IFIP TC6 (Communication Systems)

Meeting 2002/2

Minutes

Meeting Location: Lisboa, Portugal.

Meeting Date: October 5th and 6th , 2002.

TC6 Attendants: M.Nicolau, H.Dutton, A.Danthine, J.Sousa, K.Boyanov, J.Min (proxy), J.Slavik, V.Iversen, S.Tohme, O.Spaniol, S.Dibuz, G.Prati, I.Niemegeers, F.Aagesen, A.Al-Naamany, A.Casaca, R.Puigjaner, D.Khakhar, H.Rudin, V.Wuwongse, P.Radford, A.Iyengar, G.Leduc, G.Pujolle, H.Perros, R.Boutaba, D.Gaiti, V.Tschammer.

Guests: K.Brunnstein, P.Nedkov, L.Pouzin, T.Szentivanyi, G. van der Veer, J.Granado, A.Cerveira.

Apologies: J.Diaz, R.Posch, T.Saito, A.Grzech, K.Fabian, K.Koen, F.Kamoun, L.Chapin, Y.Takahashi, G.Omidyar.

The meeting began with an address from the TC6 chairman indicating that the meeting schedule had been arranged to allow for the celebration of the TC6 30th anniversary during the meeting.

This was followed by an address from Plamen Nedkov congratulating TC6 on its 30th Anniversary.

1. Approval of agenda

The proposed agenda was approved. 

2. Approval of last meeting minutes

The minutes of the last TC6 meeting (2002/1) were approved.

3. Attendance and membership
The meeting was attended by 28 delegates. TC6 welcome the presence of H.Dutton, D.Gaiti and M.Nicolau, who attended a TC6 meeting for the first time.

The delegates of the following countries have already missed 3 or more consecutive meetings: Canada, Greece, India, Malaysia, Slovakia, South Africa and Tunisia. According to the TC6 rules the TC6 chairman should investigate the situation with each of these candidates and ask for a replacement when required (AP 59/1). Tunisia is now only an observer to IFIP.

Since the last meeting replacements have already been asked for the Greek, Indian and Malaysian delegates. The request for these replacements will be maintained. 

There are also countries without a delegate. This is the case of Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Lithuania and Singapore.

A.Dantine will suggest a name for Croatia (AP 59/2). R.Puigjaner will suggest a name for Chile (AP 59/3). A.Casaca will request the GA representatives nominations for all the missing countries (AP 59/4).

4. TC6 30th anniversary celebration

The TC6 anniversary celebration took place on Saturday (October 5th) afternoon. The programme of the cerimony was planned by Kiril Boyanov and Otto Spaniol. Addresses were given by Kiril Boyanov, Jose Granado, Gert van der Veer, Andre Danthine, Otto Spaniol, Augusto Casaca, the IFIP President Klaus Brunnstein, Louis Pouzin and Tibor Szentivanyi. A written  address to TC6 was sent by Ronald Uhlig. Congratulations were received by mail from B.Sendov, Jacques Berleur, Cecilia Tuwjasz, Dorothy Hayden and Plamen Nedkov.

The TC6 chairman expressed its appreciation of  the presence of the IFIP President and also of the IFIP Executive Director and past TC6 members in the TC6 30th anniversary celebration.

5. Review of action points

The following action points remain open from the last meeting:
AP 58/26 – The proceedings of every TC6 conference should be sent in a  CD or other digital support to the IFIP Secretariat by the Conference chairman. This should be inserted in the EOG (H.Rudin).
AP 58/36 – Send a digital format of the Communication Systems track proceedings to the IFIP Secretariat (L.Chapin).
AP 58/54 – Propose action for Grid Computing in TC6 (A.Casaca, O.Spaniol, R.Boutaba).

All the remaining action points were closed.

6. Report from IFIP General Assembly

A.Casaca reported on the most important points discussed in the last IFIP General Assembly in Montreal, Canada, in last September.

A Special Interest Group on Entertainment Computing was established in IFIP chaired by Tak Kamae from Japan. Also a Task Force was created on “IT and Sports”. It was decided that O.Spaniol will be the TC6 contact point for both activities. This should be communicated by A.Casaca to the responsible persons in both groups (AP 59/5).

