The IEEE 802.1™ Working Group This Working Group develops standards and recommended practices for the overall IEEE 802 LAN/MAN architecture; enables internetworking among IEEE 802 LANs and MANs, predominantly in the form of Bridging and VLAN standards; and creates advanced protocol layers.<http://www.ieee802.org/1/>

 

Revision of IEEE Std 802.1X
IEEE P802.1X-REV, the revision draft for IEEE 802.1X, is currently undergoing its Sponsor Ballot; it is expected that comments received in the course of the ballot will be reviewed at the May interim meeting of 802.1. It is likely that, following a recirculation ballot during the May/June timeframe, the project will be submitted for final approval around the middle of 2004.

Extension to IEEE 803 VLAN Bridging Technology to Support Service Provision
 Work under the PAR, IEEE P802.1ad, "Provider Bridges," seeks to define the technology needed to support IEEE 802 VLAN technology in service provision environments. Work is still under way to revise the Draft 2.0 text to address comments received. In particular, considerable progress was made during the March meeting with regard to developing a “drop precedence” mechanism.

Revision of IEEE 802.1D on Media Access Control (MAC) Bridges
The revision of the 802.1D MAC Bridges standard has now been approved by the Standards Board and publication of the 2004 revision of the standard should be expected within the next two months.

Discovery Protocol
 P802.1AB was issued for a Working Group recirculation ballot in February; the next draft will be issued for a second Working Group recirculation ballot, with the expectation that it will then be submitted for Sponsor ballot in the April/May timeframe.

MAC Security
This project, P802.1AE, covers the work necessary to define a secure frame format for LAN technologies. It is expected that the next draft of this project will be issued for a second Task Group ballot in April/May.

”Key Agreement”
This project, P802.1AF,
extends IEEE Std 802.1X (Port-based Network Access Control) to establish security associations for 802.1AE MAC Security, and provide media access method independent association discovery. The March meeting of 802.1 saw considerable progress in developing the technical basis of the architecture and protocols that will be defined in this project.

P802b has been approved
P802b, which is an extension to Standard 802, the Overview and Architecture standard, to define registration procedures for Object Identifiers, has now been approved by the Standards Board; publication is expected during April.

 Connectivity Fault Management PAR
The PAR for Connectivity Fault Management was approved to be forwarded for consideration by the Standards Board as a new project. This piece of work has been prompted by the needs of supporting the “Provider Bridging” (P802.1ad) work; however, it is anticipated that the tools developed as part of this project will be of utility in more conventional LAN installations as well.

Upcoming IEEE 802.1 Meetings:
* 17-20 May 2004, Interim Meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
* 12-16 July 2004 -- IEEE Plenary Meeting in Portland, OR, USA

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