Network Working Group P. Hoffman Internet-Draft VPN Consortium Intended status: Informational January 18, 2012 Expires: July 21, 2012 Requirements for Remote Participation Services for the IETF draft-ietf-genarea-rps-reqs-01 Abstract The IETF has provided some tools for remote participation in its activities for many years, and some IETF participants have also used their own tools when they felt the need arise. The IETF now wishes to support enhanced remote participation that is as seamless as possible, approaching the quality of direct physical attendance for the various roles, including chair, presenter and simple attendee. Before deploying the new tools and services needed for this enhanced remote participation, the requirements for such tools and services must be defined. This document is meant to be that definition. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on July 21, 2012. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. About This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Scenarios Required to be Supported . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. Interactions with Current RPS Tools Used by the IETF . . . . . 7 3.1. Technologies Currently Used at Regular IETF Meetings . . . 7 3.2. Locating the Meeting Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.2.1. Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.2.2. Instant Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.2.3. Slides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.3. Remotely Speaking at the Mic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.4. Chairs and Floor Control for Remote Attendees . . . . . . 11 3.5. Remotely Presenting at Regular IETF Meetings . . . . . . . 12 3.6. Experiences with Remote Participation in Virtual Interim Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4. Requirements for Supporting Remote Participation in Face-to-Face Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4.1. Registration for Remote Participation . . . . . . . . . . 14 4.2. Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.2.1. Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.2.2. Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.2.3. Instant Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.2.4. Slide Presentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 4.2.5. Slide Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4.2.6. Shared Document Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4.3. Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 4.3.1. Requirements for Remote Participation . . . . . . . . 19 4.3.2. Floor Control for Chairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 4.3.3. Archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 4.3.4. Transcription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 4.3.5. Polling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 4.4. Use by IETF Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 4.5. Plenaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 5. Requirements for Supporting All-Remote Meetings . . . . . . . 23 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 1. Introduction There are two types of participants at the three-times-a-year IETF meetings: the people who are physically at the meeting ("local attendees") and people that are not physically at the meeting but are following the meeting online ("remote attendees"). For more than a decade, the IETF has tried to make it easier for remote attendees to participate in its face-to-face meetings in a meaningful fashion by providing supported and experimental online services. At the same time, many IETF Working Groups (WGs) have started to have interim meetings that are scheduled between the regular IETF meetings; these are described (briefly) in [RFC2418]. Some of these interim meetings are face-to-face meetings with remote attendees, while other interim meetings only take place over the Internet or on the phone; the latter type of meeting is often called a "virtual interim". The IETF's current remote participation system ("RPS") for the official three-times-a-year meetings ("regular IETF meetings") consists of a real-time audio stream carried over HTTP, textual instant messaging (IM) carried over Jabber, as well as experimental support for two integrated tools, WebEx and Meetecho. Some WGs employ ad-hoc tools such as Skype. For interim WG meetings, the IETF provides access to WebEx. The IETF's leadership regularly uses telephone, Jabber, and WebEx for the many meetings that happen between the IETF meetings. The IETF wants to improve the tools provided in the RPS for many reasons. o A better RPS would allow more people to participate in regular IETF meetings more effectively, hopefully leading to better WG outcomes such as faster progression of WG documents, more reviewers of WG documents, and more discussion of changes needed to those documents during the WG process. There are many people who are active in many WGs who rarely or never come to IETF meetings; good RPS tools could allow these people to contribute significantly during meetings like they do on the mailing lists. o The improved RPS tools would also be used outside IETF meetings. They would be available to WGs for interim meetings, both to allow remote participation in face-to-face interims as well as to facilitate "virtual interims" where none of the participants are in the same location. o The plenary sessions of IETF meetings currently only allow remote attendees to hear the speakers and read a real-time transcript. Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 Improved RPS tools would allow remote attendees to see the speakers and be able to comment at the mics like people in the room. o The IETF leadership (the IAB, IESG, IAOC, and probably others) could use the new tools to help make their own meetings more effective. 