Paul, > At 10:15 AM +0200 6/18/03, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote: > >I can think of some possible reasons, not necessarily exclusive > > > >- this is a bad idea/impossible to do well, so we shouldn't do it > >- some other organization is already doing it, so we shouldn't > >- we're too stupid to get it right, so we shouldn't do it > >- the IETF is too large, so we shouldn't be adding more work > > This might be a combination of the latter three, but I think it is > clearer for this WG: > > - the IETF's track record for this work so far is quite poor the attached e-mail that have been posted to the PPVPN mailing list sheds some light on why the IETF's track record for this work so far is quite poor. Yakov. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 May 2003 13:24:58 -0700 Reply-To: PPVPN <PPVPN@NORTELNETWORKS.COM> Sender: PPVPN <PPVPN@NORTELNETWORKS.COM> From: auto92679@HUSHMAIL.COM Subject: Strategy for VPN work in IETF Comments: To: ppvpn@nortelnetworks.com Comments: cc: problem-statement@alvestrand.no -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alex Zinin writes: > Since San Francisco IETF meeting the IESG has been considering the > situation in the SUB-IP area and in the PPVPN Working Group in > particular. > Such close attention to this WG was triggered by numerous concerns > thatthe IESG members received from the WG participants about limited > and slow progress within the WG despite the efforts of the WG chairs > and its members. The IESG also used this opportunity to consider > the IETF area that the PPVPN work would fit best. > After much deliberation, the involved ADs (Bert, Thomas, and I) are > considering the following organizational changes in order to > improve WG focus and productivity and ensure faster progress of the > VPN-related work: > 1. Split of Layer-2 and Layer-3 VPN work in separate Working Groups. > The L2 and L3 VPN work spaces are each big enough to warrant a > separate WG. While concentration of all VPN-related work in a > single forum was the right thing to do to ensure coordination > of efforts when the PPVPN WG was created and L2 VPN work came in, > such concentration is causing scaling problems within the WG at > this moment. > Migration of work into two separate WGs for L2 and L3 VPN > technologies with more specific WG charters will help to focus > discussions, prevent staff and meeting time overloading, and will > aid faster progress of corresponding technologies. Alex, The proposed solution ignores the origins of the problem. The fact that PPVPN has been making any progress at all, despite the bureaucracy imposed on it by the IESG is rather comendable. This is a typically example of a WG which was setup despite many architectural objections that it doesn't fit in the "internet" design. One cannot help but to suspect that there was the hope ammoung the inner circles that it would fail altogether. At least giving the ammount of "framework" nonsense required and the interdiction to discuss solutions before a framework is agreed upon. The work of this working group is particularly harder given that this is todays "fashion" area... work is much harder on such areas (like mpls was a couple of years ago). One would suspect that the IESG efforts to slow the WG steem also from concerns that fashion areas tend to create a fair ammount of nonsense proposals most of which tend to be naturally eliminated by the WGs. Given the environment the performance of the ppvpn WG seems to me to rather positive. It has actually come up with several documents that are useful and deserve publication. One of the reasons given here for this proposed disolution of the WG is that the "L2VPN and L3VPN work spaces are big enought". However both in the list and WG meetings it seems to me that the current l3vpn WG is close to 0. The base document on l3vpn has been rather stable for a while and it is not likely to change. The IESG/inner-circle has chosen for mostly ideological reasons to attempt to marginalize this work so it can hardly expect to be heard now. It seems to me that if there is a problem w/ PPVPN that problem lies within the IESG itself. As such i would like to propose to split the IESG in two WGs: one that concerns itself w/ architecture and one group that concerns itself with the process of documenting interoperable solutions that are not known to be good or bad ideas until used in pratice. This latter group should have the task to assure that the process is fair and that both the pluses and minus of a solution are considered and documented. One of the ideal caractheristics of the latter group would be if they where to realize that by definition an IESG member is much less of an expert in a given domain than the membership of the WG it steers. It is humanly impossible for it to be otherwise. Unless you assume that the membership of WG is 100% incompetent which is never the case. A steerer cannot possibly be an expert in 20 groups it oversees... usually it can't even keep up with the problems and technology due to the fact that there is only 24 hours in each day. In the rather arrogant terms of internet engineering, the IESG is by definition the set of people that are "clueless". It is not possible for it to be the other way around. No matter how wise and inteligent IESG memebers are... It is necessarly that the IESG understands that latter point and restricts its job to document in a timely manner interoperable solutions for the problems at hand regardless of personal opinion on the value of such problems and technologies. - ---- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Hush 2.2 (Java) Note: This signature can be verified at https://www.hushtools.com/verify wl4EARECAB4FAj61dxQXHGF1dG85MjY3OUBodXNobWFpbC5jb20ACgkQEMGDJWtDWfpc ewCfaWN5FVNhieXVzimDk9cNYOZlgKAAnj3Hf8eWFmikSCDmAw1eMQVdEUb/ =GLPS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----