IEEE P802.11 - TASK GROUP T - MEETING UPDATE:


Status of Project IEEE 802.11 Task Group T

Recommended Practice for Evaluation of 802.11 Wireless Performance


May 2008

11-08/0543r1, meeting slides
11-08/0544r0, closing report
11-08/0597r0, meeting minutes
11-07/0659r25, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for May 2008:

Objectives for the May meeting were:

·          TG Elections

·          Discuss the future of the task group

Progress

The TG re-affirmed Neeraj Sharma as the TGT Chair. The TG also re-affirmed Tom Alexander as the Technical Editor.

The TG passed a motion to withdraw the PAR 802.11.2 for the following reasons:

·          Participation in the TG has been low

·          TGT has not converged on some key controversial issues with the draft

·          Several of the participants who started the TG have moved on.

The TG adjourned once the motion was passed for PAR withdrawal. The motion was brought to the WG and the motion passed.

Plans for July Meeting

The task group will not meet in July nor hold any teleconferences between now and July.

 


March 2008

11-08/0285r1, meeting slides
11-08/0286r0, closing report
11-08/0353r0, meeting minutes
11-07/0659r25, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for March 2008:

Objectives for the March meeting were:

o       Continue resolving comments on LB 101

o       Hear proposals resolving comments

o       Discuss the future of the task group

Progress

New Draft 1.01 was released. This draft incorporates resolution of ~ 99% of the editorial and ~ 30% of the technical comments from LB 101. The group heard two proposals resolving comments from LB 101 and both the proposals were accepted by the group. The group spent some time discussing the future of the task group as the progress has been slow. As several initial participants of the task group have moved on, the participation within the group has been low. Also the group has not yet converged on some of the key controversial issues within the draft. The group decided to come up with the next steps between now and the May meeting.

During this meeting, 74 technical comments were resolved. By end of the March meeting, the status of the comment resolution is as follows:

Overall Summary

Total

Resolved

Technical/MT Comments:

1451

34.1%

Editorial Comments:

434

99.5%

Total Comments:

1885

-

No changes were made to the process milestones as shown at: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm.

Plans for May Meeting

The plans for May meeting are to close on the controversial issues and continue resolving LB 101 comments.

Teleconference Goals

The number of teleconferences planned is as follows:

o       Dates: 4/17/08 and 5/01/08

o       Time: Thursday’s 12 noon ET (USA)

An announcement of the teleconference will be made no later than the Wednesday before the teleconference with all the details.


January 2008

11-08/0061r1, meeting slides
11-08/0062r0, closing report
11-08/0126r0, meeting minutes
11-07/0659r22, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for January 2008:

Objectives for the January meeting were:

Progress

TGT met for 16 hours during the week. The group heard one proposal resolving comments from LB 101 though the proposal was not put to motion. During this meeting, 70 technical comments were resolved. Not very significant progress was made by the group during this meeting in part due to low attendance. By end of the January meeting, the status of the comment resolution is as follows:

Overall Summary

Total

% Resolved

Technical/MT Comments:

1451

28

Editorial Comments:

434

99.5%

Total Comments:

1885

-

The group took a straw poll and decided not to hold an ad-hoc meeting between the January 2008 and the March 2008 sessions as the group is still trying to reach consensus on some of the core issues with the current draft.

Changes were made to the process milestones to reflect slow progress made by the task group as shown at: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm.

The expected first recirculation was pushed out to May’08 timeframe. To expedite comment resolution, several offline discussions are planned prior to the March meeting in an effort to bring consensus within the task group.

Plans for March

The plans for March meeting are to continue resolving LB 101 comments and hear comment resolution proposals.

Teleconference Goals

The number of teleconferences planned was reduced to two one hour teleconferences:

·          Dates: 2/14/08 and 3/13/08

·          Time: Thursday’s 12 noon ET (USA)

The group felt it was more important to have offline discussion on the comment resolution.

During the teleconferences, the plan is to continue going through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off in the January meeting and hear presentations resolving comments. During the teleconferences, we will be discussing the comments and contributions and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. The group will need to affirm such resolutions during the March meeting.

An announcement of the teleconference will be made no later than the Wednesday before the teleconference with all the details.


November 2007

11-07/2740r1, meeting slides
11-07/2741r0, closing report
11-07/2858r0, meeting minutes
11-07/0659r19, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for November 2007:

Objectives for the November meeting were:

Progress

TGT met for 14 hours during the week. The group heard 5 proposals resolving comments from LB 101. Altogether the group resolved 9% of technical comments during the week. Based on the 802.11 Common Editorial Comment Resolution Process (Doc: 11-07-2050-00-0000), 432 Editorial comments were also resolved.

The task group continued to work on resolving comments and improving its Draft in preparation to go out for a Letter Ballot. By end of the November meeting, the status of the comment resolution is as follows:

 

Overall Summary

Total

% Closed

Technical Comments

1451

20%

Editorial Comments

434

99.5

Total Comments

1885

-

 

Based on a straw poll, the group decided not to hold an ad-hoc meeting between the November 2007 session and the January 2007 session as the group is still trying to reach consensus on some of the core issues with the current draft.

Since the progress made by the task group in resolving comments has been slow, changes were made to the process milestones as shown at: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm.

The expected first recirculation was pushed out from January’08 time frame to March’08 timeframe. The key contention sub clauses for the task group have been Over-the-Air Performance and Video Performance.  Unless the task group can successfully come to consensus on these two topics, going to letter ballot would be difficult. Lot of offline efforts are being made to bring consensus within the task group.

Plans for January

The plans for January meeting are to continue resolving LB 101 comments and hear comment resolution proposals.

Teleconference Goals

The group asked to plan for biweekly one hour teleconferences starting November 29, 2007.

·        Dates: 11/29/07, 12/13/07, 12/27/07, and 1/10/08

·        Time: Thursday’s 12 noon ET (USA)

Plan is to continue going through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off in the November meeting and hear presentations resolving comments. During the teleconferences, we will be discussing the comments and contributions and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. The group will need to affirm such resolutions during the January meeting.

An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon with all the teleconference details.


