Folks,

The next SG16 meeting will be held 26 October - 6 November 2009. The meeting notice from the ITU can be found here: http://www.itu.int/md/T09-SG16-COL-0004/en

Question 2

We have a number of documents in Q2 that are scheduled for consent and I'd really like to ensure we are successful in addressing any and all open issues so that we can successfully consent those documents. The work program for Q2 is shown at the top of this page:

http://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/h323/doc_status.html

The documents scheduled for consent include:

. H.323v7

. H.225.0v7

. H.245v15

. H.460.geo (Transport of geographic information in H.323)

. H.460.23 (NAT Determination)

. H.460.24 (Point-to-Point Media Flows through NAT)

Also on that page are links to all of the documents. I would strongly encourage those interested in any particular document to review the text in advance and prepare a contribution, if necessary, to address any concerns you might have. Of course, you're also welcome to discuss issues directly with me, the various editors, or with the whole group via this mailing list in advance of the meeting. My objective is to ensure that we are able to consent these texts without running into unforeseen obstacles.

Question 12

As you know, the work in Question 12 is progressing, but we are not at a state where we have any documents to consider for consent. Nonetheless, there are a number of documents in progress. They are shown at the top of this page:

http://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/h325/doc_status.html

While the requirements may not be entirely finalized, I believe that they have sufficiently progressed to a point where we can start to talk about information flows. What I would like to see are contributions that speak to the following topics:

. What information needs to be conveyed between applications and the Container

. What information needs to be conveyed between the Container and the network

. What the syntax might look like

o We had previously agreed to use XML and possibly XML compression techniques

o We ought to try to put this into a more concrete form, even if we might change things a few times until we're comfortable with what we have

One of the things I've been looking at is how to ensure that we can properly design a system that supports versioning of messages in a way that is similar to the way other communication systems allow for the introduction of new information elements. The conclusion I reached was that XML Schema 1.0 is insufficient for our needs. What will work, though, is XML Schema 1.1, which earlier this year reached Candidate Recommendation status in the W3C. A really good overview of what's new in XML Schema 1.1 can be found here:

http://www.xfront.com/xml-schema-1-1/xml-schema-1-1.ppt

Of particular interest, of course, are the additions that relate to versioning. (I sent this link to the h325-design list last month, but I wanted to repeat it here for the benefit of others in WP2 who may not be aware of it. Plus, it has been revised numerous times and now includes a relatively short tutorial at the beginning for all of those who might not have the patience to read through a few hundred slides.)

I look forward to seeing everyone in Geneva and hope we can make good progress in both Q2 and Q12

Kindest Regards,

Paul E. Jones

Rapporteur, Q2/16 and Q12/16

Cisco Systems, Inc.