1IETF 63, Remote UI BoF WiDeX Problem Statement Dean Willis Vlad Stirbu RUI BoF, IETF 63, Paris August 2 nd, 2005

2 IETF63, Remote UI BoF What is Remote UI? A mechanism that enables user interfaces to be rendered on other devices than those that have the application logic. Remote UI Server Remote UI Client Application logic UI Semantics Processed Input Information

3 IETF63, Remote UI BoF Remote UI Alternatives Now Framebuffer-level – VNC, RDP, Hot Desk Server framebuffer is copied across the network to a framebuffer on the client Graphics-level – X Windows Drawing request to the graphical device interface (GDI) copied across the network The client is interpreting these commands and renders in its framebuffer

4 IETF63, Remote UI BoF Ecosystem: Devices

5 IETF63, Remote UI BoF Ecosystem: User Interfaces

6 IETF63, Remote UI BoF Highly Diverse Ecosystem Physical characteristics screen size and ratio color depth User Interface characteristics windowing system and widget sets input methods

7 IETF63, Remote UI BoF Challenges How to describe the user interface in terms of widgets? How to find matches between UI servers and clients? How to start UI remoting sessions? How to keep the UI synchronised? Out of Scope

8 IETF63, Remote UI BoF Some Answers UI descriptions W3C markup languages: XHTML, XHTML + SVG, etc. Discovery session setup IETF: MMUSIC, ZeroConf

9 IETF63, Remote UI BoF WiDeX Goal & Scope Specify an open, platform-independent method for use in an IP-based network to convey initialisation, update and eventing information about user-visible objects, i.e. widgets. Network “plumbing” Connectivity. e.g. NATs, firewalls Security Reliability UI remoting management URI definition Session-Transaction model Synchronisation Events

10 IETF63, Remote UI BoF WiDeX Requirements & Assumptions Protocol must have a modular architecture UI semantic independent Discovery and session setup mechanism independent Privacy concerns must be addressed, e.g. P3P Protocol must support server initiated updates Full screen updates Incremental updates Protocol must support client initiated updates The protocol must have support for authentication and secure sessions Existing protocols should be reused when appropriate