New OSI upper-layer efficiency discussion list

[Peter Furniss <[e-mail]>]

A new mailing list for OSI upper-layer efficiency

A new mailing list has been established to discuss the development of more 
efficient OSI upper-layer protocols.  This thinosi mailing list was opened to 
such discussion following the Houston IETF meeting where "reduced" OSI 
was talked about, and I would now like to move it to a more appropriate 
home. So everyone is invited to join the fun on [e-mail] (uleff-
[e-mail] to join, see below).

Since the thinosi cookbook has been approved for publication as an 
informational RFC, the IETF thinosi working group will shortly be closed 
down by the IESG. The [e-mail] list will remain open for 
discussion of implementation and deployment issues. (and things that are 
wrong with the cookbook, no doubt)

The new mailing list has been set up at the request of the ISO/IEC SC21 
WG8 Upper-layer architecture group. They discussed efficiency at the 
meeting in Southampton in July and intend to work on it, generating 
amendments etc. as appropriate. (That horrific list of acronyms is the 
designation of the bit of "ISO" that deals with the upper-layers - Working 
Group 8 also covers the standards for ACSE, Presentation, Session, ROSE, 
RTSE (and many of the application protocols) and most of their 
editors/rapporteurs were at the meeting)

However, the list will be completely open, and there is no reason why the 
discussions should not feed into other organisations, including the IETF. 
(obviously following whatever arrangements organisations have for taking in 
stuff)

The subject area for the list can be summarised as:

The discussion of protocol mechanisms for the OSI upper-layers that are 
more efficient by one or more measures of efficiency and which support 
existing upper-layer services in whole or in part. Measures of efficiency 
include:

	a) reduction of number of bits of protocol transmitted for a particular 
semantic
	b) reduction of number of  messages exchanged for a particular 
semantic
	c) reduction of processing requirement by sender or receiver
	d) greater timeliness (real-time and deterministic)

That is taken from an output of the meeting. Another way of looking at it 
would be to say it covers any protocol that could replace the functions the 
OSI upper-layers. 

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Since this message will (I hope) generate a major wave of joiners on the uleff 
list, there may be a few days delay in adding everyone.

Peter Furniss