IFIP TC6 (Communication Systems)

Meeting 2000/1

Minutes

Meeting Location: Paris, France

Meeting Date: May 13 and 14, 2000

TC6 attendants: A.Danthine, N.Sousa, K.Boyanov, L.Mason, J.Slavik, V.Iversen, S.Tohmé, O.Spaniol, S.Dibuz, T.Saito (only 14th), F.Aagesen, A.Casaca, R.Puigjaner, D.Khakhar, H.Rudin, F.Kamoun, P.Radford, L.Chapin, A.Iyengar, G.Leduc, H.Perros, G.Pujolle,  O.Martikainen, H.vanAs (only 14th), V.Tschammer, H.Leitold (proxy for R.Posch).

Apologies: J.Whiley, Y.Takahashi, W.Zimmer, V.Hara, K.Fabian, P.Bosco, S.Hoe, K.Koen, H.Yuan.

1. Approval of agenda

The proposed agenda was approved. 
2. Approval of last meeting minutes

The minutes of the last TC6 meeting (99/2) were approved.

3. Attendance and membership

TC6 chair informed that a new delegate from Poland, Prof. Adam Grzech, had been nominated.

Delegates from the following countries are missing: Andorra, Argentina, Egypt, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore and Thailand.

Also substitutions should be asked for delegates from: Australia, Italy and India.

The situation with the delegate from Malaysia should be investigated (AP54/0-A.Casaca).

It was decided to propose a name to IFIP for the nomination of a delegate from Thailand (AP54/1-A.Casaca).

Actions to find new delegates allocated to:
Argentina (AP54/2-R.Puigjaner)
Egypt (AP54/3-H.Perros)
Ireland (AP54/4-H.Perros)
Italy (AP54/5-A.Danthine)
Korea (AP54/6-G.Leduc).

4. News from IFIP

A.Casaca reported on the main IFIP decisions coming out from the last GA and Council meetings in Kuala Lumpur and Washington DC respectively.

Concerning WCC2002, TC6 asked the TC6 chair to investigate the possibility of integrating the E-Commerce event in the Montreal World Congress. A small team was nominated for studying that possibility, consisting of A.Casaca, V.Tschammer and L.Mason. (AP54/7-A.Casaca).

5. Pending Action Points

50/2 – TC6 brochure not to be published. TC6 decided to concentrate preferably on electronic means
50/18 – R.Puigjaner takes care of the tutorial list
51/7 – Done
51/16 – Postal addresses of WG 6.10 members is pending
51/38 – TC6 recommends that for tutorials in developing countries, the Conference organizers pay for: the speaker’s air travel, in economy class (an IFIP grant may be available for this); the local hotel and free access to the Conference. For tutorials in other countries the TC6 recommendation is that the Conference organizers should pay 1000 US dollars for each full day’s tutorial plus free access to the Conference and, possibly, the organizers might provide a free economy class air travel ticket. In ALL cases, the Conference organizers should make clear the terms and conditions (particularly with respect to what will be paid by the organizers and what, if anything, is expected to be paid by the speaker).
52/3, 7, 8, 9 – done
52/24 – cancelled
52/32 – done
52/36, 39, 40, 44 – done
52/47 – cancelled
52/53 – done
53/7 – H.Leitold sends the advertisement to IEEE on receipt of authorization by the TC6 chairman. This authorization is dependent both on confirmation of acceptability by the relevant WG chair and on reception of an acceptable ERF at IFIP.

In conclusion, only AP51/16 is pending at the moment.

6. Working Group Reports

The Steering Committee list was updated and distributed.

WG 6.1

G.Leduc presented the WG 6.1 report.

The indication of the amount of money paid in the Best Paper Award  (BPA) should be removed from the respective BPA certificate (AP54/8-A.Casaca).

The dates of DAIS’01 should be confirmed (AP54/9-G.Leduc).

WG 6.2

S.Tohmé presented the WG 6.2 report.

WG 6.3

H.Perros presented the WG 6.3 report.

It was decided not to sponsor the QNET Workshop to occur in Ilkley, July 2000.

H.Perros indicated that  the Conference on “ATM and IP Performance Modelling” should not be allocated only to WG 6.3.

After some discussion on the history of this series of events, TC6 decided that it will stop the sponsoring of this Conference after the event in Budapest in 2001.

WG 6.4

G.Pujolle presented the WG 6.4 report.