September 2007

11-07/2390r1, meeting slides
11-07/2391r0, closing report
11-07/2582r0, meeting minutes
11-07/0659r14, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for September 2007:

Objectives for the September meeting were:

Progress

TGT met for 14 hours during the week. The group heard 5 proposals resolving comments from LB 101. Altogether the group resolved 118 technical comments. Based on the 802.11 Common Editorial Comment Resolution Process (Doc: 11-07-2050-00-0000), the group agreed on the classification of all the comments from LB 101 as T or E.

Based on a straw poll, the group decided not to hold an ad-hoc meeting between the September 2007 session and the November 2007 session as the group is still trying to reach consensus on some of the core issues with the current draft. No changes were made to the process milestones.

Plans for November

The plans for November meeting are to continue resolving LB 101 comments and hear comment resolution proposals.

Teleconference Goals

The group asked to plan for biweekly one hour teleconferences starting October 4, 2007.

·          Dates: 10/04/07, 10/18/07, and 11/01/07

·          Time: Thursday’s 12 noon ET (USA)

Plan is to continue going through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off in the September meeting and hear presentations resolving comments. During the teleconferences, we will be discussing the comments and contributions and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. The group will need to affirm such resolutions during the November meeting.

An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon with all the teleconference details.


July 2007

11-07/2082r2, meeting slides
11-07/2261r1, closing report
11-07/2168r0, ad-hoc meeting minutes
11-07/2170r0, meeting minutes
11-07/0659r10, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for July 2007:

Objectives for the July meeting were:

·         Continue resolving comments on LB 101

·         Hear proposals resolving comments

Progress

TGT met for 13 hours (3 ad-hoc and 10 regular hours) during the week. The group heard 8 proposals resolving comments from LB 101. Altogether the group resolved 83 technical comments and several other comments were assigned to volunteers. Since there are several controversial comments, the group did not progress as much as was expected.

Based on the straw poll, the group decided not to hold an ad-hoc meeting between the July 2007 session and the September 2007 session. We also revised our process milestone during the week. In recognition that there is lot of work to be done on comment resolution, we revised our plan to go to first recirculation Letter Ballot from after the November’s meeting to after January’s meeting.

Plans for September

The plans for September are to continue resolving LB 101 comments and hear comment resolution proposals.

Teleconference Goals

The group asked to plan for biweekly one hour teleconferences starting August 2, 2007.

§          Dates: 8/2/07, 8/16/07, 8/30/07, and 9/13/07

§          Time: Thursday’s 12 noon ET (USA)

Plan is to continue going through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off in the July meeting and hear presentations resolving comments. During the teleconferences, we will be discussing the comments and contributions and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. The group will need to affirm such resolutions during the September meeting.

An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon with all the teleconference details.


May 2007

11-07/0658r2, meeting slides
11-07/0810r0, closing report
11-07/0798r0, meeting minutes, or latest revision
11-07/0659r4, Letter Ballot 101 comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for May 2007:

Objectives for the May meeting were:

·         Discuss, understand, and agree on comment resolution process

·         Commence on resolving comments from Letter Ballot 101

Progress

TGT met for 14 regular hours during the week. Since the Letter Ballot 101 did not close till Wednesday, the group decided not to commence comment resolution until after the close of the Letter Ballot. Main focus of the group prior to close of the Letter Ballot was on setting up a process for comment resolution. Group discussed two of the approaches and settled on one of them. After the Letter Ballot closed, the group commenced comment resolution.

We received a total of 1,885 comments from Letter Ballot 101 out of which 206 are Editorial, 1514 are Technical, and 165 are Minor Technical. So far, 246 of the comments have been identified as duplicates.

We also revised our process milestone during the week. In recognition that we received a total of 1,885 comments and there is lot of work to do on comment resolution, we revised our plan to go to first recirculation Letter Ballot from after the September’s meeting to after November’s meeting.

Plans for July

The plans for July are to continue resolving Letter Ballot 101 comments and hear comment resolution proposals.

Teleconference Goals

The group asked to plan for biweekly teleconferences starting May 31.

§          Dates: 5/31/07, 6/14/07, 6/28/07, and 7/12/07

§          Time: 12 noon ET (USA)

Plan is to go through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off in the May meeting. Hope is that people will bring contributions that resolve several of the comments. During the teleconferences, we can discuss the comments and contributions and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. Since the decisions made during the teleconferences do not have the full force of a motion, we will need to affirm such resolutions during the July meeting.

An announcement of the telecom will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecom with all the teleconference details.


March 2007

11-07/0321r1, meeting slides
11-07/0322r0, closing report
11-07/0501r0, meeting minutes, or latest revision
11-06/0872r25, most recent comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for March 2007:

Objectives for the March meeting were:

·         Task Group recommendation for new chair

·         Hear presentations to resolve the remaining deferred comments

·         Approve any technical changes to the draft arising from previous teleconferences

·         Decide whether draft is technically complete and ready for balloting

·         Motion to recommend the draft be forwarded to Letter Ballot

Progress

TGT met for 10 regular + 1.5 ad hoc hours during the week. We heard six proposals for resolving remaining deferred comments; this allowed us to reduce the number of unresolved comments to approximately ten. At this point, with no further proposals for resolving the remaining comments, we took up each comment in turn, and followed the procedure used during the London meeting of taking a straw poll on each comment to determine the groups opinion on whether these remaining comments needed to be resolved before going to Letter Ballot.

These straw polls did not give a clear enough indication for what to do (see 11-06/872r25 for the actual results in column J of the Master tab). So, the group again went over each remaining comment and motioned and voted to decline the comment.

This process ended up declining each comment. At this point, a motion was made to direct the editor to incorporate all the approved changes and for the Task Group to recommend that a WG Letter Ballot commence. The motion passed.

Finally, in the first official TGT meeting, the Task Group recommended Neeraj Sharma become the new TGT chair. WG chair Stuart Kerry confirmed this in the closing plenary on Friday. As of the close of the March 802.11 session, Neeraj is now the TGT chair. I wish to thank all TGT participants for your work and support during the last three years.

