• TCHSN open business meeting, April 13th, Phoenix, AX

The first TCHSN meeting for 2008 was held at the end of after in conjunction with the IEEE INFOCOM 2007 High-Speed Networks Workshop in Phoenix, AZ, on Sunday, April 13th, 2008. The current chair of the TCHSN, Dr. Chunming Qiao (SUNY Buffalo), and current Secretary, Dr. Nasir Ghani (University of New Mexico), were both present to conduct the proceedings.

Prof. Qiao started the meeting at approximately 5:30 p.m. and thanked the attendees for coming. He started by providing a status report of the committee’s history and update on its recent activities. Foremost, he notified the attendees about the reinstatement of the TCHSN to regular TC status (i.e., removal of probationary status), as approved recently by the IEEE ComSoc. Dr. Qiao detailed the earlier reasons for the IEEE ComSoc putting the TC on probationary status and identified the successful steps taken to address their concerns. Foremost, the TCHSN became much more active in sponsoring workshops and conferences, e.g., at IEEE Globecom 2007, IEEE INFOCOM 2008, etc. In addition, the TCHSN also revamped its website and updated its charter and policy & procedure documents. Dr. Qiao thanked all the members of the TCHSN who helped achieve this turnaround. He encouraged them to continue their service and help the TCSHN sponsor more technical events, organize special issues of publications, and nominate its members for awards.

Next Dr. Qiao notified the attendees that all current TCHSN officers were coming to the end of their stated 2 year terms and that he was required by the policy & procedures guidelines to pass along his chairmanship. Hence an open vote was held to select new officers for the chair, vice chair, and technical activities chair positions. Here, Dr. Qiao introduced the nominees for each position as Dr. Nasir Ghani, University of New Mexico (for chair), Dr. Sergey Gorinsky, Washington University St. Louis (for vice-chair), and Dr. Ashwin Gumaste, IIT Bombay (for technical activities chair). It was mentioned that the current vice-chair, Dr. Georg Carl, had requested not to run for the chair position as he was very busy with work activities. However, Dr. Carl did offer to serve as an EU liason for the TCHSN, and this was gladly accepted. Dr. Qiao thanked Dr. Carl for his service and then proceeded to hold a vote for each position and tally the results. The overall results confirmed the nominees in their respective positions, with Dr. Ghani becoming the new TCHSN chair (13 votes for, 0 against, 1 abstain), Dr. Sergey Gorinsky becoming the new TCHSN vice-chair (13 votes for, 0 against, 1 abstain), and Dr. Ashwin Gumaste becoming the new TCHSN technical activities chair (9 votes for, 0 against, 4 abstain).

Dr. Qiao then opened the floor for discussions and feedback from the attendees. Here, Dr. Neil Barakat asked a question about what it means for at TC to co-sponsor an event. Dr. Qiao explained that this generally involves chairing a workshop/symposium or serving on a technical program committee (TPC) of an event. Dr. Qiao then turned the floor over to Dr. Ghani who made some closing remarks and also announced that next year’s INFOCOM High Speed Networking workshop was being planned to be held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, in conjunction with IEEE INFOCOM 2009. He also thanked this year’s sponsor, Ciena Corporation, for their generous support for the workshop event and encouraged members of the TCHSN to take a lead role in building the next year’s workshop. The meeting was attended by 16 persons and was adjourned at about 6:15 p.m. These minutes were recorded by Dr. Nasir Ghani.

• TCHSN open business meeting, November 2007, Washington D.C.

The last TCHSN meeting for 2007 was held after in conjunction with IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington D.C. on Thursday, November 29th, 2007. The current chair of the TCHSN, Prof. Chunming Qiao (SUNY Buffalo), and current Secretary, Prof. Nasir Ghani (University of New Mexico), were both present to conduct the proceedings.