It was also discussed how TC6 could get the support of UNESCO for activities in developing countries. It was decided to prepare a proposal and send it to P.Nedkov. This proposal will be prepared by R.Puigjaner and A.Danthine (AP59/6). Then further action will be taken by P.Nedkov towards contacts with UNESCO.

7. Administrative issues

It was agreed that A.Danthine will contact Raghavan to enquire how TC6 can get the template of the web page used for the ICCC Conference in 2002 (AP59/7). As this template was judged to be very good, the idea is to make this template available to the TC6 conference organisers.

The various TC6 conference web pages can now be accessed via the link <conference name.ifip.org>. Every WG chairman is requested to check if the link is ready for all their conferences and if a proper description of each conference is available. If it is necessary to introduce a new link or  description of a conference, Herbert Leitold should be contacted directly by the appropriate WG chairman (AP59/8).

The EOG should include an indication of the discounts that TC6 conference organisers get, when they advertise the conferences in IEEE CS journals. H.Rudin will investigate this and make the appropriate insertion in the guidelines (AP 59/9).

8. Steering Committees

Changes have been made to the Steering Committees of  the IM, Smartnet, Active Networks and PWC conferences. A.Casaca will send an updated list of the Steering Committees (AP 59/10).

9. TC6 event statistics

The updated TC6 event statistics table was presented by A.Casaca and discussed in the meeting. A.Casaca reported that he had requested Kluwer to insert the total amount of royalties paid to IFIP for each book in its semestral report.

10. TC6 Publications

TC6 publishes many of its books with Kluwer but also some of them are being published with Springer. In any case, conference organisers should always ask Kluwer for a quotation as Kluwer is the official IFIP publisher. In case there is a choice for Springer it needs to be justified. No other publishers should be considered for TC6 publications. 

A.Casaca reported that the TC6 view for the IFIP Publication Policy was distributed to the other TC chairpersons and to the IFIP officers during the last GA. A document on the IFIP publication policy is being prepared by J.Lee, chairman of the IFIP Publication Committee.

11. IFIP Digital Library

The progress report on the IFIP Digital Library was distributed during the last GA. This document was given also to TC6 members. In the TC6 chairman’s opinion no significative progress towards the IFIP Digital Library was achieved since the last TC6 meeting. 

12. Working Group activities

The most relevant decisions taken during the meeting for each WG are indicated next.

WG 6.1

Publication for FORTE, TESTCOM, Middleware will be done by Springer.

G Leduc reported that for DCSC Grants, it was important to note that the country of affiliation was one of the criteria not the nationality.

A risk loan was approved for FORTE’2003 in Berlin. The maximum loss of IFIP will be 5,000 Euro. The rules for this risk loan have been discussed before between Guy Leduc, Dipak Khakhar, Augusto Casaca and Plamen Nedkov. Those rules will apply in this case.

WG 6.2

The Networking series of conferences will be held every year from 2004 on. Networking is sponsored by WG 6.2, 6.3 and 6.8 at the moment.

The NetCon series of conferences will be held every year too. It is supported by WG 6.2 and 6.7.

The Ad-hoc networking series of Workshops will be sponsored only by WG 6.8.

A decision has still to be taken considering the conference to be held next year in Toronto. G.Pujolle and S.Tohme will work on this (AP 59/11).

The next pfHSN event needs also to be investigated by G.Pujolle (AP 59/12).

WG 6.3

H.Perros indicated that WG 6.3 recommended Ioannis Stavrakakis to be the new chairman of WG 6.3.
TC6 unanimously approved this proposal. A.Casaca will report to IFIP this change and will contact Ioannis Stavrakakis (AP 59/13).

TC6 showed its great appreciation for the splendid work done by Harry Perros and Yutaka Takahashi, as WG 6.3 co-chairmen, and thanked  all the collaboration they have given to TC6 during all the past years.

WG 6.4

Collaboration with an existing Workshop sponsored by IEEE CS is being sought. A.Iyengar is working on this and will report on the result (AP 59/14).

