18th NMRG Meeting in Nancy (France)

The 18th NMRG meeting will be held in Nancy (France) on July 30-31 2005. The meeting will start at 10:00. The chair of this meeting is Jürgen Schönwälder. The local host of this meeting is the INRIA. Our contact is Olivier Festor. The meeting is the weekend before the 63. IETF in Paris (France). Nancy is a small French town about 2.5 hours by train from Paris.

Scope

The 18th meeting of the Network Management Research Group (NMRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) will focus on management aspects of Voice over IP (VoIP) networks. The goal of the workshop is to survey ongoing activities related to the management of VoIP networks, to discuss how they relate to each other and how they fit into a common picture, and to identify areas where research or standardization work is needed. Discussions on the NMRG mailing list resulted in the following list of topics important to the management and operation of VoIP networks:

  • call quality monitoring (loss, latency, jitter)
  • reliability (standby configurations, fast fail-overs)
  • emergency service capabilities
  • expected call quality and maximum call volume prediction
  • diagnosis of VoIP problems
  • security and VoIP abuse prevention
  • gateway utilization monitoring
  • device provisioning models (using web services-like interfaces)
  • device management behind NATs and firewalls
  • mechanisms to secure software downloads to terminals

The workshop format will be short prepared presentations (15-20 minutes) followed by extensive discussion. The presentations will introduce and survey technologies which are under development and which focus on one of the VoIP management topics listed above. In addition to technology presentations, presentations by VoIP network operators are especially welcome in order to contrast technology aspects with operational experiences and requirements.

Minutes will be taken during the workshop. Some authors/editors will be selected who volunteer to work towards an RFC or some other suitable publication after the workshop which summarizes the state of the art and any insights gained during the workshop.

All interested parties are invited to join the workshop. However, the number of attendees will be limited due to the limited space available and to achieve a productive workshop atmosphere. In case of over subscription, preference will be given to people who are willing to prepare a presentation and to lead a discussion. The list of accepted presentations will be posted on the NMRG meeting web page which will be updated regularly and also contains information about the logistics.

http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/projects/nmrg/meetings/2005/nancy/

Please contact the meeting chair Jürgen Schönwälder if you plan to join the meeting with a short description how you plan to contribute to a successful workshop.

Agenda

Saturday (2005-07-30)

10:00 Welcome
Jürgen Schönwälder (International University Bremen, Germany)
Olivier Festor (LORIA - INRIA Lorraine, France)
10:15 Real-time Application Quality of Service Monitoring (RAQMON)
Dan Romascanu (Avaya, Israel)
10:35 RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR)
Amy Pendleton (Nortel, USA)
10:55 RTP, RTCP XR and SIP MIB Modules
Dan Romascanu (Avaya, Israel)
11:15 SIP Service Quality Reporting
Amy Pendleton (Nortel, USA)
11:35 Discussion
Everybody
12:00 Lunch Break
13:00 Preprovisioning, Template, Individual and Per-Subscriber Provisioning for VoIP Services
Michael Alexander (WU Vienna, Austria)
Provisioning a VoIP subscriber entails setting a variety of per-line and per-customer group parameters in several devices and operation support systems (OSs). In mixed PSTN/VoIP Systems with local PSTN gateways at the minimum 3 devices need to be provisioned, for in-network VoIP the count is two plus OSs - with at the minimum inventory management being affected. The resulting element and OS management overhead is considerable especially when considering that CPE provisioning is expected to be performed primarily by operators going forward. This paper presents various approaches to lowering the provisioning management burden for VoIP circuits. When utilizing preprovisioning and template-based provisioning in addition to per-subscriber provisioning the burden can potentially be reduced. The advantages of the former two approaches in conjunction with per-circuit provisioning are discussed and some notions on needs requirements for VoIP management protocols derived.
13:20 Management and QoS for VoIP
Henry Sinnreich (pulver.com)
Jürgen Schönwälder (International University Bremen, Germany)
We present two discussion points: First, QoS is not an issue to worry about for VoIP in general and VoIP management in particular. Second, P2P self organizing networks will provide the highest possible availability for VoIP services.
13:40 User-oriented Management of VoIP Applications
Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University, USA)
VoIP is likely the most complex Internet applications that is deployed to non-technical users today. VoIP can fail for any number of reasons, from low-level connectivity problems to signaling failure, NAT issues, packet loss and jitter as well as subtle end- system-related problems that have the same effect as network problems. Often, these problems are transient and cannot be reproduced. While the user sees one application, end user application, user OS, home network, access network, voice service provider (proxy operator) and the remote party all need to cooperate to complete a call. Thus, there are probably half a dozen parties that can be blamed, in mutual fingerpointing, if something goes wrong. Traditional network management tools are of only limited help in this environment.
14:00 Service Provider VoIP OSS - Lessons Learned
Azita Kia (Cisco Systems, USA)
This talk will present a summary of lessons learned in the operations of SP VoIP deployments of the last 10 years and areas of standardization that can help improve these deployments. Focus will be placed on VoCable deployments as well as new challenges that emerge with SIP and IMS.
14:20 Discussion
Everybody
15:00 Break
15:30 Calculation of Speech Quality by Aggregating the Impacts of Individual Frame Losses
Christian Hoene (TU Berlin, Germany)
16:00 VoIP Security Threat Analysis
Saverio Niccolini (NEC Europe, Germany)
With the introduction of VoIP, the need for security is compounded because now there is the need to protect both the data and the voice. Protecting the security of VoIP network is required because the security assumptions of the legacy POTS do not hold any more. The security threats to VoIP systems comes from the fact that the signaling is sent using the same network as the multimedia data and that the traffic is not encrypted. The talk will present both an analysis of the current security threats related to VoIP and the possible countermeasures and the currenlty proposed solutions addressing their pros and cons.
16:30 VoIP Fuzzer, Cracker and Spammer (incl. demo)
Olivier Festor, Radu State (LORIA-INRIA, France)
17:30 Discussion
Everybody
18:00 Leaving for Dinner

