|
Disclaimer - I'm one of the ADs who will be balloting your documents
until at least March 2015, but I'm only one of 15 ADs, and haven't
talked about this with the rest of the IESG. The past week has brought me yet another example of an idea that could be a good idea, but not under every possible set of conditions, being evaluated as if we had to decide whether it was a good idea in all cases, or a bad idea. This might sound familiar to you, but if it does, let's not talk about that specific case. The longer (and more painfully) we talk during Last Call, the more details we unearth that help me to understand what document authors/working groups are thinking, and that's good, but if it was less painful, that would be even better. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-3.2 describes Applicability Statements, as distinct from Technical Specifications, and says (among other things): An Applicability Statement specifies how, and under what circumstances, one or more TSs may be applied to support a particular Internet capability. ... An AS may describe particular methods of using a TS in a restricted "domain of applicability", such as Internet routers, terminal servers, Internet systems that interface to Ethernets, or datagram- based database servers. Speaking only for myself, I don't expect Proposed Standards to be perfect, and to work perfectly in every situation, but if a specification doesn't describe any limits on applicability, I'm going to be evaluating it as if it will be used on the open Internet (that's what the "I" in "IETF" stands for). If a draft says it's only intended to be used within an IP subnet, I'd evaluate it differently. I might ask that the authors/working group consider what the TTL should be set to, so that what starts out within an IP subnet stays within an IP subnet, but (to use one actual example) we wouldn't be arguing about whether it's OK to send 32K max-length packets over an arbitrary Internet path at line rate without getting any feedback about path capacity - there are probably paths where that would work, and there are definitely paths where it would not. If a draft says it's only intended to be used on provisioned, managed internetwork links subject to SLA monitoring, I'd evaluate it differently. If a draft says "this is a hack, intended for use on old hardware that can't do $X", I'd evaluate it differently. There are other limited-use scenarios that would make me evaluate a draft differently. None of this is a guaranteed pass, but it would help me a lot. It would likely help other reviewers, too. So, if you don't intend for your draft to be used on the global Internet, please say so! As per http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-3.3, it's not necessary to put an Applicability Statement in a different draft; just a section that says (another actual example) "this has been tested using these parameters on a lightly-loaded LAN, and it works there", that is more helpful than a tug of war(*) about whether something is a good idea or a bad idea in all situations, in front of a live studio audience. Thanks to Alia Atlas for nudging me to think about this more. Spencer p.s. If you have feedback about what I'm thinking, I'd love for you to share it, whether on this list, privately to me, to the 2015 Nomcom, or to other Nomcom-eligible IETF participants when you're asking them to to sign the recall petition ;-) (*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_of_war |