Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (capwap)
-----------------------------------------------------------

 Charter
 Last Modified: 2006-12-06

 Current Status: Active Working Group

 Chair(s):
     Margaret Wasserman  <margaret@thingmagic.com>
     Mahalingam Mani  <mmani@avaya.com>
     Dorothy Gellert  <dorothy.gellert@nokia.com>

 Operations and Management Area Director(s):
     Dan Romascanu  <dromasca@avaya.com>
     David Kessens  <david.kessens@nokia.com>

 Operations and Management Area Advisor:
     Dan Romascanu  <dromasca@avaya.com>

 Technical Advisor(s):
     Scott Kelly  <skelly@arubanetworks.com>
     Bob O'Hara  <bohara@airespace.com>
     Charles Clancy  <clancy@ltsnet.net>

 Mailing Lists: 
     General Discussion:capwap@frascone.com
     To Subscribe:      http://lists.frascone.com/mailman/listinfo/capwap
     Archive:           http://lists.frascone.com/pipermail/capwap

Description of Working Group:

The original CAPWAP WG charter included drafting a problem statement
and a taxonomy of architectures. The new charter of the CAPWAP WG
proposes building upon the original charter and developing a CAPWAP
protocol to provide interoperability among WLAN backend architectures.
The intent of the CAPWAP protocol is to facilitate control, management
and provisioning of WLAN Termination Points (WTPs) specifying the
services, functions and resources relating to 802.11 WLAN Termination
Points in order to allow for interoperable implementations of WTPs
and ACs.

The revised CAPWAP WG will reference two classes of the Centralized
WLAN Architecture family, namely the Local MAC and the Split MAC,
as described in the CAPWAP Architecture Taxonomy draft. The protocol
will define the CAPWAP control plane including the primitives to
control data access. An effective Centralized CAPWAP Architecture
impacts how WLAN data traffic is managed over the backend network.
This implies the abilitiy to control how data is forwarded by
negotiating existng data encapsulation mechanisms and specifying
data payload formats in order to ensure interoperability between
CAPWAP vendors. No other specifications of the CAPWAP data plane
are within the scope of this charter.

The CAPWAP WG will strive for extensibility in the protocol design
to favor future applicability to other access technologies, especially
IEEE 802.16. While accommodation of any access technology other than
IEEE 802.11 is not required for successful completion, there are clear
deployment advantages if a wide range of access technologies are
accommodated.

In summary, the primary goals of the group will be:

1. Defining a set of Objectives based on the architecture taxonomy
work that lists the requirements for an interoperable CAPWAP
protocol. In addition, the WG will incorporate requirements
derived from the inputs provided by Enterprise and (hotspot)
Providers based on the WLAN deployment challenges addressed
by CAPWAP architecture. This document will:

a. include objectives to address problems described in the
CAPWAP Problem statement document
b. Describe each objective, its benefit to the protocol and
how it satisfies the problem statement.
c. Prioritize and classify the objectives into 3 categories:
i. Mandatory and Accepted
ii. Desirable
iii. Rejected
d. Undergo review in IEEE 802 as needed

This should result in the first WG Last Call for Objectives draft.

To avoid requirements bloat and stalemate, the WG has a
hard deadline on the Objectives phase. The WG MUST reach WG
consensus on the objectives draft by Feb 2005. This is for
several reasons:
* We must send this for review to IEEE at that time.
* We must have a reasonably stable set of objectives
so that candidate submissions are aware of the objectives
to be met.

The 2nd WG Last Call (in April) for the objectives draft is to
ensure that the WG has consensus on any changes that may result
from IEEE and expert review. So it is not the intention that
the WG keeps adding new Objectives after Feb 2005.

If the WG cannot reach consensus on the Objectives draft by the
May 2005 milestone to the IESG, the WG will close.

2. Evaluating a set of candidate proposals that include existing
IETF protocols and any proposals leading to the selection of
a protocol on which to base the CAPWAP standard.

