Draft Minutes of RAMS Quarterly Meeting, June 6, 1996, UCL ---------------------------------------------------- Attendees Mike Falla, mike.falla@bcs.org.uk _ Monitoring Officer Robin Crosher, DTI, robin.crosher@dtied.dti.gov.uk - HPIP Program Manager Steve Osselton, Prism, steve@prismtech.co.uk Huon Butterworth, Tadlon, huon@fchain.demon.co.uk Tim Snape, Abbotsbury/WDI, tim@wdi.co.uk Jon Crowcroft, UCL, jon@cs.ucl.ac.uk Zheng Wang, UCL, zwang@cs.ucl.ac.uk James Cowan, J.Cowan@cs.ucl.ac.uk Apologies from David Romano-Critcley, UCL Peter Burton, DTI Deborah Miller, EPSRC ---------------------------------------------------- The Agenda: 11.00 - 13.00 1. Presentation of progress by each partner (UCL - Zheng Wang, Prism - Steve Osselton, Abbotsbury s/w - Tim Snape, Tadlon - Huon Butterworth).. 2. Discuss DTI/ESPRC workshop in October. 3. AOB 1.00 - 2.00 lunch Afternoon session. Discussion of previous and next set of technical work. Tim wants to talk about his HTTP ping program; Huon about the relationship between his analysis and UCL's performance analysis at Texaco; James about Winsock protocol stack monitoring and control. ---------------------------------------------------- Actual Agenda. 1. Exploitation Plans We re-ordered the agenda to cover overall project plans and exploitation first, since Robin Crosher wanted to hear these in some detail for the DTI. a) J Crowcroft gave an overview of the project, updating the kickoff DTI meeting presentation. b) Steve Osselton described the Prism plans for incorporating the work in the next major release of their distributed systems platform (last quarter this year.) He also outlined some of the relationships Prism has with customers in the POSC community (as well as silicon companies) - particularly, Shell. Prism can provide a major part of the final demonstration deliverable. At this point, Crosher asked about the October meeting/workshop. Crowcroft agreed it would be useful (as a focus for quarter 3 deliverables) to demonstrate there, and it was also agreed that it would be especially useful if WDI and Prism could demo, and do the 10 minute presentation, whilst Tadlon and Texaco provide some public poster/information about their part of the work. Action: Prism/Abbotsbury/UCL - to ask Peter Burton about a) Location (e.g. Cambridge University) b) equipment (e.g. computers and network/Internet access). By the end of week June 10th. Crosher emphasised that the December (or Jan 97) workshop should be a "salespitch") for the deliverables, and that commercial partners could think of inviting customers. We should consider holding it jointly with relevant other HPIP project partners. Action: UCL to chase other HPIP projects to ask which are relevant Action all: plan for dates and ask DTI about possible invitees [location: probably UCL] c) Tim Snape presented Abbotsbury work and exploitations - he outlined two threads, one technical and the other on the commercial side. On the technical webping is being developed as part of a suite of tools for monitoring quality metrics for web page access between subscribers on different ISP networks to providers on other ISP networks. At the low level, work on socket monitoring and low level packet trace performance is being used to look at line utilisation ("bang for buck for bandwidth"). On the commercial side, WDI are a member of the ISPA (27th out of now 77 members) and set up the Web pages for the association. They are pushing for standards, and on another front, pursuing the details of ISO 9000 certification with Morris Blackman at BSI. Tim also outlined other related proposals that are springing out of this project to exploit work, including a Rural Challenge application for cabling Dorset, and a Network Challenge bid under the ISI (DTI program above the HPIP program). There are a lot of interesting things being done and these are reported in their deliverables. A very nice local subscriber organisation is Tecam, who produce RFI shielding, and did 130k of business through their web pages - performance, and connectivity/availability seemed to be fairly key for many users in general. Crosher suggested this too would make a nice case study for the DTI. d) Huon Butterworth reported on the Tadlon exploitation - the monitoring results are of interest, and Crosher asked about a possible case study report on these. Crowcroft mentioned the disclosure problems, but also mechanisms for working around them. We will pursue this, probably as a paper to be published by UCL and Tadlon. The next phase of Tadlon's work involves looking at the SAPS application, and this will prove most interesting. 2. Deliverable Status UCL reported on deliverables - Zheng Wang gave a detailed report on the network performance analysis, including maps of the Texaco WAN. James Cowan reported on the deliverable on the Winsock monitoring work (document circulated to partners and to be delivered to M.O. by end of quarter). A problem [not a showstopper) has arisen with matching classes between the Winsock DLL and the interception code he has produced. Some solutions are being chased. Prism have produced a quarterly report - note that 1 WP has been cancelled (and 4 weeks effort will be moved to the demonstrators). Another WP is ahead, while one is behind, but all on track, bar holidays. A person needs assigning to some GUI work that has slipped from Q2 to Q3, and crowcroft asked that this not slip any further, or else we will have to raise a red flag with the M.O. Crowcroft noted that a software deliverable had to be "delivered" to a partner, under the level two plan definition, so that Prism's deliverable WP3 should be delivered TO UCL, before it would be ticked off on the quarterly report to the Monitoring Officer. Tadlon have all work in hand, and reports up to date. Action UCL/Tadlon to report bug in LANWatch to FTP software (and perhaps seek quid pro quo). Action. UCL/Tadlon to seek way to publish analysis later in year as case study of commercial net. Abbotsbury reported on their deliverables - main change to level 2 workplan is that work in Q2 and Q3 has been swapped (as per agreement with Monitoring Officer) and some more statistics monitoring work is being done. Their new staff are up to speed, and a new application area, form based realtime bulletin boards ("conference-ware") is being worked on as an application of some interest for their user groups, especially trade associations such as the advertising association. 3. Claims i) Go at the end of each quarter to the M.O [We agreed to synchronise reports and claims to the end of each calendar year quarter, from now - i.e. June 30, Sep 30, Dec 31). ii) Thence to DTI iii) thence via Robin to payments, and a cheque is issued if appropriate iv) If any problem, can be expedited (and even direct credited if need be)., 4. TOD of Next Meeting Proposed for Tuesday, September 10th at UCL, 11am start. Can Texaco especially confirm if they can attend, but everyone else check their diaries too. 5. AOB The IEEE Globecom conference in London (at QEII conference center, November (see http://www-net.cs.umass.edu/tccc/internet96) is looking for exhibitors with an Internet flavour, which may interest PRISM and Abbotsbury.