A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Internet Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following description was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by October 13. Internet and Management Support for Storage (imss) -------------------------------------------------- Current Status: Proposed Working Group Description of Working Group: Fibre Channel is a high speed network technology primarily used for storage networking (i.e., Storage Area Networks [SANs]). Two important aspects of Fibre Channel interact with the Internet: - Fibre Channel can encapsulate and carry IP protocol traffic - Fibre Channel devices can be managed via SNMP The Internet and Management Support for Storage WG (imss) is chartered to address two areas, specifically: - IPv4 over Fibre Channel has been specified in RFC 2625. A corresponding specification for IPv6 is needed. - An initial Fibre Channel Management MIB has been developed by the IP Storage (ips) WG; extensions are needed to encompass management of additional aspects of Fibre Channel, such as zoning. In the future, other storage related MIBs for other storage transports such as Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or SCSI command specific MIBs may be proposed. As Fibre Channel standardization is handled by the INCITS T11 Technical Committee (http://www.t11.org), a close working relationship with T11 is essential to the WG's success. In particular: - The IPv6 over Fibre Channel specification will be based on draft-desanti-ipv6-over-fibre-channel-02.txt. This draft was originally developed within a T11 study group and T11 has officially recommended this draft to the IETF. - The WG will not standardize management of Fibre Channel features ahead of their incorporation into appropriate T11 Fibre Channel standards. - The WG will work closely with T11, specifically Task Group T11.5, on the functionality and structure of the MIBs it develops for management of Fibre Channel.