1.1. About This Document The purpose of this document is to develop the requirements and functional specifications for the IETF's RPS that enables enhanced remote participation in meeting sessions. The RPS described in this document might augment and/or replace the current set of IETF RPS tools. The intention is for the experience of remote attendees to rival those of local attendees. After the tools that meet the requirements in this document are deployed, there will probably be a change in the participation in regular IETF meetings. o Some people who would make an effort to come to a particular IETF meeting might be more likely to attend remotely. Such a change will reduce the number of local participants, which will both reduce the amount that the IETF makes from registration fees and makes the informal gatherings during the IETF meeting less valuable because of the reduced networking effects. o People who are active on WG mailing lists but not in the regular meetings are more likely to participate in the meetings remotely. Such a change might cause more effective meetings for WGs that currently have little energy because more people will participate. WG meetings that already have lots of participants will probably become busier. Presentations on documents where none of the authors come to regular IETF meetings will be much more likely to be given by the authors instead of by their proxies. o If the tools make regular IETF meetings and interim meetings much more effective, the IETF might be able to reduce the number of regular meetings each year from three to two. This would significantly reduce the impact of travel on regular IETF participants and make meeting planning much easier, but would significantly reduce the amount of income for the IETF and also reduce the amount of side-meeting value per year for participants. Note that some of the requirements in this document for particular functionality may not be desired by all WG chairs. The tools proposed will not force a particular WG to use all the features Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 proposed. This document is being produced at the request of the IAOC. The request for proposals that led to this document can be found at [RPS-RFP]. This document does not specify specific technologies or instantiations of tools. Instead, it is meant to be used as a guide for the IAOC to later contract the development and deployment of the tools described here. Requirements in this document are numbered, such as "**Requirement 01-00**". In the IETF, there is an active (and never-ending) debate about what is a "requirement". In the context of this document, a requirement is something that must appear in one of the iterations of the eventual RPS in order to support the mission of enabling useful remote participation in meeting sessions. Later versions of this document will differentiate between requirements that must be met by the first version of the RPS and requirements that must be met by future versions of the RPS. For example, a requirement for the first version of the RPS might be "chairs must be able to specify which remote attendee can speak next", whereas a requirement for a later version of the RPS might be "chairs must be able to perform many or all chair duties at a regular IETF meeting while participating remotely". [[[ TODO: come up with a way to differentiate these two and start marking them as such. ]]] A functional specification is an approach to meeting one or more requirement. For example, a requirement might be "chairs must be able to specify which remote attendee can speak next" and a function's specification associated with that requirement might be "floor control can be done through a stand-alone application or web form". Functional specifications are not (currently) called out in this document. The requirements covered in this document apply almost exclusively to tools and services that are used for remote participation in real- time meetings. The document does not cover the many other tools used by WGs for non-real-time communication such as mailing lists, issue trackers, document flow control systems, and so on. Many of the non- real-time tools are also being improved over time, but they are not the subject of this document. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. This document is being discussed on the vmeet@ietf.org mailing list. See for more Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 information. 2. Scenarios Required to be Supported The are many IETF-related activities that can be aided by remote participation tools. The scenarios in which the RPS described in this document is expected to be used are: o WG sessions at regular IETF meetings -- A typical regular IETF meeting has about 150 sessions, with up to 8 of those sessions happening at the same time. A session might have between 20 and 200 local attendees in the room, and might have only a few or many dozens of remote attendees. WG sessions typically have one to three co-chairs at the front of the room and a series of individuals who come to the front to present; some presentations are made by small panels. o Plenaries at regular IETF meetings -- There are usually two plenaries at a regular IETF meeting, with on-site attendance of about 700 local attendees and dozens of remote attendees. There are from 1 to 20 presenters; presentations may be made by multiple people. o Face-to-face interim WG meetings -- Between regular IETF meetings, some WGs hold interim meetings where participants get together at a site (often a company's meeting room, but sometimes a meeting room rented at a hotel). At such meetings, there are between a handful and a few dozen local attendees and a similar number of remote attendees. Presentations are common. o Virtual interim WG meetings -- Between regular IETF meetings, some WGs hold virtual interim meetings where there are no local attendees because there is no central meeting location. There are between a handful and a few dozen attendees. Presentations are common. o IETF leadership meetings -- The IETF leadership (the IESG, IAOC, IAB, and probably others) have periodic virtual meetings, usually with presentations. These groups also meet at the regular IETF meetings, and sometimes have remote attendees at those meetings (such as members who cannot attend the IETF meeting or presenters who are not part of the leadership group). [[[ TODO: Count the number of f2f and virtual interims from the past few years. ]]] Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 3. Interactions with Current RPS Tools Used by the IETF Users' experience with the current IETF tools vary widely. Some participants think the tools are fine and are grateful that they exist. Other participants find them barely acceptable because they have used better tools in other environments. Often, local attendees mostly forget that the remote attendees are participating until one gets something said at the mic. Local attendees don't have a feeling for how many remote attendees are just listening like most of the local attendees. The variety of current experiences can help inform the discussion of how to improve the tools. The requirements here are derived from the current tools; later sections derive requirements from needs that are not at all met by the current tools. The IETF has years of experience with the two primary tools used at its regular meetings (Jabber for IM and streaming audio). This section discusses some of the reactions of users -- those in the meetings and those who have participated remotely -- to the current tools. 