Plans for May

The plans for May are to begin resolving Letter Ballot comments.

Teleconference Goals

The group asked to plan for biweekly teleconferences starting March 29, in the event Letter Ballot was not approved. Be aware of notices on the reflector because these may be cancelled - no need for telecons while in Letter Ballot.


January 2007

11-07/0063r4, meeting slides
11-07/0064r2, closing report
11-07/0102r0, meeting minutes, or latest revision
11-06/0872r24, most recent comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for January 2007:

Objectives for the January meeting were:

1.      Hear presentations to resolve the remaining deferred comments

2.      Approve any technical changes to the draft arising from previous teleconferences

3.      Decide whether draft is technically complete and ready for balloting

Progress

We met for a total of 12 hours during the week. We heard six different proposals for resolving comments; five of these were accepted and will be incorporated into the draft.

There was also a great deal of discussion during the week around whether we should go to Letter Ballot after this meeting. About half of the group felt that we should just go ASAP and resolve issues in parallel, while the other half felt the draft was simply not complete without resolution of what were believed to be major issues (some deferred comments).

To make a decision on this, we adopted a process of taking straw polls on the remaining deferred comments. The straw poll asked, "Is the draft considered to be technically complete without resolution of this comment?". Each deferred comment was considered; the poll results are contained in a new column of the comment resolution spreadsheet.

Having done the poll, we went back over the list and considered comments with 75% or more answering "yes". If there were no objections to declining the comment, it was placed on a list of comments to be declined. These comments were then declined.

Please note that declining these comments does not mean they are not valuable comments. The group will certainly have to consider them again if they are brought as a Letter Ballot comment. It simply means that we don't need to accept a remedy to the comment to go to Letter Ballot.

We worked to the last minute. Otherwise, the next step would have been consideration of each deferred comment and taking a binding vote on the ones with 75% or more answering yes.

In the end, I asked for someone to bring a motion to go to Letter Ballot; no one would make the motion. So we did not have such a vote.

You can expect D0.13 of the draft to be released in a few weeks, which will incorporate all changes approved in the London meeting.

Nominations for a New Chair

In London, I also announced that I would be stepping down from the position of TGT chair. I am taking on new responsibilities at my sponsor company, and these responsibilities mean I can no longer lead TGT. I would like to thank everyone for their hard work in bringing us to the current state.

In March, I will still be chair, but TGT hopes to recommend a nominee as the next chair at the opening meeting. The new chair will take over at the end of the March meeting, but will sit at the table with me so I can help in the transition.

Plans for March

The TGT "wall of shame" is found in the meeting slides, slide 12. This is the list of remaining deferred comments, with "stuckees". In London, the group believed that these comments were important enough to hold up the draft from Letter Ballot; it is now time for the stuckees to deliver resolutions.

So, the plans for March are to hear a lot of proposed resolutions and then making the draft ready for Letter Ballot. We have teleconferences planned; see below for details.

Teleconference Goals

The group decided to continue having teleconferences to present

§         February 8, February 22, March 8 at 12 noon ET

The teleconference goals are to hear progress made on resolving the assigned deferred comments. Note: please send me a notice if you intend to present something in the telecon. If I don't receive anything by 3 PM ET on the Wednesday before the telecon, I will send out a cancellation notice.

Teleconference details are unchanged, and can be found at the end of any meeting slides presentation.

March Meeting Objectives

·         Approve resolutions to deferred comments

·         Forward the draft to WG Letter Ballot


November 2006

11-06/1719r3, meeting slides
11-06/1720r0, closing report
11-06/1795r0, meeting minutes, or latest revision
11-06/0872r23, most recent comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for November 2006:

Objectives for the November meeting were:

Progress

We met for a total of 12 hours during the week, plus one and a half ad hoc hours on Monday. There were six presentations; a list of these can be found in the closing report. Four of these were accepted as changes to the draft. The presentations were not expected to dominate the schedule, this gave us the freedom to alternate beween comment resolution and taking presentations as the presenters were ready.

Comment Resolution

This mode of operation worked well and we were able to finally complete a full pass through all the Internal Review comments. At that point, with the benefit of many other resolved comments, we were able to make another pass through the list and find related or out-of-date comments an mark them as resolved as well. Several iterations of this process left us with 47 deferred comments yet to resolve. Of these, many were assigned to volunteers to develop candidate text for review by the TG, and hopefully, acceptance into the draft in January. This left a remaining fifteen comments with no assignees, or which seem to be unresolvable at this time.

Please have a look at the comment resolution spreadsheet and slides 19 and 20 from the meeting slides to see what action items are assigned and unassigned.

You can also expect D0.11 of the draft to be released in a few weeks, which will incorporate all changes approved in the Dallas meeting.

Plans for January

If we make good progress with the work people have volunteered to do between now and January, we will have a very good shot at going to Letter Ballot following the January session. The comments for which we have volunteers have all been accepted ``in principle'' and we will look forward to seeing their resolution. There are some remaining comments on which the group is split, or for which the solution is controversial. If these cannot be resolved, we will decline them. Our task will then become to decide whether the draft as technically complete, and move to ask the Working Group for approval to go to WG Letter Ballot.

Teleconference Goals

Having reviewed and assigned most of the comments TGT decided to have only three telecons between the November and January meetings. The new telecon schedule is as follows:

The teleconference goals are to hear progress made on resolving the assigned deferred comments.

Teleconference details are unchanged, and can be found at the end of any meeting slides presentation. An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon.

January Meeting Objectives

·         Approve resolutions to deferred comments

·         Forward the draft to WG Letter Ballot


September 2006

11-06/1428r2, meeting slides
11-06/1429r0, closing report
11-06/1541r0, meeting minutes, or latest revision
11-06/0872r12, most recent comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for September 2006:

Objectives for the September meeting were:

Progress

We met for a total of 12 hours during the week. There were five announced presentations to be brought by members. Since tese presentations were not expected to dominate the schedule, this gave us the freedom to alternate beween comment resolution and taking presentations as the presenters were ready.

