[snip]
Description of Working Group:
...
Initially this combination of protocols will be specified with respect
to session setup with SIP. The solutions developed in XCON will not
preclude operation with other signaling protocols; however it is
anticipated that the use of other protocols would require modifications
which are out of scope for this working group.
None of the protocols defined by this group will be SIP, although the
SIP specific event notification framework will be used. The group will
use the high-level requirements and framework already described by
documents
published by the SIPPING WG.
may i inquire as to why this working group is SIP-specific? or more
accurately, why does this charter say it isn't SIP-specific, when the
contrary is true.
Well, from my perspective, the first paragraph cited above does indeed
indicate that this work is oriented towards SIP, that adapting the work for
some other protocol would entail changes to the model, and that those
changes won't be considered in the proposed WG. So while one might be
concerned by the fact that XCON is SIP-specific, I don't believe the charter
is especially disingenuous about that.
As to why this proposed WG is more or less SIP-specific, the charter arises
from a set of framework, requirements and mechanism documents that were
proposed in SIPPING. It was broken out from SIPPING because the community of
interest in conferencing seemed diverse (and prolific) enough that the work
seemed to merit its own WG. Also, the security responsibilities of
conference administration require some pretty low-level selections for media
stream security, and so on, that almost necessarily make this work specific
to some set of underlying technologies.
If it turns out that the products of the group do happen to be useful in
other areas, all the better.
for example, in the xmpp commuinity, there's a robust and
well-implemented specification for "multi-user chat" which arguably
provides a superset of the proposed xcon work product (cf.,
http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0045.html)
If this specification is a superset of the proposed work, then it should
serve as input to the group, yes (though obviously, it's a little easier for
IETF participants to work with Internet-Drafts - the status of that document
is a little unclear to me). I'm sure the group would love to be able to
declare victory at the outset. During the comment period on this charter, we
have already received a couple of notifications of existing work that is
potentially serviceable (including one from the MSEC WG). Conferencing is
certainly not a new problem; there's considerable existing work in this
space both inside the IETF and elsewhere.
XCON would no doubt welcome participation from any members of the XMPP
community.
Jon Peterson
NeuStar, Inc.
if the proposed working group is going to develop something for SIP,
then the charter should say so.
if the proposed working group is going to develop something
general-purpose,
then the charter should reflect reality by requiring an evaluation of
existing solutions to this space, as is usual for working groups that
are not starting with an existing specification...
thanks!
/mtr