A Need for Standards
LESSON 3

Outline:
A Need for Standards

What are standards?

• Standards are documented agreements containing technical specifications to be used consistently as rules, guidelines, or definitions of characteristics, to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose.
• International Standards contribute to making life simpler, and to increasing the reliability and effectiveness of the goods and services we use.

Why push for standardization?

• Industry-wide standardization is a condition existing within a particular industrial sector when the large majority of products or services conform to the same standards.
• It results from consensus agreements reached between all economic players in that industrial sector - suppliers, users, and often governments.
  
• The aim is to facilitate trade, exchange and technology transfer through:
  • Enhanced product quality and reliability at a reasonable price.
  • Greater compatibility and interoperability of goods and services.
  • Simplification for improved usability.
  • Increased distribution efficiency, and ease of maintenance.

International standardization:
Why is it needed?

• International standardization is now well-established for very many technologies in such diverse fields as information processing and communications, textiles, packaging, distribution of goods, energy production and utilization, shipbuilding, banking and financial services.
• It will continue to grow in importance for all sectors of industrial activity for the foreseeable future.
• The main reasons are:
  • Worldwide progress in trade liberalization
  • Interpenetration of sectors
  • Global standards needs for emerging technologies
  • Developing countries
  • Worldwide communications systems

Worldwide communications systems:

• The computer industry offers a good example of technology that needs quickly and progressively to be standardized at a global level. ISO’s OSI basic reference model is a good example.
• Full compatibility among open systems fosters healthy competition among producers, and offers real options to users since it is a powerful catalyst for innovation, improved productivity and cost-cutting.

What makes up a standard?

• What does a standard look like? - ISO explains the major components of their standards documents:
  • It can be anything from a four-page document to a 1000-page tome, including twice the weight of the standard itself in informative annexes.
  • It may specify the tasks that a certain range of equipment must be able to perform, or describe in detail an apparatus and its safety features.
  • It may contain:
    • Symbols
    • Definitions
    • Diagrams
    • Codes
    • Test methods.

International Standards Bodies:
ISO

• The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country.
• ISO is a non-governmental organization established in 1947.
• The mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization & related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods & services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological & economic activity.
• ISO's work results in international agreements which are published as International Standards.

International Standards Bodies:
ITU-T (formerly CCITT)

• The ITU (International Telecommunications Union), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland is an international organization within which governments & the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and services.
• ITU activities include:
  • The coordination, development, regulation and standardization of telecommunications.
  • Organization of regional & world TELECOM events.

International Standards Bodies:
IETF

• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet.
• The IETF is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.
• It is open to any interested individual.
  

• The actual technical work of the IETF is done in its working groups, which are organized by topic into several areas (e.g., routing, network management, security, etc.)
• Much of the work is handled via mailing lists, however, the IETF also holds meetings three times per year.

International Standards Bodies:
ISOC

• The Internet Society is the international organization for global cooperation and coordination for the Internet and its internetworking technologies and applications.
• Its members reflect the breadth of the entire Internet community and consist of individuals, corporations, non- profit organizations, and government agencies.
• Its principal purpose is to maintain and extend the development and availability of the Internet and its associated technologies and applications - both as an end in itself, and as a means of enabling organizations, professions, and individuals worldwide to more effectively collaborate, cooperate, and innovate in their respective fields and interests.
• Its specific goals and purposes include:
  • Development, maintenance, evolution, and dissemination of standards for the Internet and its internetworking technologies and applications;
  • Growth and evolution of the Internet architecture;
  • Maintenance and evolution of effective administrative processes necessary for operation of the global Internet and internets;
  • Education and research related to the Internet and internetworking;

International Standards Bodies:
WC3

• The World Wide Web Consortium promotes the Web by producing specifications and reference software.
• W3C is funded by industrial members but its products are freely available to all.
• The Consortium is run by MIT LCS with INRIA acting as European host, in collaboration with CERN where the web originated.

  (Definition taken directly from WC3 home-page)

International Standards Bodies:
IEEE

• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is the world's largest technical professional society.
• A non-profit organization, IEEE promotes the development and application of electrotechnology and allied sciences for the benefit of humanity, the advancement of the profession, and the well-being of it's members.

International Standards Bodies:
ACM

• Association for Computing Machinery (founded 1947) is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the art, science, engineering, and application of information technology, serving both professional and public interests by fostering the open interchange of information and by promoting the highest professional and ethical standards.
• Since its inception ACM has provided its members and the world of computer science a forum for the sharing of knowledge on developments and achievements necessary to the fruitful interchange of ideas.
• Over the years ACM has flourished along with the industry itself, playing a major role in enriching the quality, form and function of computer usage.
• ACM forms Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which focus on specific areas of computer science. Some SIGs which relate to data communications include:
  • Data Communication (SIGCOMM)
  • Hypertext/Hypermedia (SIGLINK)
  • Multimedia (SIGMM)

International Standards Bodies:
Forums: ATM Forum

• The Asynchronous Transfer Mode Forum is a worldwide organization, aimed at promoting ATM within the industry and the end user community.
• Formed in October 1991, with four (4) members, the ATM Forum membership currently includes more than 700 companies representing all sectors of the communications and computer industries, as well as a number of government agencies, research organizations and users.