3.1. Technologies Currently Used at Regular IETF Meetings There are three tools that are used by remote attendees for WG participation at regular IETF meetings: real-time audio, instant messaging, and slides. For the past few years, the IETF has used audio streamed over HTTP over TCP. TCP is often buffered at many places between (and in) the origination in the IETF meeting venue and the users' computer. At recent meetings, delays of around 30 seconds have been recorded, with minimum delays typically being five seconds. This delay is caused by buffering at the hop-by-hop ISPs and in the remote attendee's computer. At recent IETF meetings, remote attendance is almost always less than 10% of local attendance, and is often less than 5%. (There are more remote attendees when the IETF meeting is in the U.S.) Each stream is represented by an MP3 playlist (sometimes called an "m3u file"). The IETF long ago standardized on Jabber / XMPP ([RFC3920], [RFC3921], and others) for instant messaging used within the IETF. Jabber rooms (formally called "multi-user conferences" or "MUCs") exist for every WG, and those rooms are live all the time, not just during regular IETF meetings. There are also stable Jabber rooms for the plenaries and certain other activities. BoFs are usually assigned Jabber rooms before a regular meeting. Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 Presentation slides normally are stored either as PDFs or in one of Microsoft's formats for PowerPoint. They are projected on a local screen from someone's laptop computer. There has been experience at recent meetings with two tools, WebEx and Meetecho, which are supported experimentally by the IETF. Each tool was used by a handful of WGs with mixed success. The tools require remote attendees to use specific clients, and installation of those clients caused problems for some people. On the other hand, the tools have much more robust meeting control features, and participants appreciated the real-time showing of slides during presentations. 3.2. Locating the Meeting Information Finding information for the real-time audio, instant messaging, and slides for an upcoming or current regular meeting is complicated by that information being in many different locations on the IETF web site, and the fact that the relevant URLs can change before and even during the meeting. Further, a WG chair might copy the latest information and send it to the WG mailing list, but there can be later changes. Experienced remote attendees have gotten used to checking just before the meeting itself, but even that does not always guarantee the correct information. Currently, the meeting information appears in two different agendas: o The official agenda on the IETF Datatracker includes links to venue maps, WG charters, agendas, and Internet-Drafts. For example, see . o The unofficial "tools-style agenda" includes the same links as the official agenda plus links to the presentations, audio, minutes, Jabber room, and Jabber logs 9represnted as small icons). For example, see . 3.2.1. Audio The URL for the audio stream for a WG or BoF meeting is based on the room that the meeting is in. The audio streams are announced on the general IETF mailing list (ietf@ietf.org) before each meeting. A common complaint is that when a WG meeting moves to a different room, remote users need to know about the move so that they can use the proper URL to hear the audio stream. The room changes are often, but not always, announced on WG mailing lists; when they are not announced, there is no easy way for a remote attendee to find out Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 which audio stream they should be listening to. Sometimes, room changes happen just as a WG meeting is starting, making it nearly impossible for a remote attendee to know about the change in streams. 3.2.2. Instant Messaging The Jabber rooms used by WGs and BoFs do not change between IETF meetings, so finding the right Jabber room is relatively easy. Some Jabber clients have odd interfaces for joining Jabber rooms, and this can cause some problems; even though participants can test their Jabber clients before a meeting, there still seems to be some who need help just before a WG meeting. 3.2.3. Slides Slides are available from the meeting materials page. Many, but certainly not all, local and remote attendees know how to find the meeting materials page. It has become fairly common for presenters to not have their presentations available for distribution until just before the WG meeting. Because materials are uploaded by the WG chairs, this often causes the beginning of WG meetings to be a dance involving presenters giving the chairs their slides, followed by chairs uploading the slides to the IETF site, followed by the chairs saying "the slides are there now". 3.3. Remotely Speaking at the Mic In order for a remote attendee to speak at the mic, a local attendee must say it for them. In most WG and BoF meetings, this is done by the remote attendee typing into the Jabber room for the meeting, and some local attendee going to the mic and repeating what was typed into the Jabber room. This method of participation often works adequately, but there are many places where it fails. The following is a compendium of stories from recent IETF meetings where remotely speaking at the mic didn't work as well as it could have. The participants are Chris and Carl (WG co-chairs), Sam (volunteer Jabber scribe), Rachel and Robert (remote attendees), Pete (presenter), and Len and Lee (local attendees). o Robert cannot understand what Pete is saying about slide 5, but Sam doesn't get Pete's attention until Pete is already on slide 7 and Pete doesn't want to go back. Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 o Rachel wants to say something, but Sam's Jabber client has crashed and no one else in the Jabber room knows why Sam isn't going to the mic. o Robert wants to say something, but Sam is already at the mic speaking for Rachel so Sam doesn't see Robert's message until he has gotten out of the mic line. o Sam is speaking for Robert, and Rachel wants to comment on what Robert said. Unless Sam reads the message as he is walking back to his seat, Rachel doesn't get to speak. o Robert wants to say something at the mic, but Sam is having an important side discussion with the AD. o Sam is also the minutes taker, and is too busy at the moment catching up with the lively debate at the mic to relay a question from Rachel. o Robert cannot understand what Pete is saying about slide 5, but Sam doesn't get Pete's attention until Pete is already on slide 7 and Pete doesn't want to go back. o Chris thought Carl was watching the Jabber room, but Carl was reading the draft that is being discussed. o Chris and Carl start the meeting by asking for volunteers to take minutes and be Jabber scribe. They couldn't find a Jabber scribe, and it took a lot of begging to get someone to take minutes, so they figured that was the best they could do. o Sam is also a presenter, and Robert has a question about Sam's presentation, but Sam is obviously not looking at the Jabber room at the time. o Rachel asks a question through Sam, and Pete replies. Len, who is next in line at the mic, starts talking before Sam has a chance to see whether or not Rachel has a follow-up question. o Robert makes a point about one of Pete's slides, and Pete responds "I don't think you're looking at the right slide" and continues with his presentation. Robert cannot reply in a timely fashion due to the lag in the audio channel. o Pete starts his presentation by asking for questions to be held until the end. Robert has a question about slide 5, and is waiting until the end of the presentation to post the question in the Jabber room. After slide 7, Len jumps to the mic and Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 vehemently disagrees with something that Pete said. Then Lee gets up to respond to Len, and the three of them go at it for a while, with Lee getting up again after slide 10. The presentation ends and is over time, so Carl says "we need to move on", so Robert never gets to ask his question. o Chris asks "are there any more questions" while Rachel is typing furiously, but she doesn't finish before Chris says "I don't see anyone, thanks Pete, the next speaker is...". o Rachel comments on Pete's presentation though Sam. Sam doesn't understand what Rachel is asking, and Len goes to the mic to explain. However, Len gets his explanation of what Rachel said wrong and by the time Pete answers Len's interpretation, Rachel gives up. o This is the first time Pete is presenting at an IETF meeting, and Robert has the first question, which is relayed through Sam. Pete stays silent, not responding the question. Robert can't see Pete's face to know if Pete is just not understanding what he asked, is too afraid to answer, is just angry, or something else. o Pete says something incorrect in his presentation, and Len asks the folks in the Jabber room about it. Rachel figures out what Pete should have said, and others in the Jabber room agree. No one goes to the mic because Pete has left the topic, but only the people watching Jabber know that the presentation was wrong. o Pete says something that the AD sitting at the front of the room (not near a mic) doesn't like, and the AD says a few sentences but doesn't go to the mic. The chairs try to repeat what the AD says, get it only approximately right, but the remote attendees do not hear what really was said and therefore cannot comment effectively. o Sam only volunteered to be scribe because no one else would do it, and isn't sitting close to the mic, and gets tired of getting up and down all the time, and doesn't really agree with Robert on a particular issue, so Sam doesn't relay a request from Robert. o [[[ TODO: More here, of course. ]]] 3.4. Chairs and Floor Control for Remote Attendees Although the previous section may seem like it is a bit harsh on WG chairs, the current tools do not give them the kind of control over remote attendees that they have over local attendees. The chairs can tell what is happening at the mics, but have much less view into what Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 is happening on Jabber, even if they are watching the Jabber room. Without as much view, they cannot assist the flow of the conversation as well. o Carl sees that the Jabber room has an active and useful back- channel discussion during Pete's provocative presentation. Pete finishes and asks for questions. Lee and Len rush to the mic line, and it takes Robert a few seconds to get his question into the Jabber room and for Sam to go to the mic. Carl tries to prioritize Sam forward in the line, but Len gets upset when he does. o Rachel asks a question, but Sam is not going to the mic to relay it. In fact, Sam has pretty much stopped paying attention. Chris cannot do something about the situation without making Sam look bad. o Pete has run over time, Robert asks what is supposed to be the last question, and Pete doesn't understand what Sam said. Carl cannot tell whether to wait for Robert to rephrase the question or whether Robert even heard Pete's response. o In a virtual interim where remote attendees all participate by voice, someone can be heard typing / eating / talking loudly to someone else. Carl and Chris try to get that person's attention over the audio and Jabber, but to no avail. The tool being used does not have the ability to mute individual participants, so the meeting is disrupted until that person finally realizes that he or she is not muted. o [[[ TODO: More here, of course. ]]] 3.5. Remotely Presenting at Regular IETF Meetings Some WGs have experimented with remote presentations in recent years with quite mixed results. For some, it works fine: the remote presenter speaks, the chair moves the slides forward, and questions can be heard easily. For others, it is a mess: the local attendees can't hear the presenter very well, the presenter can't hear questions or there is a long delay, and it was not clear when the presenter was waiting for input or there was a lag in the sound. At a recent meeting that had a remote presenter, a WG had a video camera set up at the chairs' desk pointed towards the audience so that the presenter could see who was at the mic; this was considered to be a great help and a lot friendlier because the presenter could address the people at the mic by name. They also had the presenter's head projected on the screen in the room, which led to a lot of jokes Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 and discussion of whether seeing the remote presenter caused people to pay more attention. Remote presenters have commented how difficult it is to set up their