Subject: RE: [ipfix-eval] Discussion of Candidate Protocols

From: Mark Farmer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:31:54 -0400

Just a quick word of support from the billing vendor community. Amdocs was a founding member of the IPDR organization and joined two years ago to contribute to the development of an open-standard for usage collection. We did this because of the proprietary record formats produced by every network element we were required to interface to which added time to integration and cost to the customer for implementations. 

The largest players in the billing vendor community have joined this organization and as of the recent compliance testing, IPDR has been implemented in the products of vendors representing 90% of the billing market place with also a majority of the mediation vendors certified as well. It IS the standard for billing record formats for IP services. The standard has also been implemented in a number of large telecommunications carriers and is in production today with several more coming. Until the recent 3.x specification was introduced it was not really ready for prime time. With 3.x and the use of XDR, we are satisfied that it provides compression levels over the verbose XML that satisfy performance requirements along with the extensive benefits of structure and extensibility that Jeff Meyer has already mentioned. 

We are very interested in being able to move IPDR from it's current file based protocols to a full real-time streaming model to meet requirements in pre-paid services and other business models that require immediate delivery of billing information to our systems. I would like to voice the support of our organization for adopting IPDR into the IPFIX work to leverage the adoption that has already taken place further.

Mark Farmer
Director Product Marketing
Amdocs 

http://www.amdocs.com

From: Aron Heintz ([email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]?subject=RE:%20[ipfix-eval]%20Discussion%20of%20Candidate%20Protocols>)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 17:47:22 CDT 
*	Next message: Reinaldo Penno: "RE: Variable Length Fields : was RE: [ipfix-eval] RE: Discussion of C andidate Protocols - data model; broadcast vs reliable" <1268.html> 
*	Previous message: Simon Leinen: "[ipfix-eval] Simon's evaluation draft contribution" <1266.html> 
*	Maybe reply: Aron Heintz: "RE: [ipfix-eval] Discussion of Candidate Protocols" <1154.html> 
	Following are comments on openness and likelihood of adoption (some given
in relative ignorance of your technical problem domain - sorry).

	It seems to me that NDM-U wins the "free, open, and widely deployed" crown
hands down.  NDM-U 3.1 is completely free and publicly available (see
below).  By the end of this year, more than 70% of the mediation and billing
packages (by market share) will have proven NDM-U 3.1 *real-world*
interoperability.

	What could be more important than this?  It appears that some of you are
debating minor technical points when you might approach the question "Who is
going to receive the data we are sending?  How do they want to see it?"
Technologies do not win by virtue of their theoretical perfection.  The OSI
model is close to theoretical perfection.  TCP/IP is not.

	Do you want to attach yourself to a technology created, supported, and
propagated by a single vendor?  If not, narrow your field to NDM-U vs.
Diameter.  You will also find that NDM-U technology *is* close to
perfection, thanks to 40+ vendors and service provider heavyweights putting
their combined engineering talent into the design process.

	IPDR Organization is 100% open to any entity (person or corporation) who
wishes to participate.  In three years, 60+ vendors have chosen to do so,
representing most of the packages you might send IPFIX records to.  Members
requested the legal structure of a non-profit with an IPR-membership
agreement for two purposes:

	a) Provide a safe environment for technical exchange. Engineers can lay
down competitive concerns to be completely open and unconcerned with IPR and
legal impediments.  IPR checks can safely happen after the engineering
collaboration occurs, so there is no development time is lost to a-priori
legal queries.
	b) To harness members' financial contributions towards more rapid progress.

	All members confirm that the IPR they contribute is free and clear of
obligations for the Organization and therefore available for free public
distribution.  The exact IPR agreement can be found on the IPDR web site,
but highlights include:

"2.1	Subject to the provisions of Section 5 of this Agreement, upon
contribution of a Contributed Document to the Group, Member hereby grants to
the Group, the other Members and the public, a worldwide, irrevocable,
non-exclusive, royalty free license to the Contributed Document, to use,
copy, execute, reproduce, modify, translate, prepare derivative works in the
Group's name based upon all or any portion thereof, disclose, distribute,
(other than for profit), and otherwise deal with such Contributed Document.

9.1	Either Party may terminate the Agreement without cause. Upon such
termination, Member shall continue to perform in accordance with the
Agreement to the extent that Member has: (1) relinquished any or all of its
rights, including without limitation any and all patent rights; and (2)
granted the Group, the public domain or others, any rights under the
Agreement, including without limitation, any and all licenses."

	As a result of this structure, IPDR Members have made incredible progress
in three years, include multiple revisions and finally a mature version of a
specification that has been *proven* by interoperability amongst a dozen
packages.  I challenge you to find another (business systems) standard that
has gone from conception to widespread *industrial* practice so fast.

	IPDR Organization is completely commited to open flow of information.  The
top two value statements confirmed by the Board are: 1 - Focus direction
through consensus 2 - Open gathering of ideas and information.

	Jeff Meyer, as Chair of the Protocols Working group, has my highest
confidence in representing NDM-U 3.1 as a technology.  NDM-U 3.1 and all
associated IPR has been released to the public for royalty-free use and
redistribution.  David (below) mentions the need to submit IPR forms - I can
have those processed as necessary. I would expect any additional work that
is done within IPFIX and extends NDM-U 3.1 to be subject to the normal IETF
rules and restrictions.

Aron Heintz
President, IPDR Organization

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Meyer [mailto:[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]?subject=RE:%20[ipfix-eval]%20Discussion%20of%20Candidate%20Protocols>]
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 19:12
To: Harrington, David; [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]?subject=RE:%20[ipfix-eval]%20Discussion%20of%20Candidate%20Protocols>; Aron Heintz
Subject: Re: [ipfix-eval] Discussion of Candidate Protocols

David,

   I believe the legal agreement signed by IPDR members
passes the rights to IPDR itself.  IPDR's board has
approved this submission activity.

   I'll forward this onto the IPDR President for further
clarification.

-- Jeff

....snip

end

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From: Benoit Claise <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 23:49:23 +0200

Mark,

>The largest players in the billing vendor community have joined this organization and as of the recent compliance testing, IPDR has been implemented in the products of vendors representing 90% of the billing market place with also a majority of the mediation vendors certified as well. It IS the standard for billing record formats for IP services. 
>
Maybe between the mediation device(s)  and billing application(s)!
But on how many Network Element vendors is it deployed today?
This remarks relates to David Harrington's comment (and the follow up 
from Reinaldo): "Given two technically comparable candidates, we should 
consider the likelihood that vendors will ship the protocol in their 
devices and that vendors' customers will deploy the functionality in 
their networks." 

As a side note, billing is just one aspsect of IPFIX

Regards, Benoit.

>The standard has also been implemented in a number of large telecommunications carriers and is in production today with several more coming. Until the recent 3.x specification was introduced it was not really ready for prime time. With 3.x and the use of XDR, we are satisfied that it provides compression levels over the verbose XML that satisfy performance requirements along with the extensive benefits of structure and extensibility that Jeff Meyer has already mentioned. 
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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