Speaking of Standards

It’s hard these days to escape news about peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and the concerns raised by service providers about those P2P apps. With recent FCC hearings about Comcast “delaying” P2P traffic, the topic is getting a great amount of discussion across the blogosphere and in the media in general. To look at the issue from a technical point-of-view and see if there are technical solutions that could help in the area, the IETF recently announced a “workshop on P2P Infrastructure” to be held on May 28th on the campus of MIT in the Boston area.

From a voice perspective, any kind of latency / delay is something to be avoided at all costs. As researchers look at P2P SIP as a future deployment model, getting the infrastructure right is a key factor in the future success of P2P SIP. Now, serious deployments of P2P SIP won’t happen for some time now (probably a few years), but the reality is that it will also take some time for any technical solutions to: 1) work their way through IETF; 2) be incorporated into vendor equipment; and 3) actually be deployed in service provider networks. So now is really a good time to get started.

If you are interested in P2P applications in general and are in the Boston area (or can get there), please do consider attending this workshop. There is a wiki page for the workshop that will be updated as the workshop gets closer and a ‘p2pi’ mailing list that is open to anyone to join.

Here is part of the announcement that explains what the workshop will be about:

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The Real-time Applications & Infrastructure (RAI) Area Directors, Jon Peterson and Cullen Jennings, would like to announce an IETF workshop on P2P Infrastructure to be held on May 28, 2008 at 50 Vassar St, Room 34-101 on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA USA.

Several large ISPs have encountered issues with P2P traffic. The transfer of static, delay-tolerant data between nodes on the Internet is a well-understood problem, but traditional management of fairness at the transport level has largely been circumvented by applications designed to achieve the best end-user transfer rates. This results, at peak times, in networks running near absolute capacity, and in which all traffic incurs delays; the applications that bear the brunt of this additional latency are real-time applications like VoIP and Internet gaming. This has led to need for further discussion of the proper approaches to P2P application development, and infrastructure management in environments where P2P is commonly used. This workshop intends to discover where additional IETF standards work is needed, or existing work might be reapplied, to alleviate these difficulties. In particular, the workshop will draw on the experiences of Comcast and BitTorrent, representatives of both of whom will present their perspectives on the problem space.

Example solution discussions might include, but are not limited to: deployment of application servers or caches to reduce network load; new rendez-vous mechanisms to optimize P2P network topology; enabling applications to signal their bandwidth needs (and priority or lack thereof) to networks; enabling networks to signal bandwidth constraints to elastic and inelastic applications; and, new approaches to fairness that are coupled with incentives for applications. Contributions from subject matter experts in the problem and solution space are welcome. The primary outcome should be a direction for one or more IETF efforts exploring the best practices for addressing these challenges.

The organizers would like to stress that this is a technical workshop exploring engineering issues and practices. The public policy implications of P2P applications are not in the scope of this workshop.

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If you would like more information about how to participate in the workshop, please read the full announcement.

Technorati Tags: ietf, standards, p2p, peer-to-peer, p2psip, sip, voip, comcast, bittorrent, Internet, networking

If you want to get a sense of what an IETF meeting is all about, I’ve now uploaded a set of photos from the recent IETF 71 meeting in Philadelphia.

If you get the sense that we spent a lot of time sitting in chairs… you would be correct! It’s all about chairs, hallway conversations and, of course, (for those of us with no aversion to speaking publicly) the microphone! (Unless, that is, someone relocates the mic.

IETF meetings also naturally involve a whole lot of email, even while we are there at the meeting. Given that we had a very solid wireless network (even if access points were sometimes on chairs) and we also had a 100 Gbps (yes, you read that correctly - 100 Gigabits per second!) connection to the Internet via Comcast you’ll notice that basically every picture has a very high density of laptops. If there were 1300 people at the meeting, probably 1295 of the attendees had a laptop there with them.

