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Lisa Dusseault | 1 Jan 2007 04:11
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Re: "Discuss" criteria


On Dec 31, 2006, at 2:27 PM, Lakshminath Dondeti wrote:

> There is perhaps one more aspect to "Can somebody explain ..." that  
> is worth considering.  In some cases, the AD simply does not have  
> the expertise or simply has incorrect/wrong understanding.  In that  
> case, the burden is on the authors to help the AD understand the  
> context of the work, provide references to reading material and  
> such.  Until the AD understands at his/her own pace, the work seems  
> to languish (sure the authors do delay responses etc., but let us  
> work on one problem at a time) in the IESG review stage.

Sure.  That could happen.  But it's not usually the case that an AD  
who knows that they don't understand something, holds a DISCUSS on a  
document for a long time, all the while getting useful responses and  
help from authors.  I sure wouldn't feel comfortable doing that.   It  
could be that a given document languishes while an AD gains  
understanding, or it could be that eventually the AD gives up or  
manages to get some issues resolved in that document. I'm sure there  
are different perspectives on why something was held up and then  
worked out, for just about any document that did suffer from a long  
DISCUSS.

Note that the authors and WGs have a burden to explain their work to  
more than just ADs.

Lisa

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Steven M. Bellovin | 1 Jan 2007 07:38

Re: "Discuss" criteria

On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:11:33 -0800
Lisa Dusseault <lisa <at> osafoundation.org> wrote:

> 
> On Dec 31, 2006, at 2:27 PM, Lakshminath Dondeti wrote:
> 
> > There is perhaps one more aspect to "Can somebody explain ..." that
> > > is worth considering.  In some cases, the AD simply does not have
> > > > the expertise or simply has incorrect/wrong understanding.  In
> > > > that > case, the burden is on the authors to help the AD
> > > > understand the > context of the work, provide references to
> > > > reading material and > such.  Until the AD understands at
> > > > his/her own pace, the work seems > to languish (sure the
> > > > authors do delay responses etc., but let us > work on one
> > > > problem at a time) in the IESG review stage.
> 
> Sure.  That could happen.  But it's not usually the case that an AD
> who knows that they don't understand something, holds a DISCUSS on a
> document for a long time, all the while getting useful responses and
> help from authors.  I sure wouldn't feel comfortable doing that.

Right.  The usual AD vote is "no objection", not "yes".  "No objection"
includes "I don't know enough to have a problem with this".  In such
cases, I looked at the parts I did understand -- that, of course,
included authentication and (if appropriate) confidentiality -- and
worried about those, and didn't worry nearly as much about arcana at
other levels.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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Robert Sayre | 1 Jan 2007 15:17
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Re: "Discuss" criteria

On 12/29/06, Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf <at> mit.edu> wrote:
>
> If there are people on the IESG who you don't trust with the ability
> to say "Hey, I think we have a problem here.  Let's take the time to
> find out," then please work to remove them.

I don't think that is an accurate description of a DISCUSS. In
particular, it skirts the issue Dave mentioned:

Dave Crocker wrote:
> There is often a failure to distinguish between new and peculiar problems
> created by a particular specification, versus general problems that already exist.
>
> A classic example of this is citing basic DNS problems, for specifications that
> are merely consumers of the DNS and, hence, are not creating any new problems.

A WG can agree with the AD that there is a problem, but disagree that
it needs to be solved in their document. Too often, the compromise
ends up being the insertion of text that satisfies the AD's concerns,
but disenfranchises the WG. The WG either ignores the text in
practice, or the document author couches the text in so many
qualifiers that it becomes easy to explain any implementation in terms
that make it seem conformant. The result is inaccurate or misleading
documentation of Internet technology.

