IFIP TC6 (Communication Systems)

Meeting 2003/1

Minutes

Meeting Location: Budapest, Hungary.

Meeting Date: May 18th and 19th, 2003.

TC6 Attendants: A.Danthine, K.Boyanov, L.Mason, J.Slavik, O.Spaniol, S.Dibuz, T.Saito, I.Niemegeers, F.Aagesen, A.Al-Naamany, A.Grzech, A.Casaca, R.Puigjaner, D.Khakhar, H.Rudin, P.Radford, L.Chapin, A.Iyengar, G.Leduc, R.Boutaba, D.Gaiti.

Apologies: M.Nicolau, R.Posch, J.Sousa, H.Yuan, V.Iversen, S.Tohmé, G.Prati, K.Fabian, K.Koen, V.Wuwongse,  F.Kamoun, G.Pujolle, I.Stavrakakis, G.Omidyar, V.Tschammer.

1. Approval of agenda
The proposed agenda was approved. 

2. Approval of last meeting minutes
The minutes of the last TC6 meeting (2002/2) were approved.

3. Attendance and membership
The meeting was attended by 21 delegates. 

The delegates of the following countries have already missed 3 or more consecutive meetings: 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. Tunisia is now only an observer to IFIP. In addition the TC6 chairman should investigate if the delegates of Austria, Finland and Slovenia are willing to continue to participate in TC6 meetings. (AP60/1)

There are also countries without a delegate. This is the case of Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Lithuania and Singapore. The TC6 chairman has already formally requested the nomination of delegates for these countries, but without success until now.

The meeting was reminded that it is not possible for a country representative to designate as proxy to the meeting a delegate of another country.

The IFIP voucher scheme should be more widely publicised so that delegates from developing countries can take advantage of it to attend the meetings. D.Khakhar will do it. (AP60/2).

4. TC6 30th anniversary
The TC6 chairman summarised the different congratulations messages received for the TC6 30th anniversary, after our last meeting in Lisbon.

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 59/9 – Include in the EOG the indication on discounts in IEEE CS and ACM publications for IFIP conference announcements (H.Rudin).
AP 59/16 – Revise the WG6.6 membership (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 Bilbao, Spain, last March.

To get student grants from the DCSC, applications should be sent to IFIP, via TC6, when requested in a call. This call will be done once a year. Every year there will be money available from the DCSC and every other year there will be additional money from Unesco for this purpose. The grant will be 1,000 Euros for travel within the same continent and 1,500 Euros for travel between different continents.

TC6 is not participating in WCC’04, except for the I3E Conference, which will be co-located with WCC’04.

Regarding the heavy losses of WCC’02, TC6 approved unanimously a motion to the IFIP GA, which will be included in the TC6 report to the GA . The motion is the following: “To protect IFIP resources, TC6 requests that for future Congress site selection, it should be clear that the organisers have to provide a guarantee that they are able to organize the Congress without asking for an IFIP loan“.  (AP60/3)

7. IFIP Secretariat
The present situation of the IFIP Secretariat caused by the dismissal of the Executive Director was discussed at length during the meeting. 

TC6 unanimously approved the following motion to be sent to the IFIP President with cc to the IFIP GA:
“TC6 members have been very surprised by the decision of the EB to dismiss Plamen Nedkov. TC6 had, in many occasions, the opportunity to appreciate the excelent work and support brought by Plamen Nedkov and the IFIP Secretariat to its activities.
TC6 regrets to have been kept unaware of the development of the crisis which ended up by a decision so detrimental to its activities. The TC6 chairman is mandated to request from the IFIP General Assembly the participation, in the future, of the Technical Committees at the Executive Board level.
TC6 requests to the Executive Board the urgent designation of one of its members to ensure the continuation of the support provided by the Executive Director until the designation of a new Executive Director.” (AP60/4)

8. TC6 Web site
The TC6 chairman circulated some statistics on the use of the TC6 web site, which had been provided by Herbert Leitold. The web site continues to be very well managed by Herbert and it has encouraging statistics of user accesses.

