On 25/08/2022 14:00, Robert Sparks wrote:
To Brian's "quite new": Dispatch was chartered in 2009 - over 13 years ago.
To "why" : See RFC5727 and its updates, particularly RFC7957.
To Mary's point about DISPATCH vs ARTAREA: Right _now_ traffic in both
groups is small enough that at meeting time, sharing a slot is a
reasonable optimization. That is not guaranteed to remain true. It is
not true right now for Security (SAAG vs SECDISPATCH) for instance.
Pendulums swing, often driven by the need to scale.
I remember the creation of the Dispatch WG and the reasons that led to
it along with the reorganisation of areas and the brief(!) life of
Appsawg. I probably assumed that Dispatch was not just for one area but
would also serve for others when needed until I saw a recent reference
to WG xxx being the dispatch for Area zzz which led me to look for other
dispatch WG and to find secdispatch but not the others, although
Donald's list makes perfect sense, starting from the basis that there is
a dispatch WG for each area.
In practice, I do not see that happening much in routing and Ops where I
see to-ing and fro-ing as to which WG might be the best home; thus
TLS1.3 is being added to a number of protocols and it is not clear to me
where such work fits; it gets sorted, courtesy of cooperation between WG
Chairs and ADs.
I continue to be surprised as to what I am ignorant of after 25 years of
participation in the IETF so I was also wondering what else has passed
me by.
Tom Petch
On 8/24/22 5:52 PM, Mary B wrote:
The DISPATCH WG in the ART area originated in the RAI area and I think
it was the original dispatch type WG. It was a reaction to the
plethora of diverse work items that were being shuffled through the
SIPPING WG (which published a total of 54 RFCs before it was closed).
We sometimes referred to the WG sessions as the gong show as we would
only have time for 5 minutes for some topics. The DISPATCH WG was
quite effective in getting smaller WGs organized to solve specific
problems and making sure there was enough people willing to do the
work. SIPPING really suffered from having just a few people interested
in some items and there were things published for which there are no
implementations. The wiki is no longer maintained, but if you go back
to an earlier version you can see the groups that were chartered and
were able to successfully complete deliverables:
https://trac.ietf.org/trac/dispatch/wiki/WikiStart?version=144
There never was a RAI area WG and as you note, dispatch type WGs serve
a very similar role. I would posit that there is really no strong
impetus at this juncture to really have the notion of a DISPATCH WG
separate from ART Area - both have been scheduled in the same slot
since RAI merged with APPs and the distinction as to where a topic
fits isn't always clear. And, of course, the volume of new work
related to SIP and real time protocols has dramatically decreased
since the DISPATCH WG was originally chartered.
Regards,
Mary.
On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 4:43 PM Brian E Carpenter
<brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 24-Aug-22 20:46, tom petch wrote:
>
> On 22/08/2022 18:03, Donald Eastlake wrote:
>> Area Dispatch WG
>> ------------------
>> ART DISPATCH
>> GEN GENDISPATCH
>> INT INTAREA
>> OPS OPSAWG
>> RTG RTGWG
>> SEC SECDISPATCH
>> TSV TSVWG
>>
>> In some cases it is a "pure" dispatch WG that never processes
documents
>> itself. In other cases, it handles documents in the area that
it does not
>> dispatch in some other way.
>
> Donald
>
> Thank you for the prompt and comprehensive response. Clearly it is
> easier to know than I imagined but how could I have found that
out? As
> you may infer, I did search the datatracker, IESG wiki and such
like to
> no avail. I see that the charters for e.g. intarea and rtgwg do
include
> mention of this function albeit not using the word 'dispatch'.
The very notion of a separate forum for 'dispatch' discussions is
quite new,
whereas 'area' WGs have existed for many years and are (IMHO) the
natural
forum for such discussions. I don't know why ART and SEC areas
decided to set
up separate groups (that doesn't imply that I have any objection,
those
are simply areas that I don't track). I do know why the GEN area
did so -
there was no GENAREA WG at all, so there was a real gap.
(When I was GEN Area Director, I assumed that ietf@xxxxxxxx was
the forum
for general IETF discussions.)
Brian
