IFIP TC6 (Communication Systems)

Meeting 2001/2

Minutes

Meeting Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Meeting Date: October 6th and 7th, 2001

Attendance:  A.Danthine, K.Boyanov (only 6th ), V.Iversen (only 6th ), O.Spaniol, S.Dibuz, G.Prati, T.Saito, I.Niemegeers, F.Aagesen, A.Al-Naamany, A.Grzech, A.Casaca, R.Puigjaner, D.Khakhar, H.Rudin, V.Wuwongse, P.Radford, A.Iyengar, G.Leduc, G.Pujolle, Y.Takahashi, R.Boutaba, O.Martikainen, V.Tschammer, A.Al-Lawati (observer).

Apologies: R.Posch, N.Sousa, L.Mason, D.Hu, J.Slavik, S.Tohmé, K.Fabian, K.Koen, F.Kamoun,L.Chapin, J.Whiley, H.Perros.

1. Approval of agenda

The proposed agenda was approved. 

2. Approval of last meeting minutes

The minutes of the last TC6 meeting (2001/1) were approved.

3. Attendance and membership

TC6 welcomed the new TC6 members, Prof. Giancarlo Prati, Prof. Ignacius Niemegeers, Dr. Ahmed Al-Naamany and Prof. Vilas Wuwongse, in their first attendance of a TC6 meeting. TC6 also welecomed the presence of Dr. Ali Al-Lawati, GA representative from Oman, as an observer to the meeting.

Since last meeting some new TC6 members have been nominated. The updated list of members is included in the meeting documents.

There are still 8 countries, which belong to IFIP and that have not nominated TC6 members. They are: Andorra, Chile, Egypt, Ireland, Israel, Rep. of Korea, Lithuania and Singapore.

Nominations will be asked by A.Casaca to the respective GA delegates (AP57/1).

In addition, R.Puigjaner  will try to get a name for Chile (AP57/2) and D.Khakhar for Ireland and Lithuania (AP57/3).

The delegates from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Greece, India, Malaysia, Slovenia and Tunisia have already missed at least three consecutive meetings. The same happens with the chairman of WG 6.10. A.Casaca will contact these members and the respective GA representative, where appropriate, to clarify the situation. 

4. Review of action points

The following action point from meeting 55 remain open:
AP 55/24 – A Workshop on digital TV will be planned (J.Slavik).

The following action points from meeting 56 remain open:
AP 56/8 – Preparation of a template for conference budget (H.Rudin)
AP 56/16 – Announcement on web page requesting interest for events (A.Casaca)
AP 56/34 – Updated list of WG 6.6 members (R.Boutaba)
AP 56/39 – Updated list of WG 6.10 members (H. van As).
AP 56/40 – Date for next meeting of WG 6.10 (H. van As).

All the other action points have been closed.

A report on the use of software packages for paper reviewing was asked to A.Iyengar, V.Tschammer, G.Leduc, R.Boutaba and A.Danthine (AP 57/4).

6. Report from IFIP activities

The TC6 chairman gave a report on the last IFIP GA meeting (Natal, Sept. 2000) in which he participated.

The most relevant points for TC6 were the following:
-	The GA approved a resolution stating that due to the comfortable amount of the fund balance presently existing in the Special Activity Fund, there will be a halt on the transfers from the TC6 funds into the Special Activity Fund for 2001 and the situation will be re-examined in the next GA in 2002.
-	The steps towards the development of an IFIP publication policy , as proposed by the TA, were approved.
-	The new WG 8.4 on E-Commerce was provisionally approved. A new name was requested, so that it does not cover subjects from other TCs.
-	The IFIP Witfor event to occur during the Summer of every odd numbered year was approved.
-	The Entertainment Computing initiative was approved.

TC6 nominates T.Saito, A.Iyengar and O.Spaniol to the Entertainment Computing Task Force (AP 57/5 – A.Casaca).

7. Event Organiser´s Guidelines

These guidelines have been completed and are available in the TC6 web site. Their reading should be recommended to every event organiser by the respective WG chairman.

8. Steering Committees

TC6 reviewed the present constitution of Steering Committees. 

