On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
2. Focus on document relationships
Today, users of IETF standards have no way to unambiguously identify
the complete current set of specifications for a given standard. In
particular, there is no effective structured document identification
scheme and no systematic approach to documenting the relationship
between various parts and versions of a standard.
This issue is best illustrated by example.
Actually, the IPv4 example in the document is quite good, but looking at
dependency graphs like http://rtg.ietf.org/~fenner/ietf/deps/viz/ipv6.pdf
(for IPv6, but that's
also interesting) is an even better illustration. Or
http://rtg.ietf.org/~fenner/ietf/deps/viz/sip.pdf, for SIP.
Is there an expectation that the IETF should define which
specifications should be implemented to constitute "implements IPv6",
"implements SIP", or whatever?
I guess folks have since abandoned the concept of IETF deciding on
behalf of users and vendors which features are necessary in a given
scenario or trying to determine what needs to be implemented to
interoperate with already deployed implementations.
Don't get me wrong, I love documents like
draft-ietf-tcpm-tcp-roadmap-06.txt. They just take a long time and
significant energy to produce. However, the main purpose (AFAICS) of
those documents is not to specify which specifications must be
implemented to interoperate, so many of the arguments of
newtrk-questions section 2 do no apply.
--
Pekka Savola "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
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