[lp-wan] draft text for rechartering; Comments please!

["Pascal Thubert (pthubert)" <[e-mail]>]

Daer all: 

Please find the proposed charter text (*) that we built during the last 3 interim meetings. Please let us know if you have issues with this text within the next 7 days. Once the document is stable, we (chairs) will ask our AD (Eric) to push it for IESG review.

Many thanks!

The chairs

(*) draft charter text:

Background (to be removed) for IESG

The initial focus of the LPWAN Working Group was to enable IPv6 connectivity over the following selection of Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) technologies: SIGFOX, LoRa, WI-SUN and NB-IOT. As a result of the first round of chartering, the IETF has contributed to LPWA technologies by allowing IPv6 connectivity with to the SCHC deep compression protocol. SCHC is now becoming an accepted industry standard in that space and is being or was already adopted by major alliances.

The group produced documents providing an overview of the baseline LPWA technologies (RFC8376) as well as a document specifying a Generic Framework for Static Context Header Compression and Fragmentation (SCHC) [RFC8724], SCHC for CoAP [RFC8824], SCHC over LPWA technologies for LoRA, SigFox, and NB-IOT, and the SCHC data model specification. Though the LPWA technologies were used as the baseline technologies for the LPWAN SCHC standard , interest is now rising to employ SCHC in other, non-LPWA environments.


New (proposed) Charter



The scope of the group is to enable the benefits of the SCHC technology to LPWAN and non-LPWA networks, including Low Power devices such as zero-energy / scavenging devices that may operate in Delay Tolerant mode.  To that effect, the group will provide specifications for the application of SCHC over Foo, where Foo includes but is not limited to UDP tunnels, IP, PPP, and Ethernet.

To extend SCHC over multihop networks with remote endpoints, there is a need in the data plane to signal the SCHC session and some operational values in the packets. For instance, the INT-AREA WG is working on a SCHC protocol type for IP and a SCHC Ethertype (in coordination with IEEE) for Ethernet. The group will provide standard track specifications for a SCHC Header that conveys the SCHC Session Info over IP for the SCHC protocol type.

A complete SCHC solution also requires control plane technologies to secure the operations and manage the SCHC sessions, devices, and gateways.  The group will provide specifications to identify the rule sets and negotiate the associated parameters between the pair of endpoints in a secure fashion. The group will also work on the installation of the rules, including the instantiation of generic rules to the nodes and networks in which they are applied.

The group will continue activities of the previous charter and take on new work as follows:

>From the previous charter:
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1) Perform SCHC Maintenance, including enabling SCHC mechanisms for Upper layer Protocols, and providing additional reliability mechanisms such as FEC for fragments.

2) Produce a Standards Track document to enable operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) to the LPWAN device, including support for delayed or proxied liveness verification (Ping).

New work items for this charter:
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3) Produce Standard Track documents for SCHC over Foo and Bar over SCHC where Foo includes but is not limited to IP, PPP, and Ethernet and Bar may include IPv4, ICMPv6-based protocols, TCP, IP tunnels, DLMS, and other protocols over CoAP such as LwM2M; define and maintain data models for the protocols supported by SCHC.

4) Define the SCHC Protocol Header to convey SCHC Session Info over IP for the SCHC protocol type

5) Produce Standard Track documents for SCHC Rule Discovery and Parameter Negotiation, including the specification of how work from the IETF Security Area is leveraged to secure these operations

6) Produce Standard Track documents for SCHC Rule Installation, including the specification of generic SCHC rules that can be instantiated, e.g., to apply to a certain node or within a certain network.

The LPWAN WG will collaborate with INT Area WGs for the protocol type definition and possible Bar-over-SCHC activities. It will work with the relevant Security Area WGs to secure the SCHC session appropriately.