We also revised our process milestones this week. In recognition that we still have a lot of thorny work to do on comment resolution, we revised our plan to offer the draft for Letter Ballot from after this November's meeting to after January's meeting. We have moved this date up several times. I was able to move the first LB and following SB milestones accordingly, due to some padding in the schedule. However, at this point, we are running out of pad and will need to revise the expected ratification date if we slip again.

Comment Resolution

In the time spent on comment resolution, we resolved some 49 comments and deferred another 21. Many of the deferred comments have specific individuals identified. In the interest of meeting our revised LB milestone, I hope these people take up the work suggested by these comments.

The current comment resolution status is:

New/Revisited Proposals

There were several proposals made for resolving one or more comments from the Internal Review. Only one was accepted at this meeting; I expect the other three to be back in November. See the closing report document for a list of all presentations made.

IETF BMWG Liaison Item

The IETF Benchmarking Working Group had asked TGT to consider whether a proposal for new work given in their group at the July IETF meeting might be within the scope of TGT. July, in San Diego, we heard Tom Alexander helpfully present 11-06/1102r0 to TGT to explain the proposed new work. TGT had taken several straw polls about whether TGT considered this work within its scope. The consensus was no, it was not, but we still wanted to be kept informed of the work progress, if it is taken up.

In September, TGT reviewed and approved a liaison letter crafted by Dorothy Stanley (11-06/1538r1) as the official response of the 802.11 WG. This letter was further approved by the WG and has been communicated to the IETF.

Teleconference Goals

According to the current telecon schedule, TGT would have only three opportunities for telecons between the September and November meetings. So, I recommended we have telecons every week. However, due to a conflict I have on the alternate Thursdays, I suggested that the new telecons be on Wednesdays; there was general agreement. So, the new telecon schedule is as follows:

My plan is to simply plow through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off. However, a much more efficient procedure would be for people to make contributions that resolved one or more comments. We can discuss these contributions during the telecon and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. Decisions made during teleconferences do not have the full force of a motion, so we will need to affirm such resolutions during the September meeting.

Teleconference details are unchanged, and can be found at the end of any meeting slides presentation (such as 11-06/977r2). An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon.

November Meeting Objectives

·         More comment resolution!

·         Approve any technical changes to the draft arising from previous teleconferences

Our revised goal is to have the draft ready for Letter Ballot by the end of the January meeting. It is critical that we make a lot of progress at this November meeting if we are going to keep to that goal.


July 2006

11-06/0977r2, meeting slides
11-06/1004r1, closing report
11-06/1034r1, meeting minutes, or latest revision
11-06/0872r5, most recent comment resolution spreadsheet

Goals for July 2006:

Objectives for the July meeting were:

Progress

We met for a total of 14 hours during the week, two more than originally planned. Another Task Group had finished early and we were able to take one of their slots.

Of those hours, the group decided to spend about half the time on comment resolution and the other half on hearing ``new'' proposals. As it turns out, most of the proposals addressed comments from the Internal Review, so they weren't entirely out of order.

Comment Resolution

I initially expected to group the comments by subject areas and break into several ad hoc groups to resolve comments in parallel. However, this was not the will of the group, seeing that TGT is rather a small group anyway.

So, we started at the beginning of the Clause 4 technical comments and proceeded linearly. We managed to make it almost to the end of the Clause 5.2 comments during the week, and, with Motion 4 (see 11-06/977r2), we approved the resolution of twenty comments. These will be incorporated into the draft to produce D0.9.

New Proposals

We heard several new proposals this week, and one of them was approved into the draft (11-06/964r1). Other proposals were deemed not quite ready, but comments had been submitted for which these proposals were actually proposed resolutions, so we are certain to hear these proposals again in some form.

IETF BMWG Liaison Item

The IETF Benchmarking Working Group has asked TGT to consider whether a proposal for new work given in their group at the July IETF meeting might be within the scope of TGT. Tom Alexander helpfully presented 11-06/1102r0 to TGT to explain the proposed new work to TGT.

After the presentation, three straw polls were taken. The full results can be found in our closing report (11-06/1004r1), but the upshot is that TGT generally believes this work is out of our scope. A liaison letter is being crafted for an official response.

Teleconference Goals

TGT agreed to continue holding teleconferences on the same bi-weekly schedule. These calls would be dedicated to resolving the comments from the Internal Review. The calls will be conducted on the following dates:

My plan is to simply plow through the comments in linear fashion from where we left off. However, a much more efficient procedure would be for people to make contributions that resolved one or more comments. We can discuss these contributions during the telecon and decide whether there is consensus to the proposed resolution. Decisions made during teleconferences do not have the full force of a motion, so we will need to affirm such resolutions during the September meeting.

Teleconference details are unchanged, and can be found at the end of any meeting slides presentation (such as 11-06/977r2). An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon.

September Meeting Objectives

·         More comment resolution!

·         Approve any technical changes to the draft arising from previous teleconferences

The goal is to have the draft ready for Letter Ballot by the end of the November meeting. I will be reminding people of this deadline to keep progress moving.


May 2006

11-06/0670r0, closing report
11-06/0669r1, meeting slides
11-06/0810r0, meeting minutes, or latest revision

Goals for May 2006:

Objectives for the May meeting were:

Progress

We met for a total of 10 hours during the week. The relatively short number of meeting hours was due to the fact that four other task groups had completed a letter ballot and needed many hours for comment resolution.

Our first order of business was to have a discussion on the state of the TGT draft. We kicked of the discussion with some excellent observations by Tom Alexander (11-06/726r0) on the status of the draft.

I then brought up a couple of slides from the TGT Plan of Record document (11-05/912r3) - the list of expected proposals for making the draft “mostly complete”. After prioritizing the items not currently complete, it became obvious that we really need some contributions on the following

There are other items as well, but the lack of these items probably causes the most problems in making a complete draft. In fact I would say that we need these contributions first and foremost. I welcome contributions on any of these subjects.

Richard Kennedy also gave an interesting alternate view of the state of TGT (11-06/705r0).

We heard a range of technical presentations. Only two proposals were accepted into the draft at this meeting. A complete list can be found in the closing report document.