systems, particularly because they are not sure whether their setup is working until the moment they are supposed to be presenting. Even then, the first few minutes of the presentation has a feeling of "is this really working?". [[[ TODO: More discussion about experiences with remote presenters. Include more discussion of where it went well. ]]] 3.6. Experiences with Remote Participation in Virtual Interim Meetings Because few WGs have virtual interim meetings, there is less experience with the tools that are commonly used for them. The IETF has had free use of WebEx for a few years, and some WGs have used different tools for audio participation. For example, some virtual interims are held using Skype, others with TeamSpeak, and so on. So far, the experience with virtual interim meetings has been reasonably good, and some people say that it is better than for remote attendees at regular IETF meetings because everyone has the same problems with getting the group's attention. One of the often-debated aspects of virtual interim meetings is what time to have them in order to make them available to all participants. That topic is (thankfully) not covered in this document. [[[ TODO: More discussion about experiences with virtual interims. Focus on differences between the all-in-one systems like WebEx and the cobble-together systems where there is an audio feed with no floor control plus pre-distributed slideware. ]]] 4. Requirements for Supporting Remote Participation in Face-to-Face Meetings This section covers the functional specification for effective remote participation in meetings where some members are in a face-to-face meeting, such as the regular IETF meetings and interim WG meetings that are held in a meeting room. Some of the requirements in this section overlap with those in Section 5, but many are unique to meetings that have a significant physical presence. There is an assumption in this section that the meeting chairs will continue to control the flow of the discussion. That is, if a Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 presenter is speaking and a remote attendee wants to ask a question, the request to do so goes to the chair, not to the presenter. **Requirement 01-01**: The specifications SHOULD rely upon IETF and other open standards for all communications and interactions wherever possible. **Requirement 01-02**: All tools in the RPS SHOULD be able to be run on the widest possible array of computers. This means that they need to be able to be run as an application, from any modern web browser, or from the command line of all of (at least) MacOS version 10.6 or later, Windows 7 or later, and any common Linux distribution produced in 2010 or later. [[[ TODO: Do we need to include IOS and Android platforms in that list? ]]] A common complaint with the current RPS is that the streaming audio can take more than 10 seconds (and sometimes as much as 30 seconds) to reach the remote attendee. This causes many of the problems listed in Section 3.3. **Requirement 01-03**: Audio, video, instant messaging, and slide streams going to and from remote attendees SHOULD be delivered in as close to real-time as is practically possible. [[[ TODO: Proposed replacement for this requirement is "Delays MUST be less than X milliseconds greater than the network delay to the remote attendee." Two values for X have been proposed: 200 and 500. ]]] [[[ TODO: A possibly different way to set the requirement is "The audio MUST achieve a MOS (Mean Opinion Score) of 3.5 or better." And there should probably be a discussion of a possible equivalent for video. A proposal was "320x240 @ 15fps". ]]] **Requirement 01-04**: Audible echo in the audio stream MUST be damped and/or eliminated by the tools. [[[ TOOD: Proposed replacement: the RPS MUST recognize audible echo and automatically take measures to reduce it to a level which won't distract listeners. ]]] 4.1. Registration for Remote Participation There has been periodic discussion of whether remote attendees are or are not bound by the "note well" text that local attendees are bound to. By requiring registration before participating, remote attendees can be better bound to that text. The cost for remote attendees to register, if any, is not covered in this document but will instead be determined by the IETF at a later Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 14] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 time. There are many ideas on the subject (tiered costs for different services, no cost at all for the first year, and others), but the effects of different cost structures is beyond the scope of this document. **Requirement 01-05**: All remote attendees MUST register with the IETF Secretariat before using any of the RPS tools described here. **Requirement 01-06**: The RPS MUST have a system where a remote attendee can register their name and have that name be used in the instant messaging and video systems. Registration must only need to be done once for an entire regular IETF meeting. **Requirement 01-07**: A remote attendee who doesn't want to identified MUST be able to use an anonymized name when appearing in video and instant messaging. [[[TODO: Is the anonymity appropriate in light of the "note well" and floor control requirements? ]]] **Requirement 01-08**: The RPS MUST gracefully handle multiple attendees who have the same name. 4.2. Technologies 4.2.1. Audio A few requirements come from the IETF's current use of audio in meetings. Meeting rooms have many mics: one or two for the chairs, one for the presenter, and at least one for other local attendees to ask questions. Plenaries have many more mics, both at the front of the room and in the audience. Note that the requirements here assume a very large change in the way that remote participation will happen. Instead of a remote attendee typing something into the Jabber room that someone will repeat at a mic in the room, remote attendees will use their own mics to speak to the meeting. **Requirement 01-09**: Remote attendees MUST be able to hear what is said by local attendees and chairs at any mic in the meeting. **Requirement 01-10**: Remote attendees MUST be able to speak directly to a meeting without going through a local attendee, and have their speaking be heard by local attendees. (Note that the ability to speak is controlled by the chair; see Section 4.3.2.) **Requirement 01-11**: Local attendees MUST be able to determine which remote attendee is speaking, unless the remote attendee is using an anonymized display name (see Requirement 01-07). Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 15] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 **Requirement 01-12**: The RPS MUST give a remote attendee who is allowed to speak a clear signal when they should and should not speak. IETF meetings happen in venues such as hotels and conference centers, most of which have their own audio setups. The IETF Secretariat contracts with those venues for the use of some or all of their audio system. **Requirement 01-13**: The audio system used by the RPS MUST be able to integrate with systems commonly used in the venues used for IETF meetings. 4.2.2. Video The RFP that preceded the current document, [RPS-RFP], discusses video as a requirement. The IETF has experimented with one-way and two-way video at some meetings in the past few years. Remote attendees have said that seeing people in the meetings gave them a better understanding of the meeting; at a recent meeting, a remote presenter was able to see the people in line at the mic and was better able to interact with them. [[[ TODO: determine how much of this is needed for effective participation. ]]] **Requirement 01-14**: Remote attendees MUST be able to see the presenter at a meeting. **Requirement 01-15**: Remote attendees MUST be able to see local attendees at any mic in the meeting. **Requirement 01-16**: The RPS MUST have the capability of showing video of the remote attendee who is speaking over the audio to the local attendees. **Requirement 01-17**: A remote attendee who is speaking MUST be able to choose what is shown to local attendees: video of them speaking, a still picture of their face, or just their name. **Requirement 01-18**: The RPS MUST give a remote attendee a clear indication when their video image is being shown to the local attendees. [[[ TODO: Is there a requirement that IETF video integrate with the venue video, if any? ]]] 4.2.3. Instant Messaging As noted earlier, while the current tool's Jabber room is a good way to get questions to the mic, it also becomes a second communications channel that only a few people in the room are participating in. This document does not address how to prevent that problem (or whether it really is much of a problem). The instant messaging system is also useful for remote users to ask about the status of the room ("is anyone there?"). Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 16] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 **Requirement 01-19**: The instant messaging system MUST allow anyone to see all messages in the WG's or BoF's room. **Requirement 01-20**: The instant messaging system MUST allow any registered user (even those registered to use anonymous names) to post messages in the WG's or BoF's room. Someone coming into a meeting late requires context for which messages in an instant messaging room are recent and which are old. **Requirement 01-21**: The date and time that a message appears in a room MUST be retained. Instant messaging clients MUST be able to show an indication of the date and time for all messages. [[[ TODO: Should there be multiple rooms for a meeting? There were many requests for a separate "speak into the mic" room, but that is not needed if the requirements in Section 4.2.1 are met. Is there a need for other rooms? ]]] [[[ TODO: Should non-registered people be allowed to read the IM traffic in real time, given that anyone can register anonymously? Should people registered anonymously be allowed to post in IM rooms? ]]] 4.2.4. Slide Presentations In many current remote participation systems, slide presentations and the video coming from in-meeting cameras are sent as two separate streams (called the "slide stream" and the "camera stream"). The slide stream is usually much lower bandwidth than the camera stream, so remote attendees with limited bandwidth can choose to watch just the slides but not the local attendees. Further, separating the streams allows remote attendees to see the slide stream and the camera streams in separate windows that can be independently sized. **Requirement 01-22**: The RPS MUST transmit the slide stream separately from the camera stream. **Requirement 01-23**: The slide stream MUST represent the slides as they are projected in the room, allowing the presenter to go back and forth, as well as to edit slides in real time. **Requirement 01-24**: It MUST be made clear to the remote attendees which set of slides, and which slide number, is being currently shown. [[[ TODO: If the slides will be visible to remote attendees as they are presented, is there a requirement that presenters be able to use the equivalent of a laser pointer? ]]] Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 17] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 4.2.5. Slide Distribution Slides are available to local and remote attendees on the IETF servers before and during regular IETF meetings. This service is useful to all attendees who want to be prepared for WG meetings. The slides are not only used by remote attendees listening to the WG meeting; it is common for local attendees to download the slides and view them on their laptops during meetings instead of having to read them at the front of the room. **Requirement 01-25**: The RPS MUST be able to handle both PDF and PowerPoint for distributed slides. [[[ TODO: Is there a requirement to support other formats? ]]] [[[ TODO: For the distributed slides, is there a requirement that animation in PowerPoint be supported, or just static slides? ]]] **Requirement 01-26**: The RPS MUST automatically convert PowerPoint presentations to PDF and make both available for distribution at the same time. **Requirement 01-27**: Presenters MUST be able to update their slides on the IETF site up to just before their presentation, if such update is allowed by the chairs. **Requirement 01-28**: Chairs MUST be able to approve or disapprove of any slide submission or updates, with the default being that all submissions are allowed. 4.2.6. Shared Document Editing In some WG meetings, there is an attempt to edit a document with input from the local attendees. This is typically done for proposed charter changes, but sometimes happens on a WG document or the meeting's agenda. This is usually unsuccessful, given the amount of text and the size of what can be displayed on the screen. In recent meetings, shared document editing has been used for editing charters and for taking minutes of meetings. **Requirement 01-29**: It MUST be easy to start a new shared document and to import existing text into a shared document. **Requirement 01-30**: Shared real-time editing of text-only documents MUST be supported. This system must allow at least three people to have write access and hundreds of people to have read access to any particular document. **Requirement 01-31**: Remote attendees MUST be able to be either the writers or the readers of shared documents. Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 18] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 **Requirement 01-32**: Those with read access MUST be able to see the edits made by those with write access within less that five seconds after each edit. **Requirement 01-33**: It MUST be easy to change the permissions for who gets write access to a document during an editing session. [[[ TODO: Is this also needed for non-text documents? If so, in what formats? For example, is drawing on a whiteboard needed? ]]] 4.3. Tools 4.3.1. Requirements for Remote Participation **Requirement 01-34**: Remote attendees MUST be able to easily find all the material they need to effectively participate, including links to audio, video, instant messaging, slides, and so on. This material MUST be available well before the time of the meeting. The page with the meeting material SHOULD allow the remote attendee to easily perform a time conversion to and from the local time at the IETF meeting. **Requirement 01-35**: A remote attendee who comes to a meeting late MUST be able to tell what is happening in the meeting. In specific, there MUST be an indication if the meeting has not started, if the meeting is happening (even if there is silence on the mics), and if the meeting is over. Remote attendees need to be able to test the remote participation setup before a regular meeting, and even during the meeting. **Requirement 01-36**: There MUST be a constantly-running testing service that covers all interactive tools (audio, video, slide display, and so on) for at least a week before the meeting begins. **Requirement 01-37**: The testing service MUST run throughout the meeting so that last-minute joiners can test their systems. **Requirement 01-38**: The testing service SHOULD allow remote attendees to also test whether their outgoing audio, video, and slide control works. **Requirement 01-39**: Remote attendees SHOULD be able to easily contact the IETF Secretariat if they find problems with any of the RPS tools, and to get fairly rapid response. **Requirement 01-40**: Similarly, local attendees SHOULD be able to easily contact the IETF Secretariat if there are RPS problems in the meeting rooms. Regular IETF meetings are more than just a group of WG meetings. Remote attendees may want to participate in the other parts of a regular meeting as well. **Requirement 01-41**: The RPS tools MUST be Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 19] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 available for AD-sponsored lunch meetings scheduled by the IETF Secretariat. At many IETF meetings, some local attendees act as remote attendees in WG meetings that they are not sitting in, so they can attend two WGs at once. **Requirement 01-42**: Any tools that are used by remote attendees MUST also be available to local attendees as well. Many remote attendees will be in places with limited bandwidth. **Requirement 01-43**: All streaming information from the RPS MUST be usable over slow Internet connections. [[[ TODO: We need to define "slow" here, or drop the requirement.]]] 4.3.2. Floor Control for Chairs Newcomers to regular IETF meetings often expect the floor control in WG meetings to be fairly straight-forward. By Tuesday, they might be shaking their heads, wondering why some people cut into the mic lines, why some people get up to the mics after the chair has closed the line, why some people ignore presenters' requests to hold questions to the end, and so on. Mixing remote attendees into this social structure will be a daunting task, but one that has been dealt with in many remote participation systems. It is not yet clear how the set of remote attendees would be treated for queueing. Some tools have each remote attendee being considered separately, while others pool all remote attendees into one group. This affects the chair knowing and being able to act on the order that remote attendees ask to speak. **Requirement 01-44**: Remote attendees MUST have an easy and standardized way of requesting the attention of the chair when the remote attendee wants to speak. The remote attendee MUST also be able to easily cancel an attention request. (Note that Requirement 01-35 implies that someone is watching the request queue, something that does not happen consistently with the current tools.) A remote attendee might want to indicate that they are asking a question of the presenter, or answering a question that someone else asked at the mic, or want to bring up a new topic. **Requirement 01-45**: The RPS MUST allow a remote attendee's request for attention to include an optional short text string. **Requirement 01-46**: Remote attendee's requests MUST be part of the floor control tool, not in the instant messaging system. **Requirement 01-47**: The chair MUST be able to see all requests from remote attendees to speak at any time during the entire meeting Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 20] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 (not just during presentations) in the floor control system. **Requirement 01-48**: The floor control system MUST allow a chair to easily turn off and on an individual's ability to speak over the audio at any time. **Requirement 01-49**: The floor control system MUST allow a chair to easily mute all remote attendees. **Requirement 01-50**: The floor control system MUST allow a chair to easily allow all remote attendees to speak without requesting permission; that is, the chair MUST be able to easily turn on all remote attendees mics at once. It is common for a chair to leave the room, to have a side discussion with an AD, or to become a presenter. They should be able to do so without having to do a handoff of the floor control capability. **Requirement 01-51**: The floor control system for the chair MUST be able to be run by at least two users at the same time. **Requirement 01-52**: The RPS MUST authenticate users who can use the floor control system in a particular meeting using simple passwords. **Requirement 01-53**: The IETF Secretariat MUST be able to easily set up the individuals allowed to use the floor control system for a particular meeting and to change the settings at any