WG Action: RECHARTER: IP Flow Information Export WG (ipfix)

[IESG Secretary <[e-mail]>]

The IP Flow Information Export (ipfix) working group in the Operations
and Management Area of the IETF has been rechartered. For additional 
information, please contact the Area Directors or the working group 
Chairs.

+++

IP Flow Information Export (ipfix) 
=================================== 

Current Status: Active Working Group 

Chair(s): 
Nevil Brownlee <[e-mail]> 
Juergen Quittek <[e-mail]> 

Operations and Management Area Director(s): 
Dan Romascanu <[e-mail]> 
Ronald Bonica <[e-mail]> 

Operations and Management Area Advisor: 
Dan Romascanu <[e-mail]> 

Mailing Lists: 
General Discussion: [e-mail] 
To Subscribe: http://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipfix 
Archive: http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipfix/current/index.html 


Description of Working Group: 

The IPFIX working group has specified the Information Model (to describe
IP flows) and the IPFIX protocol (to transfer IP flow data from IPFIX 
exporters to collectors). Several implementers have already built 
applications using the IPFIX protocol. As a result of a series of IPFIX 
interoperability testing events the WG has produced guidelines for IPFIX 
implementation and testing as well as recommendations for handling 
special cases such as bidirectional flow reporting and reducing 
redundancy in flow records. 

Practical experiences with IPFIX implementations exposed new 
requirements for the IPFIX protocol that so far have not been addressed 
by the WG. The major current goal of the WG is developing solutions 
that meet the new requirements without modifying the core IPFIX protocol 
specifications. 

1. The IPFIX WG has developed a MIB module for monitoring IPFIX 
implementations. Means for configuring these devices have not been 
standardized yet. The WG will develop an XML-based configuration data 
model that can be used for configuring IPFIX devices and for storing, 
modifying and managing IPFIX configurations parameter sets. This work 
will be performed in close collaboration with the NETCONF WG. 

2. There is a need for storing measured flow information and for 
exchanging this information between different systems and organizations. 
The WG will develop a common IPFIX file format for storing flow data in 
order to facilitate interoperability and reusability among a wide 
variety of flow storage, processing, and analysis tools. It will be a 
flat-file format using binary encodings that are based on the IPFIX 
message format. 

3. When dealing with enterprise-specific information elements in IPFIX 
flow records, it often occurs that the receiver of the record does not 
know the definition of the information element. For processing such 
information elements it would be desirable for the receiver to know at 
least the data types of the enterprise-specific information elements. 
The WG will develop an extension to IPFIX that provides means for the 
encoding of IPFIX data type information within an IPFIX Message stream. 

4. Another requirement resulting from practical use of IPFIX is 
reporting IPFIX template records and corresponding data records within 
the same SCTP stream. The IPFIX WG will develop guidelines for this use 
case. 

5. First applications of IPFIX at large operator networks showed the 
need for mediation of flow information, for example, for aggregating 
huge amounts of flow data and for anomymization of flow information. 
The IPFIX WG will investigate this issue and produce a problem statement 
and a framework for IPFIX flow mediation. 

Goals and Milestones: 
Done Publish Internet Draft on IPFIX Testing 
Done Publish Internet Draft on IPFIX MIB 
Nov 2007 Submit IPFIX Testing draft to IESG for publication 
as Informational RFC 
Nov 2007 Submit IPFIX MIB draft to IESG for publication 
as Standards track RFC 


Dec 2007 Publish Internet draft on IPFIX Configuration Data Model 
Dec 2007 Publish Internet draft on IPFIX File Format 
Dec 2007 Publish Internet draft on IPFIX Type Information Export 
Dec 2007 Publish Internet draft on Single SCTP Stream Reporting 
Jan 2008 Publish Internet draft on IPFIX Mediation Problem Statement 
Jun 2008 Submit File Format draft to IESG for publication 
as Standards track RFC 
Jun 2008 Submit Type Export draft to IESG for publication 
as Standards track RFC 
Jun 2008 Submit Single SCTP Stream draft to IESG for publication 
as Informational RFC 
Oct 2008 Submit Configuration Data Model draft to IESG for 
publication 
as Standards track RFC 
Oct 2008 Submit Mediation Problem draft to IESG for publication 
as Informational RFC

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