Megaco/H.gcp call May 11/99 Minutes

[Nancy-M Greene]

Below are the minutes for the call May 11th - please let me know if I have
missed anything, or not captured what you think happened.

Nancy
--------------------------------
Minutes of Megaco/H.gcp call May 11/99 10am-12pm ET

Participants from both the IETF Megaco WG, and ITU SG16 were present on the
call. A total of 20 people called in (I am listing them here - some names
are missing, and some are probably spelled wrong..): Radika Roy, Brian
Rosen, Nancy Greene, John Segers, Paul Sijben, Mike Buckley, Tom Taylor,
Bryan Hill, Glen Freundlich, Rich Ruben, Mike Brown, Hong Liu, and about 9
others.

Results are summarized here, and are open for discussion on the mailing
lists. (Actions are prefaced by **.)

Results:
-----------
1) Procedures for continued cooperation between SG16 and IETF
- agree that the protocol should not unduly complicate the case where MGs
are handling only IP Telephony and not multimedia.

- agree to keep this in mind when dealing with issues such as mono vs
multimedia contexts, etc.

- upcoming SG16 in Chile will address issues such as how to handle
multimedia in the protocol, whether to describe the termination descriptors
using SDP-like syntax or H.245-like syntax. An output of call flows would be
useful.

- ** Progress made in Chile will be documented and posted to the IETF
megaco at standards.nortelnetworks.com list by Tom Taylor

- Discussion is encouraged to continue on the megaco mailing list as always,
and there will be an audio call the week after the SG16 meeting to once
again gauge consensus between the two groups.

- even if the H.gcp document is Determined in the ITU SG16 Chile meeting,
the IETF and SG16 can still evolve the document together. Final White
Document text for ITU is due Oct/1999. In the IETF, plan is for the document
to go for WG Last Call in July/99.

2) Documents update
- outstanding issues list - contained in H.gcp, and Tom Taylor has a list as
well, and may post an update to it.
- New version of H.gcp should be out this week (Bryan Hill)
- Ascend SG16 contribution, still not available to the megaco mailing list.
Essence is need to decide whether to tunnel signalling primitives in the
device control protocol, or in Sigtran.

3) mono vs multi media context
- not resolved, still need to compare messages and parameters needed for
each using a series of test cases.
- for H.320 or H.324 MGs, Tom Taylor sees the need to have H.245 running on
the MG

4) SDP syntax vs H.245 syntax
- still need to see call flows, concrete proposals for each method.
- ** Brian Rosen will write up a proposal for termination descriptors - it
won't be SDP and it won't be H.245 - it will be what we need ("minimum
average pain solution")

5) Naming of terminations
- seem to agree that we do not want to have semantics implied by the name.
- need a property in Add that indicates the termination class for the
termination
- move termination class into the termination descriptor?

6) Termination Class - needed?
- question came up whether we need termination class, or whether packages
are enough - each termination would have a set of packages it supports.
- what is a termination class? A group of packages.
- Problem: some DS0's will support MF, some won't, or "I can support 12 DS0s
with MF if there are only 3 G.726 codecs in use". Need to be able to express
this.
- ** Conclusion: rethink termination classes
      - if it is not obvious that removing them helps, then leave them,
      - need a way to concisely express the properties of any termination or
group of terminations
      - need support for provisioning of termination classes at the MG, and
MGC.
      - need to support capabilities/resource limitations that span the MG,
such as "I can support 10 G.711 and 3 G.726 codecs simultaneously", and
variations.
      - and finally, make sure we do not complicate the simple case! Need
examples.

7) Description of test cases
- ** Tom Taylor will send these out this week, and they will be used to
build call flows, which will be the basis for comparing variations on the
protocol (e.g. mono vs multimedia contexts, ...)

8) Next Audio Call
Sometime during the week after the ITU-T SG16 meeting - date and time will
be posted to the two mailing lists.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nancy M. Greene
Internet & Service Provider Networks, Nortel Networks
T:514-271-7221 (internal:ESN853-1077) E:ngreene at nortelnetworks.com