Re: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational

Stephen,

    As a clarification question, what typically is the role assumed by the
class of member that includes scientific and industrial organizations?

Stephen Trowbridge wrote:

> Christian,
> Zhi has captured the essence.
> ITU-T has several classes of membership:
> - The highest, since ITU is an organization under the umbrella of the United
>   Nations, are "member states". This consists of the 190 or so countries that
>   are members of the United Nations. In study groups that deal with regulatory
>   and tariff issues, the governments are often sources of some of the material
>   to be considered. In a more technical study group (like Study Group 15),
>   governments tend to fill the role of determining if there is consensus of
>   industry within the country, and forwarding that as a national position.
> - The next class of membership is Recognized Operating Agencies. These are
>   network operators.
> - The next class (equivalent in rights to the operators) is called Scientific
>   and Industrial Organizations. While any such organization can join, these
>   are generally equipment or component vendors.
> - The final class are called "Associates", who pay a lower level of dues to
>   participate in a single Study Group.
> Each country can determine their own national process through which national
> positions are determined. In the US, it is customary to take proposed national
> positions first to a related US standards organization (ANSI committee T1X1
> for most of ITU-T Study Group 15) to develop the industry consensus, and then
> to a US State Department committee (US Study Group B is the one which feeds
> Study Group 15) which generally (not always) follows the recommendation of the
> US standards organization in whether something should be forwarded as a 
> national
> position under the "member state" membership. Since in most cases, the 
> national
> standards organizations have looked at these documents first, the meetings of
> the US State Department committees tend to be relatively short (1/2 day or so,
> often by conference call).
>
> As far as I understand the UK process, they have a national committee per
> ITU-T Study Group which can approve national positions when there is industry
> consensus. Since the UK does not have similar national standards 
> organizations,
> they must also look into the technical details of the contributions. This
> results in a longer meeting (I think a couple of days, from what I have heard)
> to develop any UK national positions for ITU-T Study Group 15.
>
> Getting a national position in countries with significant industrial 
> participation
> is no small feat, so contributions such as this are generally taken very 
> seriously.
> Hope this helps.
> Steve
>
> "Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi)" wrote:
> > Hi Christian,
> >
> > This is one of the processes within the ITU-T standards body. The documents 
> > that is submitted into these documents can have multiple levels of 
> > "status". I'm not sure what the process is within the UK, but I have some 
> > idea of the process within the USA. Maybe Stephen Trowbridge or others more 
> > familiar with the procedures can comment (I typically try to stay away from 
> > these and stick my head into the technical stuff).
> >
> > The lowest status is that a document is sent by a company. In this case 
> > only that company is known to support this. A document may also have 
> > multiple company names as contributors, in which case these companies are 
> > active proponents.
> > The next level status is a country document. A country document (e.g., USA 
> > or UK) means that the document has undergone a national standards process, 
> > and that ALL the companies represented within that country will support the 
> > position stated by the document.
> >
> > This is of course much different from the IETF process, where all documents 
> > are by individual basis (theoretically it should not even have company 
> > affiliation but only represents the views of the individuals in the author 
> > list, but of course practically most people who attends and submits 
> > documents are actually representing a company view)...please don't flame 
> > me, just giving an observation based on my limited exposure to the IETF 
> > process...
> >
> > Hope this helps
> >
> > Zhi
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Christian de Larrinaga [mailto:cdel(_at_)firsthand(_dot_)net]
> > Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 10:17 AM
> > To: Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi); iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; 
> > Wijnen, Bert
> > (Bert); Scott Bradner (E-mail); kireeti(_at_)juniper(_dot_)net
> > Cc: Stephen Shew (E-mail); Lyndon Ong (E-mail); Malcolm Betts (E-mail);
> > Lam, Hing-Kam (Kam); Alan McGuire (E-mail); 
> > sjtrowbridge(_at_)lucent(_dot_)com;
> > Dimitrios Pendarakis (E-mail)
> > Subject: RE: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational
> >
> > Lin Zhi-Wei
> >
> > You mention a UK national position paper. Can you give me the references and
> > what made this "national"?
> >
> > many thanks,
> >
> > Christian de Larrinaga
> >
> > > A clear U.K. national position paper was
> > > contributed to the meeting currently underway
> > > (delayed contribution 483), supporting that all
> > > three of the ASON signaling Recommendations
> > > should be put for consent at this meeting.
> > > Hope this helps...
> > > Zhi