Re: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational

[Eric Gray <ewgray@graiymage.com>]

Stephen,

    As a clarification question, what typically is the role assumed by the
class of member that includes scientific and industrial organizations?

Stephen Trowbridge wrote:

> Christian,
> Zhi has captured the essence.
> ITU-T has several classes of membership:
> - The highest, since ITU is an organization under the umbrella of the United
>   Nations, are "member states". This consists of the 190 or so countries that
>   are members of the United Nations. In study groups that deal with regulatory
>   and tariff issues, the governments are often sources of some of the material
>   to be considered. In a more technical study group (like Study Group 15),
>   governments tend to fill the role of determining if there is consensus of
>   industry within the country, and forwarding that as a national position.
> - The next class of membership is Recognized Operating Agencies. These are
>   network operators.
> - The next class (equivalent in rights to the operators) is called Scientific
>   and Industrial Organizations. While any such organization can join, these
>   are generally equipment or component vendors.
> - The final class are called "Associates", who pay a lower level of dues to
>   participate in a single Study Group.
> Each country can determine their own national process through which national
> positions are determined. In the US, it is customary to take proposed national
> positions first to a related US standards organization (ANSI committee T1X1
> for most of ITU-T Study Group 15) to develop the industry consensus, and then
> to a US State Department committee (US Study Group B is the one which feeds
> Study Group 15) which generally (not always) follows the recommendation of the
> US standards organization in whether something should be forwarded as a national
> position under the "member state" membership. Since in most cases, the national
> standards organizations have looked at these documents first, the meetings of
> the US State Department committees tend to be relatively short (1/2 day or so,
> often by conference call).
>
> As far as I understand the UK process, they have a national committee per
> ITU-T Study Group which can approve national positions when there is industry
> consensus. Since the UK does not have similar national standards organizations,
> they must also look into the technical details of the contributions. This
> results in a longer meeting (I think a couple of days, from what I have heard)
> to develop any UK national positions for ITU-T Study Group 15.
>
> Getting a national position in countries with significant industrial participation
> is no small feat, so contributions such as this are generally taken very seriously.
> Hope this helps.
> Steve
>
> "Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi)" wrote:
> >
> > Hi Christian,
> >
> > This is one of the processes within the ITU-T standards body. The documents that is submitted into these documents can have multiple levels of "status". I'm not sure what the process is within the UK, but I have some idea of the process within the USA. Maybe Stephen Trowbridge or others more familiar with the procedures can comment (I typically try to stay away from these and stick my head into the technical stuff).
> >
> > The lowest status is that a document is sent by a company. In this case only that company is known to support this. A document may also have multiple company names as contributors, in which case these companies are active proponents.
> > The next level status is a country document. A country document (e.g., USA or UK) means that the document has undergone a national standards process, and that ALL the companies represented within that country will support the position stated by the document.
> >
> > This is of course much different from the IETF process, where all documents are by individual basis (theoretically it should not even have company affiliation but only represents the views of the individuals in the author list, but of course practically most people who attends and submits documents are actually representing a company view)...please don't flame me, just giving an observation based on my limited exposure to the IETF process...
> >
> > Hope this helps
> >
> > Zhi
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Christian de Larrinaga [mailto:cdel@firsthand.net]
> > Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 10:17 AM
> > To: Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi); iesg@ietf.org; ietf@ietf.org; Wijnen, Bert
> > (Bert); Scott Bradner (E-mail); kireeti@juniper.net
> > Cc: Stephen Shew (E-mail); Lyndon Ong (E-mail); Malcolm Betts (E-mail);
> > Lam, Hing-Kam (Kam); Alan McGuire (E-mail); sjtrowbridge@lucent.com;
> > Dimitrios Pendarakis (E-mail)
> > Subject: RE: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational
> >
> > Lin Zhi-Wei
> >
> > You mention a UK national position paper. Can you give me the references and
> > what made this "national"?
> >
> > many thanks,
> >
> > Christian de Larrinaga
> >
> > > A clear U.K. national position paper was
> > >contributed to the meeting currently underway
> > >(delayed contribution 483), supporting that all
> > >three of the ASON signaling Recommendations
> > >should be put for consent at this meeting.
> > >Hope this helps...
> > >Zhi