Draft Notes

I.  Participants
Michael Behringer, DANTE
Suzanne Burgess, DynCorp/FNC
Woohyong Choi, KAIST
Kilnam Chon, APAN/KAIST
John Dyer, TERENA
Lawrence Law, HARNET
Ingrid Ledererova, Czech Republic
Bill Manning, USC/ISI
Kevin Meynell, TERENA
Bohumila Mullerova, Czech Republic
Forencio Utreras, REUNA
Karel Vietsch, TERENA

II.  Action Items
- Propose a meeting after December IETF (in WDC) to identify and coordinate current mbone operations, multicast deployment, and associated tools.  Explore funding options for this meeting. (NSF, Terena)
- Contact RIPENCC and report to the CCIRN lists with information on European mbone and topology. (Dyer, Behringer)
- Report to the mail lists where multicast exists on the Asian/Pacific and Latin American  research networks (Utreras, Chon)
- Contact vBNS regarding their efforts to become "multicast aware" and report back to the mail lists.  Send to mail list information on mbone efforts in NGI and I2. (Burgess)
- A working group chair needs to be appointed.  (CCIRN)

III. Proceedings
A.  Asian and European Mbone Initiatives
Currently, Asian research networks are not doing as much mbone work as desired.  If the planned APAN connection to the STARTAP in Chicago is completed, the physical topology for mbone would be simple and mbone possible.  In Europe, the ad hoc coordination done by the RIPENCC continues and bilateral contacts are made to configure tunnels.  TEN34, a consortium of European research networks, will be multicast aware, but the exact timing of that is not known.

B.  North American Initiatives
In the US, plans are underway to make the vBNS multicast aware (run mroute D, native multicast).  Information on the current vBNS multicast work is available at http://www.vbns.net/multicast/status.txt and the network is working with its provider, MCI, to ensure transport with minimum packet loss.  In CA*net, there is sufficient bandwidth for multicast, and their web site (http://www.canarie.ca/c2) has information on mbone.

C.  Ease of Use and Mbone tools
The group discussed the current state of Mbone and possible steps to make it more accessible. The perspective is that mbone is a tool of researchers, but not accessible to the average Internet user.  Current obstacles to use include lack of easy-to-use tools, lack of clear hierarchy, and changing network topology.  To overcome the last obstacle noted, NLANR’s work in mbone visualization (http://www.nlanr.net/Viz/Mbone/) was cited.  It was felt that if input and solutions were not developed for these areas, the commercial development of multicast technology would move forward without fully addressing these problems in a non-proprietary manner.

The lack of mbone monitoring tools was cited as another impediment.  Those familiar with mbone can setup tunnels, which eat up bandwidth, and slow the network down.  Network administrators need some set of monitoring tools to identify the mbone tunnels as opposed to the ad hoc detection methods currently used.  There is some work being done on the training of local campus administrators, but additional documentation of detection methods is required.  The group briefly discussed the use of Perl scripts to do packet trace and the use of IPv6 for mbone.  While there have been no tests of mbone across the 6bone, it is thought that IPv6 will allow prioritization of transmission, and thus, better service.

The question of push technology was briefly discussed, as was the TERENA project  DEVISE, which is looking at Internet tools for videoconferencing.

D.  CCIRN Working Group proposal
In response to the need for network monitoring tools, it was felt that the CCIRN could play a coordinating role in collecting body of knowledge of where multicast monitoring tools exist on the Internet, and distribute them. Each research network was asked to report on its multicast efforts and any tools currently used (see above action items).  To further disseminate this information, a workshop on multicast was proposed.