Subject: Remote Participation Services

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 11:04:38 -0500

Please see the attached report on the current status of remote participation in the IETF meeting.  Please notice at the end a call for potential experiments to explore ways that we can improve remote participation.

Russ Housley
IETF Chair

Bob Hinden
IAOC Chair

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Status of Remote Participation Services in the IETF Today

                      Russ Housley
                     1 February 2013

1.  Introduction

   For more than a decade, the IETF has tried to make it easier for 
   remote attendees to participate in regular and interim face-to-face
   meetings.  At the same time, some IETF Working Groups (WGs) have
   started to conduct virtual interim meetings.

   The IETF's current remote participation system ("RPS") consists of a
   outbound real-time audio stream for each session carried to remote
   attendees over HTTP, textual multi-user chat carried over XMPP
   (commonly called Jabber), and posting of slides prior to the WG
   session so that they can be downloaded from the IETF web site.

   WebEx and Meetecho are experimentally supported, offering outbound
   real-time audio stream synchronized to the slides for the remote
   participant.  Meetecho displays the Jabber Room on the screen with
   slides, and it can also be used to replay the audio and slides from
   a recording.
   
   Some WGs also employ ad-hoc tools, such as Skype for two-way audio and
   video conferencing and Etherpad for shared document editing.

2. Regular and Interim IETF Meetings

   Today, it is easy to remotely observe IETF sessions, but it is very
   difficult to participate in discussions.  However, several tools are
   used to accommodate remote participants.  To the greatest extent
   possible, these tools rely on IETF or other open standards, and they
   embrace both IPv4 and IPv6 without network address translation.

2.1. Audio

   Anyone can use a web browser to receive real-time audio of the IETF
   meeting sessions.  The URLs for the audio are announced in advance,
   and the audio recording becomes part of the session proceedings.

   It is quite difficult for a remote participant to have their voice
   heard in the session.  The WebEx and Meetecho systems can accommodate
   this with advance setup and testing.  However, allowing arbitrary
   remote participants to speak does not work well.  Connecting to the
   audio system in the meeting facility is quite problematic.  Further,
   a WG Chair would need sophisticated controls to maintain order if
   arbitrary remote participants were able to speak at any time.
   While WebEx and Meetecho provide some participation management
   features, but integration with in-room participation is needed.

2.2. Video

   In the 1990s as part of the multicast experiment, multicast video was
   made available, but this experiment has ended without evolving into a
   production service.

   As part of a separate experiment, some sessions use Meetecho to make
   video available to anyone with a web browser.  WG Chairs must request
   this coverage.  When Meetecho is used, the URLs are announced in
   advance, and the recording becomes part of the session proceedings.

2.3. Multi-User Chat

   Multi-user chat (MUC) is used both as a remote participation tool as
   well as a communication tool for local attendees, to raise and resolve
   issues without intruding on the presentation.  Each WG has a Jabber
   Room for Multi-User Chat, which employs the XMPP Standards Foundation
   (XSF) XEP-045 specification.  These Jabber Rooms can can be used at
   any time, not just during the IETF meetings.  During the session,
   remote participants that are listening to the audio are able to ask
   questions by typing them in the Jabber Room, and then someone in the
   physical room reads the question at the mic.  This is called
   MUC-to-Mic Relay.  The Jabber Room log becomes part of the session
   proceedings.

2.4. Slide Sharing

   Anyone can use a web browser to fetch the session slides.  WG Chairs
   are responsible for posting the slides prior to the session, and the
   slides (in PDF format) become part of the session proceedings.

   When Meetecho is used, the audio or video is presented in a
   synchronized fashion along with the jabber room and slides.

2.5. Remote Presenter

   When a presenter cannot attend, someone else usually presents their
   slides.  Some WG Chairs have tried remote presentations using WebEx
   and Meetecho.  Neither system is ideal, and the audio can include
   squeals and echos.  Both systems require advance setup and testing.