National Standards Bodies:
ANSI

• Founded in 1918, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is a private, not-for-profit membership organization that coordinates the U.S. voluntary consensus standards system and approves American National Standards.
• ANSI consists of approximately 1,300 national and international companies, 30 government agencies, 20 institutional members, and 250 professional, technical, trade, labor and consumer organizations.
• ANSI acts to insure that a single consistent set of consensus based American National Standards are developed by ANSI-accredited standards developers.
• Integral to the development and approval process is the requirement that all interests concerned have the opportunity to participate in the development process.

National Standards Bodies:
NIST

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology was established by Congress "to assist industry in the development of technology ... needed to improve product quality, to modernize manufacturing processes, to ensure product reliability ... and to facilitate rapid commercialization ... of products based on new scientific discoveries."
• NIST's primary mission is to promote U.S. economic growth by working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards.

Standards Documents and Series:
RFC

• RFC (request for comments) are publicly available documents which track the growth of all Internet-related protocols.
• All TCP/IP protocol implementations must be based on RFCs to ensure interoperability with other Internet protocols.
• RFCs can be in one of several protocol states and have different protocol status.

Standards Documents and Series:
ITU-T: X series

• Public data networks - Interfaces:
  • X.21 - Interface between data terminal equipment and data circuit-terminating equipment for synchronous operation on public data networks.
  • X.25 - Interface between data terminal equipment (DTE) and data circuit-terminating equipment (DCE) for terminals operating in the packet mode and connected to public data networks by dedicated circuit
• OSI - Model and notation:
  • X.200 - Info. technology - OSI - The basic model.
• Message Handling Systems:
  • X.400 - Message handling services: Message handling system and service overview.
• Directory Services:
  • X.500 - Information technology - OSI - The directory: Overview of concepts, models and services
• Security:
  • X.800 - Security architecture for Open Systems Interconnection for CCITT applications.

Standards Documents and Series:
ITU-T: V series

• Interworking with other networks:
  • V.18 - Operational and interworking requirements.
• Interfaces and voice-band modems:
  • V.32 - A family of 2-wire, duplex modems operating at data signaling rates of up to 9600 bit/s.
  • V.32 bis - A duplex modem operating at data signaling rates of up to 14 400 bit/s.
  • V.34 - A modem operating at data signaling rates of up to 28 800 bit/s.
• Error control:
  • V.42 - Error-correcting procedures for DCEs using asynchronous-to-synchronous conversion.
  • V.42 bis - Data compression procedures for data circuit terminating equipment (DCE) using error correcting procedures.

Standards Documents and Series:
ITU-T: Q series

• General Recommendations relative to signaling and switching systems (national or international):
  • Q.20 - Comparative advantages of "in-band" and "out-band" systems.
• Functional description of the signaling system:
  • Q.251 - General
• Definition and function of signals:
  • Q.254 - Telephone signals.
  • Q.255 - Signaling-system-control signals
• Broadband ISDN:
  • Q.2010 - Broadband integrated services digital network overview signaling capability set 1, release 1
  • Q.2110 - B-ISDN ATM adaptation layer - Service specific connection oriented protocol (SSCOP)
  • Q.2931 - Broadband integrated services digital network (B- ISDN) - Digital subscriber signaling system No. 2 (DSS 2) - User-network interface (UNI) layer 3 specification for basic call/connection control.

Computer Science Technical Reports, Papers, and Journals:

• Computer Science Technical Reports (CSTR):
  • The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) is working with five leading universities to develop concepts for digital libraries. The project is supported by the ARPA of the DoD.
  • As part of the project, each university is placing its Computer Science Technical Reports and related reports on- line.
  • In addition, CNRI and the universities researching on aspects of storage, search, retrieval & info. display in the Digital Library.
  • The Five Participating Universities are:

    1. Carnegie Mellon University

    2. Cornell University

    3. University of California at Berkeley

    4. Stanford University.

    5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  [Outline]

  ---

• Technical Papers:
  • Various papers are freely available on the Internet which help expand the coverage of standards and other industry trends.
  • Most universities, organizations, and project groups make their findings available on the WWW in the form of white- papers or technical articles.
  • Most sites offer access and searching mechanisms for retrieving technical papers:
    • AT&T Network Bibliography
    • Internet Accessible Libraries
    • General search forms which cover topics over many sites.
  • Most good technical papers find their way into popular journals.

