The Internet and the Millennium Problem (2000)

This Working Group Did Not Meet

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 41st IETF Meeting in Los Angeles, California. It may now be out-of-date. Last Modified: 25-Nov-97

Chair(s):

Erik Huizer <Erik.Huizer@sec.nl>

Operations and Management Area Director(s):

John Curran <jcurran@bbn.com>
Michael O'Dell <mo@uu.net>

Operations and Management Area Advisor:

John Curran <jcurran@bbn.com>

Technical Advisor(s):

Scott Bradner <sob@harvard.edu>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion:2000@nic.surfnet.nl
To Subscribe: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
In Body: subscribe 2000 <your name> in body
Archive:

Description of Working Group:

The Millenium problem

According to the trade press billions of dollars will be spend the upcoming three years on the year 2000 problem, also called the millenium problem (though the third millenium will only start in 2001). This problem consists of the fact that many software packages and some protocols use a two digit field for the year in a date field. Most of the problems seem to be in administrative and financial programs, some of which have been written in archaic languages like Cobol. A lot of organizations are now starting to make an inventory of which software and tools they use will suffer from the millenium problem.

....and the Internet

With the increasing popularity of the Internet, more and more organizations start to use the Internet as a serious business tool. This means that most organizations will want to analyze the millenium problems due to the use of Internet protocols and popular Internet software. In the trade press the first articles suggest that the Internet will collapse at midnight the 31st of December 1999.

To counter these suggestions (that are obviously wrong) and to avoid that all over the Internet people will redo the same inventory over and over again the WG is to make an inventory of all important Internet protocols and their most popular implementations with respect to the millenium problem. Only software and protocols directly related to the Internet will be considered.

The inventory will be published as an informational RFC. The RFC will contain:

o Description of the year 2000 problems and when they will occur

o Summary of possible solutions and timelines for those solutions

o Inventory of the year 2000 problem in the most popular Internet protocols and their most popular implementations

o Suggested solutions to the problems noted in the inventory

o A disclaimer that the RFC does not pretend to be complete and that the proposed solutions should be tested before being relied upon (this for the US readers).

The WG will only meet once (in Memphis, April 1997), most of the work will be done via the mailing list.

Goals and Milestones:

Feb 97

  

Begin collecting inventory.

Sep 97

  

Submit Internet-Draft to IESG for publication as an Informational RFC.

Internet-Drafts:

No Request For Comments