ATM Forum/IETF Cooperation BOF (AFIC)
Reported by Mark Laubach/Com21
The AFIC BOF, chaired by Mark Laubach and Jim Grace, met on Tuesday,
18 July. There were 67 attendees.
Jim Grace presented the charter for the ATM Forum and an overview of the
aspects of the ATM Forum's technical work. A question was raised
regarding what is the difference between the local ATM switch and the
private ATM switch? Jim replied that there are no real differences in
the ATM Forum's work. Joel Halpern added that there may be differences
between some vendors and what they provide.
Working Groups and Chairs
Jim presented a slide overviewing the working groups and their chairs:
Technical Committee Chair: George Dobrowksi (Bellcore)
Technical Committee Vice Chair: Jim Grace (Ossipee)
Working Group Chair
------------- -----
Testing Gregan Crawford (HP)
Physical Layer Richard Townsend (AT&T)
Signaling Thomas Helstern (Bell Atlantic)
Private-NNI Mike Goguen (Bay Networks)
Traffic Management Natalie Giroux (Newbridge)
Network Management Roger Kosak (IBM)
Broadband Inter-Carrier InterfaceRichard Breault (Newbridge)
Service Aspects & Applications Dean Skidmore (IBM)
LAN Emulation Keith McCloghrie (Cisco)
Multiprotocol over ATM George Swallow (Cisco)
Residential Broadband Stanley Ooi (ATM Ltd.)
Opportunities for Joint Work
Jim gave an overview of the following activities and the opportunities
for joint work:
o Private Network-to-Network Interface (PNNI)
- Variable hierarchy for UNI 3.0 Private ATM addresses
- ANYCAST addresses supported
- Signaling based on UNI 3.1 Q.2931 protocol
- Interim Inter-switch Signaling Protocol (IISP) based on static
routing
- Phase 1 specification aiming for a unified protocol supporting
inter-domain and intra-domain application
- Schedule: IISP specification in the first quarter of 1995,
Phase 1 specification in late 1995
A question was raised regarding addressing formats: do they all look
like DCC, ???, and E.164 embedded? Is it an issue to add another format
at sometime in the future? Joel Halpern replied that it is no problem
for PNNI to support an additional format, it is purely a bitstring
issue.
o Multiprotocol over ATM (MPOA)
- The fundamental purpose of the MPOA service is to provide
end-to-end internetworking layer connectivity across an ATM
fabric, including the case where some internetworking layer
hosts are attached directly to the ATM fabric and some are
attached to legacy subnetwork technologies.
- Work related to the Routing Over Large Clouds Working Group
(ROLC) of the the IETF.
Mechanisms for Increasing Cooperation
Several mechanisms will be presented for increasing cooperation with the
IETF. By charter, the ATM Forum has been a closed industrial consortium
with specific bylaws, dues, etc. The Forum has recognized a need to
make certain internal documents available to the IETF:
o Via FTP anonymous from the atmforum.com machine:
PNNI Draft: ~ftp/pub/contributions/atm94-0471.ps
MPOA Baseline:~ftp/pub/contributions/atm95-0824.ps
~ftp/pub/contributions/atm95-0824.txt
o E-mail cross fertilization via two lists:
PNNI: x-pnni@atmforum.com
MPOA: x-mpoa@atmforum.com
To subscribe, send to the normal ``-request'' mailbox.
General Discussion
The BOF was then opened up for general discussion, questions, and
answers. The people conversing are recorded as follows: Jim = Jim
Grace, Mark = Mark Laubach, Joel = Joel Halpern, Frank = Frank
Kastenholz, Ross = Ross Callon, Brian = Brian Carpenter, Q = anonymous
question asker, and Anon = anonymous answer from an attendee:
Q: What is the status on opening up the Forum?
Jim: There is debate within the Forum, even with doing away with
the auditing membership.
Q: Can the IETF suggest that the ATM Forum do away with the auditing
membership and open things up?
Jim: It's an issue we can communicate back.
Also, info@atmforum.com works for getting information, including
for principle members to get FTP access.
Q: Can the IETF join as a principle member?
Jim: I don't know.
Frank: You've told us about how ATM Forum members can do better things
with the Forum. What is this BOF about?
Mark: To open up a few specific documents to the IETF and to allow
discussions to happen about these documents.
Joel: We need more feedback from this group passed to the Forum in order
to broaden its opening up.
Brian: It sounds like this is a money issue -- the Forum ought to open
up all of its drafts to the public for feedback -- the IETF is just
a subset of the public.
Q: But opening up the documents doesn't open up the voting privileges
and the voting counts.
Joel: The information exchange will make a difference.
Mark: How do the responsibilities of effort divide between the IETF
and ATM Forum for internetworking over ATM?
Brian: Yes, will the ATM Forum take the IP over ATM Framework document as
seriously as we're being asked to take the MPOA document?
Joel: ROLC NHRP work is being taken very seriously.
Ross: MPOA is at a very early stage and this is a good time for feedback.
Jim: I will take what I've heard here back to the ATM Forum
Frank: What is the IETF going to get out of this effort?
Anon: Companies who are not in the ATM Forum get a way to influence
the Forum.
Q: What about the differences between MPOA with RFC 1577 and MARS?
Where will control reside if we decide to merge them?
Joel: Good questions. There's a lot to do here.
Ross: Would it be that we go back and forth and bless identical work or
do we give control to one group?
Q: What are the other groups that ATM Forum has liaison too?
Jim: ITU-TS - International Telecomm Union - Tech Standards
ETSI - European Telecomm Standards Institute
DAVIC - Digital Audio Video Interface Group
ANSI T1S1 - American National Standards Institute
IEEE P802.14 - Cable TV MAC and PHY
NMFORUM - Network Management Forum
Frame Relay Forum
[IETF too]