CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Claudio Topolcic/BBN CIP Minutes Agenda o ST-II specification - Identify remaining issues - Discuss remaining issues - Resolve remaining issues - Assign writing tasks o Connection oriented protocol research collaboration - Discuss possible collaboration efforts The CIP Working Group met during all five Working Group sessions. Our primary goal for this meeting was to resolve the remaining open issues in the ST-II protocol specification; three sessions were dedicated to this effort. In the other two sessions we discussed collaborative experiments on connection-oriented internet protocols. A draft of the ST-II specification was distributed and discussed at the previous IETF. Several issues were resolved then and new ones uncovered. Prior to the current meeting, Charlie Lynn distributed an updated draft incorporating the results of the previous meeting plus ensuing teleconferences and email. We discussed the changes and unresolved issues as follows: o Precedence is a per-connection characteristic, and is negotiated in the flowspec. There is a separate priority on each data packet to allow for layered coding schemes within one stream. o We agreed that all header and option chunks should have 32-bit alignment, including 32-bit entities within chunks, to efficiently accommodate machine architectures with that constraint. o The REFUSE and REROUTE negative response messages will be combined into one and the receiver will use the reason code to determine what action is appropriate. o If ranges of packet rate and size are offered, agents along separate branches of a connection might choose incompatible combinations each of which meets the minimum product requirement. Intermediate agents must keep track of flowspecs along each branch, so resolution can be left to the application. o To insure that a CHANGE won't cause the existing connection to break, the flowspec ranges must include the existing settings. o It is not considered an error if the next hop on a path is out the same interface as the previous hop, to allow relay multicasting. 1 o The current specification does not allow a uniform way on all control messages to determine the intended client. New fields are to be added to the control message header to allow this. o A mechanism for grouping streams is provided, but their use is not yet well enough understood, and will therefore, be left to experiment. o To make use of IP encapsulation paths between ST agents not directly connected, the ST routing table must be extended. o The current flowspec definition does not allow specifying a variable-rate requirement nor discrete steps in place of a range. There are provisions to define new flowspec versions as we learn what is needed through experiments. Writing assignments were also issued for sections of the document that are incomplete but not controversial. The draft is to be ready for submission as an Internet Draft in two weeks, followed by submission as an RFC after a comment period. The protocol will have ``Not-Recommended Experimental'' status while the CIP Group and others conduct experiments. Collaboration On Wednesday, we heard status reports on experimenters' plans. Allison Mankin described her work to implement Lixia Zhang's Flow Protocol algorithms within the framework of the BSD OSI TP2 protocol. She is now implementing the virtual clock mechanism in the BSD network drivers. Allison will test the protocol in the MITRE-DCA Testbed Network; she invites others to use the testbed, too. Charlie Lynn described the collaboration of BBN and Washington University in St. Louis to develop the ``COIP-kernel'' -- basically a new protocol family added into the BSD socket interface around which a variety of connection-oriented protocols could be implemented. The kernel is to be done by the end of August, then during September BBN will develop a set of modules around the kernel to implement ST-II. Paul McKenney told us about the traffic generators he is developing so that DARTnet experimenters can conduct repeatable experiments. They run in user space and can be synchronized at multiple sites, injecting packets at the NIT, RAW_IP or transport level. Measures are defined for both ``best effort'' and ``resource reservation'' types of protocols. Finally, we discussed how members of the group might collaborate. Allison expressed interest in using the COIP-kernel to extend Flow Protocol testing to the DARTnet Sparcstation environment. Paul's traffic generators may also be usable in the network testbed. Conversely, Paul might be able to incorporate Allison's DEC-bit code into the stochastic fair queuing algorithm. Meeting action list 2 Casner Rewrite sect 2 (& 2.1?) in about 3 pages (may be ok now). Everyone Comment on whether sections 2.3 through 2.7 are complete. Casner Update old encapsulation text of sect 3.7.3. Topolcic Edit or rewrite section 3.7.5 on Robustness. Lynn Edit sect 3.7.6. on Routing to simply list the things we expect from the routing function, but state that routing is not addressed here. Topolcic Edit or rewrite section 3.7.8. on Groups of Streams to state that groups are a way of associating streams and to just list some possible uses of such associated groups. Lynn Produce text for section 3.7.9. on the Source Route Option. Lynn Write a section in 4.3.1, FlowSpec that addresses the Burstiness parameter. Lynn Edit the paragraphs in section 4.3.1. that describe LimitOnCost and LimitOnDelay to specify the units. Topolcic Rewrite section 4.3.5.3. on Group Parameter to simply provide suggestions for the uses of Groups. Lynn Expand sect 4.4.14 on use of STATUS command for failure detection. Everyone Help find all the constants for inclusion in section 4.5, Suggested Protocol Constants, and should suggest values. Everyone Help write section 6, Areas Not Addressed, and specifically to help draw up a list. Everyone Help identify subsets everywhere. Schroder Provide protocol exchange diagrams. Everyone Think of good way to simplify protocol demultiplexing; consider origin & target(s) of stream on same host. Attendees 3 Stephen Casner casner@venera.isi.edu Steve Deering deering@pescadero.stanford.edu Kevin Fall kfall@Berkeley.EDU Kathleen Huber khuber@bbn.com Ajay Kachrani kachrani%regent.dec@decwrl.dec.com Charles Lynn clynn@bbn.com Allison Mankin mankin@gateway.mitre.org Paul McKenney mckenney@sri.com K.K. Ramakrishnan rama%erlang.dec.com@decwrl.dec.com Zaw-Sing Su zsu@tsca.istc.sri.com Claudio Topolcic topolcic@bbn.com Sijiam Zhang szhang@cs.ubc.ca 4