[IPFIX] new monitoring interval information elements

Dear IPFIX experts,

FYI, I'm requesting two new IPFIX Information Elements from IANA to 
record the start and end of a monitoring interval, which is a period of 
time during which the Metering Process is running.

The existing IPFIX Information Elements provide flow based timestamps, 
system init, and observation times. There's no indication of the 
Metering Process, whichmay be running for a period of time during which 
no flows of interest or relevanceare observed.

In fact, many existing elements are described as "The total number of X 
since the Metering Process (re-)initialization". However, there's 
currently no indication of when that (re-)initialization was. These new 
Information Elements enable an IPFIX device to indicate when the 
Metering Process started and ended.

These new elements are particularly useful when the Metering Process is 
windowed - ie, it runs for a fixed interval, exporting all its 
observations only at the end of that interval, before optionally 
starting over. With these new Information Elements, an IPFIX device can 
readily indicate the start (and end) of each interval.

Our present need is only for milliseconds resolution. At this time we 
don't need the equivalent seconds, microseconds, or nanoseconds 
elements, although these could be created in future if needs be.

Also note the subtle distinction between "monitoring" and "metering": a 
device could be monitoring traffic for some time, without detecting 
anything of interest or relevance to be metered. The metering interval 
could almost be expressed by minFlowStart* to maxFlowEnd*. We've chosen 
to name these elements "monitoring interval" rather than "metering 
interval" to clearly express this difference.


Name:         monitoringIntervalStartMilliSeconds
Data Type:    dateTimeMilliseconds
Sematics:     -
Description: The absolute timestamp at which the monitoring interval 
started.
               A Monitoring interval is the period of time during which 
the Metering Process is running.
Units:        milliseconds


Name:         monitoringIntervalEndMilliSeconds
Data Type:    dateTimeMilliseconds
Sematics:     -
Description: The absolute timestamp at which the monitoring interval ended.
               A Monitoring interval is the period of time during which 
the Metering Process is running.
Units:        milliseconds


Thanks,
P.

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