--

-- 

Robert Sayre

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Harald Alvestrand | 1 Jan 2007 15:30
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Re: IESG Success Stories


--On 30. desember 2006 18:00 -0800 Michael Thomas <mat <at> cisco.com> wrote:

>> With regard to textual nit-picking and evaluation of worthiness of
>> prose, I tend to agree with what I think you are saying. However, if a
>> document is too badly written to permit interoperable implementations
>> to be constructed without clarifying conversations among implementers,
>> authors, and/or the WG, then the document is a failure and needs
>> pushback.  As with late surprises, somewhat more proactive effort on
>> the part of WGs could prevent many of the problems we see, but...
>
> I was using "wordsmithing" rather broadly. My probably idiosyncratic
> meaning
> of "wordsmithing" here was "will this DISCUSS change the mechanics of the
> protocol or not". If the answer is no, we're really just making the
> document
> more ready for publication IMO. Something that does bring that possibility
> is obviously a lot more serious. It's been my admittedly limited
> experience that
> my version of "wordsmithing" is a lot more common, and the source of a lot
> of delay to varying degrees of dubiousness.

One meaning of "wordsmithing" resulting from a DISCUSS that I think is an 
entirely worthwhile activity is where the mechanics of the protocol, as 
implemented by a WG participant, will not change one whit, but where the 
implementation by a non-participant changes from "improbable" to 
"possible", because it's clear what the words were intended to say.

Another example of "wordsmithing" that does not change the mechanics of the 
protocol, but is nevertheless important, is the IANA considerations stuff -
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Bill Fenner | 1 Jan 2007 17:08
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Re: "Discuss" criteria

John,

  Sorry to pick out a nugget from the middle of a very long message, but

On 12/30/06, John C Klensin <john-ietf <at> jck.com> wrote:
> ...   What we don't need is
> more rigid rules that either try to anticipate every
> circumstance ...

This is something that I feel very strongly about.  We write rules
with wiggle room, because it's impossible to anticipate every
situation and important not to overconstrain the leadership in order
to allow them to show ... leadership.  We then look at the rules and
say "Oh horrors!  Someone could use bad judgement and make something
bad happen!" and try to write more rules to prevent that.  I think
that instead we should try to select leadership that won't use bad
judgement or will be able to understand when it's pointed out that
they are.

> I think that long terms on the IESG tend to breed
> detachment from the community and a tendency to put IESG
> judgment ahead of that of the community and I don't think we can
> solve that with more rules about IESG behavior.

As the current IESG member with the longest term, I agree with this,
and that fed into my decision to not stand for the position again.  I
think a young [in terms-of-service] IESG is more likely to be a
healthy IESG.

  Bill
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Iljitsch van Beijnum | 1 Jan 2007 17:28
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2006 IPv4 Address Use Report

2006 was another busy year for the five Regional Internet Registries:  
together, they gave out 161.48 million IPv4 addresses, just shy of  
the 165.45 million given out in 2005 as measured on january first 2006.

The current (jan 1st, 2007) figure for 2005 is 175.52 million  
addresses. Together with adjustments for earlier years, this brings  
the total addresses available to almost exactly 1.3 billion, down  
from 1468.61 million a year ago. This is out of 3706.65 million  
usable IPv4 addresses, so 2407.11 million addresses are currently  
given out to either end-users or Internet Service Providers.

Breakdown by Regional Internet Registry over the past few years as  
seen on 2007-01-01:

                 2000    2001    2002    2003    2004    2005    2006

AfriNIC         0.56    0.39    0.26    0.22    0.51    1.03    2.72
APNIC          20.94   28.83   27.03   33.05   42.89   53.86   51.78
ARIN           30.83   28.55   21.08   22.32   34.26   47.57   38.94
LACNIC          0.88    1.61    0.65    2.62    3.77   10.97   11.50
RIPE NCC       24.79   25.36   19.84   29.61   47.49   62.09   56.53

Total          78.00   84.73   68.87   87.82  128.92  175.52  161.48

Compare this to the totals as seen on 2006-01-01:

Total          78.35   88.95   68.93   87.77  128.45  165.45

(See last year's report for more details at http://www.bgpexpert.com/ 
addrspace2005.php )
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John C Klensin | 1 Jan 2007 20:10

Re: IESG Success Stories


--On Monday, 01 January, 2007 15:30 +0100 Harald Alvestrand
<harald <at> alvestrand.no> wrote:

>> I was using "wordsmithing" rather broadly. My probably
>> idiosyncratic meaning
>> of "wordsmithing" here was "will this DISCUSS change the
>> mechanics of the protocol or not". If the answer is no, we're
>> really just making the document
>> more ready for publication IMO. Something that does bring
>> that possibility is obviously a lot more serious. It's been
>> my admittedly limited experience that
>> my version of "wordsmithing" is a lot more common, and the
>> source of a lot of delay to varying degrees of dubiousness.
> 
> One meaning of "wordsmithing" resulting from a DISCUSS that I
> think is an entirely worthwhile activity is where the
> mechanics of the protocol, as implemented by a WG participant,
> will not change one whit, but where the implementation by a
> non-participant changes from "improbable" to "possible",
> because it's clear what the words were intended to say.

