The LNPA-WG Slow Horse Subcommittee met September 10th and 11th at
Washington, D.C.  The following are minutes of that meeting.

Participants

AT&T - Beth Watkins, H. L. Gowda, Dominic Choi, Cindy Sheehan
BellSouth - Ron Steen
ESI - Ron Stutheit (by conf bridge)
ELI - Dennis Robins (by conf bridge)
Intermedia - Gene Perez
Neustar - Gustavo Hannecke
Nextlink - Jamie Sharpe
Qwest - Dave Garner
SBC - Jim Alton, Charles Ryburn
Sprint - Stephanie Swanson
TSE - Jean Anthony
Telecom Technologies, Inc. - Robin Gaines
Telcordia - John Malyar
Tekelec - Colleen Collard
TriVergent - Jean Ann Fuller, Sherrian Lively
Verizon - Richard Bell, Bob Angevine, Gary Sacra, David Marshall
Williams Communications - Lana Swalls, Rick Lenox
WorldCom - Molly Dorsey, Suzel Wyuill-Jones, Steve Addicks, John Hayes

SOA Availability

The subcommittee concluded that performance related issues were of more
concern than SOA availability.  Unlike LSMS down-time, SOA down-time has
little impact on other service providers in an area.  The data collection
needed to develop a SOA availability report is included in NANC 219, so only
the availability report itself must be developed if we later require SOA %
Availability Reports.
SOA Performance

The proposed request for NPAC data on SOA-NPAC traffic, developed in the
August Slow Horse meeting, was refined to add a new bullet item (item 4,
below) and to describe the reports' format.  The data components are as
follows:
1.  All NPAC notifications to SOA and LTI, summarized by type, by SPID, over
a one-month period
2. All NPAC notifications to SOA and LTI, in total, summarized by 30-minute
intervals, by SPID, over a one-month period
3. All SOA/LTI requests to NPAC, summarized by type, by SPID, over a
one-month period
4. All SOA/LTI requests to NPAC, in total, summarized by 30-minutes
intervals, by SPID, over a one-month period
5. Number of NPAC-initiated SOA aborts, summarized by 30-minute intervals,
by SPID, over a one-month period
6. Number of SOA-initiated aborts, summarized by 30-minute intervals, by
SPID, over a one-month period
7. Congestion indications observed by NPAC at SOA, summarized by 30-minute
intervals, by SPID (alias), over a one-month period

The data collected is to be displayed in four reports:
1. Data for above item 1
2. Data for above item 3
3. Data for above items 4 and 6
4. Data for above items 5, 7, and 2
Each report should include data for a calendar month.  Each report should be
for a single NPAC region.  The reports should identify service providers by
an alias rather than an actual SPID (the same aliases as used on LSMS %
Availability Report covered by change order NANC 219).  At least three
calendar months' worth of data should be collected and provided to the Slow
Horse subcommittee for analysis.
Gustavo Hannecke suggested that the reports include with each SPID heading a
list of the associated SOA's key characteristics to indicate, for example,
whether the SOA automatically re-binds, whether it uses a "scope filter
request" even for single TN queries, and whether it uses queries for
recovery.  Consensus was that this not be shown on the reports.
The LLCs will be asked to request a Statement of Work (SOW) from Neustar.
At best, it appears the SOW process could accommodate starting the monthly
reports no earlier than January 2001.  However, the report is desired after
Release 3.0 is implemented, since this will impact SOA-NPAC traffic.  Thus
the reports are not required to start until about April 2001.
There was substantial discussion about the operational impact of delayed
NPAC responses to SOA requests and the consequent need for additional
information to complement the reports described above.  The additional
information should indicate in some way the time required for NPAC to
respond to SOA requests over the 30-minute measurement intervals throughout
a calendar month.  Gustavo Hannecke, Neustar, was asked to determine what
measurements are available to determine the interval between a "request" and
a "notification."  For example, exactly when does NPAC apply time stamps to
a SOA request?   Neustar will respond at the next Slow Horse subcommittee
meeting, scheduled for October 10th

LSMS Performance

John Malyar reviewed his October 1999 contribution on a proposed approach to
defining LSMS performance.  The proposal bases the LSMS performance
requirement on the NPAC throughput requirement described in Exhibit N.
However, it says that an LSMS must be able to support the sustained rate for
one hour whereas the NPAC requirement for meeting the sustained rate for
five minutes.  Bob Angevine, Verizon, expressed concern that longer
sustained rate requirement for LSMS would result in over-engineering the
LSMS.  The question of how to do peak engineering remains open.  Further
discussion is held in abeyance until the LLCs and Neustar update the NPAC
throughput measurements.  This work is expected to be completed by July 2001.

Status report to NANC
*LSMS Availability - revised NANC 219 sent to LLCs to request revised
SOW; next step is data analysis in early 2002
*LSMS Performance - work in abeyance pending NPAC throughput capacity calculation update
*SOA Performance - NPAC-SOA Traffic Data Request sent to LLCs to request SOW
*SOA Availability - further work deferred; currently viewed as low priority

Next Meeting

The next meeting of the Slow Horse Subcommittee is scheduled for Tuesday
morning, October 10th in Banff, Canada.  The meeting's agenda will be as follows:
*review September meeting minutes
*discuss redundant testing requirements for "superior" LSMS equipment configurations - Stutheit
*SOA-NPAC traffic data request status - Addicks
*SOA performance - availability of complementary data - Neustar
* develop status report for NANC
*develop November meeting agenda