Meeting Minutes of Internet Architecture Board Columbus, OH, March 30 and April 1, 1993 CONTENTS 1. REPORT ON STATUS OF NOMINATIONS ............................... 2 2. PROPOSED ISOC LIAISON WITH ISO ................................ 2 3. EXECUTIVE SESSION ............................................. 4 APPENDIX A: NEW IAB .............................................. 5 APPENDIX B: DRAFT AGENDA ......................................... 6 FORWARD This document contains the minutes of meetings of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) held in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, in conjunction with an IETF meeting. The sitting IAB held an open meeting on Tuesday evening March 30, 1993. It also held an executive session on Thursday evening April 1, 1993, to consider and approve the recommendation of the IETF nominating committee for new members of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Both meetings are summarized below. Subsequently, a new set of IAB members was approved by the Internet Society (ISOC) Board of Trustees; see Appendix A. These minutes were prepared by the IAB Executive Director, Bob Braden. IAB [Page 1] IAB Meeting Minutes April 1993 MINUTES An open IAB meeting was convened at 7:30 P.M. The IAB attendees were: Bob Braden, ISI [ExecD] Vint Cerf, CNRI Lyman Chapin, BBN [Chair] Phill Gross, ANS Christian Huitema, INRIA Steve Kent, BBN Barry Leiner, USRA Jon Postel, ISI [RFC Editor] [Absent members: Hans-Werner Braun, Tony Lauck, Dan Lynch] Appendix B records the initial agenda. However, due to the "lame duck" nature of this IAB, the actual agenda was severely truncated. 1. REPORT ON STATUS OF NOMINATIONS Vint Cerf, in his role as ISOC President, summarized the status of the "POISED" process for selecting new members of the IAB and IESG. He reported that the IETF Nomination Committee, chaired ably and energetically by Jeff Case, was still working on IESG nominations. The ISOC trustees had received the supporting information that they requested: vitae for the proposed new IAB members and a description of the process used by the Nomination Committee. Cerf hoped to get closure on an email ballot of the ISOC Board soon (see Appendix A). 2. PROPOSED ISOC LIAISON WITH ISO The rest of the meeting was devoted to a thorough discussion by the IAB and many other attendees of possible formal liaison between the standards development efforts of ISOC/IETF and the related standards efforts of the International Standards Organization (ISO). Jack Houldsworth attended as an official representative of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC6, to urge significant working liaison between IETF and ISO, in order to spur cooperation instead of competition. Also present was Charles Young, representing Study Group VII of CCITT (now renamed to ITI-T). His interest is in the architecture of open systems networking and he expressed interest in the establishment of liaison relations with appropriate IETF Working Groups. Houldsworth and Cerf explained ISO's liaison categories. Category A is for international treaty organizations, such as CCITT. Category B is for industry-wide groups like ECMA. Category C (which is new) is intended to allow ISO to make relationships with "fast moving organizations like ISOC/IETF", or with industry consortia such as the ATM Forum. Category A and B liaison is with the top-level ISO management; Category C is at the working group level. IAB [Page 2] IAB Meeting Minutes April 1993 JTC1 has instructed SC6 to move towards Category C liaison with the Internet Society, and SC6 empowered Houldsworth to carry this message to the IAB meeting. Other relevant SCn's were instructed to study the situation. Cerf explained that ISOC has applied for category A liaison. He noted that this request is not binding, and that its acceptance by ISO would confer no obligation on the ISOC/IETF nor would it require any changes in ISOC/IETF standards procedures. The question was posed: "What's in it for us [ISOC/IETF]?" Chapin said that an ISO liaison could "remove the lack of recognition" which currently impedes official sanction of TCP/IP in many countries. Houldsworth made an appeal for liaison, in order to "stop tearing the industry apart" and to "stop the war of attrition" between the OSI suite and TCP/IP. He said that the world cannot afford two separate standardization tracks for communication protocols; ISO wants to "build together". He noted that ISO may have to change some of its mechanisms, and that in particular, it may put its lower-level protocol documents online (but copyrighted, to protect ISO income). A number of comments from IAB members and from the floor indicated doubts that the cultural divide between ISO and ISOC/IETF can be spanned at the working group level (Class C liaison) with acceptable cost to the Internet process. ISO tends to work from the top down, while IETF works from the bottom up. Cerf observed that the technology is still evolving ("The future is yet to be written, and the Internet will explore new services, like video"). He asked Houldsworth whether ISO might change its approach to the extent of including the testing of specifications, with "bakeoffs", before they are standardized. Malamud noted