Subject: Where We Go From Here

From: Tom-PT Taylor <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 08:16:25 -0500

I've bee unable to get access to E-mail until yesterday --- didn't realize I
needed different a modem connector in Britain.  Anyway, it's time I made
clear the status of our protocol and its documentation.

First point: our protocol document text is frozen as of 7:25 am EDT last
Friday, when John Segers submitted it to the ITU-T secretariat.  Every
change we make from here on in must go into a delta document which will go
as a contribution into the SG 16 decision meeting in February.  I will ask
our editors to put the complete text out as ...protocol-05.txt as soon as
the embargo is lifted.

It follows on from this that every change we identify from here on has to be
classified into one of three categories:

(1) defect, MUST fix.  These items go into the contribution into the
decision meeting.  We should track them in a new document,
draft-ietf-megaco-mustfix-xx.txt.  Each item will be expressed as a proposed
change to the text of the base protocol document.

(2) defect with workaround.  These items go into a separate contribution,
which becomes the "H.248 Implementors' Guide".  We track them in our own
document draft-ietf-megaco-impguide-xx.txt.  This material eventually gets
picked up into H.248v2.  The content here is more complex than in the
previous document: it may refer to both the base protocol document and the
"must fix" document when describing the problem and its workaround.

(3) new features.  These items could be documented in one or more drafts,
which will have to be kept alive until work on H.248v2 begins after next
February.

Bottom line: our discussion from here on in should begin with references to
text in the base protocol document.  Eventually it has to be summed up in
terms of proposed changes to that text, but the discussion can stay at the
conceptual level until we decide on the right solution.

Tom Taylor
Advisor -- IPConnect Standards
E-mail: [email-masked] (internally, Tom-PT Taylor)
Phone and FAX: +1 613 736 0961