*VidMid-VC Conference Call*
May 20, 2002

*Attendees*

Ken Klingenstein - Internet2
Albert School - OARnet
Tyler Johnson - U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lisa Hogeboom - Internet2
Samir Chatterjee - Claremont Graduate U.
Nadim El-Khoury - U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Jill Gemmill - U. Alabama, Birmingham
Tom Barton - U. Memphis
Ann West - Internet2/EDUCAUSE
Steve Olshansky - Internet2
Jeanette Fielden - Internet2

*Discussion*

- update on IMTC meeting in Geneva -

The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is an industry working group that advises the ITU with respect to multimedia conferencing standards from an engineering perspective. The ITU has created a new standards track to take a standard from draft to full international status much more quickly. The ITU has also been very receptive to research and education community involvement.

The Secretary of Study Group 16 gave a presentation on the H.235 standard Annex F (security). The standard will not be ratified for another 4-6 weeks, during which input on the standard is invited. This offers an opportunity to focus on alignment between VidMid and Annex F. There was discussion of how alignment in security was progressing, how to move it forward, registration and authentication, and where XML sits in the H.323 standards process. One suggestion was submitting a draft to the IETF about authN with XML using end-to-end PKI. Pros and cons of such an approach were talked about.

There is great interest in the LDAP commObject work done by VidMid. Instead of pursuing joint ITU and IETF ratification of commObject, the intent is to submit the existing commObject with H.323 identity specification to ITU Study Group 16 for ratification as annex to H.323. SIP identity will be pursued through IETF and commObject will be redefined as a generic super class that applies to any protocol. The goal is to define it jointly by both standards bodies.

There is a relatively new group formed called the H.323 Forum. The goal is to pull all of H.323 under a common umbrella in order to promote H.323 universally to the press and at trade shows. Additionally there is a desire by the H.323 Forum to pull together a multipoint online conference with all interested parties in H.323 topics on an ongoing basis to discuss current standing and evolution of the standard. This represents an opportunity to build a community that serves as a central point for promoting the standard. A few suggestions were discussed on how to involve participants in the online conference. The group consensus was this could represent a substantial benefit to H.323. There was discussion of how alignment in security was progressing.

This segued into how to raise awareness on the SIP security working group and the challenges they facing. The draft on privacy is somewhat stable but many other things are still not codified.

The ITU is currently offering 3 free downloads a year to private users. For subsequent downloads the regular document charges apply.

- other business -

Ken discussed developing a proof of concept for demonstrating registration and authentication incorporating a point and click visual method to generate some excitement/interest for the conceptual goal even if the backend technology changes.

Microsoft has expressed interest in being involved in our group. One near-term goal is to have one of the more active VidMid member sites become an alpha and beta site for the new versions of Messenger, which include both video and instant messaging in a unified fashion using existing credentials. Registration, authentication and resource discovery are all SIP-based. The benefit is that the participating campus could understand and deconstruct how the underlying mechanisms are being implemented by XP.

Microsoft also expressed interest in the federation concept for involving corporations in the process of defining federated administration and bilateral and multilateral agreements within federations. Microsoft is expected to announce they will implement federation and that users will not have to convert to Passport to work with Passport. There was interest around how this would be achievable and integrate with Microsoft's current architecture including their Active Directory structure. A number of other companies will also be involved in the federation discussion, which will be structured as an open approach to the issue.

The NMI release 1 date was May 7th 2002. The VidMid page has been updated to include all the documents included in the release. The next step is setting up a feedback and support process for comments that will funnel them back to the lead authors of the papers. Eventually the process will support tracking and archiving comments as well as a document revision process. Since documents have a 6-month life span there is time urgency in incorporating comments and changes into documents.

The Access Grid standards are developed inside the Global Grid Forum. Global Grid Forum is not yet a formal standards group, but it intends to become one. It is not yet clear exactly how it will evolve. It is not clear how much work has been done yet by the Global Grid Forum on Access Grid. The next Global Grid Forum meeting is in July, so more information will be available at that time.

*Action Items*

1. [AI] 20-May-02 (Tyler) Obtain and circulate draft of H.323 Annex F for comment/review.
2. [AI] 20-May-02 (Tyler) Draft a brief description of proposed multipoint conference.
3. [AI] 20-May-02 (Ken) Refer Microsoft IM contact to Jill for followup discussion.