Subject: Brief Report on Results of ITU-T Study Group 8 meeting

From: James Rafferty <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 17:01:50 -0400

Folks,   

Things went well this week at the Question 4 rapporteur meeting and at
the Study Group 8 plenary meeting.   

The key result from our standpoint is that T.37 Amendment 1 was approved.   
This amendment establishes the Internet Fax "full mode" for T.37, which 
references the extended Internet Fax RFCs 2530-2532, and has embedded
references to the Conneg RFCs 2506, 2533 and 2534.    

So, the agreement between ITU-T and IETF for common Internet fax standards
now includes support for both the simple mode (T.37 referencing RFCs
2301-2305)
and the full/extended mode (T.37 Amend 1, referencing RFCs 2530-2532).   
This is an important development for companies that have current or planned
Internet fax products and services, as it means that both standards groups
have endorsed the facilities needed to provide features such as delivery 
confirmation, processing confirmation, color document transport and 
capabilities identification.    

The two communications which we submitted were also positively received.   
No direct work items resulted, but there is some implied ongoing work 
in areas such as enhanced capability identification and extended MDN
messages.    My understanding is that there will be some work proceeding
in these areas which may result in Internet drafts in the not too distant
future; 
there were some related informal discussions this week.   

There was also agreement that maintaining a link between the ITU and the 
IETF for fax topics is important going forward for purposes of communication
and maintenance/extension of the recommendations and RFCs.    This is 
an item we will discuss further as we plan for the steps needed to 
complete the remaining activities of the Internet Fax working group.   

In other news, another area of IETF cooperation and references is opening up
as there has now been "determination" (the 1st step of the ITU-T approval
process) on draft Annexes to T.38 (real time fax over IP) which are targeted
to use the SIP/SDP  RFCs (draft Annex D) and Megaco/H.248 (draft Annex 
E).     These documents are targeted for February approval.    

That's a summary of the key events related to our work from this week.
My thanks 
to the other ISOC delegates Dave Crocker and Graham Klyne, who both helped 
out on some of the discussion early in the week.    Thanks also to Herman 
Silbiger, the Q4 rapporteur,  and Toru Maeda, the T.37 editor, who  
were instrumental in the process of completing the approval for T.37 amendment
1.   

James Rafferty
Chair, IETF Internet Fax working group

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