Sunday (2005-07-31)

09:00 Discussion: Identify main research/engineering questions to be addressed
Everybody
10:00 Break
10:30 Discussion: Develop plans how the research/engineering questions could be addressed
Everybody
11:30 Wrap Up
Jürgen Schönwälder (International University Bremen, Germany)
Olivier Festor (LORIA - INRIA Lorraine, France)
12:00 Workshop closes

Reading List

  1. K. Lingle, J. Mule, D. Walker: Management Information Base for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), draft-ietf-sip-mib-09.txt
  2. T. Friedman, R. Caceres, A. Clark: RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR), RFC 3611
  3. A. Clark, A Pendleton, R. Kumar: RTCP XR - New Parameter Extensions, draft-clark-avt-rtcpxr-bis-00.txt
  4. A. Clark, A. Pendleton: RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR) VoIP Metrics Management Information Base, draft-ietf-avt-rtcp-xr-mib-02.txt
  5. Anwar Siddiqui, Dan Romascanu, Eugene Golovinsky: Real-time Application Quality of Service Monitoring (RAQMON) Framework, draft-ietf-rmonmib-raqmon-framework-11.txt
  6. Anwar Siddiqui, Dan Romascanu, Eugene Golovinsky: Real-time Application Quality of Service Monitoring (RAQMON) MIB, draft-ietf-rmonmib-raqmon-mib-08.txt
  7. Anwar Siddiqui, Dan Romascanu, Mahfuzur Rahman, Eugene Golovinsky, Yong Kim: Transport Mappings for Real-time Application Quality of Service Monitoring (RAQMON) Protocol Data Unit (PDU), draft-ietf-rmonmib-raqmon-pdu-10.txt
  8. R. Petrie: A Framework for Session Initiation Protocol User Agent Profile Delivery, draft-ietf-sipping-config-framework-07.txt
  9. H. Sinnreich, S. Lass, C. Stredicke: SIP Telephony Device Requirements and Configuration, draft-sinnreich-sipdev-req-07.txt

Slides:

Meeting Place

The meeting will take place at the LORIA - INRIA Lorraine research lab building:

LORIA Research Building
Room B-013
615 rue du jardin Botanique
54602 Villers-les-Nancy
France

Access information can be found here. It is strongly recommended to take the tramway direction "Vandoeuvre CHU" from Nancy train station as it is cheap, fast and very convenient. In case of any unexpected problems, you can reach our local host under +33 (0) 673.69.89.81 during the two days of the meeting.

Accomodation

Below is a choice of some hotels all located near the train station (less than 5 minutes walk). More hotels can be found via Nancy's touristic web page.

  1. BEST WESTERN HOTEL CRYSTAL (***)
    5 Rue Chanzy
    54000 Nancy
    Tel: +33 3 83 17 54 00
    Fax: +33 3 83 17 54 30
    Price: 81-112 Euro
  2. ALBERT 1ER ASTORIA (**)
    3 Rue de l'Armee Patton - BP 555
    54000 Nancy
    Tel: +33 3 83 40 31 24
    Fax: +33 3 83 28 47 78
    Price: 49-73 Euro
  3. AKENA PRESTIGE (*)
    41 Rue Raymond Poincare
    54000 Nancy
    Tel: +33 3 83 28 87 41
    Fax: +33 3 83 90 00 45
    Price: 42-45 Euro
  4. AKENA NANCY (*)
    41 Rue Raymond Poincare
    54000 Nancy
    Tel: +33 3 83 28 02 13
    Fax: +33 3 83 90 00 45
    Price: 35-37 Euro

Travel Information

Below is some information how to reach Nancy from Paris by train. You can also rent a car - but beware that driving in France is somewhat different from what you may be familiar with and it for sure won't be faster than the train. But in case you are looking for an adventure...

  • Paris - Nancy (Train)

    • The easiest way to reach Nancy is to take the train from Paris. Note that Paris has several train stations. The trains to Nancy leave from the "Gare de l'Est" station. The travel time Paris - Nancy is about 2 hours and 40 minutes.

  • Paris Charles De Gaulle - Nancy (Train)

    • International flights to France usually land in Roissy - Charle De Gaulle Airport in Paris. From there you can take a suburb train (RER-B) that takes you to the "Gare du Nord" train station (journey ~35 minutes). From "Gare du Nord" you have to go to the "Gare de l'Est" train station. This takes 3 minutes by feet, 10 minutes by metro. From "Gare de l'Est" station, you take the train to Nancy (travel time 2 hours and 40 minutes).

  • Paris Orly - Nancy (Train)

    • If you land in Orly (which is unusual except if you come from somewhere else in France), things are a bit more complicated. You have to cross Paris since Orly is in the south and Gare de L'est in the North/Est.

Participants

  1. Michael Alexander (WU Vienna, Austria)
  2. Olivier Festor (LORIA-INRIA, France)
  3. James Hong (Postech, Korea)
  4. Christian Hoene (TU Berlin, Germany)
  5. Azita Kia (Cisco Systems, USA)
  6. Saverio Niccolini (NEC Europe, Germany)
  7. Amy Pendleton (Nortel Networks, USA)
  8. David Perkins (SNMPInfo, USA)
  9. Aiko Pras (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
  10. Jürgen Quittek (NEC Europe, Germany)
  11. Dan Romascanu (Avaya, Israel)
  12. Jürgen Schönwälder (International University Bremen, Germany)
  13. Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University, USA)
  14. Radu State (LORIA-INRIA, France)