Prof. Ghani started the meeting at approximately 6:00 p.m. and thanked the attendees for coming. He started by providing a status report of the committee’s activities. Foremost, he detailed the steps taken by the officers to address the probationary status of the committee. These included the increased sponsorship of workshops and conferences and a complete revision of the website, charter, and policy and procedure documents. These revisions had been submitted several months ago to the IEEE COMSOC for reassessment of the probationary status and a decision was due any time. Indeed, it was announced shortly after the meeting (several days later) that the IEEE TCSHN had been re-instated to regular status. Prof. Ghani also announced that this year’s INFOCOM High Speed Networking (HSN) workshop was again a big success and that plans are moving ahead with the fourth such workshop to be held with IEEE INFOCOM 2008 in Phoenix, AZ. The general chairs for this event are Prof. Nasir Ghani (UNM) and Prof. Ramamurthy (University of Nebraska Lincoln) and the TPC co-chairs are Prof. Ashwin Gumaste (IIT Bombay) and Prof. Sergey Gorinsky (Washington University St. Louis). Several sponsors had also expressed strong interest in supporting this event for the coming year.

In addition the TCHSN has also been invited to co-sponsor some symposia for the upcoming IEEE ICC 2008 and IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 conferences. It was also mentioned by one of the attendees that there are openings for TPC symposia chairs for the future IEEE ICC 2009 and IEEE GLOBECOM 2009 events, and that the TCSHN should encourage its members to pursue these positions. The committee chair Prof. Qiao also joined the meeting and added that the current officer terms are set to expire in 2008 (2 year terms). As a result, new elections were going to have to be held in 2008, most likely at the IEEE INFOCOM 2008 HSN workshop in Phoenix, AZ (April 2008). Dr. Qiao announced that he will be moving on as chair and hence this will create a new opening. Now according to TCHSN election procedures, the current Chair (and two earlier chairs) will become a member of the Advisory Board. The current Vice Chair and Secretary will then automatically become candidates for the next higher positions (Chair and Vice Chair, respectively). Other candidates are also welcome to contest for these elections by submitting their candidacy to the Chair (Nominations and Elections committee). There will also be an election held for the Secretary position. Finally, the scope of the technical committee’s activities also came under discussion. There was a suggestion that the committee should work harder to attract wireless networking persons and also focus on studying higher-layer networking applications and services. This would help better discern the focus committee from others. In addition, the discussion of a possible merger between the TCHSN and the IEEE Technical Committee on Switching and Routing was also mentioned by Prof. Qiao. Namely, there is interest between the chairs of these two committees and also IEEE COMSOC to consider merging these two groups owing to a possible overlap in scope. Hence it was expected that new discussions were going to be initiated on this possible merger, i.e., between the chairs of these two committees.

Finally, Prof. Qiao also encouraged the attendees to nominate deserving candidates (including self-nominations) for IEEE service awards, Distinguished Lecturer positions, and IEEE Senior Member/Fellow grades by contacting the TCHSN officers. The meeting was adjourned at about 7:00 p.m. These minutes were recorded by Prof. Nasir Ghani (UNM).

• TCHSN open business meeting, Anchorage, AK May 2007

The TCHSN meeting was held after the High Speed Networking (HSN) Workshop 2007 in Anchorage, Alaska, USA on Friday, May 11, 2007. The current officers of TCHSN are Chair: Prof. Chunming Qiao (SUNY Buffalo), Vice Chair: Prof. Georg Carle (University of Tuebingen, Germany) and Secretary: Prof. Nasir Ghani (Tennessee Tech. U.).

Prof. Chunming Qiao, Chair, TCHSN began the meeting at 5:15pm. He started by thanking the TPC chairs of this year's HSN workshop (Byrav Ramamurthy, UNL and Nasir Ghani, TTU) and the general chair (Thomas Ndousse, US Department of Energy).  Chunming provided a status report on the committee activities. He announced that TCHSN was placed on probation for activities prior to June 2006.
In the past year, TCHSN has held the High Speed Networking workshops at INFOCOM 2006 (Barcelona, Spain) and INFOCOM 2007 (Anchorage, Alaska, USA) successfully. There were also meetings at INFOCOM 2006, GLOBECOM 2006 and INFOCOM 2007.  TCHSN meetings will be held regularly at IEEE INFOCOM and GLOBECOM conferences and if necessary, also at the ICC conference. Chunming outlined the policy and procedures for the committee including issues such as membership, elections, meetings etc.

Anyone interested in high-speed networking is welcome to become a member of TCHSN by subscribing to the TCHSN mailing list. The terms of the current TCHSN officers will expire (after a 2-year term) at next year's INFOCOM (2008) where elections will be held for all three positions (Chair, Vice Chair and Secretary).

