May 2013doc.: IEEE 802.11-13/0655r0

IEEE P802.11
Wireless LANs

Minutes of JTC1 standing committee
in Hawaii
in May 2013
Date: 20130602
Author(s):
Name / Affiliation / email
Andrew Myles / Cisco /

Minutes of Ad Hoc Meeting Tuesday AM1, 14 May 2013

Agenda

  • The JTC1 SC agenda is found in 11-13/0537r0 (updated to 11-13/0537r3) and was approved unanimously.

Minutes

  • The task group also unanimously approved the minutes of the last task group meeting in Orlando (11-13/0547r0).

Ad Hoc Call

  • An ad hoc coordination call between the JTC1 SC and members of IEEE 802.1 (Brian Weis (Cisco), James Macintosh (Vitesse), Mick Seamans) was held Tuesday morning to discuss items of mutual interest.
  • These include TLSec, TISec, and the comparison of TePA vs. 802.1X.

Ad Hoc Call - 802.1X attack

  • The Chinese NB has submitted a document (N15513) that documents an “attack” against 802.1X.
  • The attack relies upon an incorrect implementation of the protocol – failing to check certificate expiration and/or nonce values.
  • At best, the attack is specious and could apply to any improper protocol implementation.

Ad Hoc Call - TLSec

  • The Chinese NB has also submitted a paper (N15617) documenting implementation and verification of the TLSec (an 802.1AE analog) protocol.
  • This document doesn’t really show superiority of the TLSec, but it does demonstrate that implementations exist.
  • The JTC1 SC doesn’t see much in this document that merits a response.

Ad Hoc Call - TISec

  • No updates have been seen from the China NB on TISec (an IPsec analog).
  • This specification isn’t handled in WG1 (where IEEE standards are progressed), but rather in WG7.
  • Sean Turner (on behalf of the IETF) will be attending the WG7 sessions at the upcoming JTC1/SC6 meeting in Seoul, KR
  • Dan Harkins is investigating if he can participate in that meeting as well.

Ad Hoc Call - TePA/KA4 vs. 802.1X

  • Finally during the ad hoc coordination call, Dan discussed the IEEE response (embedded in the agenda; available on request) to the TePA/KA4 vs. 802.1X document submitted by the Swiss NB representative (Hans-Rudolf Thomann) who also consults for the Chinese.
  • The response presentation is a simplification of the document that was drawn up during the Orlando meeting, but does not really contain substantially new arguments.
  • The response compares both TePA and 802.1X against a set of criteria (6N15523) that are supposed to be applied to these types of protocols.
  • Harkins’ response unsurprisingly shows that 802.1X is superior (more featureful) to TePA; this result was not reflected in the original Swiss contribution owing to the submitter’s misunderstanding of 802.1X.
  • Bruce Kraemer (Marvell Semiconductor) requested some minor wordsmithing to make the meaning of the response clear but not overly confrontational.
  • Harkins concludes that TePA provides no advantages over 802.1X.

Ad Hoc Call – Prep call

  • A conference call between the members of the IEEE delegation to the Seoul meeting will be held at 1 p.m. PDT on June 10, 2013.
  • The call will be held to give a final briefing of the materials for the meeting and make sure all attendees are in agreement on the plan.
  • Andrew Myles (Cisco) will be supplying the call-in details.

Minutes of Meeting Tue-Wed PM1, 14-15 May 2013

Agenda

  • The agenda for the main part of the meeting was approved without objection.

Goals

  • The goals for the JTC1 SC were reviewed.
  • The last changes to these goals were approved in November 2010.
  • Essentially, the SC provides a forum for 802 members to discuss issues between IEEE 802 and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6.
  • It also provides recommendations on relevant issues to the IEEE 802 Executive Committee (ExCom), works with IEEE Staff and the ExCom on issues originating from ISO/IEC JTC1, and organizes IEEE 802 contributions to JTC1.

SC6 agenda

  • The Seoul meeting agenda has not been updated since the previous iteration.
  • Given the large number of documents that have been contributed to the meeting, the agenda will almost certainly be updated.
  • The particular topics are not certain yet.

