Subject: Minutes of APPN/HPR BOF meeting

From: "Marcia Peters (8-444-4380)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 10:06:16 EDT

_________________________________________________________________________

                     Minutes of APPN/HPR BOF
                          Sept. 29, 1993
                              AIW-3

                Moderator:  Marcia Peters - IBM
_________________________________________________________________________

We had good attendance at the APPN/HPR BOF meeting - over 52 people from
30 different companies.  I proposed the following objectives and agenda
for the meeting; these were acceptable to the group.

o  Objectives:
   - Learn how HPR works
   - Review HPR draft for completeness/correctness
   - If further work is needed, propose a scope of work for SIG formation

o  Agenda:
   - Distribute HPR draft specification - Ray Bird (30 min.)
   - Determine if we need an APPN/HPR SIG - group (45 min.)
   - Technical questions & answers on HPR - Ray Bird, Lap Huynh (45 min.)

Ray Bird, editor and co-author of the HPR spec, distributed initial
drafts of the spec and gave a quick tour of how the material is
organized.  Currently, the draft does not contain a full specification
of RTP although considerable (all? most?) necessary information is
present.  The RTP spec will be forthcoming from another group in IBM.
The BOF felt the spec is weak until it includes full RTP.  I committed
to seek the other group's help in order to meet a year-end 1993
publication target for RTP.

You requested softcopy; it has been made available (see my prior note).
I have some extra hardcopies: contact me privately
([email-masked]) if you need one.

Because the APPN/HPR specification is work-in-progress, the AIW review
will focus on completeness and architectural errors rather than design
alternatives.  Otherwise, normal AIW approval and consensus procedures
will apply to APPN/HPR.

A question on patents arose.  I said that IBM has one patent application
covering HPR on Adaptive Rate-based Congestion Control.  I reiterated
Jane Munn's statement from a prior AIW meeting that ARB will be included
in the existing APPN EN and NN Technology Packages at no extra charge.
Thus this appears to be a non-issue.

We then reviewed AIW requirements to charter a SIG and discussed whether
the HPR group needed to become a SIG.  A SIG needs:

    - A crisp technical objective
    - Concrete deliverables and people willing to work on them
    - A schedule

The group offered the following proposals for HPR-related work items
(numbers indicate the number of people willing to work on each):

    - Review and refine the spec                  (6)
    - Use RTP as a datalink under PU2 +/or DLSW   (0)
    - Divorce HPR from the APPN control point
      E.g., how could DLSW use HPR?
         . Specify an interface to HPR            (2)
         . Remove HPR dependencies on APPN CP     (5)
    - Define CMIP & SNA/MS management for HPR     (0)
    - HPR over shared router datalinks            (1)
    - HPR over other datalinks (ATM, etc.)        (0)

In addition I suggested the following:

    - Establish a schedule for review and approval of HPR draft
    - Discuss HPR and APPN migration configurations
    - Discuss HPR integration into existing APPN implementations
    - Ensure that HPR meets requirements for a transport under DLSw
    - Liase with SNMP MIB BOFs
    - Liase with conformance, interoperability and testing BOF

The consensus was to become a SIG, with the following proposed schedule
for the APPN/HPR specification:

    - Proposal stage     - AIW 4 (Feb 1994)
    - Approved Direction - AIW 5 (Jun 1994)
    - Approved Pages     - AIW 6 (Oct 1994)
    - Closed Pages       - AIW 7 (no date yet)

By consensus of the plenary AIW, the HPR SIG now exists, with the
following statement of work for inclusion in the AIW Technical Plan:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                      |
|                        APPN/HPR SIG                                  |
|                        ____________                                  |
|                                                                      |
| The initial goal of this SIG is to complete the APPN/HPR work        |
| in progress.  A secondary goal is to examine requirements for        |
| additional applications of the APPN/HPR technology.  The initial     |
| scope of work is to ensure that APPN/HPR meets requirements for SNA  |
| routing by reviewing the specification and submitting input to the   |
| authors.  The deliverables are the APPN/HPR specification and        |
| recommendations concerning any future work.                          |
|                                                                      |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

A SIG chair will be appointed by the AIW chair.  Meanwhile, our first
order of business is clearly to review the existing draft thoroughly.

(1) Please read the spec and send your comments, questions, ideas,
    etc. to this mail exploder.  We will conduct an electronic review
    just as Ed Tremblay has been doing on the DLUR draft spec.

(2) We need more input concerning the proposal to remove HPR
    dependencies on the APPN CP.  The requirements should address the
    following topics:

      - What configurations are being addressed?
      - What type(s) of traffic would be carried?
      - How would migration work?
      - Comparative advantages and disadvantages
        to customers, compared with other approaches
      - Cost versus benefits
        (in terms of code size, storage, CPU cycles, etc.)

Technical Q&A:

   Q: Please comment on "shrinking header" vs. "pointer adjustment"
   A: (Believe it was Ray Bird) For high-speed stuff, hardware
      implementation is quicker when "shrinking" is employed.

Marcia Peters .............................. IBM Networking Systems