Subject: 51st IETF - IP Flow Export BOF (ipfx)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:10:39 -0400

IP Flow Export BOF (ipfx)

Thursday, August 09 at 0900-1130
=================================

CHAIRS: Nevil Brownlee <[email-masked]>
        Dave Plonka <[email-masked]>

AGENDA:

 1. Agenda bashing.

 2. Discussion of IPFX Requirements
    (Internet Draft being prepared, to be submitted
    late June).

 3. Discussion of charter, goals & milestones for the
    proposed new IPFX Working Group.

 4. Discussion of work items raised in the charter
    discussion.

 Mailing Lists:
         General Discussion: [email-masked]
         To Subscribe: [email-masked] with "subscribe ipfx"
                     in message body
         Archive: http://ipfx.doit.wisc.edu/

 Description of Working Group:

    There is a need in industry and the Internet research community for
    IP devices such as routers to export flow information in a standard
    way to external systems such as mediation systems,
    accounting/billing systems, and network management systems to
    facilitate services such as measurement, accounting, and billing.

    This group will define a protocol by which IP flow information can
    be transferred in a timely fashion from an "exporter" to a
    collection station or stations.  The "exporter", which is typically
    an IP router or IP traffic measurement device, will employ the IP
    flow export protocol to report "IP flows", these being series of
    related IP packets that have been either forwarded or dropped.  The
    reported flow details will include both (1) those attributes derived
    from the IP packet headers such as source and destination address,
    protocol, and port number and (2) those attributes often known only
    to an IP router such as timestamps, ingress and egress ports, IP
    (sub)net mask, and autonomous system numbers.

    In doing so, the group has the following specific goals:

     o  Devise a protocol that provides a flexible but specialized, high
        performance, online IP Flow export capability which meets the
        work-load, reliability and timeliness requirements of existing
        applications that rely on IP flow export.

     o  Define the notion of a "standard IP flow" within the protocol
        specification.  The flow definition will be a practical one,
        similar to those currently in use by existing non-standard flow
        export protocols which have attempted to acheive similar goals
        but have not documented their flow defintion.

     o  Devise data encodings that support analysis of MPLS, IPv4 and
        IPv6 unicast and multicast flows traversing a network element at
        packet header level and other levels of aggregation as requested
        by the network operator according to the capabilities of the
        given router implementation.

     o  Ensure that the protocol is reasonable to implement by router
        and instrumentation developers and is easy to deploy by network
        operators.

     o  Design the protocol to be reliable in that it will minimize the
        likelihood of flow data being lost and to accurately report such
        loss if it occurs.  This may involve supporting the use of
        firewall/proxy between network element and collectors as well as
         load balance amongst multiple collectors.

     o  Consider the notion of IP flow export based upon packet sampling.

 Goals and Milestones:

    Jun 2001
             Request BOF at IETF 51 in London.
           BOF would discuss the charter, continue the requirements
           discussion, and begin discussion on Transport Layer
           protocol and Data encoding model.

    Late Jun 2001
             Submit Internet-Draft on IP Flow Export Requirements
                IPFX-REQUIREMENTS

    Late Sep 2001
             Submit Revised Internet-Draft on IP Flow Export Requirements
                IPFX-REQUIREMENTS

    Early Feb 2002
             Submit IPFX-REQUIREMENTS to IESG for publication,
                Informational RFC
             Submit Internet-Draft on IP Flow Export Protocol
                IPFX-PROTOCOL
             Submit Internet-Draft on IP Flow Export Data Model
                IPFX-DATAMODEL

    Early May 2002
             Submit IPFX-DATAMODEL to IESG for publication,
                Informational RFC
             Submit IPFX-PROTOCOL to IESG for publication, Proposed
                Standard RFC (also need an Applicability Statement RFC)