Where Industry and Security Intersect
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OPEN SESSION:
1. The ISTAC meeting opened with introduction and solicitation of comments from the public. There were no comments from the public.
2. Maggie Hershey of SEMI made a short presentation summarizing key points of the Export Control Workshop that was held in conjunction with SEMICON in China in March 2006. Key points were: that there is increasing interest in this workshop, as evidenced by the attendance of ~100 people; that China , unlike the United States , does not have formal mechanisms for industry and government to discuss export control matters; and that communication is still mostly unidirectional, from US to China . SEMI hopes to form a Shanghai-based steering committee to serve as a vehicle to develop local expertise in export controls and to foster government/industry interactions. The audience at the workshop is mostly from Chinese subsidiaries of US companies, but there is beginning to be some attendance from indigenous Chinese companies in the electronics manufacturing industry.
3. Jonathan Wise, as chair, raised the following issues:
-HR4780, a bill seeking to limit activities of US persons relative to internet censorship by foreign governments. Bob Rarog commented that HR4780 is interesting and of concern. Erik Oliver noted that there is an implicit issue of scale, and that HR4780 should seek to target enterprise-level users, not individual users. He further noted that internet search providers face the dilemma of providing a good internet experience with fast but censored results by placing servers inside the Great Firewall of China, or providing a less-satisfactory but less-censored result by placing servers in other countries. It was agreed that the ISTAC does not need to take any specific actions regarding HR4780.
-The question of whether some future ISTAC meetings might be one-day instead of two-day and whether the current schedule (February/April/July/November) might be changed. It was agreed that the ISTAC chair will send some proposals for changes to the meeting schedules to the members for their consideration.
-There was a last-minute cancellation to a planned talk that would have introduced some industry-initiated Wassenaar proposals for Digital Rights Management and 5E1c1.
4. Bernie Kritzer provided an update on BIS activities. Key points were:
-Thanks to all for supporting BIS on a wide range of projects, and BIS is particularly appreciative of the information and facts provided by the TACs in support of informed debate.
-A summary of BIS licensing statistics was provided.
-The Export Control Workshop at SEMICON was cited as one of the best outreach programs outside of the United States .
-The new Encryption Director will be in place soon and will be introduced to the ISTAC at the July meeting.
-The China military regulation is still in interagency review, and any comments from the TACs will be appreciated. There is no estimate as to when a draft version of this regulation might be available to the public.
-BIS has recently hired a new engineer, Ed Cushen, and currently has a posting for another.
In response to the BIS comments, Jeff Rogers of Applied Materials commended Brian Baker of BIS for his work supporting industry on Wassenaar proposals.
5. Jeff Hicks of NetIQ made a presentation on VoIP. He explained how a VoIP call consists of two phases – Call Setup and Conversation. VoIP uses a server (analogous to a PBX) for the Call Setup Phase and then is not involved in the Conversation Phase. Cisco’s Call Manager software runs on commodity servers, with a dual-x86 server capable of serving 7500 phones, and a cluster of 10 servers handling 30,000 phones. Once the call manager has performed Call Setup it is no longer involved in the VoIP – the conversation becomes ordinary UDP/IP packets sent through LAN routers and switches. Jeff described some of the considerations in traffic planning having to do with call quality, delay parameters, packet loss, and choice of codec. He mentioned Open Source IP Telephony offerings such as Asterisk, and an increasing attention to security through such forums as the VoIP Security Alliance and the NIST security recommendations.
6. Henry Brandt provided an update on the Practitioner’s Guide to APP. The essence of this presentation is that APP is a very simple linear scaling formula that works even for very complex architectures. Several example calculations were provided; the audience was favorably impressed with the simplicity of the calculations. Several suggestions/comments were made: 1) The Guide will described “how APP calculations are done” and will document as many assumptions as possible; 2) Need to clarify whether a core is a processor or a chip; 3) Erick Oliver offered to edit the draft of the Guide. The intention is to present the completed Guide to BIS for their consideration and possible publication.
7. Frank Quick made a presentation regarding ambiguity of some definitions in 5A001, specifically regarding “user programmable”, “information channel”, “civil cellular” and “user programmable channelizing codes, scrambling codes, or network identification codes”. There was general agreement regarding the possible ambiguity but no conclusions were made on further action. It was suggested that Frank continue to consider this matter.
8. Henry Brandt and Tim DiVincenzo led a spirited and stimulating discussion regarding the similarities and differences between 4A3b and 4A3c. Aspects considered were what technology block within a microprocessor core provides aggregation technology, and the role of PC boards. There was a wide range of opinions among the members.
9. Joe Young reminded the TAC that industry is urged to have draft proposals for next year submitted to BIS by July 1.
The meeting was then adjourned.