According to TCHSN election procedures, the current Chair (and two earlier chairs) will become a member of the Advisory Board. The current Vice Chair and Secretary will automatically become candidates for the next higher positions (Chair and Vice Chair, respectively). Other candidates are also welcome to contest for these elections by submitting their candidacy to the Chair (Nominations and Elections committee). There will also be an election held for the Secretary position.

Olufemi Komolafe (University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK) volunteered to serve as TCHSN's representative to ICC 2007 to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK in June 2007. Olufemi is organizing the GMPLS workshop on Control plane resilience and encouraged the HSN workshop attendees to participate in this upcoming workshop.

Regarding TCHSN's role in upcoming IEEE/ComSoc conferences, the following events were discussed:

1. ICC 2007 will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK in June 2007.

2. GLOBECOM 2007 will be held in Washington DC, USA in November 2007.

3. ICC 2008 will be held in Beijing, China in May 2008.

4. GLOBECOM 2008 will be held in December 2008 in New Orleans, USA.
The two relevant symposia are
5. Optical Networks and Systems Symposium
10. Next generation networks and Internet Symposium

5. INFOCOM 2008 will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, USA in April 2008.
- High Speed Networking workshop
- Elections for TCHSN Officer positions

Chunming encouraged the audience to nominate deserving candidates (including self-nominations) for IEEE service awards, Distinguished Lecturer positions and IEEE Senior Member/Fellow recognitions by contacting the TCHSN officers.

The discussions at the meeting included the following topics.

1. It was suggested that the slides used by Chunming be placed on a website. Chunming mentioned that the slides will appear on the TCHSN committee website http://www.comsoc.org/tcgn in a few weeks. Chunming also mentioned that the Comsoc website still refers to TCHSN by its old name TCGN - Technical Committee on Gigabit Networks and this will be fixed by Comsoc staff.
2. There was a suggestion made to encourage participation of industry representatives in the Committee activities. Two companies mentioned included Google and Wal-Mart which have a lot of interest in the build-out of high-speed networks for data transfers.
3. There was a suggestion made to consider having a plenary/keynote speaker at the HSN workshop in future years.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:45pm.
The minutes were recorded by Byrav Ramamurthy (UNL).

• TCHSN open business meeting, Barcelona, 24 April 2006
  The meeting took place after the worshop HSN2006 at Infocom 2006.
  The meeting was opened by Chunming Ciao, who reported a message from the chair of the TC, Joe Evans, who excused himself for not being able to attend the meeting.
  Chunming gave a brief overview about the goals of this meeting and its agenda:
  - Opening Remarks
     o Identity of TCHSN
     o Sign-up sheets
     o Web page and mailing list
  - Coming activities
     o Relevant conferences
     o Next TCHSN business meeting
  - Elections
  
  For the first point of the agenda, Chunming gave additional overview information,
  - introducing the TCHSN
  - giving an overview on the charter of the TC, and on events sponsored by it
  - holding elections for the TC officers.
  Chunming did introduce people who gave important support to the TC.
  This includes Nasir Ghani, whose work was key to the success of the HSN 2006 workshop, and who also bridges work to other TCs dealing with optical networking. This also includes Georg Carle, who co-chaired the workshops PfHSN 2002 and HSN 2003.
  
  The next issue presented in the meeting were web page and mailing list of TCHSN. Information was provided on the information provided by the TCHSN web page, namely past conferences supported by the TC, and how to subscribe to the TCHSN mailing list.
  
  Subsequently, IEEE conferences supported by the TC were discussed. It was asked how many persons of the audience would attend the following relevant conferences:
   - ICC 2006, 11-15 June 2006, Istanbul, Turkey
   - Globecom 2006, 27 November – 1 December 2006, San Francisco, USA
   - Infocom 2007 including HSN 2007, 6 - 12 May 2007, Anchorage, USA
   - ICC 2007, 24-28 June 2007, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
  The result was that the highest participation of the people present was to be expected during the HSN 2007 workshop, making this the best location for the next open business meeting.
  