Internal Review of the Draft

In the last few minutes of the final meeting, we decided to go ahead and hold the planned internal review of the draft. The idea behind the internal review is that we announce to the WG that we are doing this, and we solicit comments. The comments will be submitted in Letter Ballot fashion.

The internal review proved useful for TGk, and I believe it is a useful step for TGT in preparation of the draft for our own Letter Ballot, currently planned for November this year.

The internal review is planned to start June 1st and continue until July 11th. We will perform the review on draft 0.8, which our editor hopes to produce in time for the review. I will follow up with more instructions after the first telecon on June 1st.

Teleconference Goals

TGT agreed to continue holding teleconferences on the same bi-weekly schedule. These calls would be dedicated to addressing existing comments to the draft. The calls will be conducted on the following dates:

The call we would have on July 13th will not be held due to a personal time conflict.

I would like to try to extend the time for the telecon to 90 minutes per telecon. If that proves too much, we can always shorten it to 60 minutes once more. Teleconference details are unchanged, and can be found at the end of any meeting slides presentation (such as 11-06/670r1). An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon.

May Meeting Objectives

·         TGT ``State of the Draft'' discussion

·         Approve any technical changes to the draft arising from previous teleconferences

·         Review and approve proposals

·         Continue with other technical presentations

·         Plan to start TGT internal review of the draft after incorporation of new proposals

·         Appoint permanent secretary


March 2006

11-06/0403r2, closing report
11-06/0402r1, meeting slides
11-06/0497r0, meeting minutes
11-06/0426r0, ad hoc minutes

Goals for March 2006:

Objectives for the March meeting were:

Progress

We met for a total of seventeen hours during the week, three hours of which were an ad hoc session on Monday morning.

The three hours of ad hoc time were fruitfully used to hear four presentations of various new metrics, and for the presenters to receive feedback on their presentations.

In the regular meetings, starting on Tuesday, I, as chair, was reaffirmed by the TG to continue as chair. This reaffirmation carried in the WG plenary on Wednesday. I thank everyone for their support and look forward to continuing to lead the group. We also reaffirmed our editor, Tom Alexander. I thank Tom for his continued service.

There was some discussion that resulted from two presentations as to who is the intended audience of the 802.11.2 document. Some believed that the presentations did not fall within the scope of TGT. This prompted a revisit of the TGT PAR document. There is some hint of the audience in the scope, but further explanation can be found in paragraph 14a, in which it is stated pretty succintly. This is important, because reviewers of the TGT draft will compare the draft with what is stated in the PAR, and can submit a valid "no" vote if they feel the target audience is not addressed.

We did accept two proposals this week: 11-06/0004r3, ``Test Methodology Measuring Loss Delay and Jitter'', and 11-06/0383r0, ``Coexistence of two overlapping BSSs in adjacent channels''. We expect further proposals to come and look forward to incorporating them in some form once they are accepted by the group.

The editor will be incorporating these proposals into the draft to produce version D0.7, which is expected to be available around the third teleconference.

Process Review

Our Plan of Record is recorded in slide 11 of 11-05/0937r1. It states we will start a Task Group internal review of the draft after the March meeting. During the March meeting, we realized this was just not going to happen, so we took time to discuss a new plan for moving ahead. We agreed to the following process for getting to Letter Ballot.

We recognize that there are still many metrics expected to be required for having a completed draft, but also that we really better get started on reviewing the draft and getting to Letter Ballot. This plan starts us on that path.

Teleconference Goals

TGT agreed to continue holding teleconferences on the same bi-weekly schedule. These calls would be dedicated to addressing existing comments to the draft. The calls will be conducted on the following dates:

Teleconference details are unchanged, and can be found at the end of any meeting slides presentation (such as 11-06/402r1). An announcement of the telecon will be made no later than the Wednesday before the telecon.

May Meeting Objectives

·         TGT ``State of the Draft'' discussion

·         Approve any technical changes to the draft arising from previous teleconferences

·         Review and approve proposals

·         Continue with other technical presentations

·         Plan to start TGT internal review of the draft after incorporation of new proposals

·         Appoint permanent secretary


January 2006

Goals for January 2006:

Objectives for the January meeting were:

Progress

We met for twelve of the fourteen meeting hours during the week; during one meeting slot we recessed due to a conflict with TGn voting. We heard nine interesting and thought-provoking presentations. five of which were accompanied by proposed draft text. Out of these five, only one was accepted into the draft at this time: 11-06/0007r0. We expect the other proposals to return in the March meeting and request approval.

26 Jan 2006 Correction: In my count of accepted proposals, I missed one: 11-06/0078. Sorry for the confusion.

Our editor, Tom Alexander, will be incorporating this proposal into the draft to produce version D0.6, which is expected to be available in about mid-February telecon.

We reviewed the process timeline and decided not to change it at this time. Keeping to this schedule means we need to have all expected proposals into the draft after the March meeting so we can commence the task group internal review of the draft. If we complete the task group internal review by the July meeting, we will be able to ask the WG for approval to forward the draft to Sponsor Ballot. This is an aggressive schedule, so we need to keep focused on delivering proposals that are complete, then spend the proper time reviewing and correcting the draft as a result of the internal review.

There was one major issue that arose from our discussions this week. It relates to the clause on ``Permissible Error Margins and Reliability of Test''. It turns out we never had agreement on the required contents for this subclause in the test template. We seem to have a lot of confusion as to what this subclause should contain, so I suggested (and it seemed the members agreed) that we open this topic for general discussion. The expected outcome is that we would be able to agree on the intended contents of this subclause. This would enable proposers to properly compose this section, and enable rewriting the existing subclauses in the draft, if necessary. It is crucial that we get agreement on this subclause. I recommend we begin discussion on this in one of the teleconferences between now and March.

As chair, I maintain an ``issues list'', in the form of a comment-resolution spreadsheet. There have not been contributions to this list since before the last meeting. I guess we are focusing more on getting the proposals we want into the draft. No matter, we will return to it after the internal review. Still, Tom and I will accept any such comments for inclusion in the list. Send a short description of the issue and a suggested resolution (much like a ballot comment) to the chair (Charles Wright) or editor (Tom Alexander) for inclusion in the issues list. The issues list will always be the most recent version document 11-05/1024.

