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
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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.