The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Protocol to Access White-Space (PAWS) Databases' (draft-ietf-paws-protocol-20.txt) as Proposed Standard This document is the product of the Protocol to Access WS database Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Pete Resnick and Barry Leiba. A URL of this Internet Draft is: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-paws-protocol/ Technical Summary Portions of the radio spectrum that are allocated to licensees are available for non-interfering use. This available spectrum is called "White Space." Allowing secondary users access to available spectrum "unlocks" existing spectrum to maximize its utilization and to provide opportunities for innovation, resulting in greater overall spectrum utilization. One approach to manage spectrum sharing uses databases to report spectrum availability to devices. To achieve interoperability among multiple devices and databases, a standardized protocol must be defined and implemented. This document defines such a protocol, the "Protocol to Access White Space (PAWS) Databases". Working Group Summary During the design of the protocol, in earlier phases, there was some controversy, even deadlock at some point over a few points. But issues got addressed, and for the last 3 versions of the document there were no comments indicating any controversy. There were significant comments during AD Review and Last Call that have also been addressed to the satisfaction of the reviewers, and a second Last Call took place to confirm. Document Quality During private conversations, several mailing list members indicated that they have an implementation of a version of the protocol, but none came forward publicly with their implementations yet, and there was no request to hold an interop event. Personnel Gabor Bajko <gaborbajko@gmail.com> is the shepherd. Pete Resnick <presnick@qti.qualcomm.com> is the AD.
