Creation of the Real-time Applications and Infrastructure (RAI) Area The IESG is grateful for the useful comments received on the proposal to create an RAI Area (see http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg01566.html for the original proposal). After integrating those comments and carefully considering the arguments both in favour and against, the IESG has decided to create the new area starting in March 2006 and has duly informed the NomCom Chair. The revised area description is attached below. One concern expressed was about the impact of increasing the number of Area Directors on the IESG's efficiency. The IESG takes this concern seriously and we intend soon to discuss operational and organisational changes to deal with it. Brian Carpenter for the IESG ----------------------------------------------- Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area: The Real-Time Applications and Infrastructure Area develops protocols and architectures for delay-sensitive interpersonal communications Work in this area serves an industry whose applications and services include voice and video over IP, instant messaging and presence. These applications and services are "real-time" in the sense set out first in RFC 1889. The RAI Area is seeded with existing working groups from the Transport and Applications Areas: AVT, ECRIT, ENUM, GEOPRIV, IEPREP, IPTEL, MEGACO, MMUSIC, SIGTRAN, SIMPLE, SIP, SIPPING, SPEECHSC, and XCON. A good rule of thumb for the incorporation of new work into RAI, as opposed to Transport or Applications, is that the work in question is needed to support real-time interpersonal communication. The infrastructure applications needed to support such communications are explicitly in scope, as are discussions of operational concerns specific to this area. For example, work might relate to presence services, to session signaling protocols and emergency call routing solutions, or to work on the "layer five" issues for Internet telephony. Like all areas of the IETF, the RAI Area draws on the work of numerous other areas, and as such there can be no neat mathematical boundaries delineating RAI's work from the rest of the IETF. The new area will allow an existing community within the IETF to solidify its vision and to benefit from increased institutional support. --- _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
