May 2004doc.: IEEE 802.11-04/561r0

IEEE P802.11
Wireless LANs

Minutes for the IETF Adhoc Committee

Date:May 10-14, 2004

Author:Michael Montemurro
Chantry Networks
1200 Minnesota Ct, Mississauga, ON, CANADA Phone: 905-567-6900
e-Mail:

Monday May 10, 2004

7:30 pm

Chair: Dorothy Stanley

Secretary: MikeMontemurro

  • Introductory comments – Tentative agenda – doc 11-04/575r0
  • Review 802.11 policies and procedures and patent policy
  • Voting rights for the Chair’s adhoc committee is restricted to committee members only.
  • Calls for additions to the agenda? None.
  • Agenda is approved by unanimous consent
  • Approve minutes from conference call – doc 11-04/490r1 – approved by unanimous consent
  • Review Draft Letter – doc 11-04/473r2
  • Paragraph 2 should say “based on review of the expert’s group”
  • Only a portion of the members of 802.11 reviewed this document.
  • The only people who review this document are part of a volunteer subset of the 802.11 members.
  • We could take out the word “member”.
  • Perhaps we should use the phrase “based on Chair’s Special Adhoc Committee”
  • We should indicate who did the reviewing –we could simply add “by the CAPWAP Adhoc Committee members”
  • The names of the reviewers are attached in the attachment with the detailed comments
  • This Adhoc committee is chartered to prepare a response on behalf of the Working Group
  • Any objections to simplifying the sentence and just stating that there are attached comments? None.
  • The document states that of the implementations fall into 2 categories and that there is an opportunity for standardization. While it is possible to draw this conclusion from the document, you could also come to the conclusion that there are different solution and that there is no opportunity for standardization.
  • Most of the taxonomy fell into two categories which does seem to demonstrate an opportunity for standardization.
  • The opportunity for standardization is exclusive for the centralized architecture. It simply captures the view of the solution architectures at this time.
  • The 802.11 functions described as “accurate”. But “accurate” compared to what? an AP? A chosen set of functions?
  • In the document, there are descriptions of 802.11 functions. In the tables, the vendors were asked to describe were attributesof an 802.11 Access Point.
  • It seems contradictory to say that “overall” the descriptions are accurate when there are detailed comments regarding clarifying the functional descriptions.
  • The use of the term “overall” in the statement is too encompassing. We should remove it.
  • We should also change the word “accurate” to “reasonable”.
  • No other comments

MOTION: Adopt the following text as a response to the IETF CAPWAP Taxonomy document:

“Dear Bert,

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on the “Architecture Taxonomy for CAPWAP” document, draft-ietf-capwap-arch-02, and for continued dialogue on how to work together to best meet the standards needs of the dynamic and evolving WLAN marketplace.

Attached are a number of detailed comments for CAPWAP working group consideration.

Overall, the Architecture Taxonomy document provides a useful survey of existing vendor implementations, which

Highlights the inherent flexibility of the IEEE 802.11 MAC definition to support a variety of implementation choices across both single and multiple network elements.

Shows an amount of regularity among vendor choices for partitioning of MAC functionality within the Centralized WLAN implementation alternatives. This suggests that there may be opportunities for future protocol standardization of the Centralized WLAN implementation alternatives.

Selects and describes a representative set of IEEE 802.11 Functions, as a basis for comparison of the implementations. The selected set of functions used for the comparison is resonable. Note that discussion is ongoing within IEEE 802.11 regarding the potential need for additional description of Access Point functionality.

For CAPWAP WG reference, ANSI/IEEE Std 802.11-1999 (2003 Reaffirmation) edition as amended by IEEE Std 802.11g-2003 and IEEE Std. 802.11h-2003 is the current version of the IEEE 802.11 Standard.

Please contact Stuart J.Kerry, IEEE 802.11 Working Group Chair and Dorothy Stanley, IEEE 802.11/IETF Liaison with any questions, and to discuss further IETF follow-up.”

By: Clint Chaplin

Second: Mike Morton

Discussion: None

Result: Yes – 6; No – 0; Abstain – 1

STRAW POLL: I support the above motion.

Discussion: None.

Result: Yes –27; No – 2; Abstain – 2;

  • We’ll bring the motion to the consideration Wednesday
  • Any objection to adjourning for this session.

Attendance for the IETF Adhoc Committee Meeting

Donald Eastlake 3rd / Victor Lin / Florant Bersani / Paul Lambert
Mike Morton / Bob O’Hara / Clint Chaplin / Haixiang He
Dorothy Gellert / Cheng Hong / Emer Sadot / Mahalingam Mani
Bob Beach / Stephen McCann / Thomas Haslestad / Kari Laihonen
Petros Zertos / Jim Wendt / Sheila Frankel / Juan Carlos Zunga
Knut Odman / Andrew Myles / Ambatipindi Sastry / Yasuhiko Inove
Nancy Cam Winget / Fred Haisch / Kue Wong / Darwin Engwer
Partha Narasimahan

Submissionpage 1Michael Montemurro, Chantry Networks