From: Jacob Palme To: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 14/WG 4 and CCITT Study Group VII/Q.18. From: Jacob Palme Title: Coworking with Internet standardization? Date: July 1993 This document has been modified after input from Harald T. Alvestrand and other people, but I take full responsibility for the present text. Background In the 1980-s, those of use who were involved with X.400 development believed that X.400 would rapidly become the dominant international standard for electronic mail. In the same way, developers of other OSI standards have believed that their standards would replace older non- OSI standards. This has not happended. Instead, the dominating network standards are AppleTalk, Novell Netware, TCP/IP and other similar protocols. The fastest growing wide-area network is the TCP/IP-based Internet. And the dominating protocol for electronic mail is still the Internet mail standards. The most probable outcome is that we will have to live for a long time with two or more network worlds, which use different standards and protocols. Even if gatewaying is possible between standards, loss of information and functionality is inevitable. The more different in structure the application standards on each side of a gateway is, the more is the risk for information loss and other problems. SC 6 is planning to co-work with IETF Noting this, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6 has started to investigate whether closer coworking between OSI and Internet standards development would be possible. See for example the document ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6 N 7963. Some quotes from that paper: "the key objective of liaison is the convergence of the existing TCP/IP and OSI interconnection protocols and the joint development of a common platform to support future multimedia and hypermedia solutions. He highlighted the obvious benefits of a single converged solution, which are the reduction of the development effort required by the industry and the easier route to global interconnection. He was particularly anxious to halt the current media rhetoric about the rumoured battle of attrition between TCP/IP and OSI which is confusing users and tearing the industry apart. He urged all delegates to ensure that the liaison initative is promulgated in all possible areas of the media on the grounds that this is a batter story than the worn out open warfare rhetoric." "It was agreed that the single most effective action would be to obtain the release of a selected set of key ISO documents to the Internet Community for use within their electronic distribution system. This does not imply the release of copyright and the list would be restricted to those documents on which ISO would like Internet to base their development." SC 29 is planning to co-work with IETF Also ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 is discussing co-working with the IETF in the area of coded representation of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information, see document ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/N 419. Comparing the IETF and ISO/IEC/CCITT standards process The IETF and ISO/IEC/CCITT standards processes have many similarities, as can be seen from the comparison below: ISO/IEC work IETF work (1) National bodies propose new (1A member sends a proposal to the work items. Area Director (AD) for his application area. The AD, after revision, forwards it, if accepted, to the IESG, which forwards it to the IAB. (2) New work items are accepted (2IAB decides to start a new by JTC 1. working group to develop a new standard. (3) Experts meet for 2-3 yearly (3Experts communicate via e-mail, meetings lasting 1-2 weeks to combined with face-to-face develop a Draft Proposal (DP). meetings during IETF plenary meetings three times a year, to develop a Proposed Standard (PS). (4) The DP is sent to national (4Implementors start to implement bodies for checking and voting. the proposed standard. (5) The DP is revised by experts. (5Technical work continues to After this, work may go back to resolve issues which arise during stage (4) above or go on to stage implementation. (6) A Draft International (6When two independent Standard (DIS) is sent out again implementations are ready, the PS for voting. may progress to a Draft Standard (DS). (7) Experts revise the DIS. After (7Implementations and resoultion of this, work may again go to stage problems continue. (4), (6) or on to stage (8). (8) An International Standard (8When significant implementation (IS) is ready. and operational experience has been obtained, the DS may be elevated to a Standard (S). (9) Problems with the standard (9The need for an Implementors' are reported, and resolved first Guide to resolve problems is not in an Implementors' Guide (IG). so large in IETF, since test The IG has no formal status but implementations are in IETF done is in practice an important before the DS and S stage. document. (10)Problem corrections and (10) When new requirements arise, developments result in an a revised standard may be amendment to the IS. developed. (11)Functional Standards group (11) There is no need for specify a subset of the the IS. functional standards in IETF, since the requirements for implementations before a standard can progress to the DS stage, will weed out unnecessary and difficult-to-impleement functionalites earlier in the process. The stages to the left and to the right in the table above are not exactly similar. The requirements for working implementations in IETF mean that a document in the right part of the table above is often more mature than the corresponding ISO/IEC document. Contents of standards ISO/IEC/CCITT standards tend to be more complex and contain more functionality than IETF standards. One reason for this may be that ISO/IEC/CCITT standards do not require implementations before their standards are ready. Often, there are functions in ISO/IEC/CCITT standards which are never implemented, so that real implementations correspond to subsets of the standards. In IETF, functions which are not implemented are removed from the standards by the requirement that the standard should only contain functions which have at least two independent implementations. There may also be other reasons why ISO/IEC/CCITT strive more for completeness, while IETF strive more for simplicity. Coding techniques Most ISO/IEC/CCITT standards use ASN.1 as their specification language and a standardised