Internet DRAFT - draft-palet-ietf-meeting-network-requirements
draft-palet-ietf-meeting-network-requirements
Meeting Venue J. Palet Martinez
Internet-Draft The IPv6 Company
Intended status: Informational March 5, 2018
Expires: September 6, 2018
IETF Meeting Network and Other Technical Requirements
draft-palet-ietf-meeting-network-requirements-02
Abstract
This document describe the minimum technical requirements for a
facility to be able to host a successful IETF meeting. Includes also
requirements for the terminal room and other technical requirements.
This documents should be used as the minimum criteria during an on-
site facility survey, to ensure the fulfilment of the IETF meeting
needs.
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
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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 September 6, 2018.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2018 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
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
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to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Facility General Technical Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Internet Upstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Wired Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Wireless Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Network Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Terminal Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. NOC and Network Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. Other Technical Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
10. Multi-property/building meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11. Technical Risks and Contingencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
12. Timing and Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
13. Venue Acceptance/Rejection Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
14. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
15. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
16. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1. Introduction
This document describes network, terminal room and other technical
criteria for the IETF facility selection process, including some
details related to the planning. All this details are required in
order to accommodate the IETF meeting with technical guarantees of
successful working capabilities for the attendees, as a result of
previous experience and considering possible new future news in the
medium term.
This document lists what needs to be evaluated and various
alternative solutions, or combinations thereof, that may apply. The
document shall be used in several steps of the venue/facility
selection:
o Pre-on-site survey: Before a facility is qualified, from the
technical perspective, for a possible on-site visit, and when non-
technical requirements (such as venue requirements and facility
meeting space availability) seem to be met already, in order to
pre-evaluate that the technical requirements could also be
satisfied.
o On-site survey: Experience shows that an on-site survey of the
facility MUST be organized, typically in conjunction with a
general on-site survey for ensuring that both technical and non-
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technical meeting requirements are met. The participation of a
local IETF participant together with the NOC team may be very
relevant, in order to ensure that as much information as possible
is collected in advance, to facilitate communication issues, and
specially to make sure that the all the facility relevant staff is
present during the on-site survey.
o Pre-meeting: If a facility has been already selected/contracted,
around 1-2 months before the actual meeting, a new on-site visit
is organized which allows a very detailed scrutiny to nail down
possible issues or needs, as well as connecting already an IETF
managed router to the Internet upstreams, allowing announcing the
IETF networks and doing some remote testing to facilitate
resolving any possible issues before the actual meeting.
Only if the pre-on-site-survey seems to indicate that the facility
match the IETF technical requirements, then the on-site-survey will
be organized. In some cases, where several facilities are in the
same venue or in a convenient distance, it may make sense to organize
also on-site technical surveys for several facilities.
Experience shows that things could go wrong when there is too strict
a dependence on specific people or equipment and when no alternatives
are provisioned for. Consequently, contingencies are a very
important consideration across all the process.
2. Facility General Technical Requirements
The facility being evaluated for hosting IETF, should comply with
several generic technical requirements, which will allow an adequate
installation of the network, terminal room and some other relevant
technical details. The facility chosen can have a dramatic impact on
the ability to deliver a quality network to attendees, so the general
requirements of this section are of key importance:
o MUST have a Telecommunications rooms and/or equivalent spaces
(cabinets, etc.). They MUST be secured and provide a mechanism
for 24-hours access to the NOC team, even during the network
setup.
o MUST have adequate ventilation to support the equipment rooms and
the terminal room.
o SHOULD have as much physical separation as possible in the meeting
room area to improve the RF environment.
o SOULD avoid air-walls and similar partitions systems, between
meeting rooms, with low RF attenuation in the 2.4MHz spectrum.
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o SOULD provide a RF environment in all the meeting rooms to be used
by IETF, common spaces, terminal room and registration area, that
has a reasonable noise floor in the 2.4MHz spectrum.
o SHOULD provide an appropriate wiring plan (power and data) in
order to know the existing infrastructure (fiber, connectors, UTP
category/distances) and what can be used, what not, what can be
done with it, etc.
o SHOULD have installed network cabling which can be used to deploy
the IETF network, either by spare fiber pairs (other options may
be possible), by sharing by means of VLANs/other means, or by
providing exclusive usage to those fibers for the IETF network.
