|
Mat, Geoff,
It is my belief that a WG that has all
standards in the 'withdrawn' or 'stablized' state should
be disbanded. There is absolutely no need to keep it in a hibernated
state, because there is no need to maintain a core of experts to handle
interpretation requests.
Regards,
--Paul
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 12:17
PM
Subject: Re: [802SEC] Questions on
Disanding 802.4
Mat-
By the system set up by Don Loughry long ago, there
is a system of several states for an 802 Working
Group:
-
Study Group (pre-PAR, activity approved by the EC, seat at EC but no
vote)
-
Active (Group has PAR and/or active standards, meets at least every
Plenary,
Chair
is a voting member of the
EC)
-
Hibernation (Group has active standards but no open PARs or active Study
Groups,
WG
does not regularly meet at
Plenaries
Chair
is aged out of voting at EC (This is a change from the
original)
"List
of Experts" is maintained via a
reflector.
Chair
and experts reactivate when
revision.)
-
Disbanded (Standards have all been "Withdrawn". WG no longer
exists,
No
representative at the
EC.
Standards
only exist in withdrawn
state.
No
requirements for maintenance or revision.)
The system as currently
constituted has not been adjusted for the recent changes at the SA for
"Stabilized Standards", a system where standards no longer have any
maintenance requirements from the Sponsor but remain active.
When put
in place, it was felt that the above was a reasonable system.
Are you
saying otherwise?
Are you proposing to change it?
Ifso, what do you
propose?
Geoff
At 08:08 PM 8/5/2004 -0700, Sherman,
Matthew J. (US SSA) wrote:
Paul,
It sounds
like everything is handled informally since no standard actually exists
right now. What benefit does a hibernating WG provide to the current
situation? It's primary function in my mind it to provide a core of
experts to field questions on a standard. If it does not perform that
function, then what is the point of keeping it around? I'm sympathetic
to that fact that there still seems to be a user base, but the user base is
not using the WG facility. So it does not seem to fill a
purpose. Am I missing something?
Thanks,
Mat
Matthew Sherman, PhD
Senior Member Technical Staff
BAE SYSTEMS,
CNIR
Office: +1 973.633.6344
email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eastman
[mailto:paul@rfnetworks.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 1:37 PM
To: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
Cc:
STDS-802-SEC@listserv.ieee.org; paul.nikolich@ATT.NET
Subject: Re: Questions on Disanding 802.4
Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA) wrote:
>Dear Paul,
>
>I'm trying to determine how to vote on this
issue. I was hoping you can help me with some questions.
>
>1) Can you provide a
list of the "core of experts" that this group maintains to resolve technical
issues regarding 802.4 standards?
>
Since
our standard was withdrawn in 2001 and our representation in the
EC was terminated, I did not deem it necessary to continue
active
polling of the "core of expertise".
Should it be necessary, I could
probably resurrect
50% or more of the "core of expertise" on very short
notice.
>2) When was the last
time a formal inquiry or request for interpretation was made of this
group?
>
The 802.4
standard was very well written. The last action of the 802.4
group was to suggest that its 802.4L study group reform as
802.11.
There were no problems, resolved or
otherwise, with the standard
published jointly as
ISO/IEC 8802-4 (ANSI/IEEE Std. 802.4) Token Passing
Bus 1990
>3) How often do you
receive informal inquiries concerning 802.4?
>
I personally have continued to receive a
couple of inquiries a year,
mostly from academic
sources. In the latest inquiry we even
investigated and gave a rough order of magnitude quote on the
resurrection of both MAC and PHY layers for a Department of
Homeland
Security application.
>4) Off hand, can you identify any specific users of the
technology? How big (in terms of number of nodes) do you estimate the
total current deployment is?
>
There is
still a number of places where the carrier band version of
802.4 is being used. Most of the equipment is being shipped
into Japan
through Marubun, an importing company,
and to various companies in
India. There is
even some product being sold to Moore Products, a
Seimens company located in Pennsylvania. Specifically,
Hitachi,
Furukawa Electric, Yokagawa and possibly
Toyota are Japanese companies
with active
systems
>5) What is the likelihood of
any new nodes being added?
>
The answers to item 4 indicate where additional nodes are still being
added.
>6) Is anyone actually building
equipment, as opposed to just using equipment that is still around?
>
Relcom, Maris Graube's company
(Maris was the first chair of the 802
EC), is still
manufacturing many nodes per year for the carrierband PHY.
My company, RF Networks, is still capable but not manufacturing
nodes
for the broadband PHY.
>Thanks in advance for any answers you can provide. Finally,
in the quote Paul Nikolich provided, what did you mean by "old standards
should have the right to protect their legacy"? I'm not sure
understand what you mean by this.
>
A lot
of work was done to produce an extremely stable standard, both MAC
and PHY. Should some future work decide to do some
work using a token
bus architecture, I would hope
that wheels would not be reinvented and
that the
pioneers of the work would get some acknowledgment.
>Best Regards,
>
>Mat
>
>
>
>
>
>Matthew Sherman,
PhD
>Senior Member Technical Staff
>BAE SYSTEMS, CNIR
>Office:
+1 973.633.6344
>email:
matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
==================================================
Paul Eastman
RF Networks,
Inc.
10201 N. 21st Avenue, Unit 9
Phoenix, AZ 85021
(602) 861-3652
Fax: (602) 861-0251
"Worrying about what's right is always more
important than worrying about who's right."
==================================================
----------
This email is sent
from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is
maintained by Listserv. ---------- This email is sent from
the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is maintained by
Listserv.
----------
This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.
|