Point-to-point Protocol Work Group
Chairpersons:  Russ Hobby/UC Davis and Drew Perkins/CMU




CURRENT MEETING REPORT
Reported by Russ Hobby



ATTENDEES


       1. Cohen, Danny/cohen@isi.edu

       2. Coltun, Rob/rcoltun@trantor.umd.edu

       3. Deboo, Farokh/fjd@bridge2.esd.3com.com

       4. Edwards, David/dle@cisco.com

       5. Fair, Erik/fair@apple.com

       6. Farinacci, Dino/dino@bridge2.3com.com

       7. Fox, Craig/foxcj@nsco.network.com

       8. Gross, Phill/pgross@nri.reston.va.us

       9. Hobby, Russ/rdhobby@ucdavis.edu

      10. Hollingsworth, Greg/gregh@gateway.mitre.org

      11. Jolitz, William/william@ernie.berkeley.edu

      12. Kaufman, Dave/dek@proteon.com

      13. Khanna, Raman/khanna@jessica.stanford.edu

      14. Kullberg, Alan/akullberg@bbn.com

      15. LoVerso, John R./loverso@xylogics.com

      16. Lottor, Mark/mkl@sri-nic.arpa

      17. Maas, Andy/maas@jessica.stanford.edu

      18. Mamakos, Louis A./louie@trantor.umd.edu

      19. McKenney, Paul E./mckenney@sri.com

      20. Melohn, Bill/melohn@sun.com

      21. Merritt, Don/don@brl.mil

      22. Natalie, Ron/ron@rutgers.edu

      23. Opalka, Zbigniew/zopalka@bbn.com

      24. Perkins, Drew /ddp@andrew.cmu.edu

      25. Petry, Mike/petry@trantor.umd.edu

      26. Satz, Greg/satz@cisco.com

      27. St.  Johns, Mike/stjohns@beast.ddn.mil

      28. Tsai, Howard/hst@mtuxo.att.com

      29. Waldfogel, Asher/wellflt!awaldfog


MINUTES

The PPP WG met on July 24, 25 and 26 at the IETF meeting at Stanford.
Review of the latest draft of the specifications required discussion on the
following areas:


  1. An "Executive Summary" needs to be written for the beginning.

  2. The PPP document should have less details of the HDLC protocol and have
     references to the appropriate documents on HDLC. The PPP document
     should include text of specifications that are unique to the PPP
     protocol application of HDLC.

  3. All discussion of LAPB will be dropped from the document.  The Enable
     LAPB option will also be removed.

  4. There was again discussion of what protocol numbers to use, the
     ethernet numbers or new numbers.  It was decided to let Jon Postel make
     the final decision with arguments presented for each case.

  5. There was clarification of the wording in steps 3 and 4 of the
     description of the LCP sequence.

  6. The Configure Request Request packet and the Character Generator
     Request/Reply packets were determined to be unnecessary and would be
     dropped.

  7. A better description of Async Character Mapping is needed and how it
     relates to sync lines.


Many other minor editing changes were suggested and will be incorporated in
the next draft.

The state diagram of the configuration exchange was examined in detail and
the final form will be written up.

There was a lengthy discussion on the best method for doing keepalives.  The
final conclusion was that a keep-alive request would be sent to the remote
end containing the number of packets sent.  The remote end would send a

keep-alive reply containing the difference in the number of packets sent and
the number of packets received.  Policy on when to take the line down could

be determined at each end independently based on the information provided by
the keep-alive packets.  A more detailed description of the mechanism will
be written.

There was discussion on what is the minimal implementation of PPP. The
conclusion was:  the minimum would be LCP configuration exchange with no
options included.  This would be followed by an IP configuration exchange
with no options.  The line would then be ready for IP traffic.

Areas in need of further work are:


   o Stronger Authentication Protocols

   o Definition of encryption methods

   o Stronger IP address exchange methods

   o Definition of the use of other high level protocols


The group plans to have a document with the agreed specifications finalized
in two weeks followed with a video conference for verification of the text.