The number of fibers required across the facility depends on the
physical allocation of the meeting space, distribution structure
in different buildings/floors, etc. Some facilities have no
wiring and that could be an important inconvenient, especially in
order to quickly deploy the wireless network. Feasibility/
facility to setup new cables (fiber/UTP) MUST be considered.
o Roof access, in case a WLAN link is required, MUST be provided.
o If there is already a WLAN in the facility, SOULD be possible to
turn it off at the meeting space area, otherwise dependencies to
temperature, lighting, security, access control, POS and other
systems MUST be properly evaluated.
o MUST have electrical power capacity to support the IETF equipment
and terminal room needs.
o MUST have electrical power capacity to support the IETF network
and its users, including 110/220 VAC in cabinets, roof locations,
public areas and back-of-the-house areas.
o 24 hours' power SOULD be available by means of UPS power to
support key network infrastructure, such as core routers and
switches and other devices required for the external connectivity.
o In venues where power is expected fo fail, UPS power should cover
beamers, audio equipment, remote participation equipment and the
complete wired and wireless network, at least for the average
expected failure time per day.
o Facilities for AV SHOULD be convenient for the IETF needs: room
dimensions for screens (height/width).
o SHOULD allow the use of wireless voice communication ("Walkie
Talkies" or hand-held radios). In some cases the secretariat can
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bring its own equipment, but in some occasions it is required to
be rented from the hotel.
3. Internet Upstream
o The facility MUST have good network connectivity, with at least
two different providers (main one and backup). Ideally this
SHOULD be achieved by means of two fibers with different (physical
and logical) paths. A single provider may work with two diverse
paths all the way thru different subsequent upstream providers.
o IETF network SHOULD be able to run their own BGP, so the different
links can be aggregated or load-balanced.
o The primary link MUST provide a minimum of 1 Gbit (symmetric).
However, higher capacity may be appropriate in the future (10
Gbits can be expected as something common in a couple of years).
o The backup link(s) SHOULD provide a minimum of 100 Mbit
(symmetric). However, higher capacity may be appropriate in the
future (1 Gbit).
o Native IPv6 unicast MUST be available. IPv6 Multicast SHOULD be
available.
o IPv4 unicast and IPv4 multicast SHOULD be available, either
natively or by means of a tunnel.
o The upstream providers MUST provide access to the IPv4 and IPv6
default free zones without any kind of filtering or ACLs.
Consequently MUST NOT prohibit end-to-end connectivity to any
external sites.
o The IETF SHOULD be able to use its own AS, IPv4 and IPv6
addressing space. Otherwise, the upstream provider MUST supply an
AS, an IPv4 /19, IPv6 /32 and reverse DNS delegation for that
addressing space.
4. Wired Network
o Wired links MUST be available for the registration desk/
secretariat with configuration to support the registration desk
firewall requirements.
o Wired links MUST be available in every meeting room which require
network for audio/video as required for remote participation and/
or recording. Wired connectivity for chairs SHOULD be available.
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o Separate VLANs for wired-terminal room, wired-registration desk/
secretariat, wired-remote participation and wireless traffic, MUST
be supported.
o MUST support IPv6.
o MUST allow end-to-end connectivity, so MUST NOT have any kind of
filtering.
o SHOULD support multicast (multicast is not currently used to
support remote participation, but it may change at any point.
o SHOULD support mechanisms for detecting and mitigating rogue
protocols/servers (IPv6 RA's, DHCP, etc.).
5. Wireless Network
o The network MUST provide IEEE 802.11a/b/g service in all the
meeting rooms (as identified by the Secretariat), the registration
area, the terminal room and common/gathering areas.
o The WLAN coverage SHOULD also be sufficient in additional common
spaces including lobby, bar(s), restaurant(s), most commonly used
hallways, etc. This is applicable to the main conference center
and/or the main hotel(s), depending on the specific venue.
o IEEE 802.11n/ac coverage SHOULD be also available in as many as
the above named spaces as possible, focusing on the most dense
user density (plenary meeting room) first.
o The WLAN design MUST anticipate 200% usage according to the
historical figures of participants in each meeting room, assuming
that average attendee uses two devices.
o MUST support separate SSIDs for different specific VLANs (2.4GHz,
5GHz, NAT64, etc.).
o The main(s) hotel(s) SHOULD support the IETF-hotel SSID. This
SHOULD be supported by means of a specific IETF provided VLAN.
o The WLAN MUST provide fully open (unsecured) wireless access and
SHOULD provide additional secured (WEP, 802.11i, WPA) services.
o MUST support IPv6.
o SHOULD support mechanisms for detecting and mitigating rogue APs.
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6. Network Services
o The network MUST provide local redundant DNS servers (IPv4 and
IPv6).
o The network MUST provide redundant DHCP (IPv4) servers.
o The network SHOULD provide redundant DHCPv6 servers.
o The network MUST provide SMTP server (IPv4 and IPv6).
o The network SHOULD provide a full on-site mirror of the RFC and
I-Ds directories (FTP/WWW, bothIPv4 and IPv6).
o IDS and other security issues SHOULD be covered (IPv4 and IPv6).
o The network SHOULD provide NTP services (IPv4 and IPv6).
o A pool of IP addresses for static assignment, even if discouraged
to use, SHOULD be available (IPv4 and IPv6).
o Printing services MUST support IPP and SHOULD support LPD/LPR and
Windows specific protocols (IPv4 and IPv6).
