Proposed MULTRANS Charter

The task of the MULTRANS Working Group is to devise the means whereby existing multicast mechanisms can operate successfully  when signalling and content have to traverse one or more IPv4/IPv6 boundaries. The scope of the Working Group is initially limited to the IPTV case, since the requirements for this application are better understood than those for other potential multicast applications.

Goals

1. The Working Group's first task is to develop a problem statement that identifies the scope of the problem of multicast operation for the IPTV application during the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. The problem statement will identify:
      -- requirements that must be satisfied by the mechanisms
         for multicast transition;
      -- use cases that must be considered, ranked by priority;
      -- design considerations that should be taken into account in subsequent work.

2. The Multrans Working Group will develop Standards Track documents specifying protocol interworking for the new combinations of protocols (for example, between PIM (IPv4) and PIM (IPv6)) required for multicast transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

3. The Multrans Working Group will specify the means whereby multicast addresses may be translated between IPv4 and IPv6, in both stateful and stateless fashion, in direct analogy to RFC 6052 for unicast addresses.

4. The Multrans Working Group will specify extensions to DHCPv4, DHCPv6, and RADIUS attributes required to configure hosts during the transitional period.

5. The Multrans Working Group will specify the operational and management capabilities required to support multicast transition. In particular, this work may involve the specification of MIBs.

Relationship to other working groups:

- Work done in the Softwire working group on the use of encapsulation as a multicast transition mechanism will be coordinated with the more general work being done by the MULTRANS working group.

- The specification for translation between IPv4 and IPv6 multicast addresses will be reviewed jointly with the MBONED working group, as will recommendations relating to operation and management of multicast transition.

- DHCP options, RADIUS attributes, and MIB modules developed by MULTRANS will be jointly reviewed with the appropriate other parties (DHC and RADEXT working groups, MIB Doctors directorate).

- The interworking recommendations for PIM, IGMP, and MLD developed in this group will be reviewed jointly with PIM, MBONED.


Milestones

May 2012  WG adopts
¨C problem statement draft
¨C interworking drafts
- address translation draft
- drafts related to operations and management of multicast transition

Sep 2012 Submit to IESG
¨C problem statement draft
¨C interworking drafts
- address translation draft
- drafts related to operations and management of multicast transition