Applications Area

Director(s):

   o Russ Hobby:  rdhobby@ucdavis.edu

Area Summary reported by Russ Hobby/UCDavis

Area Overview

The Applications Area of the IETF is moving to bring multimedia
capabilities to the Internet.  One Working Group in particular, The
Internet Message Format Extensions Working Group (822ext), has made
great strides in this direction.  This Working Group is finishing the
specifications to allow email to have multiple parts to the message
where each part may be text, image, audio, video or other types of
information to be presented to the end user.  The Network News Transport
Protocol Working Group (nntp) is working closely with the new message
format to bring these capabilities to the network news world.  The
Teleconferencing BOF explored the idea of desktop video conferencing.
The general goal of the area is to define the protocols to create an
interoperable multimedia distributed computing environment for the
Internet.

Working Groups Summary


   o Internet Message Format Extensions (822ext)
     The Working Group is finishing the document on multi-part mail
     messages that will replace RFC 822, and plans to submit the
     document as a Proposed Standard in early January.  This will
     complete the work of the group.
   o Internet Mail Extensions (smtpext)
     The Working Group has a new Chair, John Klensin (MIT). The group
     had to decide if progress could be made towards a method to allow
     eight bit characters in SMTP. The group decided to define a means
     for negotiating the transport of eight bit characters.  It was
     thought that the method could also be useful for negotiation of
     other items, such as allowed message size.
   o Network News Transport Protocol (nntp)
     This Working Group did not meet in Santa Fe, but has been making
     good progress on the mail list and has a document about ready to be
     issued as an Internet Draft.
   o Automated Internet Mailing List Services (list)
     Unfortunately the Chair of this Working Group, David Lippke, had to
     resign due to a reassignment of work duties.  The group will be on
     hold until a new Chair is found.
   o Network FAX (netfax)
     The Working Group finished work on the image format to be used for
     transporting FAX on the Internet.  The Document will be available
     as an Internet Draft soon.
   o Network Database (netdata)
     The Working Group continued work on the definition of SQL
     transactions over TCP/IP networks.  The group is small and there

                                   1





  needs to be involvement from other SQL implementors.
o TELNET (telnet)
  The Working Group made further progress on authentication and
  encryption for TELNET sessions.  It was decided that authentication
  and encryption need to be closely tied together in operation.
o Teleconferencing BOF (teleconf)
  At this BOF several individuals presented work being done on
  teleconferencing over the Internet.  After the presentations there
  was discussion on how the problem can be broken in work that can be
  done by various working groups.  One Working Group was created to
  define methods for realtime transport of audio and video.



                                2