Requirements for Remote Participation Services for the IETF
draft-ietf-genarea-rps-reqs-04

#x27;s meeting room, but sometimes a meeting room
      rented at a hotel).  At such meetings, there are between a handful
      and a few dozen local attendees and a similar number of remote
      attendees, if remote participation is supported.  Presentations
      are common.  There are typically fewer than 15 face-to-fact
      interim meetings a year.

   o  Virtual interim WG meetings -- Between regular IETF meetings, some
      WGs hold virtual interim meetings where there are no local
      attendees because there is no central meeting location.  There are
      between a handful and a few dozen attendees.  Presentations are
      common.  There are typically fewer than 25 face-to-fact interim
      meetings a year.

   o  IETF leadership meetings -- The IETF leadership (the IESG, IAOC,
      IAB, and probably others) have periodic virtual meetings, usually
      with presentations.  These groups also meet at the regular IETF
      meetings, and sometimes have remote attendees at those meetings
      (such as members who cannot attend the IETF meeting or presenters
      who are not part of the leadership group).

   The form of "presentations" changes from meeting to meeting, but
   almost always includes prepared static slides and audio of the
   speaker.  Presentations sometimes also includes non-static slides
   (usually animations within a slide) and sometimes video.

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 21]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

A.2.  Technologies Currently Used at Regular IETF Meetings

   There are three tools that are used by remote attendees for WG
   participation at regular IETF meetings: real-time audio, instant
   messaging, and slides.

   For the past few years, the IETF has used audio streamed over HTTP
   over TCP.  TCP is often buffered at many places between (and in) the
   origination in the IETF meeting venue and the users' computer.  At
   recent meetings, delays of around 30 seconds have been recorded, with
   minimum delays typically being five seconds.  This delay is caused by
   buffering at the hop-by-hop ISPs and in the remote attendee's
   computer.  At recent IETF meetings, remote attendance is almost
   always less than 10% of local attendance, and is often less than 5%.
   (There are more remote attendees when the IETF meeting is in the
   U.S.) Each stream is represented by an MP3 playlist (sometimes called
   an "m3u file").

   The IETF long ago standardized on Jabber / XMPP ([RFC6120],
   [RFC6121], and others) for instant messaging used within the IETF.
   Jabber rooms (formally called "multi-user conferences" or "MUCs")
   exist for every WG, and those rooms are live all the time, not just
   during regular IETF meetings.  BoFs have jabber rooms that are
   available during IETF meetings.  There are also stable Jabber rooms
   for the plenaries and certain other activities.  BoFs are usually
   assigned Jabber rooms before a regular meeting.

   Presentation slides normally are stored either as PDFs or in one of
   Microsoft's formats for PowerPoint.  They are projected on a local
   screen from someone's laptop computer.  Proceedings are currently
   stored as PDF of the slides, although they used to be stored as HTML.

   There has been experience at recent meetings with two tools, WebEx
   and Meetecho, which are supported experimentally by the IETF.  Each
   tool was used by a handful of WGs with mixed success.  The tools
   require remote attendees to use specific clients, and installation of
   those clients caused problems for some people.  On the other hand,
   the tools have much more robust meeting control features, and
   attendees appreciated the real-time showing of slides during
   presentations.

A.3.  Locating the Meeting Information

   Finding information for the real-time audio, instant messaging, and
   slides for an upcoming or current regular meeting is complicated by
   that information being in many different locations on the IETF web
   site, and the fact that the relevant URLs can change before and even
   during the meeting.  Further, a WG chair might copy the latest

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 22]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

   information and send it to the WG mailing list, but there can be
   later changes.  Experienced remote attendees have gotten used to
   checking just before the meeting itself, but even that does not
   always guarantee the correct information.

   Currently, the meeting information appears in two different agendas:

   o  The official agenda on the IETF Datatracker includes links to
      venue maps, WG charters, agendas, and Internet-Drafts.  For
      example, see
      <https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/82/agenda.html>.

   o  The unofficial "tools-style agenda" includes the same links as the
      official agenda plus links to the presentations, audio, minutes,
      Jabber room, and Jabber logs 9represnted as small icons).  For
      example, see <http://tools.ietf.org/agenda/82/>.

A.3.1.  Audio

   The URL for the audio stream for a WG or BoF meeting is based on the
   room that the meeting is in.  The audio streams are announced on the
   general IETF mailing list (ietf@ietf.org) before each meeting.