time, including during the meeting. [[[ TODO: Should those who are given floor control be allowed to augment that list to meet changing needs without going back to the Secretariat? ]]] [[[ TODO: Is it possible to tell if a remote attendee who is speaking loses network connectivity? If so, maybe this can be shown to the chair. ]]] **Requirement 01-54**: The chair SHOULD be able to monitor the sound levels of the audio being delivered to remote attendees to be sure that they can hear what is going on in the room. 4.3.3. Archiving Archived recordings of the events of the meetings are valuable for remote attendees who are not able to hear everything in real time. **Requirement 01-55**: The RPS MUST support storage and distribution of recordings of the audio, video, and slide presentations for all sessions after IETF meetings. **Requirement 01-56**: Transcripts of the instant messaging for all meetings MUST be kept for distribution Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 21] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 after IETF meetings. **Requirement 01-57**: The recordings and transcripts SHOULD be made available during the meetings, within a day of them being made. **Requirement 01-58**: Users MUST be able to easily find the archives of the recordings and instant messaging transcripts of a particular WG or BoF session at a particular meeting. **Requirement 01-59**: The RPS SHOULD support indexing of archived audio and video for particular events in meetings such as when speakers change. 4.3.4. Transcription **Requirement 01-60**: Transmitting real-time transcription to remote attendees MUST be supported. The lag in transmission MUST be less than five seconds. 4.3.5. Polling The common IETF method of assessing support is a straw poll, sometimes managed by audible humming, sometimes by raising hands. **Requirement 01-61**: A system for polling meeting participants, including remote attendees at the same time, MUST be provided. It MUST be easy to set up a simple poll, and it must be easy for all participants to find the poll and participate. [[[ TODO: Should the RPS also provide a tool that allows yes / no / abstain indications, which comes a lot closer to "voting" than currently is common? ]]] 4.4. Use by IETF Leadership The requirements for bodies like the IESG and IAB to use the RPS during regular IETF meetings are similar to those of most WGs. The main difference is that they need a way to limit who can participate remotely. **Requirement 01-62**: The IETF Secretariat MUST be able to easily limit remote access to meetings on a room-by-room basis. **Requirement 01-63**: The IETF Secretariat must be able to limit participants in restricted meetings using a simple authentication mechanism. 4.5. Plenaries At recent IETF meetings, there has been very little input from remote attendees even when there is a lot in the room, but that may be due to the current setup, not lack of interest. [[[ TODO: Are there any requirements that are special to plenaries Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 22] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 that are not covered above? Are there requirements not listed above that mostly come from plenaries that would also apply to very large WGs? ]]] 5. Requirements for Supporting All-Remote Meetings The requirements for meetings that are all remote (that is, with no local attendees) are mostly a subset of the requirements for remote participation in a face-to-face meeting. This section highlights the differences from Section 4. Video for all-remote meetings may be more important than for face-to- face meetings. [[[ TODO: Determine if this is true and, if so, the additional requirements for all the remote attendees. ]]] Nearly all current remote participation systems have some way for changing slides to be presented to all remote attendees. [[[ TODO: Is this a requirement for the IETF RPS? ]]] Attendance at virtual interim meetings is supposed to be taken, but this is sometimes ignored. A system that is probably at least somewhat different than that in Section 4.3.1 may be needed for collecting attendance at virtual interim meetings. [[[ TODO: What are the requirements for registering? Virtual interim meetings are generally considered to have a very different feeling than regular IETF meetings; does this affect the idea of registration? ]]] [[[ TODO: Are there different floor control issues for all-remote meetings? ]]] 6. IANA Considerations None. [[ ...and thus this section can be removed before publication as an RFC... ]] 7. Security Considerations People who participate remotely in face-to-face IETF meetings might expect the same level of privacy as they have when they participate directly in those meetings. Some of the proposed tools might cause it to be easier to know which WGs a remote attendee was following. When RPS tools are deployed, the IETF should describe the privacy implications of using such a tool to the users so they can decide Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 23] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 whether or not to use the tools. The eventual RPS tools will have some user authentication that will associate people with actions. For example, a remote user might need to authenticate to the system in order to give a presentation or speak during a session. The credentials needed for this authentication will need to be managed in a secure fashion, both by the system and by the people who are being identified. 8. Acknowledgements Many of the ideas in this document were contributed by members of the IETF community based on their experiences during recent IETF meetings. There are also many contributions from people on the vmeet@ietf.org mailing list as well as WG chairs. Some of the text in this document originated in the request for proposals that was issued by the IAOC that led to this document. 9. Informative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. [RFC3920] Saint-Andre, P., Ed., "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 3920, October 2004. [RFC3921] Saint-Andre, P., Ed., "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence", RFC 3921, October 2004. [RPS-RFP] IAOC, "Request for Proposals for Requirements Development for Remote Participation Services", 2011, . Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 24] Internet-Draft Remote Participation Reqs January 2012 Author's Address Paul Hoffman VPN Consortium Email: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org Hoffman Expires July 21, 2012 [Page 25]