A.Danthine made a preliminary demonstration of a tool to be developed for aiding the TC6 conference organisers to produce the conference web page. TC6 found this tool very useful for conference organisers and agreed to fund the development of this tool, including the registration system. The tool will be ready by mid July 2003 and its cost will be 3,750 Euros. (AP60/5).

9.  Technical presentations
There were two technical presentations at the meeting. The first one was done by Miklos Boda, vice-president of Ericsson, Hungary, and it was entitled “The industrial view”. The second one was done by Ramon Puigjaner and consisted on the objectives and achievements of WG 6.9.

TC6 warmly thanked both speakers for having prepared these presentations.

10. Steering Committees
No changes to be done to the existing version of the Steering Committees. Any change will be indicated by the respective WG chairman to the TC6 chairman.

11. IFIP Publications
TC6 agreed, in general, with the requirements for IFIP publications as prepared by the TC chairs. However, TC6 believes that points 4b and 4g should not be included in the requirements. TC6 also believes the time to produce a book should be specified as no more than 10 weeks. A.Casaca will report this to the other TC chairs. (AP60/6)

12. TC6 event statistics
The table with the statistics of the TC6 events was updated. There has been no special comments on this issue. The TC6 chairman will send the updated table. (AP60/7)

13. Working Group Activities

WG 6.1
The WG 6.1 report was presented by G.Leduc.

G.Leduc referred to the possibility of splitting WG 6.1 into two distinct WGs. It was decided to keep the existing structure for the time being and to discuss the issue again in 2004, when TC6 will re-evaluate the structure of the WGs.

WG 6.2
The WG 6.2 chairmen were not present. The TC6 chairman introduced the report.

TC6 agreed to sponsor Mobicom as requested by G.Pujolle. As TC6 has not understood the mechanisms of the Workshop within Mobicom, requests if G.Pujolle can explain it (AP60/8).
It is necessary to clarify whether or not the Internetworking conference occurs every year and what is its impact on the Networking series of conferences (AP60/9).
Jay Black requests more information for the organization of Networking’2005 in Toronto. He will contact A.Casaca to get more information on that. The WG6.2 Report indicated that this meeting is due to take place in 2006 but it was assumed that this was a typing mistake.
TC6 will discuss the G.Pujolle proposal for a new WG on the Embedded Internet during the next meeting, when G.Pujolle is present.

WG 6.3
The WG 6.3 chairman was not present. The TC6 chairman introduced the report.

The sponsorship for EUNICE’2003 was approved.
It was decided not to sponsor the HET-NET’03 conference. The TC6 chairman will send a mail to D.Kouvatsos to inform him on the decision (AP60/10).

WG 6.4
The WG 6.4 report was introduced by A.Iyengar.

A.Iyengar informed that WWW’04 will take place in New York.
The next WITA conference (the successor to WITASI) will be in Poland again in 2004.
The WIAPP series of conferences occurs in the alternate years of WITA conferences.

WG 6.6
The WG 6.6 report was presented by R.Boutaba.

R.Boutaba reported on the excellent scientific level of IM’03, but unfortunately with heavy financial losses. This was large because the attendance was 150, whereas a lot of commitments assumed an attendance of 700.
NOMS’04 will be in Seoul. 
It is being proposed that IM’05 will be co-located with the TeleManagement Forum in Nice, which will add a technical track to TMF.
NOMS ’06 will be co-located with Infocom in Barcelona.

WG 6.7
The WG 6.7 report was presented by D.Gaiti.

D.Gaiti will send the missing statistics for past WG 6.7 events (AP60/11).
Netcon’03 will occur in Muscat, Oman. D.Gaiti, G.Pujolle and A.Al-Naamany are taking care of the final program together with the Program Committee. The ERF and book contract have not been signed yet (AP60/12).
D.Gaiti will check the situation of IWAN’03 (AP60/13). The situation with MATA’03 needs also to be checked (AP60/14).
The 2004 conference in Vietnam will be called “Intelligence in Communication Systems” instead of Smartnet. Smartnet will occur again in 2005.
WG 6.7 foresees to terminate its sponsorship of the IWAN series of conferences after the next event foreseen for 2003.
The steering committees of the WG 6.7 conferences will be reviewed by D.Gaiti (AP60/15).

WG 6.8
The WG 6.8 report was presented by J.Slavik.

