Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) WG -- Dec 9, 1998
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Notes taken by Lee Farrell.
Carl-Uno Manros led the meeting. Around 40 people attended, only four of
which were regular IPP WG members. Many people from the Internet Fax group
were present.
The group's mail list and website address are:
* ipp at pwg.org
* www.pwg.org/ipp
Carl-Uno presented the planned agenda topics:
* IPP documents
* IFax over IPP
* IPP security
1 IPP Documents
Carl-Uno explained that the Printer Working Group members have several
implementations of IPP as defined in the latest versions of the Working
Group's
documents.
They have been submitted for acceptance as Informational RFCs, and
collectively define IPPv1.0:
* draft-ietf-ipp-req-03.txt
* draft-ietf-ipp-req-rat-04.txt
* draft-ietf-ipp-req-mod-11.txt
* draft-ietf-ipp-req-pro-07.txt
* draft-ietf-ipp-req-lpd-ipp-map-05.txt
Carl-Uno reported that the Application Area Director had agreed to
propose to the IESG that the documents be progressed as Informational RFCs
- primarily to document the existing implementations. Other features will
be required before the documents will be submitted for standards track.
Another document that the group has written is an Implementor's Guide,
-implementers-guide-00.txt. It is primarily being written to offer hints
and/or advice on topics that are relevant to people developing
implementations.
This document will be further updated and then sent to the IESG after
WG review and last call.
The document that describes a proposed IPP URL scheme is
draft-ietf-ipp-scheme-00.txt.
Keith Moore said that the IESG will be reviewing the documents "soon." He
admitted that he has not yet reviewed them, and will be traveling or on
vacation for the rest of this year. [He did not seem to be very confident
in predicting when the documents might actually get issued (or accepted?)
as Informational RFCs.]
>Randy Turner asked if the work on "IPP New Version" should come from a new
Working Group. Keith Moore suggested that any WG that has existed longer
than 18 months should consider closing down their activity-and consider
developing a different Charter for subsequent WG activity.
2 IPP Security
Randy Turner presented the following information pertaining to IPP
Security methods:
* Existing methods available as IPPv1.0 security options
* HTTPS (SSL3)
* HTTP DIGEST
* HTTP BASIC
* Proposed "IPP New Version" security method: TLS via:
* SASL
* HTTP Upgrade Header
a possible mechanism could involve selection via URL parameters,
e.g. ipp://printer.com/SECURITY="TLS"/...
One of the attendees said that having parameters in the URL defeats the
whole purpose of having a unique URL scheme.
There was some discussion about the number of "round trip" communications
needed for different security alternatives.
3 IFax over IPP
Richard Shockey presented his document, draft-shockey-ipp2ifax.01.txt,
that discusses IPP as an Internet Fax Service. The mail list on the
subject is: ifx at pxw.org. (To subscribe, send an e-mail message to
majordomo at pwg.org with a message body of: "subscribe ifx <your e-mail
address>".)
At a high level of abstraction, one could say that Fax is similar to
remote printing. IPP meets the test of a facsimile service.
Benefits
* IPP is realtime... the "look and feel" traditional Fax
* Unrestricted output quality
* Say goodbye to your phone company-local exchange carrier line
charges are high for Fax
* Never busy Fax-although low end devices...
* ...
What needs to be done to IPP?
* Satisfy legal and "custom and practice" requirements
* TIME/DATE logging of transactions by client and server locally for
receipt and ack
* Fax profile for IPP client behavior
* watermarking
* cover page
* Sender identity exchange? (CSID vs. vCard)
* Gateway to GSTN-FAX and/or RFC 2305-IFax
* attribute mapping - TIFF type
* attribute definitions - Relay Mode
* Other
* Automatic Printer Driver Download
* Security
* IPP scheme
IPP Server as a Gateway
* Redirection server
* open server-anyone can send
* redirection address known by server
* Relay server
* closed server-access by Digest Auth
* redirection address passed on wire by IPP attributes to be defined
Recommendations: IPP Action Items
* Document goals and objectives baseline with scenarios
* Document IPP client/server profiles
* Document IPP to IFax/Fax attributes and mappings
* Investigate which portions of RFC 2301 should be used as
requirements
* Continue work on IPP Enhanced Notifications-output/redirection
* Recruit IFax WG members
4 Audience Comments
Several comments involved explanation of either the existing Fax
requirements or IPP capability.
Herman Silbiger claimed that the two major differences between IFax and
IPP are that IFax:
* uses an (unalterable) image description of a document
* contains sender id information
Carl-Uno mentioned that in a conference organized by the Multifunction
Peripheral Association (MFPA) considerable interest was shown in IFax
over IPP because vendors anticipate the need to implement both IPP and
IFax capability within multifunction peripheral devices.
There were various philosophical statements and opinions about how society
treats faxed messages.
Herman believes there wouldn't be any objection from the ITU world if IPP
"encroaches into Fax transmission."
The IPP WG will be meeting in San Diego next week, and people are
encouraged to attend if they want to help work on this effort.
Keith Moore suggested that a separate IETF WG could be chartered to work
on the integration of IPP and IFax. Several people indicated that they are
willing to participate in such a Working Group. We should plan to hold a
"Birds of a Feather" (BOF) session during the next IETF meeting.
-----
Carl-Uno Manros
Chair of IETF WG on IPP
Principal Engineer - Advanced Printing Standards - Xerox Corporation
701 S. Aviation Blvd., El Segundo, CA, M/S: ESAE-231
Phone +1-310-333 8273, Fax +1-310-333 5514
Email: manros at cp10.es.xerox.com