Operational Requirements Area

Directors


   o Scott Bradner:  sob@harvard.edu
   o Mike O'Dell:  mo@uunet.uu.net


Area Summary reported by Scott Bradner/Harvard and Mike O'Dell/UUNET

Meetings of four Operational Requirements Area working groups and three
BOFs were held during the 30th IETF meeting in Toronto, Canada.



Guidelines and Recommendations for Incident Processing BOF (GRIP)

The GRIP BOF met to discuss forming a working group which would produce
guidelines and recommendations for use when dealing with security
related incidents.  The scope was to produce recommendations suitable
for use by response teams (RTs), Internet users and vendors of hardware
and software products.  The participants of the BOF agreed that there
was sufficient interest in the issues discussed to establish a working
group.  The proposed co-chairs, Barbara Frasier (CERT) and Louis Mamakos
(UUNET) are completing their draft charter and will be forwarding it for
approval soon.



Internet Accounting 2 BOF (ACCT2)

The BOF appears to have gone reasonably well and the prospective
co-chairs, Nevil Brownlee and Cyndi Mills, are working on a charter
after discussions with both Operational Requirements Area co-Directors.
Assuming they get closure on the revised charter it will be forwarded
for approval.



Testing BOF (TESTING)

The US DoD is starting a conformance testing program to support
procurement of IP technology networking hardware.  They are developing
testing profiles, verification suites and testing tools.  At this BOF,
Lee Chastain described their work developing the tester software and
provided an (unofficial) overview of the conformance testing program.
While it became evident that there is probably insufficient interest in
a pure testing working group, there was considerable interest in
tracking these efforts.  Further, the discussions made it clear that a
major revision of the Router Requirements and Host Requirement documents
was a mandatory exercise for the IETF.


Benchmarking Methodolgy Working Group (BMWG)

Meeting was cancelled.


CIDR Deployment Working Group (CIDRD)

Erik-Jan Bos and Tony Bates each presented statistics reflecting the
progress of CIDR. The conclusion is that CIDR has been helping to reduce
the growth of the global routing table.

A number of open CIDR issues were discussed:  Why are some ASs still not
playing?  What can be done to encourage them?  Is it worth aggregating
``old'' nets?  Should specific CIDR address allocation procedures be
recommended?

The need to continue the working group was discussed and it was
concluded that since there are still tasks that the group should be
involved in, it should continue.


Generic Internet Service Description Working Group (GISD)

The history of the GISD effort was reviewed and a proposed new charter
was discussed.  David Sitman assumed the mantle of GISD Working Group
Chair from Tony Bates.  A revised outline for the GISD document was
proposed and discussed and a call for volunteers was issued.  The
outline revision is intended to make it more likely that the working
group can bring the document to closure in a timely fashion.


Network Status Reports Working Group (NETSTAT)

Network status presentations were made by Scott Bradner (CoREN), Tim
Seaver (NC-REN), Sue Hares (NSFNET transition), Guy Almes (ANS), and
Eric Carroll (CA*NET).


Operational Statistics Working Group (OPSTAT)

The Operational Statics Working Group made another pass over the draft
document addressing concerns raised in mailing list discussions.  The
general discussion touched on the status of existing draft
implementations, whether the information format is for storage or just
interchange (very thoughful discussion), and some revisions to make the
specification more widely useful for network event recording as well as
aggregated statistics.  The group appears to be making good progress.