The following decisions were taken:
-	Contact TC11 to complete the CMS Conference Steering Committee (AP 57/6 – A.Casaca)
-	G.Leduc will indicate the new names for the QoS Conference Committee (AP 57/7)
-	Try to reduce the number of members in the Active Networks Conference Committee (AP 57/8 – O.Martikainen)
-	V.Tschammer will indicate the new names for the I3E Conference Committee  (AP 57/9).
-	The E-Commerce Conference Steering Committee should cease to exist. D. Khakhar and V.Tschammer will only the liaison members to ICCC.
-	New Committees were nominated for  the NAP Conference (G.Pujolle, S.Tohmé, A.Danthine, O.Spaniol, A.Casaca, B.Jabbari) and for the IM Conference (R.Boutaba, W.Zimmer, S.Aiderous, V.Salim).
-	O.Spaniol and J.Slavik will integrate the Networking Conference Steering Committee.
-	I.Niemegeers will integrate the PWC Steering Committee.
-	The Steering Committee for Africom ceases to exist.

A.Casaca will send the updated list of the Steering Committees when ready (AP 57/10).

9. Working Group report structure

The WG report structure proposed by the chairman was approved with some amendments.

The final WG report template will be sent to TC6 (AP 57/11 – A.Casaca).

The template will be included in the TC6 web page (AP 57/12 – A.Casaca).

10. TC6 30th Anniversary

A.Danthine will ask Louis Pouzin for the formal starting date of TC6 activities (AP 57/13).
S Dibuz will ask Tibor Szentivanyi about this (AP57/14)  .

A committee was nominated to prepare the celebration of the 30th anniversary of TC6. The committee consists of A.Danthine, O.Spaniol, P.Radford, K.Boyanov, H.Rudin, D.Khakhar and A.Casaca.

11. Publications

The chairman reminded that as Kluwer is the official publisher of IFIP a quotation should always be asked to Kluwer for every conference that is only sponsored by an IFIP Committee.

The chairman reported on the procedures to be taken before June 2003 for the decision on the IFIP publisher to be made in 2005.

The report on IFIP Digital Library from the GA was also presented. The Digital Library committee from TC6 will prepare a document with the TC6 view before the next IFIP Council (AP 57/15 – G.Leduc).

It was indicated that it would be important to have a digital support for every TC6 conference from now on.

12. Marketting of events

It was decided to proceed with the issuing of a TC6 leaflet, following the same lines of the TC13 leaflet (AP 57/16 – A.Casaca).

13. Technical presentation

A.Iyengar made a technical presentation on “Internet Applications Engineering”.

TC6 thanked Arun for his presentation, which clearly showed some of the working items of WG 6.4.

The next technical presentation will be done by R.Boutaba in Saariselka.

14. WCC’02

As L.Chapin could not be present, A.Casaca reminded WG chairmen that they had agreed to help L.Chapin to find invited speakers for WCC’02 in their respective areas.

A.Danthine indicated that he can give a talk on “GMPLS and Optical Networking”.

G.Leduc is working on the problem and intends to find two speakers. The same happens with A.Iyengar.

R.Boutaba and R.Puigjaner also indicated that they are working on the problem.

I.Niemegeers can contribute on Wireless Communications.

There was a question on whether a paper to be published in the WCC’02 proceedings should be written by the invited speakers. This should be answered by L.Chapin.

A.Casaca will contact L.Chapin reporting on these issues and asking him to inform directly the WG chairmen of the point of situation (AP 57/17).

15. Quality control of the TC6 events

A.Casaca asked WG chairmen to complete the table with the statistics of TC6 events until the end of October (AP 57/18).

WG chairmen are free to publish the statistics of their conferences at the web site provided by Kevin Almeroth. When doing so, the TC6 chairman should be informed. G.Leduc indicated that he intended to transmit the statistics of WG 6.1 conferences to Kevin.

G.Leduc will investigate whether it will be possible to have a pointer from Kevin’s web site to the TC6 site, where our statististics can be kept (AP 57/19).

16. WG reports

WG 6.1

G.Leduc presented the report.

No special issues to be decided at the TC6 level except the domain names for the different conferences. It was agreed to ask IFIP Secretariat to apply for these domain names and pay them from TC6 funds. The IFIP name is not required in the name of the site (AP 57/20 – A.Casaca).

WG 6.2

G.Pujolle presented the report.

It was agreed to join the “Interworking” and “Network Architecture and Protocols” Conferences into a single one, named “Network and Internetwork Architecture”. The first edition of this conference is intended to take place in US organized by Bijan Jabbari in Spring 2003. A possible alternative is Oman. G.Pujolle will confirm the conference place (AP57/21).

A new conference on Network Control (Netcon) will take place in Paris in October 2002. It is jointly organized by 6.2, 6.6, 6.7 and 6.8. There was an offer to organise the second edition in Oman in 2003.

TC6 should try to be more involved in the World Telecommunication Congress 2002.

WG 6.3

Report was presented by A.Casaca.

No decisions to take.

