Subject: [TICTOC] AD report from the tictoc interim meeting in Paris

From: Mark Townsley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:57:36 +0200

Tictoc,

The tictoc Working Group held a interim meeting from Monday afternoon, 
June 16 - Wednesday afternoon, June 18. It was a very busy few days, and 
here are some of my personal observations on what we did and did not 
accomplish. These are not minutes, and I did not write this during the 
event. I am writing it now, more than a week after, reflecting back on 
how things went. The official meeting minutes, proceedings, etc. will be 
packaged up and made available soon (I'd say they are already overdue, 
but there is a lot to compile so let's give the chairs a little more 
time here).

We had about 30 people attending, with significant expertise and 
background from ITU-T SG13, IEEE1588, and NTP.  I personally didn't 
realize until the middle of the meeting that there were several people 
who had never attended an IETF event before. This didn't really present 
itself as a problem, but perhaps it would have been easier for those 
individuals if I had spent a few minutes up front describing a bit of 
the structure of the IETF, a pointer to some of the edu-team documents, 
or something similar.

I have run a few interim meetings, but I had never asked that a 
questionnaire be sent out beforehand. I think in this case it was 
useful, and the results helped guide the meeting. In fact, the first day 
we did nothing but review the results in order to tease out protocol 
requirements. We did this, as well as reviewing some of the IDs that 
have already been published. Karen feverishly took notes, and it will be 
up to Kurtis and Silvana (with the help of Karen and Greg) to pen the 
first version. The -00 deadline has already passed, but I hope that they 
will finish before the meeting in Dublin. The chairs lamented that they 
wished they had had more time to create the questionnaire, as well as 
the effort in compiling the results. Perhaps we could use a tool for 
this next time... Live and learn.

In addition to group work on protocol requirements, we broke up into 
sub-teams to work on specific application requirement parameters in 
order to better understand what the boundaries were that we will be 
shooting for and why. The overall results recorded from this were rather 
weak in terms of generating anything that we could publish and be 
broadly meaningful, but it did generate a lot of good discussion and 
helped different parties understand one another's concerns with respect 
to specific applications. We also took this a step further by breaking 
down the same list of common application requirements, and looking at 
what the currently deployed PTP and NTP solutions could achieve next to 
each of these. The point of this exercise was not to compare the two, 
but to establish baselines in order to understand where work needed to 
be done in order to improve on what we already have (gap analysis, if 
you will).

All in all, I think the interim team made progress on the first 
objective in the tictoc charter, which is:

- To develop a time and frequency distribution requirements document for
the two cases listed above, including coexistence of the two as appropriate.

And better understands what will come next with:

- To develop a document defining the modular breakdown of functionality
within the solution space.

And finally, it touched on the "gap analysis" deliverable in the charter 
with the final exercise before we adjourned. We have "fairly solid" 
numbers from NTP here in terms of establishing a baseline  of 
parameters, PTP was a bit more fuzzy and will take additional effort to 
quantify. This was a stretch goal for this meeting in any case.

We walked into the meeting hoping to have made progress on protocol 
requirements, and touch on architecture if there was time. I think we 
did that. I don't think we fully nailed down all the requirements, but 
perhaps I'll be surprised when I see the document.

I want to thank all of those who managed to attend. The next step of 
course is to get the results into a document which will be presented and 
discussed on the list, and potentially in Dublin as well.

- Mark

_______________________________________________
TICTOC mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tictoc

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 08:16:34 -0400

On Jul 2, 2008, at 7:57 AM, Mark Townsley wrote:

>
> Tictoc,
>
> The tictoc Working Group held a interim meeting from Monday  
> afternoon, June 16 - Wednesday afternoon, June 18. It was a very  
> busy few days, and here are some of my personal observations on what  
> we did and did not accomplish. These are not minutes, and I did not  
> write this during the event. I am writing it now, more than a week  
> after, reflecting back on how things went. The official meeting  
> minutes, proceedings, etc. will be packaged up and made available  
> soon (I'd say they are already overdue, but there is a lot to  
> compile so let's give the chairs a little more time here).
>
> realize until the middle of the meeting that there were several  
> people who had never attended an IETF event before. This didn't  
> really present itself as a problem, but perhaps it would have been  
> easier for those individuals if I had spent a few minutes up front  
> describing a bit of the structure of the IETF, a pointer to some of  
> the edu-team documents, or something similar.
>
> useful, and the results helped guide the meeting. In fact, the first  
> day we did nothing but review the results in order to tease out  
> protocol requirements. We did this, as well as reviewing some of the  
> IDs that have already been published. Karen feverishly took notes,  
> and it will be up to Kurtis and Silvana (with the help of Karen and  
> Greg) to pen the first version. The -00 deadline has already passed,  
> but I hope that they will finish before the meeting in

Dear Mark;

Not quite :

July 7, Monday - Internet Draft Cut-off for initial document (-00)  
submission by 17:00 PDT (24:00 UTC/GMT), upload using IETF ID  
Submission Tool.