  Subsequently, elections were prepared. After soliciting candidates for four officer positions in the TC, elections on each of the four positions were done:
  Positions Candidates
  Chair Chunming Qiao
  Vice-Chair Georg Carle
  Technical Activities Chair Nasir Ghani
  Liaison Officer Taieb Znati
  All candidates were elected unanimously.
  Then the meeting was closed.
  
  The meeting was attended by 28 persons documented by the signup sheet.
  Note-taker: Georg Carle
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 30 March 2003 in San Francisco, California, following the conclusion of HSN 2003
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 23 June 2002 in New York, New York, following the conclusion of HSN 2002
  • Plans for TCGN technical cosponsorship were discussed
  • TCGN mailing list limitations and spam were discussed
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 22 April 2001 in Anchorage, Alaska, following the conclusion of GBN 2001
  • Presentation of slate of new officers
      Joe Evans - Chair
      Chunming Qiao - Vice Chair
      Andrea Fumagalli - Technical Activities Chair   Joe Touch - Past Chair
     
  • Proposed procedure for election
    Collect additional names, if any, filter through Executive Committee
    Vote by e-mail
  • Election of the TCGN steering committee
  • Summary of sponsored and co-sponsored meetings
    • Globecom 2002 High-Speed Networks Symposium
    • SPIE Opticomm 2001
    • Open requests for cosponsorship (notably at ICC 2002)
  • Review and approval of policies
    • TCGN mailing list
    • TCGN technical cosponsorship
    • new TCGN virus spam filter
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 21 March 1999 in New York, New York, following the conclusion of GBN '99
  • New officers
    Proposed slate
      James Sterbenz - Past President
      Joe Touch - Chair
      Joe Evans - Vice Chair
  • Proposed procedure
    Collect additional names, if any, filter through Executive Committee
    Vote by e-mail
  • What is our role? Any continuing functions? Is everything high speed? Lost control, or declare success?
    Possibilities
    1. Infrequent occurrence of GBN? What role for TCGN? Make sure references, previous work understood, filter.
    2. Sponsor less frequent, topical workshops at things like Globecom. Still offer at INFOCOM? Still more people overlap than other conferences.
    3. Continue as is?
  • TC name
    Suggestions: TCTN? TCHSN? TCHPN? TCFN? TCLSN? TCHS2N?
  • Workshop attendance
    INFOCOM attendance up
    Tutorial co-scheduled at same time
    Too many high speed things?
    Expect higher attendance in foreign venue (Tel Aviv)?
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 29 March 1998 in San Francisco, California, following the conclusion of GBN '98
  • Web pages
    • need gigabit events update volunteer
    • will fix/move e-mail list
      • use Hennig's membership tool?
      • Joe Touch list move
      • something like tcgn@ieee.org
  • Events
    • GBN'99 @ INFOCOM '99 in NYC
    • PfHSN'99 in Northern NE (Boston)
      • Fall '99, coordinate with SIGCOMM'99?
      • J. Touch and J. Sterbenz as co-chairs, Vermont?, 100-150 people
      • help!! (locals)
      • travel arrangement problems
  • Steering Committee
    • cycling (no?)
    • proposals
    • restructuring motions, passes unanimously
  • Liaisons
    • North America? Canada added
    • reasons - information flow in both directions (+ response to Japan talks)
    • Latin America liaison (Julio)
    • Canada (Sonjay Saraset)
    • Europe (Per)
    • can appoint (Executive Committee) or elect
    • seek others
  • Other business?
    • none was discussed
  • Future
    • definition, everything, HSN?, existence?
    • constraints
    • "gigabit" name/TM conflicts
      • quality control
      • maintain focus
    • names?
    • focus
      • transport or above
      • network wide
      • end to end impacts
    • is there enough "new" material for the workshop?
      • positive feedback from attendees and earlier articles
    • names?
      • still can't get Gb/s e2e
      • take off line
  • Workshop wrap-up
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 7 April 1997 in Kobe, Japan, following the conclusion of GBN '97
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 24 March 1996 in San Francisco, California, following the conclusion of GBN '96
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 2 April 1995 in Boston, Massachusetts, following the conclusion of GBN '95
• TCGN Open Business Meeting was held on 12 June 1994 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, following the conclusion of GBN '94