Establishing a Forum for Operational Issues BOF (OPERA)
Reported by Erik Huizer/SURFnet
The BOF was intended to answer the following three questions:
1. For which applications and services is there a need for
international operation and coordination?
The discussion was restricted to services above the network layer
(i.e., we assume that ping works). A list of services that people
thought were in need of international coordination and an
operational platform was compiled. The individual items on the
list were not discussed. The intention was to get insight in the
potential upcoming operational issues.
o CIDR deployment
o Information services
o DNS
o Route servers
o Distributed NICs
o URN resolution services
o End-to-end services
o Authentication services
o Firewall operation
o Channel/tunnel coordination
o Directory services
o E-mail
o Archiving services
o Mirroring services
o Multi-lingual services
o Trouble ticket hand-off
o Policy determination
o CERT
o Quality of service/service level agreements
o Access to services through limited protocols (e.g., e-mail
access only)
2. Which international bodies exist that deal with operations, and
that could serve as a home to these application services
operations?
The following non-exclusive list was identified:
o IETF-OPS
o IEPG
o RIPE
o EEPPG
o APnic
o APccirn-APepg
o FIRST/CERT
o InterNIC
o MHS-Managers
o Bind/Namedroppers
Geoff Houston as chair of the IEPG then presented the charter of
the IEPG that had recently been revised. This charter will be
published as an Informational RFC. In summary: the IEPG is open to
anyone who wants to discuss operational issues related to the
Internet. Anything will be discussed provided there is a
constituency. To subscribe to the IEPG mailing list send mail to
iepg-request@aarnet.edu.au.
Regional presentations from EEPG, APepg and the North American
equivalent followed.
3. Is there enough interest to find a home for operational issues for
applications and services?
The consensus was that there is a need (see the list under question
one). Consensus was also reached that the IEPG, with its current
charter, seemed like a very suitable and independent home for such
issues.
The recommendation from this BOF is that the IEPG should serve as
the platform for Internet operators to discuss operational issues
of all kinds, and to coordinate services. The IETF is the platform
where operational requirements and standards are discussed and
defined. If the IEPG runs into issues that require standards
related activities (e.g., changes in standards, new standards,
requirements documents, etc.), these will be referred to the IETF.
Although it is acknowledged that the borderline between the IETF
and IEPG will not always be this sharp, it is recommended that this
distinction be followed as close as possible. Input from IEPG to
IETF (and vice versa) is of course essential for both bodies.
IEPG Charter
The Internet Engineering and Planning Group (IEPG) is a group
principally comprised of Internet service operators.
The common objective of the group is to promote a technically
coordinated operational environment of the global Internet.
The activities of the IEPG will be within the following areas:
o To facilitate the operations and management of global Internet
services,
o To promote the introduction of new Internet services within the
global Internet, and
o Liaison with related Internet operations groups and liaison with
technical development groups.
Explicitly the IEPG is not a group which will conduct activities of a
technical developmental nature.
Membership of the IEPG shall be open. Any individual may subscribe to
the IEPG mailing list, and all meeting announcements, meeting agendas,
meetings and meeting reports shall be made openly available.
The IEPG will maintain an archive of material available using World Wide
Web (WWW) access tools. The location of this WWW archive, and this
charter, will be disseminated to the Internet community through an
Informational RFC.
Attendees
Claudio Allocchio Claudio.Allocchio@elettra.trieste.it
Tony Bates tony@ripe.net
Jon Boone boone@psc.edu
Erik-Jan Bos erik-jan.bos@surfnet.nl
Luc Boulianne lucb@bunyip.com
Scott Bradner sob@harvard.edu
Robert Brenner Robert.W.Brenner@gte.sprint.com
J. Nevil Brownlee nevil@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
Joesph Burrescia burrescia@es.net
Randy Bush randy@psg.com
C. Allan Cargille allan.cargille@cs.wisc.edu
John Carlson johnc@cac.washington.edu
Henry Clark henryc@oar.net
Michael Collins collins@es.net
Steve Corbato corbato@nwnet.net
John Curran jcurran@nic.near.net
Shane Davis shane@delphi.com
Farokh Deboo fjd@synoptics.com
Sean Doran smd@use.net
Ian Duncan id@cc.mcgill.ca
Havard Eidnes havard.eidnes@runit.sintef.no
Urs Eppenberger eppenberger@switch.ch
Roger Fajman raf@cu.nih.gov
Steve Feldman feldman@mfsdatanet.com
Dennis Ferguson dennis@ans.net
Jill Foster Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk
Tony Genovese genovese@es.net
Elise Gerich epg@merit.edu
Arlene Getchell getchell@es.net
Deborah Hamilton debbieh@internic.net
Eugene Hastings hastings@psc.edu
Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu
Denise Heagerty denise@dxcoms.cern.ch
Roland Hedberg Roland.Hedberg@umdac.umu.se
John Houlker j.houlker@waikato.ac.nz
Tim Howes tim@umich.edu
Richard Huber rvh@ds.internic.net
Erik Huizer Erik.Huizer@SURFnet.nl
Jinho Hur jhhur@cosmos.kaist.ac.kr
Geoff Huston g.huston@aarnet.edu.au
Barbara Jennings bjjenni@sandia.gov
Marko Kaittola Marko.Kaittola@dante.org.uk
Sean Kennedy liam@nic.near.net
John Klensin Klensin@infoods.unu.edu
Jim Knowles jknowles@binky.arc.nasa.gov
Richard Kooijman r.kooijman@et.tudelft.nl
So Young Lee sylee@hen.nca.go.kr
Frank Liu fcliu@pacbell.com
Glenn Mansfield glenn@aic.co.jp
J. Scott Marcus smarcus@bbn.com
Jun Matsukata jm@eng.isas.ac.jp
Linda Millington l.millington@noc.ulcc.ac.uk
Keith Mitchell keith@pipex.net
Pushpendra Mohta pushp@cerf.net
Kim Morla kmorla@pucp.edu.pe
Jun Murai jun@wide.ad.jp
Phil Nesser pjnesser@rocket.com
Masataka Ohta mohta@cc.titech.ac.jp
Andrew Partan asp@uunet.uu.net
Marsha Perrott perrott@prep.net
George Phillips phillips@cs.ubc.ca
Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au
Francois Robitaille francois.robitaille@crim.ca
Jim Romaguera romaguera@netconsult.ch
Srinivas Sataluri sri@internic.net
Tim Seaver tas@concert.net
Suzanne Smith smith@es.net
David Staudt dstaudt@nsf.gov
Barbara Sterling bjs@mcdata.com
Bernhard Stockman boss@ebone.net
Tim Streater t.c.streater@dante.org.uk
Marten Terpstra marten@ripe.net
Claudio Topolcic topolcic@bbn.com
Willem van der Scheun scheun@sara.nl
Maria Vistoli vistoli@infn.it
Ruediger Volk rv@informatik.uni-dortmund.de
Jessica Yu jyy@merit.edu
Chin Yuan cxyuan@pacbell.com