Bob,
I am in violent agreement with much of what you say. The
differences may be interesting...
--On Friday, July 01, 2005 10:41 AM -0700 Bob Braden
<braden@xxxxxxx> wrote:
My thoughts on reading the IPv6 H/H Option discussion:
Some technical decisions about the Internet protocol suite are
more important that others. Decisions about application-layer
issues are of course important to particular segments of the
community and industry, but decisions that impinge on the
fundamental communication mechanism of the Internet are
critical to us all. Such decisions must be made very, very
carefully, with considerable care and not a little wisdom.
History has established the IETF as the body responsible for
decisions about the fundamental structure of the Internet.
W3C certainly can set standards at the application layer,
for example, but decisions about the waist of the "hour
glass" belong in the IETF. We need to take this
responsibility seriously, and waste less time on lawyering
the procedures.
Agreed on both counts. I've found the lawyering particularly
bothersome when the discussion turns to what one document or
another says the IESG _can_ do, rather than what the right thing
to do is.
You cannot provide "adult supervision" over the Internet
protocol suite with a committee of 2000 people; you have
to delegate a major responsibility to a small group of
technical experts. Technocratic democracy is fine up to
a point, but ...
I agree, as long as the group involved really are the technical
experts on the subject matter involved, and as long as they are
willing to assume that responsibility. See below.
After Kobe, the IETF established the IESG and IAB as twin
oversight bodies with some responsibility to look after
the overall technical health of the Internet, especially
the important parts. As a member of the RFC Editor team,
I have had the privilege to sitting in IESG meetings now
and then, and I know from that experience that the IESG
takes this responsibility very, very seriously, as they
ought.
Indeed. Having been on the IESG right after the post-Kobe
transition, and having been on every one of their calls for a
while more recently, I would agree about the seriousness. I
have also seen a little more procedure-lawyering and tendencies
to interpret procedures in ways that are either very narrow or
very creating and then to appeal to them rather than taking real
responsibility for actions -- not frequently, but a little more
frequently than makes me comfortable or that I think should make
the community comfortable.
It is true that the IETF has no strict control over what bits
people choose to put into IP headers, but in fact we have a
lot of influence. We can bring quite a bit of informal
pressure against renegade (from our viewpoint) companies or
bodies. For example, the Host Requirements RFCs successfully
deprecated and effectively eliminated a number of technical
deviations. So the registration process is important and
gives us some leverage, as long as we continue to act as
adults.
Yes. However -- and I think this falls within the range of
acting like adults -- that influence and ability exert informal
pressure arises from our ability to reason carefully about what
we are doing and what we prefer, to explain our reasoning and
conclusions, and generally to be persuasive about our positions.
From my point of view, the Host Requirements RFCs were
successful precisely because they resulted from very careful and
fairly open debate, from further review within the community,
and even from your being willing to supplement them with a
discussion the process of developing them, including areas in
which agreement could not be reached (in RFC 1127).
From my point of view, it would be in the best tradition of the
IETF for us to say to the other standards bodies involved "look,
this is our area of expertise, it is potentially harmful to the
Internet for you to go off and make standards in this area,
especially so without consulting us, and we want to engage in a
serious review and technical discussion with you before this is
registered". The registration process would help give us
significant leverage in making sure that discussion was held and
that people listened carefully to each other, which is, I think,
what you are suggesting above. I would hope --and even
presume-- that such dialogue would either cause the problematic
proposals to be modified appropriately or even to disappear.
And I would consider our being willing to engage in such a
discussion to be adult behavior. Sounds like we are in
agreement, yes?
However, consider instead the situation we find ourselves in.
The IESG, at least in the interpretation as given on this list
by some of its members, has said, essentially, "We have
concluded that this requires technical review within the IETF
before it is registered. We have the 'right' to decide whether
such review occurs or not, and we have decided to not arrange
for it. Therefore, the registration request is rejected and you
lose."
Despite the good intentions, of which I have no doubt, that
sounds more juvenile than adult. If we were somehow the
Internet's respected parents, able to impose our
experience-based preferences on other standards bodies, it might
still be appropriate. But we are not: we succeed only when we
can persuade. While our experience and track record should be
persuasive when we reach a conclusion as a community (or via the
relevant expert subset of it), that persuasion requires that we
be willing to engage in honest and open discussions, rather than
displays of authority (parental or otherwise).
While I am very sympathetic to the concerns that Sam and others
have expressed about allocation of resources, what has happened
here has none of the properties of technical review by experts
on the specific subject matter that you suggest above. It
involves neither the broad discussion and community review that
led to 1122 and 1123, nor the notion of a dialogue about
protocol changes and extensions that are a large component of
IETF's credibility in this area. As adult behavior, it is
perhaps a little bit too close to "nah, nah, it is my game and
you don't get to play" for my comfort, especially since it is
_not_ our game, or is our game only as long as we behave like
adults who are willing to engage in dialogue and explanations
with others. And that is where I think we are, collectively,
falling down on the job and putting both the Internet and the
IETF's role in it, at risk.
regards,
john
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