SC6 delegates

  • IEEE delegates to the meeting are:
  • Bruce Kraemer (Head of Delegation)
  • Dan Harkins
  • Bill Carney
  • Jodi Haasz (IEEE Staff),
  • Tony Jeffree
  • Meng Zhao (IEEE Beijing office).
  • Andrew Myles will attend as part of the US delegation.

Liaisons

  • In the last two months (since the Orlando meeting), no new IEEE 802 drafts have been sent in liaison to JTC1/SC6.

802.11aa/ad/ae

  • Drafts of 802.11aa/ad/ae have all been previously submitted for ISO/IEC ratification.
  • The 60-day initial ballot on all three documents closed successfully; a 5-month FDIS ballot will soon be initiated on each document.
  • Only China voted “no” on the documents.
  • That vote arose from overall Chinese concerns about 802.11-2012, so there’s probably not much that IEEE 802 can do to resolve that vote via modifications to 802.11aa/ad/ae.
  • Bruce Kraemer believes that the chair of SC6 has asked that IEEE 802 respond to the China NB vote; it’s therefore incumbent on the SC to generate a response, perhaps simply incorporating previous responses that have been made against similar concerns raised by the China NB.
  • Kraemer will write up a separate response document in time for discussion during the Wednesday JTC1 SC time slot.
  • Japan voted for the 3 amendments, but made a procedural comment on the excessive number of documents IEEE 802 submitted.
  • While a strict interpretation of the ISO Directives limits the number of submitted documents to two, there are several ways of looking at the issue that may make the issue moot.
  • The SC decided to respond to the Japan NB and see if they will agree to dismiss their comment based on IEEE 802’s belief that the rule does not apply owing to the maintenance of the documents having been delegated by JTC1/SC6 to IEEE 802.
  • If Japan agrees to this resolution, IEEE 802 can then show this agreement to the rest of SC6 to help deflect future exploitation of this rule.

IEEE 802.1X/AE

  • IEEE 802.1X and 802.1AE started the ISO/IEC ballot process.
  • As previously reported, both initial ballots passed in February, although with “no” votes from the China NB.
  • The 5-month FDIS will start once the IEEE responses to the Chinese comments are sent to SC6; the ballot is expected to start by May 17th.

IEEE 802.1AS/AR/AB

  • IEEE 802.1 has also submitted 802.1AS, 802.1AB, and 802.1AR for 60-day pre-ballots; those close on May 25th.
  • IEEE 802.3 has submitted IEEE 802.3-2012 and its 60-day pre-ballot will close on June 2nd.

Collaboration agreement

  • At the September 2012 JTC1/SC6 meeting in Graz, AT, SC6 delegated maintenance of IEEE 802.1, 802.3, and 802.11-originating standards to their respective IEEE working groups.
  • IEEE 802 sent a liaison back to SC6 out of the Orlando meeting indicating IEEE 802’s willingness to accept input from SC6 and to process that input regardless of when it is received.
  • Bruce Kraemer is working to flesh out the status agreement and liaison documents for the next JTC1/SC6 meeting and will also draft paperwork for the informational submission of relevant new work items to JTC1/SC6.

Swiss NB comments

  • The Swiss NB has actually responded positively about IEEE 802’s efforts to accommodate JTC1/SC6’s participation in the IEEE 802 standardization process.
  • They also submitted 11 general comments on IEEE 802 standards to the JTC1 SC.
  • These have been sent to 802.11
  • TGm for processing as part of the IEEE 802.11 maintenance effort and will be addressed during the IEEE 802 July plenary meeting.
  • An interim response to SC6 indicating the process being used to handle the comments will be made, perhaps as part of the IEEE Head of Delegation status briefing during the Seoul meeting.

WAPI

  • WAPI (IEEE 802.11i substitute): remains cancelled with no evidence that its uncancellation has been attempted, although it is rumored.
  • No standards actions regarding WAPI have been observed in China and it is not currently on the Seoul agenda.