   A common complaint is that when a WG meeting moves to a different
   room, remote users need to know about the move so that they can use
   the proper URL to hear the audio stream.  The room changes are often,
   but not always, announced on WG mailing lists; when they are not
   announced, there is no easy way for a remote attendee to find out
   which audio stream they should be listening to.  Sometimes, room
   changes happen just as a WG meeting is starting, making it nearly
   impossible for a remote attendee to know about the change in streams.

   IETF meetings happen in venues such as hotels and conference centers,
   most of which have their own audio setups.  The IETF Secretariat
   contracts with those venues for the use of some or all of their audio
   system.  Without such integration, audio from remote attendees might
   not be reliably heard by local attendees.

A.3.2.  Instant Messaging

   The Jabber rooms used by WGs and BoFs do not change between IETF
   meetings, so finding the right Jabber room is relatively easy.  Some
   Jabber clients have odd interfaces for joining Jabber rooms, and this
   can cause some problems; even though attendees can test their Jabber
   clients before a meeting, there still seems to be some who need help
   just before a WG meeting.  There are sometimes problems with people
   joining Jabber rooms; in these cases, the attendee needs to find
   someone already in the Jabber room to invite them to the discussion.

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 23]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

A.3.3.  Slides

   Slides are presented in regular IETF meetings with projectors on a
   screen at the front of the room from the video output of one or more
   local attendees' computers.  The same slides are available online for
   remote attendees.

   Slides are available to local and remote attendees on the IETF
   servers before and during regular IETF meetings.  This service is
   useful to all attendees who want to be prepared for WG meetings.  The
   slides are not only used by remote attendees listening to the WG
   meeting; it is common for local attendees to download the slides and
   view them on their laptops during meetings instead of having to read
   them from the front of the room.

   Slides are available from the meeting materials page.  Many, but
   certainly not all, local and remote attendees know how to find the
   meeting materials page.

   It has become fairly common for presenters to not have their
   presentations available for distribution until just before the WG
   meeting.  Because materials are uploaded by the WG chairs, this often
   causes the beginning of WG meetings to be a dance involving
   presenters giving the chairs their slides, followed by chairs
   uploading the slides to the IETF site, followed by the chairs saying
   "the slides are there now".

A.4.  Remote Participation at IETF Meetings

A.4.1.  Remotely Speaking at the Mic

   Newcomers to regular IETF meetings often expect the floor control in
   WG meetings to be fairly straight-forward.  By Tuesday, they might be
   shaking their heads, wondering why some people cut into the mic
   lines, why some people get up to the mics after the chair has closed
   the line, why some people ignore presenters' requests to hold
   questions to the end, and so on.  Mixing remote attendees into this
   social structure will be a daunting task, but one that has been dealt
   with in many remote participation systems.

   In order for a remote attendee to speak at the mic, a local attendee
   must say it for them.  In most WG and BoF meetings, this is done by
   the remote attendee typing into the Jabber room for the meeting, and
   some local attendee going to the mic and repeating what was typed
   into the Jabber room.  Remote attendees often precede what they want
   said at the mic with the string "mic:" to differentiate that from the
   rest of the discussion in the Jabber room.

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 24]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

   In some WGs, there have been experiments of getting remote attendees
   voices into the room either by hooking into the room's sound system
   or pointing a mic at the speaker of a laptop.  This sometimes works,
   but sometimes has bad feedback and delay issues that make the remote
   participation worse than having a person reading their comments at
   the mic.

   The "Jabber-to-mic" method of participation often works adequately,
   but there are many places where it fails.  It has issues similar to
   most proxy approaches where a human is in center of the loop.  The
   following is a compendium of stories from recent IETF meetings and
   interim face-to-face meetings where remotely speaking at the mic
   didn't work as well as it could have.  The list is given here to both
   point out what some WGs are willing to put up with currently, and to
   show what is needed if the eventual RPS uses Jabber-to-mic as part of
   the solution.  The attendees are Chris and Carl (WG co-chairs), Sam
   (volunteer Jabber scribe), Rachel and Robert (remote attendees), Pete
   (presenter), and Len and Lee (local attendees).

   o  Robert cannot understand what Pete is saying about slide 5, but
      Sam doesn't get Pete's attention until Pete is already on slide 7
      and Pete doesn't want to go back.

   o  Rachel wants to say something, but Sam's Jabber client has crashed
      and no one else in the Jabber room knows why Sam isn't going to
      the mic.

   o  Robert wants to say something, but Sam is already at the mic
      speaking for Rachel so Sam doesn't see Robert's message until he
      has gotten out of the mic line.