Presently the WG organizes three series of events: PWC, MWCN and Ad Hoc networks Workshop.

WG 6.9
The WG 6.9 report was presented by R.Puigjaner.

R.Puigjaner will send the slides of his WG 6.9 presentation to H.Leitold (AP60/16).
The agreement to be signed between IFIP and ACM for the Latin America series of Networking conferences was approved. It is up to the TC6 chairman to organize the respective signature (AP60/17).
WG 6.9 has two regular series of conferences: LANC and WITFOR. The next LANC is in La Paz, Bolivia this year. The next one will be in 2005. WITFOR’03 is in Vilnius, Lithuania and in 2005 will be in Botswana.

WG 6.10
There was no report from WG 6.10 and the respective chairman was not present.

TC6 approved the request of G.Prati to organize an Optical Networking conference in Pisa in October 2004.

WG 6.11
The WG 6.11 chairman was not present. The TC6 chairman introduced the report.

The I3E ‘2004 conference will be co-located with the WCC’04 in Toulouse, but it is proposed that I3E will keep its own identity.

TC6 will stop the sponsorship of the Electronic Publishing series of conferences after the next one scheduled for 2003. A.Casaca will communicate this to ICCC (AP60/18).

14. TC6 directly supported events
The IT & Sports event is sponsored by TC6. O.Spaniol is in charge of this event, which will occur in Koln, Germany, on September 15 to 17th, 2004.

Communications and MM Security is organized together with TC11. A.Casaca suggested that TC6 should have a Task Force in Network security, which should support this event from the TC6 side. TC6 agreed.

Grid Computing is a hot issue presently. TC6 thinks that could be of interest to organize a conference on this topic but it should be done together with other TCs, namely TC8 and TC10. The interested WGs in TC6 are WG 6.1, 6.4 and 6.6. A.Casaca will investigate the interest of other TCs (AP60/19).

15. Calendar of Events	
The calendar of events was updated and will be distributed by the TC6 chairman (AP60/20).

16. TC6 Budget
TC6 approved the following Best Paper awards for 2003 (500 Euro each):
PWC, WWW, Middleware, Forte, Testcom, MMNS, DSOM.

TC6 approved the following student travel grants for 2003:
PWC – 1,500 Euros; Middleware – 1,500 Euros; Forte – 1,500 Euros; Testcom – 1,500 Euros; WWW–2,250 Euros.

TC6 approved also the following grants to speakers in 2003:
LANC- 4,000 Euros; IST- 1,000 Euros; Netcon – 2,000 Euros.

The operating expenses budget will be 6,750 Euros for 2003, including the payment of 3,750 Euros for the TC6 web page system for the conferences.

The total budget for 2003 is 25,500 Euros. It was agreed that the expenses in 2003 should not be above that value.

The budget for 2004 should be in the same order of magnitude.

The TC6 chairman indicated that IFIP Council agreed that there should be no cap to the TC funds. However, there will also be a proposal to be presented in the next GA which would require that every TC should spend, in year N, at least 20% of its existing fund from year N-1, for a number of activities in developing countries, students grant and best paper awards. If this proportion of funds is not used, the residue will be transferred to the IFIP general fund.

17. Planning for election of TC6 chair
A.Casaca will finish his second mandate as TC6 chairman on 31st December, 2003. There is a need to elect a new TC6 chairman, who will be in office from January 1st, 2004.

There will be a commission consisting of A.Danthine, O.Spaniol and A.Casaca, which is in charge of the electoral process. A.Danthine will send a message to TC6 soon, to indicate the rules for this election (AP60/20).

Elegible candidates should indicate their willingness to stand for election to A.Danthine with cc to the other two members of the Commission by June 30th, 2003. 

18. Planning for election of WG chairs
According to IFIP statutes WG chairs can stay in office for no more than two consecutive periods of three years. TC6 reviewed the current situation of the various WGs and found that it would be advisable to start correcting those situations where a WG chair has been in office for more than 6 consecutive years. 

19. Next TC6 meetings
The next TC6 meeting  (2003/2) is in Muscat, Oman on 18th and 19th of October.

The dates and places for the TC6 meetings in 2004 will be decided during the next meeting.