During the September meeting, we created a list of metrics that we thought would be necessary to have a complete draft. We updated this list at the end of the meeting this week. It's important to note that several of the items on the list from September have been crossed off, thanks to the proposals aceepted during this meeting. Please see slide 11 in 11-05/912r3. Remember, this list is simply what we have thought of so far. So, if you have other metrics you think belong in the draft, please do let us know, or better yet, bring in your own proposal. However, remember that the window of opportunity is closing. We would like to go to WG Letter Ballot after the July meeting, so get your proposal in quickly.

11-06/0050r0, closing report 11-06/0049r2, meeting slides 11-06/0143r0, minutes

Teleconference Goals

It's a relatively short time between the January and March meetings. TGT decided to go ahead with three teleconferences, held every other week, starting January 26th. This leaves the following schedule:

Other presentations are also welcome. Please send me an email before the meeting so I can list the presentation in the telecon announcement.

March Meeting Objectives


November 2005

Goals for November 2005:

Objectives for the November meeting were:

Progress

We heard twelve presentations. A complete list can be found on slide 5 of the November closing report (see bottom of this section). There were several formal proposals submitted, all of which were accepted, although some required revision before being brought again before the group.

Document 11-05/969r2, ``Document Framework Section'', was first presented in September. It was revised based on comments from then and presented here. It gives text for an extensible framework section in the draft, providing a place for high-level descriptions of the various usage cases.

Document 11-05/537r2, ``Test Methodology Proposal for Measuring Fast BSS/BSS Transition Time'', first presented in July, had undergone extensive revision since then to include a methodology for measuring transition time under the 11r protocol.

Document 11-05/638r2, ``Link Layer Metrics Proposal'', first presented in November of last year (!), has also undergone substantial revision since first presented. Except for the section on latency measurements, it has now been accepted into the draft.

Document 11-05/1157r1, ``Receiver Sensitivity Metrics in Conductive Test Environment'', was first presented during this meeting. It was modified after its first presentation to include a second technique for measuring sensitivity, presented again the next day and approved.

It should be noted that some of these proposals passed with certain conditions placed on them within the approving motion. The conditions mostly revolved around the section specifying the ``Permissible Error Margins and Reliability of Test''. Be sure to see slides 7-12 of the closing report (listed below) to see precisely what was accepted.

Our editor, Tom Alexander, will be incorporating this proposal into the draft to produce version D0.5, which is expected to be available before the mid-December telecon.

As chair, I maintain an ``issues list'', in the form of a comment-resolution spreadsheet. This was only posted just the week before the meeting, and has not been changed. The intent of this list is to spark discussion on current serious issues in the draft. At this stage, issues are perhaps best addressed in an ad hoc fashion between the commenter and the author of the relevant section of the draft. Submitting to the issues list insures the issue will not be forgotten. Send a short description of the issue and a suggested resolution (much like a ballot comment) to the chair (Charles Wright) or editor (Tom Alexander) for inclusion in the issues list. The issues list will always be the most recent version document 11-05/1024.

During the September meeting, we created a list of metrics that we thought would be necessary to have a complete draft. We updated this list at the end of the meeting this week. It's important to note that several of the items on the list from September have been crossed off, thanks to the proposals aceepted during this meeting. Please see slide 11 in 11-05/912r2. Remember, this list is simply what we have thought of so far. So, if you have other metrics you think belong in the draft, please do let us know, or better yet, bring in your own proposal.

Meeting report: 11-05/1141r2
Meeting slides: 11-05/1140r2
Minutes: 11-05/1189r0

Teleconference Goals

We decided to have three telecons between now and the January meeting. We're keeping the same every-other-week schedule, except you have a break on December 29th. This leaves the following schedule, and suggested work for these telecons:

Other presentations are also welcome. Please send me an email before the meeting so I can list the presentation in the telecon announcement.

January Meeting Objectives


September 2005

Goals for September 2005:

Objectives for the September meeting were:

Progress

We heard ten presentations. These can be found on slide 5 of the September closing report (see bottom of this section). One of these presentations was a formal proposal (11-05/758r1, 11-05/759r1) on the subject of an Adjacent Channel Interference test methodology. This proposal was voted into the draft. Our editor, Tom Alexander, will be incorporating this proposal into the draft to produce version D0.4.

We also had a process discussion. The outcome of this discussion was document 11-05/911r1, which outlines the TG's plans for creating a draft ready for balloting in July 2006. This can be summarized as follows.

There are three steps toward letter ballot. First, we focus on filling out the draft. When the draft is ``mostly complete'', we will begin a TG internal review, focusing on making the draft ready for letter ballot. This will involve resolving issues identified along the way, with new proposals being more rare. When the task group believes the draft is technically complete, the proper motions will be passed and the draft will be presented to the Working Group for full review and voting. The process at this point is well-defined.

An issues list will be maintained. The intent of this list is to spark discussion on current serious issues in the draft. At this stage, issues should be addressed in an ad hoc fashion between the commenter and the author of the relevant section of the draft. Submitting to the issues list insures the issue will not be forgotten. Send a short description of the issue and a suggested resolution (much like a ballot comment) to the chair (Charles Wright) or editor (Tom Alexander) for inclusion in the issues list. The issues list will be the most recent version document 11-05/1024.

A list of expected proposals is contained in 11-05/912r1 on slide 11. This is the present view of what is needed for completeneness. Other views are welcome for consideration.

A number of other presentation were given during the week. A complete list of all documents presented can be found in the meeting report listed below.

Meeting report: 11-05/938r1
Meeting slides: 11-05/937r1
Minutes: 11-05/955r0

Teleconference Goals

We are continuing with our plan to have bi-weekly teleconferences. There are opportunities for three between now and the November meeting. Here is the schedule:

November Meeting Objectives

Several people volunteered for new work:


July 2005

Goals for July 2005:

Objectives for the July meeting were:

We may have a volunteer for permanent secretary. I am grateful to Will Smith, who volunteered to take on the duties for the week. He may also (cross fingers) be able to take the duties permanently, pending approval from his sponsor company.