   The projection of the remote presenter's face as well as their slides
   seems to improve the experience for the people in the room, but we
   have only done this successfully a few times.  An extra projector and
   screen are needed for this to work well.

2.6.  Shared Text Document Editing

   In some sessions, there is an attempt to edit a text document with
   input from the local and remote attendees.  This is most often done
   for minutes and proposed WG charter changes.  Etherpad is the most
   popular tool for this purpose.  There has been no attempt to
   standardize the tools or protocols used for this function.

2.7.  Participant Management

   A typical meeting discussion takes place by people that want to speak
   forming a line at the microphone, and the presenter replies to each
   person in turn.  However, sometimes someone will jump the queue to
   contribute to a particular discussion point.  This mechanism does not
   provide a natural means for including remote participants.  WebEx and
   Meetecho do have a feature for noting a request to speak, but this
   is not visible to in-room participants.  Hence the burden of managing
   remote participation falls to the WG Chair or their designee.

3. Virtual WG Meeting and Leadership Teleconferences

   For a virtual meeting, all participants are remote; there is no
   physical meeting room.  A virtual WG meeting is usually held to tackle
   a very small number of open issues.  Hence, all of the remote
   participation tools must be interactive, permitting any participant to
   contribute.  The primary tool for these meetings is WebEx, in a
   conference-call mode, with no queuing of speakers.  The WG Chair's
   ability to manage discussion becomes challenging as the size of the
   virtual meeting grows.

   The teleconferences held by bodies like the IESG, IAOC, and IAB are
   somewhat like an virtual WG meeting, except they are held more often
   and size of the meeting is constrained.  The fact that all
   participants know each other facilitates the use of a more informal
   process than is typically possible for an open virtual WG meeting.
   Again, all of the participants are remote.

3.1. Audio

   For virtual WG meeting, access is open, as for regular IETF meetings.
   For leadership teleconferences, access is limited to those who are
   invited.  In recent years, WebEx has been used.  WebEx supports
   telephone dial-in as well as VoIP for the audio, although it may not
   be totally aligned with the IETF standards in this area.  Skype and
   similar systems can be used to dial into WebEx.  Sometimes issues with
   an echo take time to resolve, but the quality is generally quite good.

3.2. Video

   So far, there has been no need for video.  When someone accidentally
   turns on the WebEx video, they are asked to turn it off so that
   bandwidth is available for quality audio.

3.3. Multi-User Chat

   A jabber room or the WebEx built-in chat is used among the
   participants.  The scribes often find this useful for capturing
   accurate minutes.

3.4. Slide Sharing

   Slides are often sent by email in advance of the meeting.
   
   WebEx allows the slides and desktop applications to be viewed by the
   remote participants.  These are controlled by the presenter.  The
   presenter can be shifted from participant to participant as needed.

3.5. Remote Presenter

   WebEx allows the slides to be controlled by the presenter.

3.6.  Shared Text Document Editing

   Some scribes use Etherpad for minutes.  This allows participants to
   review and even correct the minutes as the meeting takes place.

4. Improvements

   The IETF has always used the Internet to do its work, and remote
   participation is no exception.  The IETF wants to improve the tools
   provided in the RPS tools; a better RPS would allow remote IETF
   attendees to participate more effectively.

   The IETF is seeking improvements that allow remote participants to
   more naturally contribute to in-room discussion and allow meeting
   management to integrate local and remote participants into a common
   queue.

   RPS technologies are not yet mature enough to create a production
   service for the IETF, but these technologies are developing rapidly.
   The IETF will be conducting more experiments in order to achieve
   these improvements as early as possible.  To this end, the IAOC is
   soliciting suggestions for experiments.  If you have suggestions for
   experiments, please tell the IAOC:

      (1)  What hardware and software is needed?
      (2)  What people resources are needed in the meeting?
      (3)  What are the expected benefits to the IETF participants?