VidMid-VC Conference Call, February 11, 2002

*VidMid-VC Conference Call*
February 11, 2002

*Attendees*

Egon Verharen (chair) - SURFnet
Ken Klingenstein - Internet2
Jill Gemmill - U. Alabama (Birmingham)
Michael Gettes - Georgetown
Mary Trauner - Georgia Tech
John McNair - U. Tennessee (Knoxville)
William Rhodes - U. Tennessee (Knoxville)
Steve Olshansky - Internet2
Renee Frost - Internet2
Art Vandenberg - Georgia State
Tyler Johnson - UNC-CH
Samir Chatterjee - Claremont Graduate U.
Tom Barton - U. Memphis
Mark Driver (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

Egon asked for input as to whether to schedule a second day of presentations on VidMid-VC related activities at the May 8-10 Internet2 Member meeting. Coordination with the Digital Video Initiatives group on May 9th was deemed important to ensure a cross-pollination of backgrounds within the audience. May 10th session would allow for more audience interaction and an opportunity for more technical discussion. Tyler thought it would be counter-productive to overwhelm the generally non-tech membership with LDAP and thought a tutorial on object classes and VidMid-VC architecture might create momentum towards a de facto testbed and a subsequent diffusion of the process. Others suggested that having early May as a deliverable date would help facilitate the inertia of the three nascent VidMid-VC subgroups. A before/after evolution of the VidMid-VC reference model created at the UNC meeting would provide an excellent illustration for many CIOs in terms of how resource integration will enable new applications, especially with SIP landing on the desktop via Windows XP. [AI] Egon will respond to the Internet2 member meeting Call For Presentations.

Ken discussed the Access Grid advanced collaboration environment meetings on March 4-5 which will emphasize security and resource discovery issues. He commended Samir's draft on SIP security as an excellent discussion generator, noting the divergent security approaches between VidMid-VC and Access Grid. An LDAP document, if sufficient progress could be made by early March, would also be valuable to help map a convergence in thinking between VidMid-VC and Access Grid. And Tyler, et al's object class discussion will help the Access Grid group understand the VidMid-VC directories approach.

Samir's SIP security document identifies a framework for overall videoconferencing security, including Authn/Authz, threat models (hijacked Authn, man-in-the-middle attacks), Authn digest models, and client handling of tokens, XML and full encryption modes. The document addresses a set of issues that require attention both at the protocol level and at the videoconferencing architecture level. [AI] Steve will schedule a call to discuss Samir's document; the same group should also address the LDAP flows. Tyler advocated greater activity with regards to developing the security flows model and encouraged the enlistment of the vendor community to evangelize why security extends beyond the enterprise.

Ken updated the group on Shibboleth allusions by the Securities Industry Middleware Council and Wall St. institutions relating to federated identification management. Ken is preparing slides for Paul Hill (MIT) to present to SIMC on Feb. 26th and anticipates a growing demand for clients soon. The balance between resource discovery and access control was raised and the UDDI intermediation mechanism employed by the Globus toolkit was offered as a good model. Several questions about Microsoft's implementation of SIP, UDDI and the Xchange conferencing server were posed. Their Active Directory in unicast mode allows anyone access. A senior executive involved in VC at Microsoft is interested and may be a liaison with VidMid-VC. Discussions are ongoing about the level of Microsoft’s involvement in VidMid-VC. [AI] Ken and Jill will investigate the creation of a Microsoft SIP lab, complementary to the SIP VC client development efforts underway at CGU and UC-Boulder.

Jill offered MDS as a possible directory services model, explaining that it wasn't exactly LDAP, but was designed to manage computing clusters and it caches for better performance. Ken noted that rather than a metadirectory, it was a meta-computing directory, which might be usefully modified to discover other resources. Currently it does distributed computing well via "one off" protocols, but has no protocol for replication. [AI] Jill will send a draft document on "Headhunter" to Art in order to facilitate its extension to the discovery of video resources. Jill also stated the need to recruit computer science types with knowledge of database middleware such as CORBA and SOAP, although the latter has scalability issues. The group was uncertain as to whether Polycom used a root server or a federated model for resource discovery; regardless, they found accessible resources effectively. [AI] Art will draft a proposal on public LDAP and authorized discovery within the video conferencing reference model framework for discussion.