Technorati Tags: ietf, ietf71, philadelphia, comcast, standards

Want to try out peer-to-peer SIP? (P2PSIP?) One of the areas of work within the IETF right now that intrigues me the most is the whole effort around “peer-to-peer” SIP, a.k.a. “P2PSIP”. The idea is that you could have “SIP without servers”, i.e. a range of SIP endpoints (hard phones, soft phones, etc.) that would learn of each other and communicate with each other using SIP over a P2P network (also referred to as a “P2P overlay” or sometimes just casually as a “P2P cloud”).

In another post at some point, I’ll write more about why P2PSIP is intriguing to me (and for Voxeo), but for the moment I thought I’d post that David Bryan, chair of the IETF’s P2PSIP Working Group, has very nicely put up a page listing existing implementations of P2PSIP technology. There are several open source implementations, as well as a commercial implementation from David’s own company, SIPeerior Technologies (he’s the CEO). All of these are implementations of exists drafts and so they will undoubtedly change as the drafts evolve and morph into RFCs over the next months and years ahead. Still, if you’d like to experiment and get a sense of what people are working on, the implementations are now out there!

P.S. David has also posted the P2PSIP presentations from IETF 71 earlier this month.

Technorati Tags: sip, p2p, p2psip, sipeerior, ietf, sipdht

It’s been a long and exhausting week… There are so many things I have wanted to write about… the RUCUS BOF… the MEDIACTRL session… the IPv6 experiment in the first plenary… the P2P video presentation in the technical plenary… the SIPPING and SIP sessions… the SPEERMINT and PEPPERMINT sessions… meeting the co-author of a draft I wrote who I had never met… the VERY lively P2PSIP session this morning… my challenges streaming video with hot laptops… cheese steaks and random strangers… the 100 Gbps network that Comcast brought in (yes, you read that correctly!)… so many sessions… so many great conversations… so many great people… so much great work going on… so many great stories to tell…

Alas, those stories will have to wait for late Sunday or Monday (or next week)… right now it’s time for me to head offline for some family time before I head out Sunday afternoon to Orlando for VoiceCon!

Technorati Tags: ietf, ietf71

How many conferences have you attended where the WiFi network - if there even is one - has been really poor? Or charged you an arm and a leg to use it?

That doesn’t happen at IETF meetings… bandwidth is usually decent and accessible in in all meeting rooms and common areas - at no charge to meeting attendees. Why? Because the IETF brings in its own network!

Indeed, there’s even a document on “Meeting Network Requirements” which spells out how to arrange such a network. Here’s the abstract:

The IETF Meeting Network has become integral to the success of any IETF meeting. Building such a network, which provides service to thousands of heavy users, spread throughout the event venue, with very little time for setup and testing is a dramatic challenge. This document provides a set of requirements, derived from hard won experience, as an aid to anyone involved in designing and deploying future networks.

If only other conferences could have a network like this!

P.S. Here’s a piece in the Philadelphia Business Journal that goes into this: “1,500-strong laptop invasion to hit Marriott for Net task force” (hat tip to Comcast’s IETF71 blog).

Technorati Tags: ietf, conferences, wifi

If you would like to listen to what is going on at the IETF-71 sessions in Philadelphia the sessions will be streamed in real-time courtesy of the Network Startup Resource Center at the University of Oregon. (Tip to Comcast’s IETF71 site for the link.)

You can also join in the IETF group chatrooms to see commentary during the sessions and also to ask your own questions. Each working group typically has someone acting as Jabber “scribe” during the session who will type updates into the chat room and also pose questions from chatroom members.

So here’s how you can participate remotely:

1. LOOK AT THE OVERALL AGENDA - Browse the meeting agenda and find the session(s) you want to attend.

2. FIND THE WORKING GROUP ABBREVIATION AND/OR ROOM - This is the important part. You need the “Working Group” or BOF abbreviation to go on to the next steps. Let’s say that on the agenda you want to following the “Multiparty Multimedia Session Control WG” on Monday morning at 9:00am. The working group abbreviation is “mmusic” and it is going to be in room “Franklin 3/4″.

