On 28/2/20 01:15, Bernard Aboba wrote:
Fernando said:
"If that were the case, anything and everything would be published as an
RFC."
[BA] So you're saying that this is not the case already?
Yes, that's not the case, particularly for people that participate
independently.
"Among other things, the specs we publish are supposed to be subject to a
decent level of review, and are also supposed to be coherent groups of
specifications."
[BA] Please feel free to design a process that can accomplish this,
given the level of participation we have within the IETF.
The IESG members have a near-impossible job, so they have to rely on
Directorates, who in turn do the best they can. But the IETF process
exercises much of its restraint at the beginning of the process
(*before* a WG is chartered). Once Chartered, it is rare for a WG
document with sufficient energy behind it to fail to get through the
process. The review process does not guarantee that drafts conform to
BCPs or IAB statements, let alone consistency with other RFCs.
There's a big difference between a document being published, and the
authors of a document crafting whatever they please into that document,
and having the IETF rubberstamp it.
"If you have one spec that says one thing, and then you have another,
from the same Std Org, that says the opposite, without "obsoleting" the
former, then you end up with something that won't have a single bit of
coherence, virtually impossible to digest by anybody else other by than
a limited group of people that just happens to know how everyone
violates each others specs."
[BA] This has been the case from the earliest days. For example, as
documented in RFC 4840, back in the early 1980s, there were 3+
approaches to the encapsulation of IP on Ethernet/IEEE 802.1. Yet the
marketplace sorted things out then, as they did later when some of the
same issues arose with WiMax/802.16 (RIP). If there are dueling
approaches, it is often best to document them; rather than relying on
standards bodies to "choose a winner".
I'm not referring to competing technologies. I'm talking about one spec
(e.g. SRv6) blatantly violating another one (IPv6).
When you have conflicting specs, you're kind of at odds with being a
*standards* organization.... -- nobody knows what to expect, because one
document says one thing, and another says another thing.
There's a reason for which we have the "Update" and "Obsolete" tags in
RFCs...
--
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: fgont@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Fingerprint: 6666 31C6 D484 63B2 8FB1 E3C4 AE25 0D55 1D4E 7492