WG 6.6

In the absence of WG 6.6 chair, A.Casaca presented the WG report.

A.Casaca reported also on the present situation concerning the election of the next WG 6.6 chair.

WG 6.7

O.Martikainen presented the WG 6.7 report.

An updated list of WG members was distributed.

WG 6.8

J.Slavik presented the WG 6.8 report.

TG 6.9

R.Puigjaner presented the TG 6.9 report.

The tutorials in Mexico and Costa Rica are approved and Ramon will organize them.

A new series of IFIP Conferences to take place in Latin America should start by 2002.

WG 6.10

H. van As presented the WG 6.10 report.

It was requested that H. van As provides the addresses of the WG members. This is already a pending action point from a previous meeting.

TG 6.11

V.Tschammer presented the TG 6.11 report.

The first E-Commerce Conference will take place in Zurich in September/October 2001. It is intended to run this series annually. In 2002 will be either in Canada or Portugal.

7. Working Group restructuring

During this meeting TC6 restructured some Working groups and allocated new names to some others. The result is the following.

WG 6.1

New name approved: “Architectures and Protocols for Distributed Systems”.

Aims and scope remain the same.

WG 6.2

The existing WG 6.2 and 6.4 merge into a single WG. This WG is WG 6.2. The new name of this WG is: “Network and Internetwork Architectures”.

The new WG 6.2 will have two co-chairs: Prof. Samir Tohmé and Prof. Guy Pujolle.

The approved scope is:
Local Area Network Architectures
Wide Area Network Architectures
Switching and Routing
IP and ATM Integration
IP and ATM mappings on the lower layers
MPLS
Signalling
Traffic Engineering and Control
Network Quality of Service
Access Networks
Mobile IP
Transport of packetized voice and video.

The aims are to be approved by e-mail within TC6 (AP54/10-G.Pujolle, S.Tohmé). Afterwards a message should be sent to the existing WG 6.2 and 6.4 members informing them about the changes (AP54/11- G.Pujolle, S.Tohmé).

WG 6.3

No change.

WG 6.4

New name and scope for WG 6.4 was approved. The chair is Dr. Arun Iyengar.

The name is:”Internet Applications Engineering”.

The approved scope is:
Traffic characterization
Quality of Service
Multicast
Group Management
Virtual Private Networks
Scalability aspects
Caching
Internet security
Audio/Video/Voice coding for Internet services
Multimedia in the Web
Hypertext and Hypermedia
Agent technologies
Web navigation strategies
Internet Applications
Distributed games.

The aims are to be approved by e-mail within TC6 (AP54/12-A.Iyengar).

A list of WG members should be presented until end of June, 2000 (AP54/13-A.Iyengar).

WG 6.6

New name approved: “Management of Networks and Distributed Systems”

The new aims and scope approved are the following:

AIMS
To facilitate cooperation between different organizations and individuals internationally in the areas of distributed operations and management, systems management, and integrated network management. To be an effective conduit in the technology transfer between the academic and research communities, industry and the standard bodies.

SCOPE
Our planet is increasingly being networked using a variety of media, a variety of protocols and a variety of services. On the other hand, computers are becoming increasingly pervasive in a variety of forms and architectures ranging from large scale parallel systems, vector machines and mainframes to micro computers in any type of appliances, cars, etc. The scope of WG 6.6 is Operations and Management paradigms and technologies for these novel and complex systems and networks continuous evolving over different levels of abstraction such as element, network, service, and business level and encompassing different function areas such as configuration, fault, accounting, performance and security. This includes new technologies such as policy based management, active networks and mobile agents as well as already established management protocols and information models.

WG 6.7

The aims and scope were updated as follows:

AIMS
To identify and study current issues related to the development of intelligent capabilities in networks. These issues include the creation, distribution and management of telecommunication and internet services. The services can be based on circuit and packet switched networks and applied from fixed, mobile and wireless terminals.

SCOPE
Smart Networks is concentrated on the research of telecommunication and Internet services programmed on top of network functionalities such as switching, routing, locality and mobility. Inteligent networks (IN) was developed for voice and telephony services and is now applied widely in mobile networks for service creation and integration. At the same time as there has been a shift from centralized IN based services to more distributed architectures, centralized solutions are also proposed to combine Internet and IN services. New emerging resarch includes Intelligent Agents, Active Networks, Programmable Networks, Hybrid Networks, Configurable Architectures for software and hardware, Dependable Reconfigurable Networks, Mobility Management, QoS Management and Network Integration issues. The creation, distribution and management of intelligent services on top of Internet infrastructure will demand standardized solutions for authentication, billing, security and service platforms. 