3. FIND THE AUDIO STREAM FOR THE SESSION - Go to the audio streaming page and look at the row for the room and the column for the day. You should see the Working Group abbreviation there. Click on the audio link for that room. For instance, MMUSIC tomorrow morning at 9am is on audio channel “ietf71-ch2“.

4. JOIN THE IM GROUP CHATROOM - To join the group chatrooms you’ll need a Jabber-based IM client which could be something as simple as GoogleTalk. If you are on a Mac, Adium works great with your GMail/GoogleTalk account. Connect to the Jabber server “jabber.ietf.org” and join the “room” of the working group abbreviation. For instance, MMUSIC would be “mmusic” (and the full Jabber name of the room will be “mmusic@jabber.ietf.org”).

5. LOOK AT THE SESSION AGENDA / MEETING MATERIALS - Look at the session agenda / materials list to see what is specifically being talked about and what slides might be available for you to view. NOTE: Session materials are often not posted until the session is ready to start (or sometimes afterward).

If you’ve followed these steps, you should now be listening to the audio for the session and also connected into Jabber where you can potentially find out who is at the microphone and - if you want - ask your own questions. If you have a questions, the “Jabber scribe” for the session can get to the microphone and ask the question for you.

A couple of notes:

• Philadelphia is in the US Eastern timezone. Note that we just shifted to Daylight Savings Time so there’s an hour timezone difference from yesterday.

• Jabber chat rooms will probably be empty until there is an actual session going on.
• There are Jabber chat rooms for the working groups but not necessarily for BOFs. It’s not always clear what Jabber chat room a BOF will use.
• When you join a Jabber chat room, if no one identifies themself as the scribe, feel free to ask. (Hint: It’s probably the person typing a lot.)
• Note that Jabber chat sessions are archived, so please realize that everything you say in them will be public.

All in all it’s a great way for remote participants to join in to what is going on down at IETF…. so check it out!

Technorati Tags: IETF, standards

On Sunday night I head down to Philadelphia for the IETF-71 meeting for the whole week. It will be a crazy week full of discussions and conversations about all the various standards under development. The RUCUS BOF I’ve mentioned before will be on Monday as is the SIPPING Working Group. MEDIACTRL Working Group (of key interest to us here at Voxeo) is on Wednesday as is SPEERMINT and PEPPERMINT (Hey, it’s IETF, you have to have cute names!). Thursday brings SIP, BEHAVE, AVT and ENUM and Friday morning winds it all up with the P2PSIP working group.

Being who I am, I’ll pretty much sit in all of the “Realtime Applications and Infrastructure” (RAI) working groups as sometimes activity in one group turns out to have great relevance to work in other groups (or to work here at Voxeo). I’ll be online the Jabber chat rooms probably much of the whole time as well.

If you’ve never seen the full agenda for an IETF meeting, it’s pretty incredible (at least to me!). In any given timeslot there are typically eight simultaneous meetings of various working groups, BOFs, research groups, etc. This makes sense if you remember that the IETF is developing standards for pretty much all aspects of the Internet. While I usually never leave the world of RAI, there are groups dealing with security, DNS, email, IPv6, network routing, time (seriously!), host configuration and pretty much every other subject you can imagine relating to the Internet. Take a look!

And yes, the days do begin with a breakfast at 8am and meetings that go until 7pm (often with additional ad hoc meetings afterwards). The good news is that the breaks between sessions usually have food and drink to keep you recharged.

For those attending who wish to stalkfind me, here below is the agenda I think I’ll be following (subject to the fact that it can, of course, change). Like I said earlier, it’s pretty much all of the RAI area.

