CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by David A. Borman/Cray Research, Inc. TELNET Minutes This was a rather short meeting. We met as a group for the first half of the meeting, and then adjourned to meet with the Authentication/ Privacy and Security Research Group (PSRG) joint meeting. In our meeting we discussed: Problems/questions about the 4.3Reno version of telnet/telnetd. One problem is that the latest BSD release does not send telnet ``Synch'' commands. The code is there, but it is commented out. This is because some clients do not handle a ``synch'' properly, and get stuck in a loop. It was decided that it would be better to release the code with this feature turned on, with an option to turn it off if some site has a problem with it. The ``Don't Telnet'' option was discussed again. There has been some, but not a lot of interest in it. Bill Westfield said that he would send it out again with a drop dead date. If people can't agree that it is a good idea by the December IETF we will not have any future discussion on it. There was discussion of using telnet for running printers. There were two main things mentioned: first you want to be able to connect to a box and say which terminal port you want to connect to, and you want to be able to send across information about how to set up the hardware on the remote side. The discussion revolved around whether or not this sort of stuff belonged in telnet, or in a higher level protocol, and if it was in telnet, how much could be done with existing options (like ENVIRON)? It was decided that first someone needs to write up a list of what functionality is needed to do printers over telnet, and then look at that list and see how it maps into the current telnet spec, before a decision can be made on whether or not it belongs in telnet, and if it does, will any new telnet options be needed. There was some discussion about international character sets. At this point, we don't really know what to do about them. Should telnet know about them? How is CR/NL mapping handled? Nothing was decided, this issue will have to be pursued at a later date. It was decided that we would like to start looking at reviewing/ editing/re-writing the base Telnet RFC. Joyce Reynolds said that Jon Postel has a whole bunch of notes collected over the years that she will make available in some form. Part of the next Telnet WG meeting will be used to get the editing of the Telnet RFC started. It was requested that the tn3270 mailing list be put in the minutes of the meeting. The list is at WG3270-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU. To subscribe send 1 mail to BRUCE@UMDD.UMD.EDU. The Working Group then adjourned, and went to meet with the Authentication/PSRG joint meeting. When we arrived, they were deep in discussion about SNMP authentication. When that was wrapped up, David Borman gave a brief overview to the group about the proposed Telnet Authentication option, and what was hoped to be accomplished with it. There was then discussion. The basic question that we wanted answered was ``Should we have a Telnet Authentication option, or should the authentication be done outside of the realm of Telnet, such as in a connection initiation protocol, which would happen before telnet started up?'' This question was not answered, there were arguments for both sides. Without going into all the pros and cons of what was discussed, there were two main things that came out of the discussion: 1. There needs to be a clear written description of what the Telnet Authentication is to be used for. The ``motivation'' section of the draft RFC is a bit terse, and should be expanded. 2. The Telnet Working Group will continue to develop the authentication option. Experimental implementations are being started. Having an implementation and experience about it will be useful in answering the question ``Do we need it?''. The Telnet Working Group will meet next at the December IETF meeting in Colorado. Attendees Richard Basch probe@mit.edu Dave Borman dab@opus.cray.com Philip Budne phil@shiva.com Anthony Chung anthony@hls.com George Conant geconant@eng.zyplex.com Mark Crispin mrc@cac.washington.edu Kevin Fall kfall@Berkeley.EDU Neil Haller nmh@bellcore.com Russell Hobby rdhobby@ucdavis.edu Steven Hubert hubert@cac.washington.edu Ajay Kachrani kachrani%regent.dec@decwrl.dec.com Michael Karels karels@berkeley.edu Luping Liang liang@cs.ubc.ca Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@venera.isi.edu Dana Sitzler dds@merit.edu Frank Solensky solensky@interlan.interlan.com Allen Sturtevant sturtevant@ccc.nmfecc.gov Dean Throop throop@dg-rtp.dg.com Bill Westfield billw@cisco.com 2 Yueli Yang yueli@bnr.ca 3