   o  Sam is speaking for Robert, and Rachel wants to comment on what
      Robert said.  Unless Sam reads the message as he is walking back
      to his seat, Rachel doesn't get to speak.

   o  Robert wants to say something at the mic, but Sam is having an
      important side discussion with the AD.

   o  Sam is also the minutes taker, and is too busy at the moment
      catching up with the lively debate at the mic to relay a question
      from Rachel.

   o  Chris thought Carl was watching the Jabber room, but Carl was
      reading the draft that is being discussed.

   o  Chris and Carl start the meeting by asking for volunteers to take
      minutes and be Jabber scribe.  They couldn't find a Jabber scribe,
      and it took a lot of begging to get someone to take minutes, so

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 25]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

      they figured that was the best they could do.

   o  Sam is also a presenter, and Robert has a question about Sam's
      presentation, but Sam is obviously not looking at the Jabber room
      at the time.

   o  Rachel asks a question through Sam, and Pete replies.  Len, who is
      next in line at the mic, starts talking before Sam has a chance to
      see whether or not Rachel has a follow-up question.

   o  Robert makes a point about one of Pete's slides, and Pete responds
      "I don't think you're looking at the right slide" and continues
      with his presentation.  Robert cannot reply in a timely fashion
      due to the lag in the audio channel.

   o  Pete starts his presentation by asking for questions to be held
      until the end.  Robert has a question about slide 5, and is
      waiting until the end of the presentation to post the question in
      the Jabber room.  After slide 7, Len jumps to the mic and
      vehemently disagrees with something that Pete said.  Then Lee gets
      up to respond to Len, and the three of them go at it for a while,
      with Lee getting up again after slide 10.  The presentation ends
      and is over time, so Carl says "we need to move on", so Robert
      never gets to ask his question.

   o  Chris asks "are there any more questions" while Rachel is typing
      furiously, but she doesn't finish before Chris says "I don't see
      anyone, thanks Pete, the next speaker is...".

   o  Rachel comments on Pete's presentation though Sam. Sam doesn't
      understand what Rachel is asking, and Len goes to the mic to
      explain.  However, Len gets his explanation of what Rachel said
      wrong and by the time Pete answers Len's interpretation, Rachel
      gives up.

   o  This is the first time Pete is presenting at an IETF meeting, and
      Robert has the first question, which is relayed through Sam. Pete
      stays silent, not responding the question.  Robert can't see
      Pete's face to know if Pete is just not understanding what he
      asked, is too afraid to answer, is just angry, or something else.

   o  Pete says something incorrect in his presentation, and Len asks
      the folks in the Jabber room about it.  Rachel figures out what
      Pete should have said, and others in the Jabber room agree.  No
      one goes to the mic because Pete has left the topic, but only the
      people watching Jabber know that the presentation was wrong.

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 26]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

   o  Pete says something that the AD sitting at the front of the room
      (not near a mic) doesn't like, and the AD says a few sentences but
      doesn't go to the mic.  The chairs try to repeat what the AD says,
      get it only approximately right, but the remote attendees do not
      hear what really was said and therefore cannot comment
      effectively.

   o  Sam only volunteered to be scribe because no one else would do it,
      and isn't sitting close to the mic, and gets tired of getting up
      and down all the time, and doesn't really agree with Robert on a
      particular issue, so Sam doesn't relay a request from Robert.

   o  Rachel cannot join the Jabber room due to a client or server
      software issue.  She finally finds someone else on Jabber who is
      also in the meeting, and gets them to invite her into the room.

A.4.2.  Remotely Presenting

   Some WGs have experimented with remote presentations at regular IETF
   meetings, with quite mixed results.  For some, it works fine: the
   remote presenter speaks, the chair moves the slides forward, and
   questions can be heard easily.  For others, it is a mess: the local
   attendees can't hear the presenter very well, the presenter can't
   hear questions or there is a long delay, and it was not clear when
   the presenter was waiting for input or there was a lag in the sound.

   At a recent meeting that had a remote presenter, a WG had a video
   camera set up at the chairs' desk pointed towards the audience so
   that the presenter could see who was at the mic; this was considered
   to be a great help and a lot friendlier because the presenter could
   address the people at the mic by name.  They also had the presenter's
   head projected on the screen in the room, which led to a lot of jokes
   and discussion of whether seeing the remote presenter caused people
   to pay more attention.

   Remote presenters have commented how difficult it is to set up their
   systems, particularly because they are not sure whether their setup
   is working until the moment they are supposed to be presenting.  Even
   then, the first few minutes of the presentation has a feeling of "is
   this really working?".