WG 6.8

The aims and scope of WG 6.8 were updated. Now, they are as follows:

AIMS
To organise and promote the exchange of information on wireless communication systems and networks, fixed and mobile, land and space, terrestrial and satellite, local and global. To help in the research, development, design, standardisation, and applications for wireless modules, equipment, and systems. To examine technical operational capabilities of the future wireless networks for voice, data, text and image communications. The results of the work will be made available to individuals as well as organisations concerned, such as manufacturers, operators, common carriers, standardisation bodies, users. 

SCOPE
Includes the following topics: 
1.Wireless Access networks
2.Wireless LANs
3.Cellular networks 
4.Digital microwave systems and networks
5.Digital radio and TV broadcasting
6. Short range communications and applications
7. Mobile personal communications
8. satellite networks.

All topics should be examined from the viewpoint of architecture and protocols, modulation, coding and decoding, methods of communication functions (multiple access, error control, flow control, routing, etc.), security, implementation, user aspects, legal, economic, social, and human issues. 

WG 6.10

Move item 3 from scope into aims. No other changes.

8. TC6 Events and Calendar

TC6 regreted the cancelation of CMS’2000 in Austria. The chair should express TC6 disatisfaction to the conference chair (AP54/14-A.Casaca).

The calendar of events was updated.

9. IFIP Event Advertising

The provision of adhesive labels with addresses to the event organizers from IFIP Secretariat is working for all registered events.

The procedure for sending advertisements to IEEE was agreed to be as reported in point 5.

The IFIP leaflet was distributed in the meeting. It is suggested that IFIP Secretariat sends these leaflets directly to Conference organizers (AP54/15-A.Casaca).

Links to the Call for Papers should be included in the TC6 web page (AP54/16-H.Leitold).

TC6 thanked H.Leitold for the excellent work he is been doing with the maintenance of the TC6 web page.

10. TC6 Publications

IFIP will receive royalties from Springer concerning the Networking and Middleware proceedings publications. 

Yana Lambert is contacting W.Zimmer for the publication of IM’2001 proceedings with Kluwer. Although Kluwer has shown interest in the publication of a technical journal from TC6, the committee thinks that now is not the right time to start publishing it.

11. Finance/ Loans/ Grants

The financial situation of TC6 continues stable.

Two loans were approved: DAIS’01 (5,000 CHF) and Testcom’2000 (5,000 CHF). Need to communicate this to the organizers (AP54/17-A.Casaca).

A grant was approved for ICCT’2000 to pay A.Danthine’s travel (invited speech) and for student scholarships (3,000 USD). Need to communicate this to the organizers (AP54/18-A.Casaca).
. 
TC6 chair reported on the IFIP loan not returned from pfHSN and on the steps currently taken to get it back.

12. Next TC6 meetings

2000/2: August 25-26  (Beijing). Please contact Prof. Hu Dao-Yuan for registration before July 15.  Otto will send registration form to TC6 list (AP54/19-O.Spaniol).

2001/1: March 30-31 (Cape Town). After Africom and organised by K.Koen.

2001/2: September/ October (Zurich). Together with E-Commerce and organized by H.Rudin.

2002/1: Spring (Brazil). Together with a Conference and organized by N.Sousa.

13. Next WG meetings

WG 6.1: October 10, 2000 (Pisa)
WG 6.2 : May 17, 2000 (Paris)
WG 6.7: September 19, 2000 (Vienna)
WG 6.10: February 4, 2001 (Vienna).

14. Procedures for Election of TC6 chair

The present period of TC6 chairmanship ends in December 31st, 2000.  A.Danthine will coordinate the actions for the election of the chair for the period 2001-2003 (AP54/19-A.Danthine).

15. Procedures for Election of WG chairs

A.Casaca reminded members that according to the IFIP bylaws the maximum period for a WG chair is 6 years. TC6 should start procedures for the nomination of a new WG chair whenever that period is expiring.

16. AOB

No other business was dealt with in the meeting. 

A.Casaca, in the name of TC6, thanked Samir Tohmé for organizing the meeting at ENST and for the excellent facilities provided. A.Casaca also thanked Guy Pujolle for his hospitality to the TC6 members on Saturday night.