UHT/EUHT

  • UHT/EUHT (802.11ac analog): remains, as of 2012, as an unpublished Chinese national standards.
  • Part of the 5 GHz band may be opened up to 802.11ac and other similar standards, although there will be a frequency set-aside for UHT/EUHT.
  • Neither specification is currently on the Seoul agenda.
  • More hopefully, a Nufront (primary proponents of these standards in China) will be presenting information on EUHT during the midweek IEEE 802.11 plenary.
  • A follow-up discussion on the Nufront presentation will take place Thursday morning.

TePA-AC

  • TePA-AC (IEEE 802.1X competitor): the China NB has claimed (in N15513) that IEEE 802.1X is subject to an effective attack, with TePA-AC being noted as not subject to the issues raised.
  • The attack speciously involves the use of out-of-date certificates and/or failure to check nonce values.
  • Dan Harkins will draw up a response to the attack document and it will be sent to the IEEE 802.1X team for review.

TLSec

  • TLSec (802.1AE competitor): a “verification” of the protocol has been submitted for the Seoul meeting, but it doesn’t really have much in the way of technical meat to which IEEE 802 can or needs to respond.
  • The real argument made in the verification is that TLSec can be and has been implemented.

TAAA

  • TAAA (WAPI for Long-Range Wireless Networks [802.16, LTE]): still no evidence of standardization work on this protocol in China.
  • A “verification” paper (N15815) from GCI Science and IWNCOMM (WAPI proponent) for this protocol has also been submitted for the Seoul meeting.

TISec

  • TISec (IPsec replacement): on the standards track in China.
  • China wants to start a Preliminary Work Item (PWI) in JTC1/SC6/WG7 to begin international standardization of TISec, which is promoted as a new IP layer security protocol based on TePA.
  • The IETF has indicated that they believe IPsec is sufficiently algorithm agile that the Chinese algorithms should be adaptable to work within IPsec instead of as a replacement.
  • The IETF has declined to issue a protocol number for TISec.
  • Karen Randall will check with Sean Turner (IETF Security co-Area Director) to see what materials he will be preparing for the Seoul meeting.
  • Andrew Myles will check on PWI rules to see what the Chinese actions imply.

WLAN optimization

  • During the Graz meeting, the Chinese presented materials on WLAN optimization technology.
  • That presentation wasn’t particularly memorable, but has now been updated for the Seoul meeting in response to comments made by the IEEE delegation.
  • The optimization scheme appears to use a data capture unit to feed back performance data to a central data analysis unit; this data is then used to adapt operations of the WLAN for better performance.
  • Whether this effort is worthy of or requires standardization is debatable.
  • Further education of the China NB on 802.11k and 802.11v might help to shape whether this effort proceeds in JTC1/SC6.
  • Bill Carney will also describe the new HEW (High Efficiency Wireless) efforts that are being studied within 802.11.

Shared WLAN infrastructure

  • A proposal (N15620) from Boomsense (via the China NB) to SC6/WG1 would allow ISPs to share WLAN infrastructure.
  • This is similar to the WFA’s HotSpot 2.0.
  • This would help to deal with a lack of APs in some areas while there is an overabundance of APs in other areas that leads to interference.
  • The proposal mistakenly states that HotSpot 2.0 does not require authentication between service providers.
  • The Boomsense proposal claims to support both private and public WLAN clouds, while stating that HotSpot 2.0 only supports public WLAN clouds.
  • Not much is known about Boomsense’s immediate plans for this proposal at the SC6/WG1 meeting in Seoul.

TePA/KA4 vs. 802.1X

  • Dan Harkins gave a brief run through the IEEE response to the TePA/KA4 vs. 802.1X comparison that was submitted to the SC6/WG1 by the Swiss NB.
  • This presentation is described in the ad hoc meeting section of these notes.

Swiss NB “explanatory report”

  • The Swiss NB “explanatory report” (N15517) of the Graz, AT SC6 meeting had colored and misleading information in it.
  • However, given input from ISO staff and the fact that the document is not on the Seoul agenda, IEEE 802 will likely not raise any issues about the document.

