Internet Personal Appliance Control
charter-ietf-ipac-01

There is much interest in enabling networked personal appliances to 
communicate with and control each other over the Internet. Although 
there are numerous networking technologies which allow networked 
personal appliances to operate within a single home environment or 
domain, there is currently no support for control of these devices from 
the Internet, or for interworking the various home networking 
technologies.  The ability to provide such support will radically 
enhance the ability to provide exciting new services.  The initial 
proposals and ideas on this topic were submitted to the IETF SIP WG.

The purpose of the proposed working group is to develop an architecture 
and framework for recommending (and if necessary, developing) protocols
which will enable communication with and control of Internet Personal
Appliances (IPAs).

For the purposes of the group, Internet Personal Appliances (IPAs) are 
regarded as networked devices which share the following 
characteristics: 
(1) The ability to interact with the physical environment (either 
through sensors or actuators); (2) Limited (or restricted) general 
computational power, though the devices may possess high-computation 
power for specific tasks such as image processing, or speech 
recognition.

In general, IPAs will be groups of sensors and/or actuators with 
limited 
computational power, and networking capability.  Some IPAs will be 
portable, and will provide service in multiple locations. A subset of 
these will be mobile; that is, they will provide service irrespective 
of 
their location, whether they are stationary or in transit.  Examples of 
IPAs include:  controllable lamps, alarm clocks, washing machines, 
cameras, door bells, temperature sensors, sprinklers, and garage doors.

The scope of the proposed Working Group will comprise the following 
areas of study:

 - Architecture and framework for communication and control of Internet
   Personal Appliances over the Internet.

 - Control and communication protocol of Internet Personal Appliances
   over the Internet.  Only protocols usable by IP hosts will be
   considered in this WG.

 - Naming and addressing for Internet Personal Appliances.

 - Internet Personal Appliance discovery and registration.

 - Security for Internet Personal Appliances.

The following deliverables are planned:

1.  Requirements document:  This document will outline in detail the
    networking and protocol requirements for enabling secure
    peer-to-peer communication and control of Internet Personal 
    Appliances.

2.  Architecture and framework document (including terminology):  
    This document will describe a framework and architecture for 
    supporting the networking, protocol and security requirements 
    outlined in deliverable 1.

3.  Recommendations on protocols to realize the Internet Personal
    Appliance framework:  As far as possible, this WG will not 
    develop new protocols, but recommend existing protocols to re-use. 
 
    Where appropriate, the WG will recommend extensions to existing 
    protocols which will make them more suitable for use in the 
    Internet Personal Appliance framework.  Only protocols usable by 
    IP hosts will be considered in this WG.  All protocols developed 
    or extended must provide a high-level of security, as outlined 
    in deliverables 1 and 2.