that ISO working documents have only restricted circulation, and asked if this would change; Chapin responded that the current intent, not yet realized, is to distribute working documents online. Klensin noted that the IETF might be able to learn from ISO about how to run a large organization; "mutual cultural infection" might be positive. Huizer later made similar comments. On the other hand, Klensin cautioned about the unpredictability of the results of ISOC/ISO liaison There was a lengthy discussion of the practical mechanisms and cost of category C (i.e., working group level) liaison between the communities. Huitema asked what such liaison would mean in practice, since all IETF documents are already publically available via anonymous FTP. The answer was that it would cause a submission from an IETF working group to get forced attention from its ISO peer. It IAB [Page 3] IAB Meeting Minutes April 1993 was claimed that category C liaison arrangements would create opportunities for collaboration between the two communities, but these did not need to be used, and would cost nothing if they were not. However, Klensin noted that if a "pipe" were set up between IETF working groups and their ISO counterparts, then there would have to be some decision process to decide what enters this pipe, i.e., to turn on a "Submission from IETF" bit. Sincoskie observed that any effort to synchronize parallel efforts in the two communities must inevitably slow down the faster effort. He also noted that "odd couplings sometimes happen when standards bodies become linked". Young noted that CCITT/ISO relations have evolved from hostility to cooperation over the past few years, and that the same might be hoped for the ISOC/ISO relationship. Aiken said that it is not necessary to consider the details now, but it is important to move forward [towards cooperation with ISO]. Chapin expressed the hope that any liaison that actually occurs will be driven by needs, not by some arbitrary rules requiring perhaps useless activity. Young also discussed briefly a possible IETF liaison with ITI-T, which could allow direct IETF submission of contributions to ITI-T technical committees, subcommittees, working parties, etc. Steve Crocker urged a full education process on these issues for the IETF. The IAB ExecD reminded Cerf that he has an Action Item to publish the ISOC letters to ITU and ISO, as well as any responses, as RFCs. Considering its lame-duck situation, the IAB did not attempt to reach any resolution of these issues. The meeting adjourned about 9 PM. 3. EXECUTIVE SESSION During the IETF Plenary on Thursday evening, April 1, 1993, the Nominating Committee chairperson, Jeff Case, announced its nominations for new IESG members. The IAB then met in executive session to consider and approve this slate. All but one of the members who were unable to attend IETF were canvassed by telephone. The IAB accepted the Nominating Committee recommendation for new members of the IESG. The IESG members other than the chair are assigned roles as "Area Directors" (ADs) leading specific areas (sets of working groups). New/reconfirmed members of the IESG are: IETF/IESG Chair: Phill Gross Standards A.D.: Lyman Chapin Service Applications A.D.: Dave Crocker Applications A.D.: Brewster Kahle IAB [Page 4] IAB Meeting Minutes April 1993 Internet A.D.: Stev Knowles Network Management A.D.: Marshall Rose Operations A.D.: Scott Bradner Transport A.D.: Allison Mankin The complete IESG is now: IETF/IESG Chair: Phill Gross Applications A.D.: Brewster Kahle and Erik Huizer Internet A.D.: Stev Knowles and Dave Piscetello Network Management A.D.: Marshall Rose Operations A.D.: Scott Bradner and Bernard Stockman Routing A.D.: Bob Hinden Security A.D.: Steve Crocker Service Applications A.D.: Dave Crocker Standards A.D.: Lyman Chapin Transport A.D.: Allison Mankin User Services A.D.: Joyce Reynolds APPENDIX A: NEW IAB Vint Cerf, the President of the Internet Society, has announced that the ISOC Board of Trustees accepted the recommendations of the Nominating Committee for six new IAB members. These new IAB members, beginning a 2-year term, are: Elise Gerich, Merit Jun Murai, WIDE Yakov Rekhter, IBM Research John Romkey, ELF Dave Sincoskie, Bellcore Mike St Johns, ARPA These join the following members, whose terms will expire in 1 year: Bob Braden, ISI [ExecD] Christian Huitema, INRIA Steve Kent, BBN Tony Lauck, DEC Barry Leiner, USRA Jon Postel, ISI [RFC Editor, IANA, IRSG Chair] In addition, the chair of the IESG is an ex officio member: Phill Gross, ANS [IESG chair] IAB [Page 5] IAB Meeting Minutes April 1993 APPENDIX B -- DRAFT AGENDA 7:30 PM: IAB/IESG Organization * Status of nominations * Transition planning * IAB email channel 7:45 PM: External Relations * ISOC Liaison with International Standards and Telecomm Bodies - Jack Houldsworth (ISO/IEC JTC1) - Vint Cerf (ISOC) * IANA Policy on Top-Level Domain Delegation * ICD for ISOC - Contact point for NSAP administration 8:45 PM: Standards Procedure (1310-bis) Document 9:00 PM: Architecture: Using DNS for X.400 Routing 9:15 PM: Open Discussion * Opportunity for comments/questions from floor. 9:45 PM: Architecture: Report on the GIX - Karrenberg [post-BOF] 10:15 PM: Adjourn IAB [Page 6]