Since the issue of NANOG is going to be discussed at the regional-techs meeting I thought it would be useful to have the EEPG ToR. After I dug it out I thought I'd pass it along. I believe this was the initial draft that Bernard published; I'm not sure if it's been updated (it's the only one I could find on ftp.ripe.net). --Richard ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR EUROPEAN ENGINEERING AND PLANNING GROUP (EEPG) Bernhard Stockman December 27, 1993 The European Engineering and Planning Group is the platform for the engineering and deployment planning of the European part of the Internet. The Internet shall here be seen in a broader sense not just networks based on the TCP/IP protocol suite. EEPG will be active in the area of operational planning and engineering among various network service providers. EEPG will work in close liaison with the Intercontinental Enginering and Planning Group (IEPG) and bring attention to IEPG key activities as relevant within the European networking environment. EEPG can thus be seen as the European branch of the IEPG and European participation in the IEPG will be drawn from EEPG. EEPG is open for anyone but is mainly intended for operational planning and engineering among network service providers. RIPE, being the organization for coordination of European network services, is the adequate framework for the EEPG. EEPG will thus have the form of a RIPE Working Group and meet in conjunction with general RIPE meetings, currently three times a year. With the recent development and growth of the global network environment and the foreseen problems in maintaining an ubiquitous and homogeneous global network infrastructure the EEPG sees as its role to to identify and prioritize key activities of a technical nature which have a direct impact on the European and worldwide networking environment. For this reason EEPG will: - propose solutions for an optimized interconnectivity infrastrucutre among European network service providers with the ambition of securing maximal connectivity and flexibility in terms of engineering and management. With the increasing number of international network service providers, the maintenance and improvement of pan-European and global connectivity is an obvious challenge. - propose coordinated deployment of basic distributed network applications. The overall future of the global networking infrastructure is dependent on our common ability to evolve the collection of basic applications in the direction of enhanced quality and reliability of services. - propose practices and methods for efficient fault isolation and recovery as well as coordinated information dissemination in the area of network management. The focus here is to advocate the necessity of basic common operational methodologies and procedures within each network provider's operational domain to ensure that the user community can be serviced with a seamless end to end capability with appropriate mechanisms to ensure overall quality and reliability of the offered service. This area explicitly includes Network Information Center (NIC) and Network Operations Center (NOC) interaction. An EEPG work-plan will be maintained describing current areas of interest and priorities. The work-plan will from time to time be updated and documented to reflect changes of focus.