Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/21 attendee list to be appended later. CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Bernhard Stockman/SUNET Minutes of the Operational Statistics Working Group (OPSTAT) Agenda o Administrative Items o Review Internet Draft, is it ready to progress to RFC? o Development of tools o Review Charter, Goals, and Milestones Review of Comments Received About Internet Draft Several comments were made by various Working Group participants. Jon Boone (PSC) wants stop-time and filename in a header section so that it isn't necessary to scan the entire file to find the ending time of the data. Agreement was reached to change the time_section to label_ section as follows: label_section ::= ``BEGIN_LABEL'' ``END_LABEL'' There was a question about file setup... is there a need for one big file or lots of little files? Should there be multiple sections within a file? Matt (PSC) noted that important information was not mentioned and could be potentially confusing. They wanted to use very large files because of their tape storage facilities. Agreement was reached to add a sentence saying the specifics of how files are physically arranged is outside the scope of the document. There was some confusion about the use of tags and variables in the poll-data section. Are there multiple tags for different sets of variables? It was noted that the draft is vague on time aggregation in this context and there was no clear way to do it. There is a need to provide a representation for, say, the average for 1 hour, 1 minute, and a maximum value, as well as, a need for classes of operators since aggregation is different for counters vs. an interface status variable. Agreement was reached to rewrite the section to make it more clear. Would the addition of comments within the data files be useful? Yes, add comments, something like: 1 FS :== ``,'' | | # text Additional questions were posed by Dave S. (BNL). o What is the use of the networkname field? Ross noted that network names were unique. Evan noted that the sharing of data among networks would be facilitated such that data wouldn't possibly become confused. Consensus was reached that the networkname field was useful :-). o Question about the routername. This brought up a bigger discussion about how addresses are bound to each interface on a router. Usually the name of a router is tied to the interface most commonly used to access it. The name must be unique. Discussion digressed to involve yellow post-its and neon lights to name routers. Matt mentioned limitations of the DNS to name routers usefully. No action was taken. o Questions about the linkname prompted discussion on what should be in it and what would be mandatory. The concept of a virtual link is needed to represent one or more physical links which can be grouped for statistical purposes. Should the name represent the ISO layer 2 or layer 3 name? Should there be an external name map to map the linkname field to a meaningful string? How should information be encoded in the field? Should there be resource vs. time aggregation? There are several unanswered question which could be answered in a later document covering implementation details. Ed Reeder (IBM) suggested several editorial comments. All were approved as suggested. In Section 5.1 there was a question about the difference between the raw data and the presented data. Agreement was reached to rewrite sentence/section to make more clear about the difference between the two. In a separate discussion, Matt suggested adding a field to show specifically whether the data had been aggregated, versus having an implicit indication currently. Everyone agreed to this change. There was some question about having a minimum value as well. Lengthy discussion about the minimum value always being very close to or equal to 0. Consensus had been reached at an earlier meeting to drop the minimum value. James Barr (NIKHEH-H) asked a question about adding a comment. Since this had been agreed to previously, no further discussion was held. Peter Fenwick (Univ. of Auckland) pointed out a syntax error in Section 2 6.1.3 in the data field specification where the number of ``[`` and '' ]'' were unequal. Everyone agreed the error should be fixed. Pietrak Rafal had extensive comments on the aggregation periods in the draft. Comments about the effect of extra weekend days in a month skewing data for a physical month, as well as, as questions about the period of time we wanted a peak value for raised. Everyone agreed that two hours was too long of a period. Agreement was reached to leave the time values as they were in the Internet Draft. Is the draft ready for RFC'ing? Agreement was reached that the draft was getting close and needed the changes mentioned above. Once the changes are made, Bernhard will send a copy for review before forwarding it to the IESG. Future Tool Development Eric Hood, Executive Director of FARNET, made some comments about network statistics and the availability of financial assistance from FARNET to help fund some amount of development. Eric was going to have the FARNET staff survey networks to see what tools are currently available and what is under development. Everyone agreed that there needed to be reference implementations to flesh bugs out of the draft (and future drafts) and show the direction of future work. A Consensus was reached on the need for a common way to store data and to share common tools which are freely redistributable (in the public domain). We are currently unsure of the questions which will need to be asked at some point about what statistics are important and implementations will help answer the questions. Eric will do the survey and forward the results to the OPSTAT Working Group. Discussions about tools will continue at the Washington, DC IETF, November 16-20, 1992. 3