Subject: WG Review: Application Exchange (apex)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 11:50:03 -0500

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area.
The IESG has not made any determination as yet. 

The following Description was submitted, and is provided for
informational purposes only:

Application Exchange (apex)
---------------------------
 
 Current Status: Proposed Working Group
 
 Applications Area Advisor: 
     Patrik Faltstrom  <[email-masked]>
 
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The APEX working group shall specify protocols and data formats that
define a relaying mesh service for loosely-coupled Internet
applications, along with specifying services to provide access
control and rendezvous-by-subscription. In addition, the working
group shall specify CPIM-compliant application services for
text-based instant messaging and for online presence, based on the
APEX service.

Instant messaging differs from email primarily by requiring
relatively short delivery latency guarantees and, typically, less
robust transport service. Presence information was readily
accessible on Internet-connected systems years ago; when a user had
an open session to a well-known multi-user system, friends and
colleagues could easily tell who was online. However there is no
standard way to make this information known to peers. Similarly a number 
of messaging systems have operated over the Internet and
continue to do so, although none has focused on assuring very low
latency between posting and delivery.

The working group will use APEX (as described in draft-mrose-apex-*)
as the basis of the relay mesh, access control and rendezvous
specifications. The working group will use
draft-klyne-imxp-message-service and draft-klyne-message-rfc822-xml
as its starting points for defining the instant messaging and
presence conforming RFC2779 and the interoperability details in the 
final version of the CPIM specification (draft-ietf-impp-cpim).

Although not encouraged, non-backwards-compatible changes to the basis 
specifications will be acceptable if the working group determines that 
the changes are required to meet the group's technical objectives and 
the group clearly documents the reasons for making them.