MACE Conference Call, November 17, 2003

*MACE Conference Call*
November 17, 2003

*Attendees*

Bob Morgan (chair) - Washington
Scott Cantor - OSU
Renee Frost - Michigan/Internet2
Michael Gettes - Duke
Jim Jokl - Virginia
Keith Hazelton - Wisconsin
Ken Klingenstein - Colorado/Internet2
Ton Verschuren - SURFnet
Brian Gilmore - Edinburgh
Diego Lopez - RedIRIS
Steve Carmody - Brown
Mark Poepping - CMU
Tom Barton - Chicago
Neal McBurnett - Internet2
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

Bob noted some interesting developments from the Nov. 9-14 IETF:
- There's growing interest in Shibboleth-like approaches to privacy management. This is largely driven by mobile phone providers interested in protecting callers' location information; the geopriv working group (http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/geopriv-charter.html) is making this its initial priority.
- XML is everywhere. In particular, XCAP is now trying to do what ACAP tried to do a few years ago; see http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-simple-xcap-01.txt.
- Bob has accepted the co-chairmanship of the Calendaring and Scheduling working group (http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter.html); this work is related both to Chandler and to calendar work happening at UW.

There was a short discussion of directory-enabled network integration. There appears to be broad interest in this capability, as well as progress in making it more manageable -- Michael noted that he's heard of an implementation that uses only 300 directory entries to describe a router, as compared to the previously-typical 3000. Ton noted that there are commercial products that check that machines are safe before admitting them to a VLAN, and Steven noted that U. of Connecticut also has a package that does this.

Two new MACE groups have begun conference calls:
- SALSA is addressing security issues, including followup on the Security at Line Speed (SALS) workshop, network authN/Z, and network diagnostics. Mark Poepping is interim chair; [AI] All who have suggestions for a permanent chair for SALSA will send them to Ken and Mark.
- I2IM has approved its charter and is starting to get into use cases.

Mark noted that Middleware End-To-End Diagnostics Advisory Group chair Chas DiFatta will be attending a Performance Measurement Architecture Workshop in December in San Diego; see http://people.internet2.edu/~matt/perfmeasarch/ and http://middleware.internet2.edu/e2ed/presentations/ for more information.

The group discussed MACE branding. The concept Ken wants to start pushing is "MACE-consistent", as contrasted with, e.g., "MACE-compliant". Ton described this language as suggesting that "you've done your best but don't guarantee anything ", and Ken agreed that this, not promises of tight integration, is what we need to convey. The "MACE-consistent" label would apply to a wide variety of products, from listservers to GUIs. There is steadily increasing interest from various parties -- including some outside the US -- in submitting tools for use with Internet2 middleware; this makes deciding on an approach to branding a matter of increasing urgency. [AI] All who have suggestions on the approach MACE should take to branding will send them to Ken; once consensus is reached, Ken will take the proposed approch to Kevin at NSF.

In international developments:
- The Second TF-AACE Authentication and Authorisation Workshop will take place in Malaga, Spain, on November 20-21. The first day will be devoted to user issues, the second to network-layer issues. A major opportunity for middleware/network convergence is emerging in the mobility area; there is strong interest in middleware from the network people from DANTE, and Ton is very involved with the TERENA mobility task force's RADIUS work. Ken noted SALSA's interest in this work.
- Ken met with James Dalziel of Macquarie U. in Australia. Australia has coordinated middleware activities across its 42 universities and recently secured a large grant to pursue these efforts. There's lots of energy here; particular interests include a personal resource manager a la Brown, and creating an australiaPerson. [AI] Keith will contact the Australians about participating in the internationalPerson work.

Finally, Keith gave a short update on directories work.
- MACE-Dir is getting broad response to the localdomainPerson survey, and will be writing up and circulating an analysis of the results.
- internationalPerson schema work is underway. Representatives from several countries are involved.
- JISC is issuing a solicitation for UKeduperson; watch the MACE-Dir list for details.
- There is interest in starting a new series of conference calls to work on an LDAP registry. [AI] Diego will contact Peter Gietz about getting a draft LDAP registry business plan, as well as contact information for people interested in participating in the LDAP registry work.

*Action Items*

[AI] All who have suggestions for a permanent chair for SALSA will send them to Ken and Mark.
[AI] All who have suggestions on the approach MACE should take to branding will send them to Ken; once consensus is reached, Ken will take the proposed approch to Kevin at NSF.
[AI] Keith will contact the Australians about participating in the internationalPerson work.
[AI] Diego will contact Peter Gietz about getting a draft LDAP registry business plan, as well as contact information for people interested in participating in the LDAP registry work.