3. Developing a CAPWAP protocol standard that meets the Mandatory
and Accepted objectives from the Evaluation draft and contains
the minimal set of feature needed to control and provision
WLAN Access Points. Specifically The CAPWAP protocol document
will address the following considerations:
a. Architecture
b. Operations
c. Security
d. Network Management
e. Scalability
f. Performance

4. A MIB Document to support the CAPWAP protocol.

In addition, the CAPWAP WG will maintain its Liaison with the
IEEE to ensure consistency of its work with the IEEE 802.11
Standard.

Deliverables:
* Objectives/Criteria Document for CAPWAP protocol
* Protocol evaluation and base protocol selection document
* CAPWAP Protocol standard
* MIB support standard

 Goals and Milestones:

   Done         Last call for problem statement draft. 

   Done         Discuss last call comments for problem statement at IETF 59. 

   Done         Last Call for architecture description document. 

   Done         Submit problem statement to IESG for publication approval. 

   Done         Architecture document to expert review. 

   Done         Stable Architecture document for review/sync-up with IEEE 802 

   Done         Discuss results of IEEE 802 review/sync-up 

   Done         Issue first Internet-Draft of CAPWAP Objectives document 

   Done         Submit CAPWAP Objectives to IEEE/IETF experts review 

   Done         First WGLC for CAPWAP Objectives Draft 

   Done         Deadline to submit candidate protocol proposals to the WG 

   Done         Second WGLC for CAPWAP Objectives Draft 

   Done         Issue first Internet-Draft of CAPWAP Evaluation draft 

   Done         Submit CAPWAP Evaluation draft to IESG as Information RFC 

   Done         Submit CAPWAP Objectives draft to IESG as Informational RFC 

   Done         Issue first Internet Draft of CAPWAP protocol 

   Done         Issue first CAPWAP protocol 802.11bindings 

   Jan 2007       Issue first Internet-Draft of 802.11 Binding MIB 

   Jan 2007       Issue first Internet-Draft of CAPWAP Base MIB 

   Feb 2007       First WGLC for CAPWAP Base Protocol 

   Feb 2007       First WGLC for 802.11 Binding 

   Mar 2007       CAPWAP Specs to IEEE 802.11 for Review 

   Apr 2007       WGLC for CAPWAP Base MIB 

   Apr 2007       WGLC for CAPWAP 802.11 Binding MIB 

   May 2007       Receive results of IEEE 802.11 Review 

   May 2007       Final WGLC for CAPWAP Base Protocol 

   May 2007       Final WGLC for 802.11 Binding 

   Jul 2007       CAPWAP Base Protocol to IESG 

   Jul 2007       CAPWAP 802.11 Binding to IESG 

   Sep 2007       CAPWAP Base MIB to the IESG 

   Sep 2007       CAPWAP 802.11 Binding MIB to IESG 


 Internet-Drafts:

Posted Revised         I-D Title   <Filename>
------ ------- --------------------------------------------
May 2004 Mar 2007   <draft-ohara-capwap-lwapp-04.txt>
                Light Weight Access Point Protocol 

Mar 2005 Feb 2007   <draft-iino-capwap-wicop-02.txt>
                Wireless LAN Control Protocol (WiCoP) 

Apr 2005 Mar 2006   <draft-narasimhan-ietf-slapp-01.txt>
                SLAPP : Secure Light Access Point Protocol 

Mar 2006 Mar 2007   <draft-ietf-capwap-protocol-specification-05.txt>
                CAPWAP Protocol Specification 

Oct 2006 Mar 2007   <draft-ietf-capwap-protocol-binding-ieee80211-02.txt>
                CAPWAP Protocol Binding for IEEE 802.11 

Feb 2007 Feb 2007   <draft-ietf-capwap-threat-analysis-00.txt>
                CAPWAP Threat Analysis for 802.11 Deployments 

 Request For Comments:

  RFC   Stat Published     Title
------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------
RFC3990 I    Feb 2005    CAPWAP Problem Statement 

RFC4118 I    Jul 2005    Architecture Taxonomy for Control and Provisioning of 
                       Wireless Access Points(CAPWAP) 

RFC4565 I    Jul 2006    Evaluation of Candidate Control and Provisioning of 
                       Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) Protocols 

RFC4564 I    Jul 2006    Objectives for Control and Provisioning of Wireless 
                       Access Points (CAPWAP)