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MONDAY, March 10, 2008
0800-0900 Continental Breakfast - Franklin Hall Foyer

0900-1130 Morning Session I

RAI

mmusic

Multiparty Multimedia Session Control WG

1300-1500 Afternoon Session I

RAI

rucus

Ruducing Unwanted Communications using SIP BOF

1520-1720 Afternoon Session II

RAI

ecrit

Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies WG

1740-1950 Afternoon Session III

RAI

sipping

Session Initiation Proposal Investigation WG

TUESDAY, March 11, 2008
0800-0900 Continental Breakfast - Franklin Hall Foyer

0900-1130 Morning Session I
One of these:

IRTF	rrg	Routing Research Group
OPS	v6ops	IPv6 Operations WG
RAI	geopriv	Geographic Location/Privacy WG

1300-1500 Afternoon Session I

RAI

bliss

Basic Level of Interoperability for SIP Services WG

1520-1720 Afternoon Session II

RAI

avt

Audio/Video Transport WG

1740-1840 Afternoon Session III
One of these:

IRTF	asrg	Anti-Spam Research Group
RAI	simple	SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions WG

1850-1950 Afternoon Session IV

RAI

xcon

Centralized Conferencing WG

WEDNESDAY, March 12, 2008
0800-0900 Continental Breakfast - Franklin Hall Foyer

0900-1130 Morning Session I

RAI

mediactrl

Media Server Control WG

1300-1500 Afternoon Session I

RAI

speermint

Session PEERing for Multimedia INTerconnect WG

1510-1610 Afternoon Session II

RAI

peppermint

Provisioning Extensions in Peering Registries for Multimedia INTerconnection BOF

1610-1700 PGP Session
(Yes, I’m one of those people who does actually go to PGP key signings.)

pgp

PGP Key Signing

1700-1930 IETF Operations and Administration Plenary - Salon G/H

THURSDAY, March 13, 2008
0800-1700 IETF Registration - Franklin Hall Foyer

0800-0900 Continental Breakfast - Franklin Hall Foyer

0900-1130 Morning Session I

RAI

sip

Session Initiation Protocol WG

1300-1500 Afternoon Session I
One of these:

IRTF	hiprg	Host Identity Protocol
SEC	saag	Security Area Open Meeting
TSV	behave	Behavior Engineering for Hindrance Avoidance WG

1510-1610 Afternoon Session II
One of these:

RAI	avt	Audio/Video Transport WG
RAI	enum	Telephone Number Mapping WG

1700-1930 Technical Plenary - Salon G/H

FRIDAY, March 14, 2008

0800-0900 Continental Breakfast - Franklin Hall Foyer

0900-1130 Morning Session I

RAI

p2psip

Peer-to-Peer Session Initiation Protocol WG

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As I mentioned previously, the “RUCUS” BOF about voice spam at IETF 71 in Philadelphia is one of great interest to us. Unfortunately BOF co-chair Hannes Tschofenig ran into a problem with his domain and had to move the page to a new URL: http://www.shingou.info/bof-rucus.html

If you saved the URL or sent it on to someone, you’ll need to update to using the new URL. If you didn’t visit the RUCUS page before, please do check it out - and feel free to join the RUCUS mailing list. Of course, if you can, please do join us in person in Philadelphia!

Technorati Tags: spit, ietf, spam, rucus, standards, sip

In the list of recently published RFCs, I was intrigued to see RFC 5118, “Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Torture Test Messages for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)“. This is really a companion document to RFC 4475 that provides IPv6-related messages you can use while testing SIP. From the overview:

This document is informational, and is *not normative* on any aspect of SIP.

This document contains test messages based on the current version (2.0) of the Session Initiation Protocol as defined in [RFC3261].

This document is expected to be used as a companion document to the more general SIP torture test document [RFC4475], which does not include specific tests for IPv6 network identifiers.

This document does not attempt to catalog every way to make an invalid message, nor does it attempt to be comprehensive in exploring unusual, but valid, messages. Instead, it tries to focus on areas that may cause interoperability problems in IPv6 deployments.

As IPv6 continues to move (slowly) along, it’s great to see an example like this RFC 5118 that can aid people who are developing SIP apps for IPv6.

Technorati Tags: ietf, ipv6, standards, sip

If you are the considering attending the 71st IETF meeting March 10-14 in Philadelphia, you may want to also visit the IETF-71 micro-site put up online by Comcast, the host of IETF-71. They’ve done a good job providing information about the hotel, restaurants, the social event and more. (And yes, they of course have a link to where to find the best cheese steaks… )