PSDO

  • There have been no updates on the renegotiation of the PSDO (Peer Standards Development Organization) agreement between ISO and IEEE.
  • IEEE 802 presentations
  • Bruce Kraemer will be putting together IEEE 802 presentations for the Seoul meeting.
  • These will include status reports on 802.1, 802.3, 802.11, and the remaining 802 working groups that have not been regularly submitting documents to ISO/IEC.

JTC1/SC6-generated table

  • The 802.1 WG has provided an update of the JTC1/SC6-generated table specifying the recommended dispositions of IEEE documents that are currently also standardized in ISO/IEC.
  • This updated document has not been submitted to SC6/WG1 yet.
  • Additional changes are needed to the table to reflect new status updates for 802.3 and 802.11.

Next SC6 meeting

  • The China NB representative who was requested to address IEEE 802.11 regarding TePA is not able to attend an IEEE meeting this year.
  • However, next year’s March meeting will be held in Beijing.
  • There is a possibility that IEEE might be able to sponsor the next SC6 meeting to be held in parallel with the IEEE plenary.
  • Bruce Kraemer reports that hotel contract issues make that somewhat difficult, but a contract rider might be used to offer assistance in surmounting those difficulties.
  • The hotels themselves are already at capacity during the meeting time, but it may be possible to use another nearby hotel to host the SC6 delegation.
  • Some accommodation for the fact that SC6 does not charge meeting fees will need to be made.
  • Discussions are ongoing, with feedback from SC6 expected next week.
  • Action Items:
  • Bruce Kraemer to do first cut of comments on 802.11aa/ad/ae XXX?
  • Bruce Kraemer will also work on a draft response to the Japan NB comments on the 802.11aa/ad/ae ballots.
  • Karen Randall will find out what the IETF is planning to do regarding to TISec.

Andrew Myles is to determine what PWI is and what are its rules/criteria.Minutes of Meeting Thu PM1, 16 May 2013

Comments for 802.11aa/ad/ae

  • Bruce Kraemer has not had the chance to do a first cut at comments for 802.11aa/ad/ae, so that action item will be deferred until a teleconference takes place.
  • Bruce Kraemer also has not had the opportunity to draft up a plan for the Japan NB response.
  • This action item will also be deferred for the upcoming teleconference.
  • Andrew Myles will supply Kraemer with contact details for the chair of the Japanese TAG.

UHT

  • The Nufront representative may be able to attend future IEEE 802 meetings. He will require an invitation and will have to confirm specific meetings he can make.

TISec

  • Karen Randall noted that Sean Turner is working on a rebuttal to the Chinese contribution on TISec.
  • As Turner is on vacation this week, no further details are immediately available.
  • Bruce Kraemer suggested that we confirm that Sean can participate in the upcoming 802.1 Security/JTC1 SC teleconference.

PWI

  • Andrew Myles looked up PWI (Preliminary Work Item) to see how the Chinese might progress certain proposals.
  • It is essentially a study period to investigate a topic, where no target dates can be established.
  • It is roughly equivalent to an IEEE 802 Study Group.
  • Because the following stage (NP – New Project) has an 18-month timer, most work is normally done under the PWI stage.
  • For both PWI and NP stages, 5 member bodies are required to commit to support work on the project.

TePA/KA4 vs. IEEE 802.1X

  • Dan Harkins will await comments to his response to the TePA/KA4 vs. IEEE 802.1X analysis before updating that document.
  • He will present the update during the joint teleconference.

ISO/IEC 8802 standards dispositions

  • Karen Randall has obtained an editable version of the various ISO/IEC 8802 standards dispositions. (The previous version was an uneditable bitmap.)
  • The table has been updated to show the new status for ISO/IEC 8802-11, which is to withdraw the previous version in deference to the 2012 IEEE version.

Teleconference

  • The teleconference between IEEE 802.1 Security and the JTC1 SC to discuss plans for the Seoul meeting will be held June 10th at 1 p.m. PDT.
  • Another teleconference is proposed for June 3rd at 1 p.m. PDT to cover the action items that were not completed during this face-to-face meeting.
  • These are all action items that are for preparation for the Seoul meeting, so the expected attendees are the IEEE delegation plus the 802.1 Security members.

Submissionpage 1Andrew Myles (Cisco)