[re-ECN] Draft Agenda

[<[e-mail]>]

As promised, here is the start of a discussion on the draft agenda for
the BoF... This is making the assumption that we will get 2 hours of
meeting time. I personally feel 2 hours is plenty - if we got more than
that the risk is that we will lose the focus (and lose our audience).

5 mins      administrivia
10 mins     introduction by chairs
20 mins     the problem
15 mins     towards a solution
10 mins     demonstration
40 mins     discussion
10 mins     sumnmary
10 mins     questions and hums

Details: 

"The problem" will give the background to why we want to do this work,
and why now. It will probably be split into two halves - the general
problem for the Internet and the specific problem as seen by an
operator. It should largely cover the first half of the problem
statement document we are jointly working on.

"towards a solution" will cover the second half of the problem statement
document. It will describe an overview of re-feedback and show how this
can allow congestion to be exposed by end-users. It WON'T have details
of re-ECN itself, however it could explain briefly the concept of
policing to a congestion rate.

The "demonstration" should really take 5 mins, but allowing 10 mins
allows for things going wrong. At the moment the plan is to show a
simple re-ECN system where a series of different size files are
transferred across a link. At the BoF end there is a monitor that will
display the congestion level. We will be able to insert extra congestion
and show that the monitor can give you the congestion upstream and
downstream. The idea is to show that this is not just research but that
it is ready for the IETF - we aren't trying to impose our solution, we
just need to show that there is a solution possible...

The "discussion" will need to be led by the chairs to prevent it going
off into protocol details or other dead-ends. The key thing is to work
towards getting agreement that the CONCEPT of exposing congestion (and
thus correcting the information asymmetry) is a good thing, and that it
is the starting point towards a more open and transparent means of
controlling the use of the Internet by monitoring the one thing that
actually impacts all users... One of the key things here will be to show
there is already an active community working in this area.

"summary" just needs to bring together any loose ends from the
discussion and try and leave people with a clear set of messages, for
instance: congestion is a key metric, currently congestion is hidden
from the layer that needs to know about it, revealing this congestion
will correct the information asymmetry and lead to better control of the
Internet, etc

"The questions" will need a whole email thread of their own, but that
can wait till a bit nearer the day. The key thing is to have very clear
closed questions- that is questions that only have a yes or no answer...

Toby