7. Terminal Room
o A terminal room or equivalent MUST be provided. It MAY be a
single room or a set of smaller ones distributed nearby the
meeting rooms.
o SHOULD be accessible 24 hours, however help-desk staff MAY not be
available all the time.
o SHOULD have adequate number of 10/100 Ethernet RJ-45 ports/drops.
o Two printers MUST be available. They SHOULD have duplex
capability.
o A color printer MAY be available.
o Power strips MUST be provided.
o A help-desk SHOULD be available.
o The upstream provider SHOULD provide a trouble ticket system to
track participants network issues. This system SHOULD be
accessible to the help-desk and NOC staff.
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8. NOC and Network Monitoring
A support group or NOC, is responsible to manage the network and
other technical issues, including concrete aspects such as:
o Setup and maintain a meeting NOC web page with all the required
information.
o Document what can be wrong with the WLAN to inform users (FAQs).
Provide a document to attendees detailing configuration
information (wireless, services such as printing/SMTP) on-site and
prior to the meeting if possible (IETF meeting web site and NOC
meeting web site).
o Make sure to test the network under heavy load.
o Primary and backup contacts for all the issues/topics should be
available.
o Provide stats and info on network status.
o WLAN expertise and debugging/monitoring is required.
o SHOULD provide a white board with the stats and network status, in
visible place, possibly in the terminal room and by means of a
participants accesible web page.
To cover the issues indicated above and ensure network performance,
the NOC will use common network monitoring tools:
o The network MUST provide sufficient monitoring to ensure the
expected availability/performance and to detect possible faults
before they impact users experience.
o The network MUST collect data for future use and adequate
provisioning of following meetings network.
o The upstream providers SHOULD provide SNMP read-only access to the
network devices for the NOC.
9. Other Technical Criteria
Sufficient power strips MUST be available in the meeting rooms.
Additional power strips also should be available in common gathering
areas.
Attendees SHOULD be notified of power connector requirements prior to
the meeting (via the IETF meeting web page and IETF-announce mailing
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list, possibly also via the meeting NOC web page).
The upstream provider SHOULD maintain spares of critical network
components on-site.
TBD. Audio requirements needed. There is a disparity of audio
quality from meeting to meeting.
10. Multi-property/building meetings
It should be noted that in some situations, the facility may be
composed of several buildings/properties, such as a main hotel (the
one with the meeting rooms) and secondary ones, or a conference
center and one or several hotels.
This may imply that the technical requirements in this document shall
be met by at least by the building actually hosting the meeting
rooms, however a subset of the requirements may be also relevant for
the main hotel or even several of them.
For example, it is desirable that the main facility is connected with
a direct optic fiber to other facilities (secondary hotels). This is
key in case the main facility is a conference center and there is a
main hotel or several ones. This will allow probably setting up in
one or several hotels the IETF-hotel SSID providing adequate
bandwidth for our needs.
There are alternative solutions, such as ensuring that the hotels
have sufficient bandwith even if they aren't connected to the IETF
network, and the difficulty is to define strict requirements for each
of the possible cases. However, the spirit of our needs in case
there is not a "main hotel" being the same facility as the meeting
rooms facility, should be considered by the on-site-survey team
report in order to ensure a close match with our needs.
11. Technical Risks and Contingencies
TBD.
12. Timing and Planning
Typically the pre-on-site survey is done by an email questionnaire
filled by the facility or even an phone/audio interview. This SHOULD
take place several years (around 3) before a possible on-site survey
is decided for that venue.
The on-site survey MUST take place at least 2-3 years in advance of a
possible contract. Whenever possible, several facilities in that
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venue MAY be surveyed in a single trip.
The pre-meeting survey MUST take place 1-2 months in advance of the
actual meeting, in order to confirm some technical aspects and deploy
a router for some remote testing and monitoring.
13. Venue Acceptance/Rejection Report
After the on-site survey, the team responsible for that visit will
provide a complete report to the IAOC meetings committee. This
report will provide inputs regarding both, the venue and the visited
facilities. Only those facilities that MAY qualify will be ranked by
the survey team.
The report MUST include non only technical aspects but also others
related to the venue-selection-process itself, from both the venue
and the ranked facilities.
14. Security Considerations
This document does not have any protocol-related security
considerations.
15. IANA Considerations
This document does not have any specific IANA considerations.
16. Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the inputs of Brett Thorson, Jim
Martin, Joel Jaeggli, Laura Nugent and Karen Odonoghue (alphabetical
order).
Author's Address
Jordi Palet Martinez
The IPv6 Company
Molino de la Navata, 75
La Navata - Galapagar, Madrid 28420
Spain
Email: jordi.palet@theipv6company.com
URI: http://www.theipv6company.com/
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