Popular Journal Publications:
IEEE

• Magazines:
  • IEEE Communications
  • IEEE Personal Communications
  • IEEE Networks
  • IEEE Software
  • IEEE MultiMedia
  • Computer
• Transactions:
  • IEEE Transcations on Computers
  • IEEE Transactions on Communications
  • IEEEACM Transactions on Networking
  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Popular Journal Publications:
ACM

• Publications:
  • Communications of the ACM
  • Journal of the ACM
  • Computing Surveys
  • Computing Reviews
• Other Journals:
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Systems
  • Networking
  • Standardization
  • Multimedia Systems

IETF standardization process for Internet Protocols

• The Internet protocol standardization process evolves documents through various states, achieving different levels of status.
• A document defining a protocol enters at the Internet Activities Board in the initial state. It then, with approval, gets passed to the IETF for consideration and testing.
• During the process, the document can pass through different status and follow different evolution tracks.

IETF standardization process:
Protocol States and Tracks

• Initial - Protocol was submitted for consideration
• Proposed Standard - Proposal undergoing initial screening.
• Draft Standard - Semi-final form, independent implementations are constructed and it's RFC is reviewed.
• Standard - Protocol is now officially a part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, and review and acceptance.
• Experimental - Protocol is not being considered for standarization.
• Historic - Unused Protocols are considered obsolete.

IETF standardization process:
Status Levels

• Required - All hosts and gateways must implement a required protocol.
• Recommended - Implementation of this protocol is encouraged but not required.
• Elective - Hosts and gateways can choose to implement this protocol at will.
• Limited use - Protocol is not intended for general use (experimental)
• Not Recommended - Obsolete protocols are not recommended.
• A protocol can cycle through the standards track (draft - proposed) and never become an actual standard.
• The evolution cycle usually, on average, takes 6 months per state and may take up to two years before becoming a standard.

How ISO standards are developed:

• ISO standards are developed according to the following principles:
  • Consensus - The views of all interests are taken into account
  • Industry-wide - Global solutions to satisfy industries and customers worldwide.
  • Voluntary - International standardization is market- driven and based on voluntary involvement of interests in the market-place.
• Three main phases in the ISO standards development process:
• Phase one involves definition of the technical scope of the future standard.
• Phase two is entered during which countries negotiate the detailed specifications within the standard (consensus- building phase)
• Phase three comprises the formal approval of the resulting draft International Standard, following which the agreed text is published as an ISO International Standard.
• Most standards require periodic revision. Several factors combine to render a standard out of date: technological evolution, new methods and materials, new quality and safety requirements.
• ISO has established the general rule that all ISO standards should be reviewed at intervals of not more than five years. On occasion, it is necessary to revise a standard earlier.
• To accelerate the standards process (handling of proposals, drafts, comment reviews, voting, publishing, etc.) ISO makes use of information technology and programme management methods.

Obtaining standard documents:

• Standards bodies distribute their documents in several file formats and to different groups or organizations.
• Many standards must be purchased before you may implement products based on them. However, the documents are free.
• Some standards bodies require payment up-front before you are permitted access to the standards documents.
• Still other standards bodies take an open approach where documents are entirely free to readers and implementation vendors (RFCs).
• Most standards are available on the Internet via FTP, Gopher, or the WWW.
• Many sites have search engines which allow users to obtain different documents, all of which pertain to the same standard / protocol.
• Document Formats:
  • Text / ASCII - most popular format.
  • Postscript - requires a postscript printer or TeX / LaTeX to view.
  • Word for Windows - Microsoft Windows editor.
  • HTML - browseable documents with links to other references.
  • PDF - Adobe Acrobat hyper-link format (similar to HTML).
• Document Languages:
  • Most international standards bodies offer their documents written in popular spoken languages, including:
    • English
    • French
    • Spanish
    • National language of the organization’s origin.

Does Standardization Help?

• Users have more confidence in products and services that conform to International Standards.
• Assurance of conformity can be provided by manufacturers' declarations, or by audits carried out by independent bodies.

Industry Control and Acceptance

• Commonly in today's computer industry, the acceptance of products are facilitated by the conformance to and support of standards.
• Most products become obsolete if they are only based on proprietary specifications and do not support standards.
• If a company maintains control over the majority of products based on a particular technology, that company can usually dictate the direction of the industry and any standards to follow.

Last Modification: (Sunday, August 25, 1996)

All work was written, produced, and is copyrighted by Daniel Z. Tabor Jr.
Page created by Daniel Z. Tabor Jr. Copyright ©1996 Illusion Industries Inc.