Network Element phone conference ================================================================================ Anand: should we include NPM in the NE, or just BAR? Pete: it's just semantics: if they are to be combined it's only in name Anand: from the middleware document, it's clear that JRA1 see the NE as having 2 sets of functionality. But that the access point should be the same. ... Ratna: if there is something to unify, we could unify the way they are accessed (e.g. BAR is likely to use WS-Agreement, so maybe NPM should too), we could unify security for example. Anand: would like to propose some unified set of things that both BAR and NPM will use, such as WS-Agreement or AAA or something like that. Ratna: don't know what people mean when they say "should the NE be seen in the same way as a CE or SE". Anand: someone submits the job, then there are matchmaking elements that select services that support that job. Then some of those resources are dropped because they can't support the job. So for the NE, you might choose (somehow) according to, say, available bandwidth or if there are QoS services available, use them. Pete: So we should drop "Network Element", because we offer no such thing. But we will produce a sensible framework to present what we *are* doing in a way that JRA1 can use.