Open Standards vs IOPS etc

Sun Jan 18 22:24:04 UTC 1998

At 6:34 -0500 1/18/98, Sean Donelan wrote:
>There are currently several different organizations working on various
>measurement and performance 'standards' for the Internet and IP-related
>networks.
>
>IETF has created a couple of working groups working on benchmarking
>and metrics.
>
>IOPS says they plan to be a point of contact for developing various
>industry-wide technical procedures.
>
>ATIS/T1 (an ANSI standards organization) is developing two vital Internet
>performance standards and three technical reports.

Actually, a fair bit was done in ANSI already.  I was a member of a
different ANSI committee, X3, had a digital communications performance
working group, X3S35, which produced two standards,

   X3.102 User-oriented data communications performance parameters
   X3.141 Measurement methods for the above (basically statistical techniques)

The architecture in these standards was the basis of CCITT X.140, and the
CCITT X.130-139 parameter family for circuit-switched and packet-switched
performance.    In turn, these fed into the ANSI T1 committee cited by
Sean; the focus of this committee was telecommunications rather than data
network.

Most of these working groups, and a late 1970s effort on the Federal
Telecommunications Standards Committee (FED-STD-1033) that preceded them,
were chaired by Neal Seitz of the NTIA.
>
>ANX, The Automotive Network Exchange, has documented several requirements
>including metrics for service quality.
>
>Bellcore has some Internet related work in their new GR standards.
>
>And, of course while it doesn't develop anything formal, NANOG has
>occasional presentations from various other industry organizations.
>
>Most of the above have said in their press releases they are working
>with other standards bodies, but it isn't very clear how much inter-
>organizational communications actual occurs.
>
>And I suspect there are a few more I don't know about.  It would be
>nice if this work could be consolidated into one place.  I, for one,
>don't have the time or the money to even attempt active involvement
>in half these groups.
>
>
>>>Since you suggest IOPS as a body to track this issue, what do people think
>>>about IOPS as a pseudo-standards group. This also came up at the December
>>>IETF when Curtis suggested that draft-berkowitz-multirqmt document would
>>>not be necessary since IOPS had a draft on the same subject. The IDR WG
>>>seemed very sceptical of having a small closed body fill that role. How do
>>>people see IOPS meshing with NANOG and the operational side of IETF?
>>>
>>
>>I have a little bit of a problem when people refer to IOPS as a
>>"standards organization." A "standards" body needs to be open.
>>
>>Is IOPS an open group? No.
>>
>>Can anyone in the Internet community participate? No, they have to
>>be a member of the collective, and pay a membership fee ranging from
>>between US$9500 to US$25000.
>>
>>IOPS is free to define all of the operations guides that they desire,
>>but it can't really be referred to as a "standards organization" since
>>it is a private club. :-/
>--
>Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
>  Affiliation given for identification not representation