CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by April Marine/NASA NAIC

Minutes of the Quality Information Services Working Group (QUIS)

The QUIS Working Group met on 5 December at the 31st IETF.

Thanks to Marsha Perrott for her notes from which these minutes were
derived.


Agenda

   o Review charter and milestones.
   o Update on related work being done by TERENA in Europe.
   o Update on collection of data analyzing link failures.
   o Decision concerning next steps and assigning action items.


Actions items are listed at the end of these minutes.


Review Charter and Milestones

As this was a new group, we reviewed the charter and milestones as well
as the description of the group so that everyone would be familiar with
what we are planning to do.  In particular, it was noted that we were
only addressing link failures and recommendations for how to deal with
them, and we have an Internet-Draft due by March.


Update on TERENA Work

Jill Foster presented an update on the TERENA Task Force that is working
on similar questions.  They feel very strongly that one must consider
the total picture of an information system, which includes the people
providing and using the information, the data itself, the hardware and
software, the procedures used to publish the information on-line, and
the costs of the whole system.  This group is also new, so it has not
yet had a chance to define more specific goals beyond defining its
approach to the problem.


Update on Collection of Data Analyzing Link Failures

Mitra, Alex Hoppman, Chris Weider, and Michael Mealling said at the last
BOF in Toronto that they would have some data from which we could start
an analysis of link failures.  Chris and Michael did not make this
meeting (although Chris was cornered long enough for us to learn that he
had not had a chance to make progress on this front).  Alex's software
to collect failure information is not yet quite ready.  Mitra talked
about the data he has collected, but he has not had a chance to analyze
it formally.  He noted that many of the failures seemed to be transient,
such as ftp servers refusing connections when they were overloaded.
Alex suggested contacting such site administrators to find out what
percentage of the time their servers were maxed out and refusing all new
connections.  In general, there was an interesting discussion and much
speculation.



Decision Concerning Next Steps and Assigning Action Items

Our first action item is to write an Internet Draft noting the
information we discovered from taking a look at common link failures.
It was agreed that since at this point we have no formal data, this
would be tough to accomplish!  Therefore, we agreed to set up a mailing
list to which people could send their failures as they occurred, along
with a short description of what they were doing at the time as context
for the occurrence.  This list will be quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov.
This list is now operational.  After people have contributed some
errors, Nevil Brownlee consented to look at the data there and compile
it into a draft that describes what people experienced.  Mitra also
suggested that we take the informal write ups of the previous BOF
discussions and see if they can be incorporated into the document.

So, members of the group will contribute failures.  Alex and Mitra were
also requested to write up at least a paragraph describing the
information observations they have been able to make from their
collections of failures, even if they have not had time to sort through
their piles of data formally.  Capturing their experience seems like a
valuable contribution.

The quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov mailing list is hypermail archived at:


     http://naic.nasa.gov/naic/archives/quality-errors/


To send to the list, use the quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov address.  If
you actually wish to join the list, send to listmanager@naic.nasa.gov,
with subscribe quality-errors as the body of your message (do not
include your name).

The quality@naic.nasa.gov mailing list is hypermail archived at:


     http://naic.nasa.gov/naic/archives/quality/


Other quality information can be found at:


     gopher://gopher.path.net:8001/11/.ietf/Quality


Actions

   o April to set up new mailing list, quality-errors@naic.nasa.gov.  DONE
   o The group to contribute failures to the mailing list.
   o Nevil Brownlee to compile information sent to list into a draft.
   o Mitra and Alex (and any others who are willing) to write a
     paragraph with what they have observed about common failures.