ccruss@pollux (Russ Hobby) (07/17/90)
Due to the interest in being able to transmit FAX over TCP/IP networks, the Internet Engineering Task Force has formed a new Working Group to evaluate the needs and to come up with methods and protocols to accomplish this task. The WG charter has been included below and includes information on how to be added to the WG maillist. For more information contact the WG Chair. Russ Hobby INTERNET: rdhobby@ucdavis.edu IETF Area Director - Applications BITNET: RDHOBBY@UCDAVIS UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucdavis!rdhobby ----------------------------------------------------------- Network Fax Working Group Chairman: Mark H Needleman/University of California-DLA (mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu) Mailing Lists: General Discussion: netfax@stubbs.ucop.edu To Subscribe: netfax-request@stubbs.ucop.edu Anonymous FTP: /pub/netfax@stubbs.ucop.edu Description of the Working Group: The Network Fax Working group is chartered to explore issues involved with the transmission and receipt of facsimile across TCP/IP networks and to develop recommended standards for facsimile transmission across the Internet. The group is also intended to serve as a coordinating forum for people doing experimentation in this area to attempt to maximise the possibity for interoperability among network fax projects. Among the issues that need to be resolved are what actual protocol or protocols will be used to do the actual data transmission between hosts, architectural models for the integration of fax machines into the existing internet, what types of data encoding should be supported, how IP host address to phone number conversion should be done and associated issues of routing, and develeopment of a gateway system that will allow existing Group 3 and Group 4 fax machines to operate in a network enviornment. It is expected that the output of the working group will be one or more RFC's documenting recommended solutions to the above questions and possibly also describing some actual implementations. The life of the working group is expected to be 18-24 months. It is also hoped th at some fax vendors, as well as the networking community and fax gateway developers, will be brought into the effort. Goals and Milestones: 1). August 1990: First IETF Meeting: review and approve charter making any changes deemed necessary. Refine definition of scope of work to be accomplished and intial set of RFC's to be developed. Begin working on framework for solution. 2). August - March 1991: Continue work on definition of issues and protocols. Work to be conducted on mailing list. 3) March - August 1991: First draft of RFC to be completed. To be discussed at IETF meeting and revised as necessary. Make document and Internet draft. 4) August - December 1991: Continue revisions based on comments received and if ok give to IESG for publication as RFC. 5) January - March 1992: Overlapping with activities listed above may be implementations based on ideas and work done by the working group. If so revise RFC to include knowledge gained from such implementations.