Subject: Draft minutes for WREC meeting at IETF49 (San Diego)

From: Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 16:58:22 +0000

Here are the minutes for the WREC meeting held in San Diego.  If you spot 
something that you believe is not accurate please let me know ASAP, so that 
corrections can be made before I submit the final minutes.  Thanks.

WREC minutes (IETF49, San Diego)
Tuesday 12 December 2000

Co-chairs: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
            Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>

Presentation slides: http://www.mnot.net/papers/ietf-49-wrec.{ppt|pdf|htm}

The meeting was a combination of an update on the status of WREC as well as 
an introduction to possible future work within a new group, WEBI (Web 
Intermediaries).

Ian Cooper gave an update on the status of the WREC group and work.  Ian 
and Mark Nottingham had replaced John Martin and Bill Maggs for the 
remaining life of the group, and gave thanks for their efforts in the past.

An update of the "Known Problems" document was given.  The format of the 
document had been changed to move more "historical" interest items to the 
appendix.  The revised document was almost ready for group last call.

The "Taxonomy" document had been returned by RFC-editor due to some 
concerns with the types and quantity of some references.  Internet Drafts 
appeared to have been given as normative references (hopefully resolved by 
changed wording); the large number of URLs used in, and as, references was 
a concern.  URL only references were removed where possible, and other URLs 
(e.g. for RFCs and Internet Drafts) were also removed.  Document 
re-submitted to IESG and copied to the mailing list since it had not been 
re-submitted to the Internet Drafts queue.

Larry Masinter commented that the revised version needed to be submitted as 
an Internet Draft since there had been changes.  Ian believed that since 
these were only editorial changes that this was an unnecessary 
step.  [Later clarification indicates that the document needed to be 
re-submitted.]

In order to close WREC the outstanding work items (Known Problems and 
Taxonomy documents) needed to be finished or removed.  Removal and a change 
to individual submissions was the chairs favored solutions in order to 
facilitate the move to new work.

Mark Nottingham described the motivation for new work in this field, within 
the context of a new working group.  WREC identified issues in the Web 
infrastructure that need resolution; there is community interest in solving 
additional problems in the Web infrastructure.  A presentation on two 
proposed areas of work was given: "Intermediary Discovery and Description" 
(IDD), and "Resource Update Protocol" (RUP).

IDD was proposed to resolve the known issues with interception proxies and 
the problems surrounding WPAD (reliance on PAC files; general lack of support).

Alex French commented that it may not be useful to put the intelligence 
into the client.  The amount of information and processing may be too high 
for lightweight clients.

Michael Condry asked whether the locality of the discovery was dependant 
upon network or geographical topology, and that in response to Mark's 
belief that it should be dependant on network locality suggested that 
regional locality needs to be considered for services that are regional in 
nature.

Mark encouraged interested parties to subscribe to the WEBI mailing 
list.  In response to a question to the floor, Ian clarified that 
subscriptions to WREC would not be automatically transferred to the WEBI 
list, and that the WEBI list would be announced on the WREC list.

Scott Brim asked whether there was a suggested date for having a stake in 
the ground on requirements.  It was suggested that this should be Feb 2001.

Oskar Batuner commented that while IDD may be an academically correct thing 
to examine, this was an area where there was already a solution.  There is 
a conflict of interests in the user choosing their intermediary vs. forcing 
users to connect through devices in the network.  Most people (ed: network 
managers?) would still use transparent proxies (sic).  The group should, 
perhaps, look at discovering interception proxies.

Mark Nottingham acknowledged that one could never get rid of all 
interception proxies.

Larry Masinter commented that the process is useful even if clients are not 
using it.  Figure out the right thing to do then work out the transition 
process.

Mark Nottingham stated that IDD could be used for more than simple 
discovery of proxies.

John Martin noted that the two environments are not mutually 
exclusive.  The proxy does not care how the request gets to it.

Lesley Daigle warned that there was a danger in suggesting transparency 
from the user and in automating meshes.  There is a danger of getting 
involved in the relationship between the end user and the content provider.

With reference to a comment made in the presentation slides, Evan Baer 
commented that he liked the analogy between Web UA and mail UA (users think 
nothing of configuring their mail UA to use a local mail system, but this 
is not the case for Web access through a proxy).  Perhaps there was scope 
for a new query type on top of DNS?

Mark Nottingham went on to give an outline for a "Resource Update Protocol" 
(RUP).

There were concerns on the use of XML for meta-data transfer.

With reference to the presentation slides, there was a query regarding 
URISpace.  Mark was unwilling to say where this work was being done.

The proposed charter for WEBI did not propose a requirements document for 
RUP, but this was now seen as an omission.

Dan Li suggested that perhaps the protocol should be named WRUP (Web 
Resource Update Protocol).

Pei Cao queried whether invalidations and updates would be grouped together 
within the protocol.  Invalidations can be small, with updates being much 
larger - this would force a design at the lower layer.  Also commented that 
stronger authentication was necessary for updates than for invalidations.

Mark commented that authentication may cause many requirements.

??? suggested that SASL may provide a reasonable framework.

Phil ??? queried the use cases.
Mark: large number (hierarchy) of intermediaries where the state has to be 
transferred, without polling.
Phil: push technology?
Mark: perhaps

Ashish ??? commented on the one way channel, querying the restriction.  It 
may be useful to have a back channel for monitoring.  Mark commented that 
the nature of the channel was not set.

??? noted that there were common problems at the transport levels 
(multicast).  Rather than reinvent that work, standardize interface at the 
edges, APIs.  Dan Li also commented that the interfaces between transport 
and messaging mechanisms should be clearly defined.

Brad Cain queried which network layers were being considered for the work.

Paul Eastham stated that we must consider AAA issues (e.g. problems of 
accounting issues if things become cacheable). Some of the drafts (in other 
groups) already consider this.  Needs further discussion.

Ted Hardie warned that the discussion was descending in many ratholes (in 
terms of proposing transport protocols at this early stage).  Should 
consider the actual problems before considering the transport mechanisms.

Harald Alvestrand queried the scaling of the system, and suggested that we 
need to define how far the system scales.  Mark responded that the system 
should be able to cope with 10,000 subscribers to the same object.

Michael Condry suggested that the charter needed revising.

Dan Li asked how the proposed work related to the CDNP distribution 
peering.  Seems that there is a common signalling problem and how to 
package and group objects; concern that the work may be done twice.  Mark 
Day commented that signalling may be inputs to design process.  [ed: the 
proposed groups had already been requested to work together to identify 
common ground and what might be done where.]

Pei Cao asked whether the scope of RUP was for single or multiple 
administrative domains.  Mark Nottingham replied that the work should be 
generic, not limited to either.

There was rough consensus that the two proposed work items were interested 
and well scoped.  It was agreed that the charter should be revised to 
include reference to the RUP requirements document, and also to clarify the 
scope of the group in relation to other proposed groups in the area.

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