> Another example of "wordsmithing" that does not change the
> mechanics of the protocol, but is nevertheless important, is
> the IANA considerations stuff - while it does not change the
> protocol as such, it does change the "meta-protocol" of
> extending the protocol later. That's important.

Harald,
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Harald Alvestrand | 2 Jan 2007 00:12
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Re: IESG Success Stories

John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Monday, 01 January, 2007 15:30 +0100 Harald Alvestrand
> <harald <at> alvestrand.no> wrote:
>
>   
>>> I was using "wordsmithing" rather broadly. My probably
>>> idiosyncratic meaning
>>> of "wordsmithing" here was "will this DISCUSS change the
>>> mechanics of the protocol or not". If the answer is no, we're
>>> really just making the document
>>> more ready for publication IMO. Something that does bring
>>> that possibility is obviously a lot more serious. It's been
>>> my admittedly limited experience that
>>> my version of "wordsmithing" is a lot more common, and the
>>> source of a lot of delay to varying degrees of dubiousness.
>>>       
>> One meaning of "wordsmithing" resulting from a DISCUSS that I
>> think is an entirely worthwhile activity is where the
>> mechanics of the protocol, as implemented by a WG participant,
>> will not change one whit, but where the implementation by a
>> non-participant changes from "improbable" to "possible",
>> because it's clear what the words were intended to say.
>>     
>
>   
>> Another example of "wordsmithing" that does not change the
>> mechanics of the protocol, but is nevertheless important, is
>> the IANA considerations stuff - while it does not change the
>> protocol as such, it does change the "meta-protocol" of
>> extending the protocol later. That's important.
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Harald Alvestrand | 2 Jan 2007 00:21
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Re: "Discuss" criteria

John Leslie wrote:
>    This is venturing into dangerous territory. The best expertise on
> the technical issues involved _should_ be in the WG that produced the
> document. Expecting to find _better_ expertise within the IESG seems
> less than rational...
>   
Expecting the best available expertise on charset issues and string 
matching in the Kerberos WG is, in my opinion, less than rational.

But the Kerberos WG still has to define protocol operations where 
strings are compared.
Sometimes a WG needs help with issues outside their core purview, and 
sometimes they won't discover that until their documents hit the IESG. 
That's life.

(apologies to the Kerberos folks, who, I think, are now very much 
educated on those specific issues, for using them as an example....)

                    Harald

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John C Klensin | 2 Jan 2007 01:42

Re: IESG Success Stories


--On Tuesday, 02 January, 2007 00:12 +0100 Harald Alvestrand
<harald <at> alvestrand.no> wrote:

> The problem of working groups that emit documents as their
> last gasp before dying from lack of energy is, in my opinion,
> a much harder problem to tackle than that of browbeating the
> IESG into DISCUSS discipline - and one where, if the IESG's
> energy was suddenly magically to double, I'd definitely advise
> directing the windfall surplus.

Precisely because this subtopic is a harder one, one
clarification.  I was not referring to "emit as WG last gasp"
situations, although those would clearly also apply.   I was
referring to the more common situation in which a WG has reached
the exhaustion point on a particular document, possibly because
it has been the result of very careful, but tiring, negotiations
over language as well as substance.  

For that class of document, a "please engage in fine tuning"
request, even if that request is accompanied by very specific
suggestions, can easily lead to an "oh no, we can't revisit
_that_ again" reaction that can lead to significant delays, even
if the WG and editors/authors are otherwise completely healthy
and committed.

>From my parochial point of view as someone who still believes in
a multi-step standards process, this is yet another argument as
to why the IESG should adopt and strengthen an "if it isn't
clearly harmful, let it go" attitude toward documents moving
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