WG Review: Recharter of IP Flow Information Export (ipfix)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

A modified charter has been submitted for the IP Flow Information Export
working group in the Operations and Management Area of the IETF.  The IESG
has not made any determination as yet.  The modified charter is provided
below for informational purposes only.  Please send your comments to the
IESG mailing list ([e-mail]) by November 15, 2007.

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 facilitating 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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