David W. Hankins wrote: > I certainly would say that, given what we can observe as users, the > possible explanations for the DNS and DHCP service outages reside in > a _very_ limited set; hardware, software, configuration, or some > combination. > > None of those are "IETF business" in the sense of things which we can > observe or change through "Reviewing our protocols and > specifications" as John Klensin appears to have suggested. > doesn't follow. in particular, I don't think we in IETF pay nearly enough attention to architecture, nor to making our protocols easy to configure. DHCP, in particular, strikes me as a nightmare - a hodgepodge of unrelated attributes, many of which have no business being dictated to hosts by the network. gluing DHCP to DNS creates another set of problems, also based on dubious assumptions about the relationship between a host's identity and the attachment point of a host to the network. and this all strikes me as a consequence of developing network configuration protocols "organically", i.e. without much forethought. now it might be that this specific incident has little to do with the lack of a configuration architecture in IP. but I do think that IETF would do well to analyze such incidents when they do occur and try to learn from them. such lessons might impact future protocol designs at both an architectural and a detailed level. more broadly, I wish there were a better feedback path from operators to IETF to take advantage of the breadth of operational experience. it's not as if the incidents occurring in IETF meeting networks are typical; it's just that we experience them directly and as a group rather than indirectly or as individuals. Keith _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf