Please see the attached report on the current status of remote participation in the IETF meeting. Please notice at the end a call for potential experiments to explore ways that we can improve remote participation.
Russ Housley
IETF Chair
Bob Hinden
IAOC Chair
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Status of Remote Participation Services in the IETF Today
Russ Housley
1 February 2013
1. Introduction
For more than a decade, the IETF has tried to make it easier for
remote attendees to participate in regular and interim face-to-face
meetings. At the same time, some IETF Working Groups (WGs) have
started to conduct virtual interim meetings.
The IETF's current remote participation system ("RPS") consists of a
outbound real-time audio stream for each session carried to remote
attendees over HTTP, textual multi-user chat carried over XMPP
(commonly called Jabber), and posting of slides prior to the WG
session so that they can be downloaded from the IETF web site.
WebEx and Meetecho are experimentally supported, offering outbound
real-time audio stream synchronized to the slides for the remote
participant. Meetecho displays the Jabber Room on the screen with
slides, and it can also be used to replay the audio and slides from
a recording.
Some WGs also employ ad-hoc tools, such as Skype for two-way audio and
video conferencing and Etherpad for shared document editing.
2. Regular and Interim IETF Meetings
Today, it is easy to remotely observe IETF sessions, but it is very
difficult to participate in discussions. However, several tools are
used to accommodate remote participants. To the greatest extent
possible, these tools rely on IETF or other open standards, and they
embrace both IPv4 and IPv6 without network address translation.
2.1. Audio
Anyone can use a web browser to receive real-time audio of the IETF
meeting sessions. The URLs for the audio are announced in advance,
and the audio recording becomes part of the session proceedings.
It is quite difficult for a remote participant to have their voice
heard in the session. The WebEx and Meetecho systems can accommodate
this with advance setup and testing. However, allowing arbitrary
remote participants to speak does not work well. Connecting to the
audio system in the meeting facility is quite problematic. Further,
a WG Chair would need sophisticated controls to maintain order if
arbitrary remote participants were able to speak at any time.
While WebEx and Meetecho provide some participation management
features, but integration with in-room participation is needed.
2.2. Video
In the 1990s as part of the multicast experiment, multicast video was
made available, but this experiment has ended without evolving into a
production service.
As part of a separate experiment, some sessions use Meetecho to make
video available to anyone with a web browser. WG Chairs must request
this coverage. When Meetecho is used, the URLs are announced in
advance, and the recording becomes part of the session proceedings.
2.3. Multi-User Chat
Multi-user chat (MUC) is used both as a remote participation tool as
well as a communication tool for local attendees, to raise and resolve
issues without intruding on the presentation. Each WG has a Jabber
Room for Multi-User Chat, which employs the XMPP Standards Foundation
(XSF) XEP-045 specification. These Jabber Rooms can can be used at
any time, not just during the IETF meetings. During the session,
remote participants that are listening to the audio are able to ask
questions by typing them in the Jabber Room, and then someone in the
physical room reads the question at the mic. This is called
MUC-to-Mic Relay. The Jabber Room log becomes part of the session
proceedings.
2.4. Slide Sharing
Anyone can use a web browser to fetch the session slides. WG Chairs
are responsible for posting the slides prior to the session, and the
slides (in PDF format) become part of the session proceedings.
When Meetecho is used, the audio or video is presented in a
synchronized fashion along with the jabber room and slides.
2.5. Remote Presenter
When a presenter cannot attend, someone else usually presents their
slides. Some WG Chairs have tried remote presentations using WebEx
and Meetecho. Neither system is ideal, and the audio can include
squeals and echos. Both systems require advance setup and testing.
The projection of the remote presenter's face as well as their slides
seems to improve the experience for the people in the room, but we
have only done this successfully a few times. An extra projector and
screen are needed for this to work well.
2.6. Shared Text Document Editing
In some sessions, there is an attempt to edit a text document with
input from the local and remote attendees. This is most often done
for minutes and proposed WG charter changes. Etherpad is the most
popular tool for this purpose. There has been no attempt to
standardize the tools or protocols used for this function.
2.7. Participant Management
A typical meeting discussion takes place by people that want to speak
forming a line at the microphone, and the presenter replies to each
person in turn. However, sometimes someone will jump the queue to
contribute to a particular discussion point. This mechanism does not
provide a natural means for including remote participants. WebEx and
Meetecho do have a feature for noting a request to speak, but this
is not visible to in-room participants. Hence the burden of managing
remote participation falls to the WG Chair or their designee.
3. Virtual WG Meeting and Leadership Teleconferences
For a virtual meeting, all participants are remote; there is no
physical meeting room. A virtual WG meeting is usually held to tackle
a very small number of open issues. Hence, all of the remote
participation tools must be interactive, permitting any participant to
contribute. The primary tool for these meetings is WebEx, in a
conference-call mode, with no queuing of speakers. The WG Chair's
ability to manage discussion becomes challenging as the size of the
virtual meeting grows.
The teleconferences held by bodies like the IESG, IAOC, and IAB are
somewhat like an virtual WG meeting, except they are held more often
and size of the meeting is constrained. The fact that all
participants know each other facilitates the use of a more informal
process than is typically possible for an open virtual WG meeting.
Again, all of the participants are remote.
3.1. Audio
For virtual WG meeting, access is open, as for regular IETF meetings.
For leadership teleconferences, access is limited to those who are
invited. In recent years, WebEx has been used. WebEx supports
telephone dial-in as well as VoIP for the audio, although it may not
be totally aligned with the IETF standards in this area. Skype and
similar systems can be used to dial into WebEx. Sometimes issues with
an echo take time to resolve, but the quality is generally quite good.
3.2. Video
So far, there has been no need for video. When someone accidentally
turns on the WebEx video, they are asked to turn it off so that
bandwidth is available for quality audio.
3.3. Multi-User Chat
A jabber room or the WebEx built-in chat is used among the
participants. The scribes often find this useful for capturing
accurate minutes.
3.4. Slide Sharing
Slides are often sent by email in advance of the meeting.
WebEx allows the slides and desktop applications to be viewed by the
remote participants. These are controlled by the presenter. The
presenter can be shifted from participant to participant as needed.
3.5. Remote Presenter
WebEx allows the slides to be controlled by the presenter.
3.6. Shared Text Document Editing
Some scribes use Etherpad for minutes. This allows participants to
review and even correct the minutes as the meeting takes place.
4. Improvements
The IETF has always used the Internet to do its work, and remote
participation is no exception. The IETF wants to improve the tools
provided in the RPS tools; a better RPS would allow remote IETF
attendees to participate more effectively.
The IETF is seeking improvements that allow remote participants to
more naturally contribute to in-room discussion and allow meeting
management to integrate local and remote participants into a common
queue.
RPS technologies are not yet mature enough to create a production
service for the IETF, but these technologies are developing rapidly.
The IETF will be conducting more experiments in order to achieve
these improvements as early as possible. To this end, the IAOC is
soliciting suggestions for experiments. If you have suggestions for
experiments, please tell the IAOC:
(1) What hardware and software is needed?
(2) What people resources are needed in the meeting?
(3) What are the expected benefits to the IETF participants?