PANEL SESSIONS

Panel 1:
Charging for Quality-of-Service or Managing Service Level Agreements?
Chair: Burkhard Stiller, ETH Zurich, TIK, Switzerland

Panelists:
Jšrn Altmann, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Cupertino, U.S.A.
Nevil Brownlee, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Marcus Brunner, NEC Europe, CCRL, Heidelberg, Germany
Georg Carle, GMD Fokus, Glone, Berlin, Germany
Christian Rad, AT&T, U.S.A.

On the one hand, mechanisms to provide fine-grained Quality-of-Service (QoS) in the Internet have been designed in support of several different networking approaches. Since QoS allows for the introduction of different service levels, a differentiation with respect to their costs is useful. However, a commonly agreed upon manner to apply charging functions has not been found yet. On the other hand, the management of Service Level Agreements (SLA) between Internet Service Providers shows quite a static approach over recent years. Advanced mechanisms for short-term adaptation of bandwidth being exchanged and its quality management are coming up. The panel is open to these topics and shall discuss related open issues: Will negotiated SLAs be sufficient for future network interconnections to provide at least a statistical QoS to applications? Which charging approaches are appropriate for QoS and SLAs? Which service level and quality will be of interest for charging anyway?

Panel 2:
Optical Internetworking: Can We manage the Integration of IP and the Optical Layer?
Chair: Doug Rom, Telcordia Technologies, USA

Panelists:
Bala Rajagopalan, Tellium, USA
Scott Marcus, Genuity, USA
Jim Gambony, Worldcom, USA
Bill Miniscalco, Verizon, USA
Beau Atwater, Telcordia Technologies, USA

Dynamically configurable optical networks are rapidly becoming a commercial reality. These networks appear to be architecturally simpler than the multi-layer, multi-technology networks common today, and thus may offer the promise of simpler operation, or even self-operation. Major industry forums, such as the IETF, OIF, the ODSI Coalition and T1X1, are developing signaling, control and management mechanisms that would enable rapid bandwidth provisioning and new service features within these networks, as well as an increased level of integration between the IP and optical layers. Direct signaling between network layers, combined with greatly increased intelligence within optical network elements, will carry significant implications for the distribution of network management functionality and will impact the role and design of carriersÕ operations support systems.

Panel 3:
Title: SNMP and/or COPS for Configuration Management?
Chair: Bert Wijnen, Lucent Technologies, USA

Panelists:
Diana Rawlins, WorldCom, USA
David Durham, Intel Corp., USA
Steve Waldbusser, Consultant, USA

In the IETF, two working groups are defining methods to do configuration management in the context of policy-based management. The protocols that are intended to be used are SNMP and COPS (COPS-PR) COPS is sort of a "new kid on the block," while SNMP has been around for more than a decade. Even when COPS is used, it is still assumed that SNMP will be used for monitoring, and so SNMP will not go away. So it seems that both protocols will probably be used in future network management, or at least that is what some people currently think. The question on the table is: Do we need both protocols or can we get away with just one?

Panel 4:
Can WBEM Replace SNMP?
Chair: J.P. Martin-Flatin, AT&T Labs Research, USA

Panelists:
Jim Davis, Sun Microsystems, USA
James Hong, POSTECH, Korea
Aiko Pras, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Juergen Schoenwaelder, TU Braunschweig, Germany
Andrea Westerinen, Cisco, USA

SNMP-based management is ubiquitous in the IP world. But it has exposed serious limitations in real life, most notably its lack of scalability, its non-object-oriented information model, and its focus on network element management and low-level instrumentation MIBs. To date, the industry's main response to these concerns is Web-Based Enterprise Management, a new management architecture developed under the umbrella of a large industrial consortium: the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). WBEM is characterized by a distributed architecture, an object-oriented information model, and the integration of network, systems, application, service, and policy-based management. By addressing the main deficiencies perceived in SNMP, can WBEM eventually replace it? Will customers migrate from SNMP to WBEM? Did WBEM learn from SNMP's mistakes? Should WBEM/CIM information modeling start with a clean slate, or should it build on existing models? Will SNMP and WBEM co-exist for many years?

Panel 5:
Will Pervasive Computing be Manageable?
Chair: Morris Sloman, Imperial College, London, UK

Panelists:
Victor Bahl, Microsoft Research, USA
Gaetano Boriello, University of Washington, USA
Richard Graveman, Telcordia, USA
Steven Shafer, Microsoft Research, USA

Computers are being integrated into everything. Domestic appliances such as refrigerators, video recorders or door locks could act as web servers for remote access; your mobile communicator will seamlessly switch between Blue Tooth, wireless LAN or UMTS to choose the most appropriate communication link; wearable computers in smart garments will monitor your medical well-being; your whereabouts will be tracked by integrated GPS or by base stations; intelligent paper with integrated radio will provide a light-weight, unbreakable, high-resolution output media for e-books and e-newspapers and mobile robots will clean streets. Mobile computing technology will enable users to interact with their pervasive computing environment to obtain location dependent information, be entertained, purchase goods or control their local environment. It is obvious that the time and effort to configure a typical web server or workstation will be impractical for the forecasts of 100K pervasive computers per person which will be embedded around our future homes, offices and leisure facilities. There is a need for self-organizing systems that can dynamically adapt to form ad-hoc collaborating groups. This panel will address the issues of whether current security and management mechanisms scale to cater for millions of mobile computers interacting with a pervasive computing environment.