encoding rule, usually BER, as their coding format. Some IETF standards use ASN.1, but many of them instead use a more text- oriented format. This means that the IETF format will often be based on English-language words and phrases used as syntactical delimeters and position makers. There are exceptions, for example SGML is an ISO/IEC/CCITT stadard which uses a text-oriented coding format. How can ISO/IEC/CCITT co-work better with IETF? Problem Possible resolution Neither organisation is willing to This can be solved in the same way let the other organisation have as it has already been solved in control of their standards. co-working between JTC 1 and CCITT: By letting each organisation publish its own standards, but trying to make them compatible or even identical. IETF tries to make standards The IETF standard could be a simple and lean, while ISO tries subset of the ISO/IEC/CCITT to make standards complete. standard. Note that by this I do not mean that ISO/IEC/CCITT make their standards first, and that IETF then selects in that standard. I mean that standards work is progressed in parallel in both organisations, and that both organisations produce input which will influence the standard developed by the other organisation. IETF often uses text-oriented Three alternatives: coding techniques, while (a) Both organisations accept ISO/IEC/CCITT often uses ASN.1. ASN.1 with the same coding rules. (b) ASN.1 is used for specification, but text- oriented coding rules (TER = Text-based Encoding Rules?) are used by both organisations or at least by IETF. (c) Both organisations develop standards which are similar in function, but which differ in encoding rules used. IETF requires at least two ISO/IEC/CCITT should here adopt independent working the IETF principle, at least for implementations before a standards the subset of the standard which is accepted. is common between ISO/IEC/CCITT and IETF. IETF meets at different times than I see no easy solution of this, ISO/IEC/CCITT. since IETF holds all meetings with their technical groups in parallel in the same place and time. The experience from ISO/IEC earlier co- working with CCITT is that different meatings with liaison between them is not an efficient way to develop standards. Possibly, the rapidly increasing number of attendees at the IETF meetings will cause them to split their meetings in time and place, which would make it easier to have collaborative meetings with ISO/IEC/CCITT. IETF uses electronic mail and Best would be if ISO/IEC/CCITT other electronic communication for adopted the IETF working style. If much of their work. this is not possible, liaison between parallel processes will be necessary. At least ISO/IEC/CCITT documents should be available electronically to the Internet community during the standards development process. ISO/IEC sell standards at high Best would be if ISO/IEC/CCITT prices, CCITT sell the same standards also would be available standards at much lower prices, for network downloading. If this IETF makes their standards cannot be achieved, at least the available for network downloading IETF version of the standard by anyone on the Internet. should be available for network downloading. People in ISO sometimes believe More co-working should make people that IETF people are impractical at both sides learn that people on academics, while people in IETF the other side are in fact also sometimes belive that ISO people qualified technical people are incapable of producing striving efter a good and user- implementable standards. friendly standard. Proposals for SC 18/WG 4 and CCITT Study Group VII I suggest that better coworking between ISO/IEC/CCITT and Internet standards protocols would be very valuable also in the areas of Message Handling Systems and Distributed Office Architecture. Because of this, I propose that ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 18/WG 4 discuss how to obtain collaboration with Internet standards work in the future. This discussion could include the following subtopics: (1) What is the difference between standards development procedure in ISO/IEC/CCITT and in Internet. Can the procedure be modified to support better coworking? (2) Should ISO/IEC/CCITT adopt the Internet rule not to finally accept any standard until there are two working implementations of it? Some even claim that any function in the standard not implemented by two working implementations should be removed from the standard! (3) Should ISO/IEC/CCITT open standards work more for those who cannot afford to come to meetings? Should we use e-mail more in our work, as IETF does? (4) The ISO/IEC/CCITT custom to include many options as opposed to the Internet custom to make lean standards and later extend them. (5) In what areas are ISO/IEC/CCITT willing to adjust to Internet? Do we regard Internet and Internet gateways out-of-bounds for us to work on? (6) Can our working documents be made available for network retrieval in the Internet? (4) Can our standards be made available for network retrieval in the Internet? (7) How can development of standards for gatewaying between OSI and Internet standards be supported by ISO/IEC/CCITT? (8) On the special topic of X.400 versus Internet mail, can a special study be made of possible future convergence routes? (9) Can we, in our areas of work (Messaging and Distributed Office Architecture) , establish collaborative procedures with IETF for future coworking with Internet? (10) I suggest that SC 18/WG 4 write a liaison letter to SC 6 and SC 29, who are also striving to find ways of co-working with IETF, telling them of our conclusions. References Note: Internet RFC documents are easily downloadable using anonymous FTP or Gopher in the Internet. Internet RFC-1310 March 1992: The Internet Standards Process. Internet RFC-1391 January 1993: The Tao of IETF; A guide for New Attendees of the Internet Engineering Task Force. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6 N 7963 8 March 1993: Notes of the Ad-Hoc Joint Meeting of SC 6/WGs 1, 2 and 4 Regarding Liaison Between ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6 and the Internet Community. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 N 419 20 May 1993: Letter from the ISO/IEC ITTF to the Internet Socienty on Liaison wth ISO/IEC JTC 1, Attachment: Letter from the Internet Society to the ISO/IEC ITTF. Making Standars the IETF Way, by David Crocker, to be published in StandardView (a new publication of the ACM), August 1993.