Editor's note: These minutes have not been edited. User Services Working Group Minutes IETF - San Jose, California Monday, December 9th, 1300-1500 Chair: Joyce K. Reynolds/ISI (jkrey@isi.edu) Thanks to Ryan Moats who assisted in the minute taking of this session. Subscription/Unsubscription requests for the USWG email list should be sent to uswg-request@isi.edu. 1) A report on IETF User Services Area activities The following working groups in the USV Area are meeting at this IETF: HARTS, ISN, RUN, SSH, IDS, and USWG. The related USV Area I-Ds and FYI RFCs include: draft-ietf-ssh-handbook-03.txt (There will be one more I-D version posted before the SSH WG Chair sends the document to the IESG for approval and RFC publication.) draft-ietf-ssh-overview-00.txt draft-ietf-harts-guide-00.txt FYI 29 "Catalogue of Network Training Materials", (Also RFC 2007), October 1996. FYI 22 "Frequently Asked Questions for Schools", (Also RFC 1941), May 1996. FYI 18 "Internet Users' Glossary", (Also RFC 1983,) August 1996. 2) Reports on related global liaison group activities and international conferences -InterNIC report - Tom Newell, Susan Calcari, and Rick Huber provided the InterNIC report. Tom Newell presented an update to his InterNIC endeavors: The InterNIC Registry: 825,000 registered domains. Updated (85,000 new a month and 100,000 changes a month) IP allocation: will be spun off as a non-profit organization from NSI. I/E front: have over 17 people including the NetScout folks. The current projects they are working on include: The 15 minutes Internet series is moving forward (40 modules currently, but target is 100) in http/powerpoint format. Metering and demography clearinghouse. Document share: working with two organizations to create a single clearinghouse of user services documentation links to this available from http://rs.internic.net/ Susan Calcari provided a report on NetScout: NetScout, is associated with the University of Wisconsin, with a staff of 4, including folks that work on the net-happenings mailing list. The Scout Toolkit has been updated with a target to meeting an expressed need from a focus group for additional summary and analysis information about the scout tools. Cheat sheets for the major search engines and directories have been created as handouts for when providing training. These are not being distributed as hardcopy, but there are PostScript and Adobe pdf format available from the NetScout web page. A new newsletter is being produced on the Internet by kids for kids. The name of the newsletter is KIDS. The target for publication is to be published every two weeks, with four schools working on it (two in Madison, WI and two in Boulder, CO). Rick Huber gave a report on a project called Nomenclature. This endeavor is still being developed. Joanne Ordille will present something on this in the IDS working group on Wednesday. Earlier this summer, ds.internic.net took over maintenance of the netfind seed database and source code from Mike Schwartz and have greatly increased the capacity of the seed database. In addition, they have introduced a tool for finding web servers called webfind, available from http://ds.internic.net/ds/webfinder/WebFinder.html. They are also continuing to expand our document repository and maintaining our existing search tools. Rick stated that they are always looking for comments and suggestions: send mail to admin@ds.internic.net -TERENA/IETF ETINU TERENA is the Trans-European Research and Education Network Association. The TERENA web page is located at http://www.terena.nl/ A newly formed group, called ETINU, is the "Environment To Inspire Network Users". It is a joint effort of the TERENA Information Services and User Support (ISUS) and the IETF User Services Area. Its charter and focus is in developing a system to deliver enhanced user support via the network. Some of the objectives include: o prioritise main issues related to user support today, including: helpdesk queries, FAQs, software updates, hardware fault reporting, documentation, online training o discuss the pros and cons of online support as opposed to conventional methods o collate experiences of help desk software o collect references to relevant papers, articles, web sites, etc. and link them from a task force home page o identify and evaluate any available online support systems o identify the features of an ideal online support system o build a pilot online support service which could act as a model for many sites o standardise appropriate elements of the pilot system via RFC process The leaders of this effort believe we should be supporting, inspiring, and encouraging the user to make fuller use of the network to overcome their difficulties AND also help others when possible. To join, send an email message to: mailserver@terena.nl containing the text: subscribe tf-etinu 'your real name' replacing 'your real name' as appropriate. INET97, the Internet Society's (ISOC) annual conference will be held in June 1997 in Malaysia. There is a "User Track", with Mark Prior and Joyce K Reynolds as the co-track leaders. The User Track sessions for INET97 include: o Disabilities o Using Technology o Electronic Publishing o Network Information Retrieval o Community Networking o Impact of the Internet o Disabilities Panel Jodi Ito mentioned that there will be a K12 INET session before the actual INET conference again this year. The IESG had retreat last October in Santa Barbara. This was the second retreat this year. 3) Discussion/Participation Discussion and attendee participation focussed on the final topic in the agenda - the continued USV Area Focus. In Montreal, the following objectives were decided by the USWG: -Liase with TERENA ISUS. (See ETINU effort mentioned above.) -Update certain selected FYI RFCs. The update of FAQ documents were discussed in Montreal, but nothing has happened beyond that.) At this session, Jodi Ito and Sepi Boroumand volunteered to update FYI 4, "FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly asked "New Internet User" Questions". -Continue to provide documentation for developing countries. -Liase with other IETF areas. This includes working with QOS protocols, Next Generation Internet, Internet 2, etc. The result will be a new world network providing QOS, and how will that affect the User Area. As an example: the service side is usually crisis driven, and the idea is to become proactive. The new network will be providing end-to-end services to a user/application, and problems will involve coordination between multiple administration organizations (e.g., ISPs).