Regards
Marshall

> Dublin. The chairs lamented that they wished they had had more time  
> to create the questionnaire, as well as the effort in compiling the  
> results. Perhaps we could use a tool for this next time... Live and  
> learn.
>
> shooting for and why. The overall results recorded from this were  
> rather weak in terms of generating anything that we could publish  
> and be broadly meaningful, but it did generate a lot of good  
> discussion and helped different parties understand one another's  
> concerns with respect to specific applications. We also took this a  
> step further by breaking down the same list of common application  
> requirements, and looking at what the currently deployed PTP and NTP  
> solutions could achieve next to each of these. The point of this  
> exercise was not to compare the two, but to establish baselines in  
> order to understand where work needed to be done in order to improve  
> on what we already have (gap analysis, if you will).
>
> And finally, it touched on the "gap analysis" deliverable in the  
> charter with the final exercise before we adjourned. We have "fairly  
> solid" numbers from NTP here in terms of establishing a baseline  of  
> parameters, PTP was a bit more fuzzy and will take additional effort  
> to quantify. This was a stretch goal for this meeting in any case.
>
> requirements, and touch on architecture if there was time. I think  
> we did that. I don't think we fully nailed down all the  
> requirements, but perhaps I'll be surprised when I see the document.
>
> course is to get the results into a document which will be presented  
> and discussed on the list, and potentially in Dublin as well.
>
> - Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

---

From: "FERRANT JEAN-LOUP" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 14:16:54 +0200

Mark,

I think there is a small typo in the first sentence of the second bullet.

Although one member of Tictoc is participating to ITU-T SG13, I think that you are referring to the expertize and background  of ITU-T SG15 Q13, IEEE1588 and NTP.  :-)

Regards

Jean-Loup

-----Message d'origine-----
De : [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] De la part de Mark Townsley
Envoyé : mercredi 2 juillet 2008 13:58
À : [email-masked]
Objet : [TICTOC] AD report from the tictoc interim meeting in Paris

Tictoc,

The tictoc Working Group held a interim meeting from Monday afternoon, June 16 - Wednesday afternoon, June 18. It was a very busy few days, and here are some of my personal observations on what we did and did not accomplish. These are not minutes, and I did not write this during the event. I am writing it now, more than a week after, reflecting back on how things went. The official meeting minutes, proceedings, etc. will be packaged up and made available soon (I'd say they are already overdue, but there is a lot to compile so let's give the chairs a little more time here).

We had about 30 people attending, with significant expertise and background from ITU-T SG13, IEEE1588, and NTP.  I personally didn't realize until the middle of the meeting that there were several people who had never attended an IETF event before. This didn't really present itself as a problem, but perhaps it would have been easier for those individuals if I had spent a few minutes up front describing a bit of the structure of the IETF, a pointer to some of the edu-team documents, or something similar.

I have run a few interim meetings, but I had never asked that a questionnaire be sent out beforehand. I think in this case it was useful, and the results helped guide the meeting. In fact, the first day we did nothing but review the results in order to tease out protocol requirements. We did this, as well as reviewing some of the IDs that have already been published. Karen feverishly took notes, and it will be up to Kurtis and Silvana (with the help of Karen and Greg) to pen the first version. The -00 deadline has already passed, but I hope that they will finish before the meeting in Dublin. The chairs lamented that they wished they had had more time to create the questionnaire, as well as the effort in compiling the results. Perhaps we could use a tool for this next time... Live and learn.

In addition to group work on protocol requirements, we broke up into sub-teams to work on specific application requirement parameters in order to better understand what the boundaries were that we will be shooting for and why. The overall results recorded from this were rather weak in terms of generating anything that we could publish and be broadly meaningful, but it did generate a lot of good discussion and helped different parties understand one another's concerns with respect to specific applications. We also took this a step further by breaking down the same list of common application requirements, and looking at what the currently deployed PTP and NTP solutions could achieve next to each of these. The point of this exercise was not to compare the two, but to establish baselines in order to understand where work needed to be done in order to improve on what we already have (gap analysis, if you will).

All in all, I think the interim team made progress on the first objective in the tictoc charter, which is:

- To develop a time and frequency distribution requirements document for the two cases listed above, including coexistence of the two as appropriate.

- To develop a document defining the modular breakdown of functionality within the solution space.

And finally, it touched on the "gap analysis" deliverable in the charter with the final exercise before we adjourned. We have "fairly solid" 
numbers from NTP here in terms of establishing a baseline  of parameters, PTP was a bit more fuzzy and will take additional effort to quantify. This was a stretch goal for this meeting in any case.

We walked into the meeting hoping to have made progress on protocol requirements, and touch on architecture if there was time. I think we did that. I don't think we fully nailed down all the requirements, but perhaps I'll be surprised when I see the document.

I want to thank all of those who managed to attend. The next step of course is to get the results into a document which will be presented and discussed on the list, and potentially in Dublin as well.

- Mark

---

From: Mark Townsley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:20:31 +0200

Marshall Eubanks wrote:
>> afternoon, June 16 - Wednesday afternoon, June 18. It was a very busy 
>> few days, and here are some of my personal observations on what we 
>> did and did not accomplish. These are not minutes, and I did not 
>> soon (I'd say they are already overdue, but there is a lot to compile 
>> so let's give the chairs a little more time here).
>>
Thanks, I got this mixed up in my head with:

June 30, Monday - Working Group Chair approval for initial document 
(Version -00) submissions appreciated by 17:00 PDT (24:00 UTC/GMT)

- Mark
>> rather weak in terms of generating anything that we could publish and 
>> be broadly meaningful, but it did generate a lot of good discussion 
>> and helped different parties understand one another's concerns with 
>> respect to specific applications. We also took this a step further by 
>> breaking down the same list of common application requirements, and 
>> looking at what the currently deployed PTP and NTP solutions could 
>> achieve next to each of these. The point of this exercise was not to 
>> compare the two, but to establish baselines in order to understand 
>> where work needed to be done in order to improve on what we already 
>> have (gap analysis, if you will).
>>
>> did that. I don't think we fully nailed down all the requirements, 
>> but perhaps I'll be surprised when I see the document.
>>

---

From: Mark Townsley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:26:25 +0200

> Although one member of Tictoc is participating to ITU-T SG13, I think that you are referring to the expertize and background  of ITU-T SG15 Q13, IEEE1588 and NTP.  :-)
Yes, looks like I left out a few letters between "ITU-T SG" and "13" - 
Thank you!

- Mark