WG 6.6

A.Casaca will remind Yana Lambert from Kluwer that they had been asked for  a proposal to publish the IM proceedings in the IEEE digital library (AP 59/15).

R.Boutaba will revise the membership list of WG 6.6 (AP 59/16).

WG 6.7

There is a need to contact the organizer of the Active Networks conference in Zurich, Prof. B.Plattner to inquire about the status of the event. D.Gaiti will make sure that this event has the appropriate references to IFIP (AP 59/17).

The dates for the NetCon conference in Oman have been moved to October  15-17, 2003.

There is interest to continue to support the MATA series of conferences. D.Gaiti will look after that (AP 59/18).

WG 6.8

The next PWC conferences are already planned to take place in Venice and Delft in 2003 and 2004 respectively.

There is a need to enquire about the status of the next MWCN conference. J.Slavik will look after that (AP 59/19).

WG 6.9

It was agreed that the next Latin AmericaWorkshop/ Conference should be supported in equal terms by TC6 and ACM. TC6 will pay the travels of invited speakers, but it will not support any deficit of the conference. In the conference proceedings both IFIP and ACM should be included as the main sponsors. R.Puigjaner will continue contacts with ACM to settle down the agreement between TC6 and ACM (AP 5/20). The conference will take place together with CLEI in La Paz, Bolivia in 2003.

It was decided that there would be no exception to pay the hotel and living expenses of TC6 speakers in Uruguay for 2002. These expenses must be supported by the local organisers. A.Casaca will communicate this (AP 5/21).

WG 6.10

The WG 6.10 Chairman was not present and there was no written report from the WG.

WG 6.11

I3E in 2003 will be in São Paulo, Brazil. V. Tchsammer will investigate whether the invitation to hold I3E in Toulouse in 2004, during the WCC’04,  can be accepted.

13. TC6 directly supported events

TC6 decided to answer favourably to the request to support the IST Conference in Iran in 2003. A.Casaca will communicate this decision (AP 59/22).

TC6 agreed also to have the next Africom in Tunisia in Spring 2005. A.Casaca will communicate this to F.Kamoun (AP 59/23).

TC6 agreed in co-sponsoring the International Conference in Telecommunications in Fortaleza, Brazil in 2004.

TC6 was also in favour of holding a large conference on Optical Networking in 2004. TC6 agreed that H.Perros and G.Prati should further work on a proposal for this event. The event should be done in close collaboration with WG 6.10, which will be invited to sponsor the event and collaborate into its organization (AP 59/24). This has no impact in the series of ONDM conferences that should continue as scheduled in WG 6.10.

TC6 was not in favour of supporting the IDAACS’03 conference, because the scope of the conference is not within TC6. A.Casaca will communicate this decision (AP 59/25).

The participation of TC6 in the WCC’02 was reported in written form by L.Chapin and commented by A.Casaca, who has been present in Montreal. Although the Communication Systems stream was of a high technical quality, due to the excellent speakers present, the attendance was very low. TC6 was very disapointed with this low attendance and questioned about the usefulness of TC6 participation in future WCCs.

14. Calendar of Events	

An updated version of the calendar will be distributed by A.Casaca (AP 59/26).

15. TC6 Budget

The TC6 budget of 35,000 Euros for 2003 has been approved by IFIP.

TC6 agreed that this should be distributed as follows:
Grants to speakers: 10,000 Euro
Operating expenses: 5,000 Euro
Best paper awards: 5,000 Euro
Student travel grants: 10,000 Euro
Contingency: 5,000 Euro.

Proposals for Best Paper Awards and Student Grants should be sent to the TC6 chairman.

16. Next TC6 meetings

TC6 decided to accept the kind invitations of Sarolta Dibuz and Ahmed A-Naamany to organize the 2003 TC6 meetings in Hungary and Oman respectively.

The schedule of meetings is as follows:
Meeting 2003/1: Budapest, Hungary  (18 – 19 May, 2003)
Meeting 2003/2: Muscat, Oman (18 – 19 October, 2003).