Minutes of the IPFIX meeting at IETF 80
About 36 people present
Scribes: Cyndi Mills & Nevil Brownlee

Nevil Brownlee presented current WG document status.  Three documents
completed since IETF 79 (Export-per-SCTP-stream, Mediators Framework
and Anonymisation Support), one with IESG (Structured Data).  We have
received comments on the IPFIX Configuration Model draft from the YANG
Doctors, and have been carefully considered.  Juergen will do its
write-up.  The PSAMP MIB has been revised to use the UnsiUnsigned64TC
and Float64TC Textual Conventions from other MIBs.  Nevil will do its
write-up.  The remaining work item, Flow Selection, is under review,
and will be discussed further on the IPFIX list.

Brian Trammell presented a report on the 'DEMONS IPFIX
Interoperability Test,' held in Prague, 24-25 March.  This was the
fourth such event for IPFIX, with eight implementations (4 exporters,
3 collectors) being tested.  Interoperation was complete for UDP, less
so for TCP; for SCTP it was dependent on the SCTP implementations
used.  Quite a few issues came to light (see the slides), many were
fixed during the event.  Several people commented on SCTP
implementation issues, suggesting that perhaps "template handling is
needlessly complicated in the (IPFIX) protocol."  Such comments mostly
indicate that few attendees at the event had implemented template
withdrawal or template number re-use, or simply that it wasn't tested
there.  Dan Romascanu (our AD) asked for an Interoperation Report,
Brian says he hh will write one as an Internet Draft.

Lothar Braun presented Recommendations for Implementing IPFIX over
DTLS/UDP.  DTLS is mandatory for IPFIX over UDP and SCTP, but using
it is difficult because IPFIX traffic is unidirectional, but DTLS
requires shared state.  Discussion centred on IPFIX's need for a
heartbeat to detect collector failures, and whether IPFIX should do
its own heartbeat.  Lothar's recommendations could fit in a revision
of IPFIX Implementation Guidelines.  [TLS WG chairs report that this
draft is progressing, currently waiting for a review from the Transport
Area.]

Juergen lead a discussion on whether we should work on moving some of
the IPFIX standards from Proposed to Draft.  Dan explained that to
do so any changes would need to be editorial, not technical.  There
was considerable discussion, the main points being:
1. There are many errata for 5101 and 5102, it would be good to have a
   new draft that does that, along with some more explanatory
   (editorial) text where needed
2. If we move 5101 and 5102 to Draft, any changes - however small -
   would need to be a new version of the IPFIX protocol.  Doing that
   could lead to confusion among IPFIX implementors and users
3. An alternative approach would be to work on a new draft (which
   implemented small changes that did not affect interoperation, for
   example adding detail where there are gaps in 5101) as a Standards
   Track successor to 5101.  Once that had been published as an RFC
   for some time, we could work on moving it to Draft; that should be
   possible in a reasonably short time.
4. Other things that could be considered: IPFIX heartbeat provision
   (we need to consider how long it will take TSVWG to complete the
   DTLS Heartbeat Extension), change canonical transport to TCP, ... ?
5. Another possibility is to make a new "all about IPFIX" document;
   there was only weak consensus for this
The meeting reached consensus for 3 (rather than 2), we will discuss 
this further on the IPFIX list.

Five drafts were presented as candidates (in addition to the 'Standards
upgrade') for an IPFIX re-chartering.

Brian Trammell presented "Exporting Aggregated Flow Data with IPFIX;"
this drew strong consensus as a new WG item.

Brian presented the 'IE Doctors' draft, pointing out that this draft
"lays out the ground rules for developing new IPFIX Information
Elements, and clarifies how the IE Registry process works."  Michelle
Cotton (IANA) commented that other working groups, e.g. DNS, have
similar processes to those in this draft; we need to be clear about
whether we're proposing "approval by IE-Doctors," or changes to
"expert review" (which we have now).  Dan commented that to set up a
team of IE Doctors, we need AD approval, and must keep IESG informed.
Paul Aitken asked (via jabber), whether an IE could be reviewed and
not made public until the product is shipped?  Dan replied "we have a
body of experience to say that this should be an exception and not the
rule."  There was clear consensus for adopting this as a WG item,
with one person expressing strong dissent.  We will discuss this
further on the list - the issues here are
a. Should we develop an 'IE Guidelines' draft?
b. Do we want to have an 'IE Doctors' team (with IESG overview),
   an expanded group of IE Expert reviewers, or what?

Benoit Claise presented the 'IPFIX Mediation protocol' draft, now at
version -03.  There was clear consensus for adopting this.

Benoit presented 'Exporting MIB variables using IPFIX.'  A spirited
discussion of how Odis should be referred to in the IPFIX protocol.
There was stronger consensus for this than against it.  Again,
discussion of this will continue on the list.

Benoit presented 'Exporting Application Information,' prompting
considerable discussion.  Steven Campbell commented that
"vendor-specific labels for layer-7 mapping is difficult. However, the
way to discover layer 7 (behavioral, DPI) could be standardized."
Benoit said he wasn't proposing this as a WG item, however anyone
interested should continue discussing this topic on the list.

The meeting finished at 1459.



One-para summary:

IPFIX met on Tuesday afternoon.  All but one of our current WG items
are (nearly) complete, the IPFIX Flow Selection draft needs lots more
work, alas.  We held a successful interoperation event last week,
which raised several issues.  Those issues lead into a discussion of
how we might progress the IPFIX base standards, they are summarised in
our minutes and will be discussed further on the list.  Several drafts
were presented as possible future work; they will be discussed further
on the list, leading to a re-chartering request, probably before the
Quebec meeting.

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