WG 6.4

Report was presented by A.Iyengar.

A workshop on “Internet Applications” is planned for Poland in October 2002 in collaboration with WG 6.11. A Grzech to provide information on this workshop (AP57/22).

WWW’03 will be in Budapest.

A.Iyengar indicated that there is a discount on ACM and IEEE CS journals for advertisements of IFIP conferences, as IFIP and ACM are IFIP members. This is a point that should be indicated in the EOG (AP57/23 –H.Rudin).

WG 6.6

R.Boutaba presented the report.

The IFIP-IEEE ComSoc agreement is in IEEE ComSoc to be signed. Raouf will investigate the present situation (AP57/24).

It will be important to start preparing the publication of IM’03 (AP 57/25 – R. Boutaba).

WG 6.7

O.Martikainen presented the report.

IWAN’02 will be in Zurich in December 2002.

Smartnet’02 will be in Saariselka. Eunice summer school will have the TC6 support and will be in Trondheim in September 2 to 4, 2001.

F. Aagesen and O. Martikainen will discuss convergence of SmartNet and ActiveNetworks (AP 57/26).

WG 6.8

A.Casaca presented the report.

Following a proposal from J.Slavik, A Casaca  proposed the change of name to Mobile and Wireless Communication for WG 6.8. TC6 approved this new name. A.Casaca will propose this change to IFIP TA (AP57/27). J.Slavik should provide the revised aims and scope (AP57/28).

In response to a question sent by J.Slavik the meeting indicated that WG 6.8 is welcome to nominate a vice-chair. This was thought preferable to having a co-chair.

TG 6.9

R.Puigjaner presented the report.

The negotiation with  ACM is proceeding for the organization of the Latin America Networking Conference.

Travel grants for speakers will be asked for this conference and also for tutotials in CLEI in 2002. (AP 57/29 -R.Puigjaner).

WG 6.10

The WG chairman was not present in the meeting and there was also no report.

This was the third consecutive meeting that the WG 6.10 chairman misses a TC6 meeting. The TC6 chairman indicated to TC6 that this a problem that needs to be solved. 

WG 6.11

V.Tschammer presented the report. 

V.Tschammer reported on the I3E conference in Zurich. TC6 thanked Volker for his effort on the conference preparation and congratulated him for the conference success. The collaboration from TC8 and TC11 could have been better for this I3E event. It is hoped that the collaboration improves in future events.

Prof. Kurt Bauknecht, general chair of the I3E conference also addressed the meeting, reporting on several aspects of the conference. In response to a question from A Danthine, Prof. Bauknecht admitted that while Kluwer’s services had been good the proceedings were very expensive.

For I3E’2003 there are two offers: Singapore and Brazil. The choice will be made by the Steering Committee.

WG 6.11 intends to have a vice-chairman, who will be proposed later on.

The participation in the E-Publishing conference with ICCC needs to be re-evaluated (AP 57/30 – V.Tschammer).

17. Establishment of WG 6.9

TC6 voted unanimously for the establishment of WG 6.9 (Communication Systems in Developing Countries) with the aims and scope proposed by R.Puigjaner. The aims and scope are included in the meeting documents.

A.Casaca will propose this new WG to the IFIP TA in March 2002 (AP 57/31).

18. Calendar of Events

The calendar of TC6 events will be updated by A.Casaca and sent to the TC6 list (AP 57/32).

19. Finances

The IFIP finance control tables supplied at GA’2002 were analysed by TC6. Attention should be given to the fact that the event proceeds diminished significantly in 2001. The royalties proceeds are stable. Expenses continue to be done below the budget.

A TC6 budget of 35,000 Euros for 2002 has been approved by IFIP.

WG Chairmen were asked to send any request for budget allocations to A. Casaca as soon as possible.

20. Grants and Loans

Nothing to report.

21. Next TC6 meetings

The next TC6 meetings wiil take place as follows:

Meeting 2002/1 – Saariselka, Finland (6-7 April, 2002)

O.Martikainen to send out the schedule for the meeting (AP57/33).  .

Meeting 2002/2 – Lisboa, Portugal (5-6 October, 2002).

There was an offer from Oman to organize a TC6 meeting in 2003. The exact date should be decided in the next meeting.

22. AOB

There was no time for the planned brainstorm on TC6 activities. This will be done in the next meeting.

TC6 thanked Harry Rudin for the splendid organization of the meeting and also for preparing the visit to the IBM laboratories on Saturday afternoon, which was greatly appreciated by the TC6 members. TC6 asked H.Rudin to carry also the TC6 thanks to the IBM Laboratory Director.