*New Action Items*

1. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Egon to respond to Internet2 Call for Presentations at May conference.
2. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Steve to coordinate security discussion with Access Grid representatives.
3. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Steve will post Samir's draft on SIP security on the I2 Middleware website.
4. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Steve will schedule a call to discuss Samir's document within VidMid-VC
5. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Ken & Jill will contact Microsoft to facilitate development on an MS-compatible SIP lab.
6. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Jill will send "Headhunter" draft to Art.
7. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Art will distribute initial proposal on a public LDAP/authorized discovery mechanism.
8. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Steve will list middleware WG members and contact info. on I2 website.
9. [AI] 11-Feb-02 Steve will post draft UNC workplan on I2 website

*Previous Action Items*

10. [AI] 28-Jan-02 Mary Fran will ask Terry Dixon and Bob Olson to provide an AccessGrid perspective on security, authentication and authorization.
11. [AI] 28-Jan-02 Steve will send out descriptions of the subgroups.
12. [AI] 28-Jan-02 Tyler and Nadim will complete UNC’s H.323 object class and communication superclass in time for the NMI 1.0 release in April 02.
13. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Egon will write a summary of the VidMid-VC session at the VIMM.
14. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Samir will send the list a short summary of approaches to coping with NATs and firewalls.
15. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Egon will contact OpenH323 about participating in VidMid-VC. (In Progress)
16. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Tyler will look into Siemens' involvement in videoconferencing-related technologies, especially SIP. Tyler will send Siemens contact info to Steve. William has videoconferencing contact at Siemens in Boca Raton and will pursue that avenue.
17. [AI] 14-Jan-02 {In Progress}Steve will follow up with Michael Gettes re: Sun contact interested in VidMid-VC with potentially available resources: Programming help? SW licenses? HW?
18. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Egon will contact France Telecom to invite them to participate in Vidmid-VC
19. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Pierre will send RadVision object classes to VC list.
20. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Mary Fran, Bob, Keith, Michael, Pierre, and Tyler will look at H.235 Annex D and Annex E to see what is viable near/mid-term to use in our work, and what is viable for the April release.
21. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Philippe (VRVS) will comment on multicast and multipoint scenarios.
22. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Keith will send to VC list a proposal on using eduPersonExtension and eduPersonEntitlement for video groups in enterprise directory.
23. [AI] 14-Jan-02 {In Progress} Steve will follow up with details of IMTC (International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium) - a vendor-centric group focusing on vidmid issues. Egon contacted Paul Jones who is trying to establish an H.323 Forum under the auspices of the IMTC. IMTC wants to get universities involved. Tyler mentioned Anatoli at Radvision also wanted vidmid and IMTC to link up.
24. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Mike and Keith will investigate potential benefit of leveraging Grid MDS v.2 (Meta-computing Directory Services) work on directory of directories (meta-directories). Grid MDS work happening over weekend of Jan. 19-20. Jill discussed coordination with Globus toolkit workshop at end of January.
25. [AI] 14-Jan-02 {In Progress} Samir and Doug will pursue development of SIP user agents capable of voice and video.
26. [AI] 14-Jan-02 {In Progress}Steve and AB will follow up: NIH spending $40m on Middleware in next few years. Synergy?
27. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Tyler and Orit Levin will follow up: H.323 Study Group 16 hasn't looked at LDAP yet, so they might be open to looking at it. Tyler is finishing latest revision before submitting.
28. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Nadim, Tyler, Albert, Mike, and Keith will go through schema point by point with an I2 scribe in a conference call or two. Brief mention of Internet2 identity and zone attributes. Consideration needed re: Radvision implementation of these attributes vs. other vendors' implementations.
29. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Mary Fran, Art and Egon will markup/revise scenarios to make them less H.323 centric (Final Version 1.0)
30. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Tyler, Egon, and Jill will overlay scenarios onto Tyler’s Visio reference model diagram (including scheduling)
31. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Samir will develop scenario: interoperability between H.323 and SIP
32. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Steve and Tim Poe will follow up with vendors not already represented in VidMid-VC: Tandberg, VCon, Polycom, MS, Sony(?), PictureTel (?), Cisco(?) [VRVS and Access Grid?] identify and contact key individuals
33. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Steve, Jill and Ann West will follow up: UNC-Chapel Hill & GaTech funded to do documentation for the Commons; maybe part of this could go to the VideoCookbook
34. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Jill and Steve will investigate the benefits/viability of planning an April 02 meeting where we could get end users together with endpoint vendors.
35. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Jill, Mike and Keith will collaborate on the VideoDoD/Globus investigations
36. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Samir will find a SIP vendor willing to implement user authentication.
37. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Steve will report on the degree to which SunONE infrastructure parallels/aligns with NMI
38. [AI] 14-Jan-02 Mary Fran and Jill will develop (or oversee) a survey of end users to get data for endpoint functionality
39. [AI] TBD Tyler, Steve and Jill will investigate other potential funding sources; develop grant proposals to assist in funding some of our efforts.
40. [AI] TBD Jill and Samir will investigate viability of setting up a SIP testbed
41. [AI] TBD Jill and Samir will conduct an Active Directory investigation