A.4.3.  Floor Control

   Although Appendix A.4.1 may seem like it is a bit harsh on WG chairs,
   the current tools do not give them the kind of control over remote
   attendees that they have over local attendees.  The chairs can tell
   what is happening at the mics, but have much less view into what is
   happening on Jabber, even if they are watching the Jabber room.

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 27]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

   Without as much view, they cannot assist the flow of the conversation
   as well.

   o  Carl sees that the Jabber room has an active and useful back-
      channel discussion during Pete's provocative presentation.  Pete
      finishes and asks for questions.  Lee and Len rush to the mic
      line, and it takes Robert a few seconds to get his question into
      the Jabber room and for Sam to go to the mic.  Carl tries to
      prioritize Sam forward in the line, but Len gets upset when he
      does.

   o  Rachel asks a question, but Sam is not going to the mic to relay
      it.  In fact, Sam has pretty much stopped paying attention.  Chris
      cannot do something about the situation without making Sam look
      bad.

   o  Pete has run over time, Robert asks what is supposed to be the
      last question, and Pete doesn't understand what Sam said.  Carl
      cannot tell whether to wait for Robert to rephrase the question or
      whether Robert even heard Pete's response.

   o  In a virtual interim where remote attendees all participate by
      voice, someone can be heard typing / eating / talking loudly to
      someone else.  Carl and Chris try to get that person's attention
      over the audio and Jabber, but to no avail.  The tool being used
      does not have the ability to mute individual attendees, so the
      meeting is disrupted until that person finally realizes that he or
      she is not muted.

   Some of these problems are alleviated by some of the proprietary
   solutions that have been experimented with.  For example, WebEx and
   other systems have a "raise hand" feature where a remote attendee can
   indicate in the application or through a web form that they want to
   speak.

A.5.  Remote Participation at IETF Interim WG Meetings

   Face-to-face interim meetings have many things in common with regular
   IETF meetings, but there are also many significant differences.  For
   most WGs, fewer people attend interim meetings than IETF meetings,
   although those who travel to a face-to-face interim meeting are often
   the more active WG participants.  There may be a larger demand for
   remote participation because people have a harder time justifying
   travel for a single WG meeting than for an IETF meeting, but there
   may also be less demand because people tend to think of interim WG
   meetings as less important than regular IETF meetings..

   Typically, the IETF Secretariat does not control the rooms in which

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 28]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

   face-to-face interims are held, so they have no control over whether
   outgoing audio will be supported, or supported well enough to
   guarantee that remote attendees can hear.

A.5.1.  Face-to-Face Interim Meetings

   Many interim meetings are held face-to-face in conference rooms
   supplied by companies active in the IETF (and, much less often, in
   commercial conference facilities such as hotels).  Because these
   facilities are not administered by the IETF Secretariat, the ability
   to include remote attendees varies widely.  Some facilities can
   distribute the in-room audio over the Internet just fine, while
   others have no or limited abilities to do so.

   For example, a recent face-to-face interim meeting was supposed to be
   open to remote attendees through WebEx, but the sound coming from the
   room was too soft to hear reliably.  Even if a face-to-face interim
   meeting has good facilities for audio and slide presenting, it will
   probably have an experience similar to regular IETF meetings.

A.5.2.  Virtual Interim Meetings

   Because few WGs have virtual interim meetings (those with no face-to-
   face attendees), there is less experience with the tools that are
   commonly used for them.  The IETF has had free use of WebEx for a few
   years, and some WGs have used different tools for audio
   participation.  For example, some virtual interims are held using
   Skype, others with TeamSpeak, and so on.

   So far, the experience with virtual interim meetings has been
   reasonably good, and some people say that it is better than for
   remote attendees at regular IETF meetings and face-to-face interims
   because everyone has the same problems with getting the group's
   attention.  Also, there are no problems getting the in-room audio
   into the RPS because all attendees are using their own computers for
   speaking to the group.

   One of the often-debated aspects of virtual interim meetings is what
   time to have them in order to make them available to all attendees.
   Such scheduling of virtual interim meetings is out of scope for this
   document.  However, it is noted that because many attendees will be
   attending at different times of day and night, no assumption can be
   made that attendees will be at an "office".  This debate also affects
   face-to-face interim meetings because the meeting hosts normally will
   schedule the meeting during business hours at the host company, but
   that might be terribly inconvenient for some WG members.

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 29]
Internet-Draft          Remote Participation Reqs               May 2012

Author's Address

   Paul Hoffman
   VPN Consortium

   Email: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org

Hoffman                 Expires November 8, 2012               [Page 30]