The IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), on behalf of the IETF,
announces this Request for Proposal
to develop the specifications for Remote Participation Services. The successful
bidder will enter into a contract with
the Internet Society.
The primary goal of this project is to develop consensus on a set of
requirements for IETF Remote Participation
Services (RPS) to enhance remote participation at IETF meetings, interim and
virtual working group meetings.
Background
The IETF has supported remote meeting participation over the Internet for many
years. For example, the audio of
each session is made available in real time so that remote participants can
listen to the proceedings. Instant messaging
is supported by having a jabber room 'conference' for each session, so that
comments from remote participants can be
relayed to people in the face-to-face meeting and to permit �side� exchanges
that comment on material being
presented. In addition, we have experimented with bi-directional audio support
for remote presenters, as well as video
broadcasting of the face-to-face meeting, but these more advanced features
have, to date, have proved difficult to
scale.
Environments
1. IETF Meeting Group Sessions
There are about 150 sessions, with up to 8 being simultaneous at any one time.
A session varies in size from twenty to
two hundred on-site participants.
2. IETF Meeting Plenary Sessions
There are two plenaries. On-site attendance at plenary sessions averages 700.
The number of speakers at the front of
the room ranges up to twenty.
3. Interim Group Meetings
In addition to sessions during one of the three regular meetings, there can be
as many as thirty Interim Working
Group Meetings held throughout the world annually, serving a range of on-site
participants from 15 to 50 and an
unknown number of remote participants.
4. Virtual Group Meetings
There are currently 30-50 Virtual Group Meetings held throughout the year
annually, serving 15-75 online
participants from all parts of the globe. These have no physical, on-site
instantiation and are conducted entirely
through teleconferencing tools.
The contractor is expected to highlight development and operational challenges
to the functions that are defined.
Deliverables
1. The IETF is seeking development of functional specifications for a suite of
tools that enable Remote Participation
Services, meeting the needs described above, ideally enabling an experience for
remote attendees that rivals that of
on-site attendees.
2. The specifications shall rely solely upon IETF and other open standards for
all communications and interactions.
3. At a minimum it is expected that the RPS will support the following real
time functionality:
a. audio, bi-directional
b. video, bi-directional
c. instant messaging
d. slide presentations, including by remote attendees
e. whiteboard, for collaborative document development
f. conference control and moderation
g. transcription and broadcast of audio to text in real-time
h. ability to conduct and participate in straw polls.
In addition to real-time participation support, the service must support
recording of an entire session, using
standards-based encoding, to permit integration into the IETF meeting
proceedings system.
Timeline
The contractor will observe group and plenary sessions at IETF 82 (Fall 2011 in
Taipei) and conduct interviews with
vendor teams (at a minimum, Meetecho, Adobe, Citrix and Webex when possible),
the Network Operations Center
(NOC) volunteers, remote participants, and those individuals who run the
working group and plenary sessions. After
gathering all of this input, the contractor will prepare an initial
specification for review by the IETF Tools Team and
the vmeet mail list participants. Following these discussions, the contractor
will update the specification as required.
Specifications will be circulated as IETF Internet-Drafts (I-D). It is expected
that an initial I-D containing the
specifications will be developed prior to IETF 83 (Spring 2012) and a completed
I-D will be delivered prior to IETF 84
( 2012).
The RFP can be found at: <http://iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html>.
Proposals must be received via email at rpelletier(_at_)isoc(_dot_)org no later
than November 1, 2011, 5:00 P.M. EDT. All
questions/inquiries must be submitted in writing and must be received no later
than midnight, EDT, October 24, 2011.
Responses to questions and inquiries shall be posted on the IAOC website,
<http://iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html> by
midnight, EDT, October 27, 2011.
The point of contact regarding this RFP is the IETF Administrative Director,
Ray Pelletier.
Ray Pelletier
IETF Administrative Director
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