Progress

We heard five formal proposals. See the 11-05/669r2 (or latest revision), slide 9 for the proposals and their accompanying presentations. Two of these proposals were accepted into the draft in voting on Wednesday. They were:

The two in bold were accepted into the draft. We will very likely see the others again after revisions. Other presentations are listed in the meeting report document, below.

Our editor, Tom Alexander, will be incorporating these accepted proposals into the draft and producing version D0.3. We plan to start reviewing this draft after he releases it. He expects it to be available around August 11th. After its release, members are invited to start reviewing it and making written comments. We will begin addressing these comments starting in the 8/25/05 teleconference.

Meeting report: 11-05/775r1
Meeting slides: 11-05/669r2
Minutes: 11-05/736r0

Note: some of these revisions may not be immediately available due to issues that currently exist with uploading documents to 802WirelessWorld.

Teleconference Goals

We agreed to schedule telecons bi-weekly rather than weekly, starting 7/28/05. Here is the schedule for things we plan to do during these telecons:

September Meeting Objectives

Several people volunteered for new work:


May 2005

Goals for May 2005 & status:

Objectives for the May meeting were:

There were no volunteers for permanent secretary. I am grateful to Lisa Ward, who volunteered to take on the duties for the week.

Progress

Attendance was low, however, we did have several presentations and many good discussions as a result.

I took the opportunity to present again document 11-05/378r1, ``Status, Next Steps and Call to Action'' which I first presented during the telecon of 12 May. I had made some revisions and additions, including slides outlining milestones and a proposed short term schedule. Please have a look at this document.

One general discussion resulted from document 11-05/378r3. We had ``create a first list of metrics'' as an action item from Atlanta, so we took this up. Slide 6 of 11-05/378r3 listed presentations on metrics we've had in the past; I took this as our ``first list'' and have identified individuals to take on (or delegate!) the task of writing proposals for these metrics.

My intent here is to get some activity on these metrics. I would like people to develop these metrics further, making refinements if necessary, or even discarding the original ideas in favor of something else more suitable. Regardless, we need people to do the hard work of writing a meaningful methodology.

The only other incomplete action item from the Atlanta list is some agreement on on document structure. There has been much discussion on this in the past, and no new proposal during this meeting.

We also had voting on a formal proposal. Documents 11-05/450r0 and 11-05/451r1 constituted the first formal proposal adhering to the guidelines set out in 11-04/1553r3. It describes a methodology for performing calibrated over the air tests. A motion was passed to incorporate this proposal into the draft.

The meeting report slides is document 11-05/412r1, with the meeting minutes in 11-05/509r0.

Teleconference Goals

We will continue having teleconferences. Due to conflicts in my schedule, we agreed to hold teleconferences on the following specific dates: June 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, and July 14th. These will be held at the usual time (Thursdays, 12 noon US Eastern time). People should consider bringing presentations forward that define metrics and associated test methodologies. Other presentations of interest to the group are also welcome.

July Meeting Objectives


March 2005

Goals for March 2005 & status:

Objectives for the March meeting were:

We were unable to appoint a permanent secretary during the week, but managed to get by with a volunteer. I am grateful to Tom Alexander, our editor, for rising to the occasion once again. Potential volunteers must be voting members of 802.11. This is the decision of the WG chair, and derives from Robert's Rules. There are people who have recently gained voting rights. I would ask that voting members consider taking this position as it does offer a unique way to keep up to date with the group activities.

Progress

We heard many good technical presentations. These are all listed in the Meeting Slides and Closing Report document, 11-05/0153r1. We succeeded in approving the Task Group document 11-04/1553r3, ``Guidelines for TGT Proposals''.

We also approved an initial list of definitions to be incorporated into TGT draft 0.1. Normally definitions are added as a draft is developed. However, TGT is different from other groups in that we are not simply developing another PHY or MAC amendment to the base standard, but something fundamentally different and unfamiliar. These definitions form the starting point of the common language we will be using to describe test methodologies in the future and will be refined as necessary as we move forward.

We also heard presentation 11-05/177r0, which refines a vision for the output of TGT. It describes the concept of primary and secondary metrics, and the need for correlation between measurements and primary metrics. Proposals for metrics should be developed to meet the needs described in this presentation.

Teleconference Goals

We will continue our weekly teleconferences starting March 24th, at the same time (Thursdays, 12 noon US Eastern time). People should consider bringing presentations forward that define metrics and associated test methodologies. Other presentations of interest to the group are also welcome.

One recommendation made in the group was that proposals should take us down the complete path for addressing a particular usage case.It would be great if we got at least one proposal like this to show others how it can be done. Also, we'd like to somehow preserve justifications for the proposals within the draft, either through informative annexes or in some other appropriate place in the draft.

May Meeting Objectives

TGT, like all the other 802.11 task groups, is meeting in May in Cairns, Australia. We hope to hear some full proposals at that time and perhaps even accept them into the draft.

General Objectives


January 2005

Goals for January 2005 & status:

Objectives for the January meeting were:

We were unable to appoint a permanent secretary during the week, but managed to get by with volunteers. I am grateful to these individuals for their help: Lisa Ward, Kevin Karcz. Potential volunteers must be voting members of 802.11. This is the decision of the WG chair, and derives from Robert's Rules. We are hopeful that a member that gains voting rights during the March meeting will volunteer at that time.

Progress

None of the documents we hoped to approve were approved, although there was lively discussion around each one. The minutes capture some of that discussion, and I am planning to release an issues document that summarizes the state of our thinking on each of these subjects. I think it's safe to say that the group is not ready to be constrained by these requirements at this time.

We did hear many good technical presentations. These are all listed in the Meeting Slides and Closing Report document, 11-05/1639r4. Of note is an excellent presentation by Steve Shellhammer on terminology and definitions (11-05/0003r1, 11-05/0004r1). This helped clear up a lot of confusion and emotion surrounding contentious terms by defining more precise and non-judgemental terms. I highly recommend that we start using this terminology in our future presentation.

