Bob Braden wrote:
That's not a plenary.
That's an interoperability event.
The IETF doesn't do those...
Dave,
Why not? The IETF can do anything it decides to do.
In that case, let's work on world peace. More important.
Closer to home, let's start specifying standardized user interface details for
Internet applications.
In other words, we have a combination of community expertise and very long
established practice. We aren't likely to succeed with whimsical decisions to
go beyond that established scope.
IPv6 interoperability testing is beyond our established scope? Yes!
Going beyond it might be fine, but only with due deliberation. The likelihood
of unintended consequences is essentially 100% and the track record for
unintended consequences is that they are mostly undesired.
The example of increased BAR BOF attendance during the plenary was a very nice
example, I thought.
And it would seem
that circumstances of IPv6 might strongly favor the utility of such a
large-scale
bak#-of# in the IETF.
I think IPv6 interoperability testing would be dandy.
I think that treating it as an imposition is questionable.
I think that approaching it as anything other than needing quite a lot of
planning and guidance -- as opposed to the sink-or-swim model with which it
was put forward -- is particularly risky.
For example, one would expect simple documents offering guidance for common
components, such as various windows and mac platforms and common server platforms.
The presumption in the announcement was that participants have a) a great deal
of end-to-end control, while they (we) often won't, and b) a great deal of
technical and operations knowledge about all of the relevant comonents, while
they (we) often don't.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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