Applications Area

Director(s):

   o Russ Hobby:  rdhobby@ucdavis.edu

Area Summary reported by Russ Hobby/UC Davis

Area Overview

The general goal of the area is to define the protocols to create an
interoperable multimedia distributed computing environment for the
Internet.  The Internet is now a global communications resource and
people want more applications than the standard Telnet, FTP and SMTP
provide.

At the Boston meeting there were demonstrations of how video and audio
could be carried between workstations over the Internet today.  The
Teleconferencing Architecture BOF discussed what is necessary to create
a multi-workstation multimedia conference environment.  With the greater
international interest in the IETF there is a desire to be able to
extend the ``face-to-face'' meetings over the network around the world.

Another interest that generated several BOFs was information storage and
retrieval over the Internet.  There is a growing amount of information
available over the network, but how does one locate and retrieve it?

Email Requirements BOF (MAILREQ)

The defined protocols (SMTP, RFC 822, MIME, ...)  do not begin to
address the complexity of the email environment of the Internet and
beyond.  We need a set of documents that can give ``the big picture''
and provide guidelines for implementors, operators and users.  The BOF
discussed problems and needs for the email world and some possible
documents to address these issues.

OSF Distributed Computing Environment BOF (DCE)

Doug Hartman from OSF presented and overview of DCE and answered
questions.  DCE addresses several of the ``holes'' that we currently
have in the Internet Protocols.  Future work in the IETF to fill these
holes may be able to use the work of OSF as a strong starting place.

Remote Conferencing BOF (REMCONF)

The BOF continued work to define an overall architecture to cover all
aspects of remote conferencing.  This included things such as session
management and groupware.  Separate Working Groups may be generated to
work on specific protocols specified by the architecture.  There was
discussion on the current work on session management.  This may be
spawned off as a Working Group.

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Internet Mail Extensions Working Group (SMTPEXT)

The Working Group did the final review of the document that extends SMTP
to allow the transport of 8-bit characters and provides some additional
capabilities to improve efficiency, especially when very large files are
being transmitted.  Working Group has submitted the document to be a
Proposed Standard.

Network Database Working Group (NETDATA)

Two approaches to provide SQL over TCP/IP networks were reviewed.  One
approach has been developed by the Working Group Chair, Daisy Shen over
the past few IETF meetings.  The other approach has been developed by
the SQL Access Group and was presented to the IETF for the first time at
the Boston meeting.  The Working Group agreed that a single approach
needs to be developed for standardization and would evaluate both
approaches.  Security work is still needed on both approaches.

TELNET Working Group (TELNET)

The TELNET Working Group made further progress on authentication and
decided that the document should be put forth as an Experimental
Protocol.  Dave Borman presented an extension to remote flow control
that the Group reviewed and will be submitted to be a Proposed Standard.
The Working Group reviewed the Environment Option and will put it
forward to become a Proposed Standard.



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