Teleconference Goals

We will continue our weekly teleconferences starting January 27th, at the same time (Thursdays, 12 noon US Eastern time). People should consider bringing presentations forward that address one of the following subject areas:

March Meeting Objectives


November 2004

Goals for November 2004 & status:

Objectives for the November meeting were:

We were unable to appoint a permanent secretary during the week, but managed to get by with volunteers. I am grateful to these individuals for their help: Areg Alimian, Dalton Victor, Tom Alexander. Potential volunteers must be voting members of 802.11. This is the decision of the WG chair, and derives from Robert's Rules.

We did appoint an editor for the Task Group. Tom Alexander has experience as editor from another 802 working Group, and we look forward to the production of a quality draft as we begin approving proposals.

Progress

As part of my opening remarks, I described the general standards development process, and a recommended method for ``how to write a draft'' (11-04/1389r4, slide 18). Also, in a straw poll, the group approved document 11-04/1203r1 as a starting point for the TGT draft, (provided that clauses 5-8 were deleted). This gives us the blank canvas into which accepted proposals will be incorporated.

While we now have an empty draft and a process for filling it, this needs structure. We started discussion on general requirements expected of proposals. One requirement we were in general agreement on was the use of the test template first brought before the group in July. We brought the document back to discussion (11-04/863r2) and decided to begin refinements on it. An ad hoc group formed for further discussion of the test template and met several times during the week. We look forward to having this group bring the fruits of their labor before the group for approval.

Another requirement for which people seemed generally in favor was that proposals should display results of a demonstration of the proposed test methodology. This would allow valuable discussion on the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

We also have the framework provided by the authors of document 11-04/1222r1 to further define requirements. The relevant ideas in this document must be incorporated into the requirements for proposals, and will help shape the structure of the draft.

We plan to continue this discussion as we proceed, and intend to create a concise requirements document to guide proposers of metrics and methodologies.

There were nine different technical presentations in the group this week; each stimulated a a great deal of excellent discussion. For other progress of the group, please see the list of presentations found in the meeting slides and closing report document, 11-04/1389r4.

Teleconference Goals

We will continue our weekly teleconferences starting Dec 2nd, at the same time (Thursdays, 12 noon US Eastern time). People should consider bringing presentations forward that address one of the following subject areas:

January Meeting Objectives


September 2004

Goals for September 2004 & status:

Objectives for the September meeting were:

Between the July and September meeting, NESCOM approved the formation of TGT and we became a task group. Also between July and September, we had discussion on the test template and decided that there had been enough on that topic for the moment. Here in Berlin, we had a low turnout, so we did not get a volunteer for permanent secretary. Our candidate for editor could not make the meeting, so it made little sense to appoint him without his being present.

We did hear many good presentations. Of special interest is 11-04/1009, ``Framework, Usages and Metrics Proposal for TGT''. This was presented on the last telecon, and we agreed to discuss it further in Berlin. There was a strong fear that slide 11 from this presentation dictated application level testing for evaluating wireless performance, and many in the group did not agree with this. There was also a fear that this proposal dictated open air testing, which many also did not agree with.

To come to accord, an ad hoc group met during the week to compose 11-04/1131, ``A Metrics and Methodology Starting Point for TGT'', as a response. During these ad hoc meetings, we came to better understand the proposal document and agreed with it. The "Starting Point" document served as a record to clarfy the intent of the proposal, and in the 4:00 Thursday meeting, the group passed motions approving the proposal. Due to document server issues, a straw poll was taken on the "Starting Point" document, asking whether TGT was in favor of accepting the metrics and test methodology approach, and passed unanimously. This solidifies the requirements and gives an acceptable approach to fulfilling those requirements.

Teleconference Goals

The next telecon will be on September 30 at 12 noon Eastern Time. In this teleconference, we will discuss the outcomes of the Berlin meeting.

I suggest we consider several calls for proposals. I would like to see proposals for the standard environments, and for metrics and their test methodology. There may be other subjects we should consider. Before we can do that, however, we might want to decide what each proposal must contain. I hope we can start discussion on this in the next telecon. Watch the 802.11 reflector for the details.

November Meeting Objectives


July 2004

Goals for July 2004 & status:

Our goals for the July meeting were to resolve any comments from 802 on the PAR and Five Criteria documents, and to hear technical presentations. There were no 802 comments, so we were able to spend most of the meeting time hearing technical presentations, and discussing next steps.

We are hoping for 802 EXCOM approval of the PAR and Five Criteria documents. Presuming that, we will operate under the assumption that we will be a Task Group in September.

We had half a dozen excellent presentations this time. The one probably most important in the short term was related to a test template definition (11-04/832). Several people volunteered to help refine that definition and bring it again before the group.

Our current mental model for WPP has wireless performance as a function of the test environment, under a given device configuration, with specific metrics measured that impact an application's performance. For next steps, I encourage members to consider various problems of characterization:

And finally, the metrics themselves. I strongly encourage members to consider these subject areas, compose a presentation that outlines the characterization thought process and identifies issues that are discovered. We will hear as many of these presentations as possible during teleconferences between now and September's meeting.

The next telecon will be on July 29th at 12 noon EDT. Watch the 802.11 reflector for the details.

September 2004 Objectives:

Objectives for the September meeting are:

 


May 2004

Goals for May 2004 & status:

Our goal for May was to come to consensus on PAR and 5 Criteria documents. We succeeded! The PAR and 5 Criteria documents were approved by the Working Group. I have to thank the people who participated in the weekly telecons and the 802.11 meetings - you made this possible.

During the week, we invited Richard Paine, chair of TGk, to talk about the goals and activities within TGk because there had been questions in the past about how WPP was different from TGk. We also had a joint meeting with 802.19, the Coexistence TAG (Steve Shellhammer, chair). This was informative and we see areas of synergy between our groups.

The next steps are:

The next telecon will be on May 27th at 12 noon EDT. After that, we will decide on a weekly basis whether to have a telecon or not, with plenty of notice given.

July 2004 Objectives:

Objectives for the July meeting are:


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