Subject: what are the real problems

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 11:08:23 -0700

<personal opinion>

a tiny error in an initial trajectory adds up to large errors at
the target.  errors in the statement(s) of our problems will
therefore produce irrelevant, or worse damaging, solutions.  hence,
it is critical that we get the set of statements of problems very
very correct, and very clear.

what are problems anyway?  i propose they are conditions which
hamper our ability to reach our goals.

but what are our goals?  for the moment, i will put forth the
following goals which were stated (far too quietly) in london and
then a couple of times afterwards (again, far too quietly):

   the ietf's goal is to produce high quality, relevant, and timely
   standards for internet technology.

so, for any statement of a problem, i would suggest that it be made
very clear how it is a root, or close to root, cause of damage to
achieving our goals.  i submit that, by doing so, we would have
much more confidence in a good problems statement, and have an
excellent foundation on which to build the next level, the changes
we need to make to better meet our goals by solving those problems.

if a problem can not be shown to pretty directly affect our goals,
then perhaps it is the result of other more root problems, people's
personal issue, ...

randy

---

From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 12:27:23 -0700

Thanks for your thoughts, Randy.  On a related note, I think the perception 
in IETF that we (the IETF community) are stewards of the Internet has 
weakened.  This may be the reason for the somewhat conservative nature of 
the IESG. Perhaps it's because corporate interests have become stronger. 
This concerns me because it is our common purpose.

--aaron

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 13:12:57 -0700

> Thanks for your thoughts, Randy.  On a related note, I think the
> perception in IETF that we (the IETF community) are stewards of
> the Internet has weakened.  This may be the reason for the
> somewhat conservative nature of the IESG.

<personal opinion>

at least among some iesg members, there is the feeling that

  o while the ietf is supposed to be the steward of the (technical
    part of the) internet

  o we perceive that we get massive pushback when we act in a
    conservative fashion, as it is perceived as inhibiting vendors,
    who are a bit desperate these days.

  o yet we think that the purpose of an sdo is to provide to the
    *users* inter-vendor choice through compatibility.  so we
    wonder how pandering to featuritis of the vendors is serving
    the users

no easy answers.

randy

---

From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 16:28:53 -0700

>     wonder how pandering to featuritis of the vendors is serving

indeed.

Randy-

You've been around the IETF much longer than I.  Do you sense that the
level of conservatism in the IESG has increased over time?  My
perception is that, as more non-computer scientists get on the
Internet, it has been viewed as more of a utility, i.e., "it just
works."  It wouldn't surprise me if there is a reduced tolerance of
risk by the IESG to protect these users.  In other words, the
interpretation of stewardship of the Internet has changed from "let's
grow something neat" (or "let 1000 flowers bloom") to "let's keep this
cool thing from breaking" (or "let's not confuse the marketplace").

Do you concur?

--aaron

(PS. If this is too off-topic or omphaloskepsical, hit me with the
clue-stick and I'll shut up.)

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 21:37:42 -0700

> level of conservatism in the IESG has increased over time?

it's gone both ways.  there are fans of 'let 1000 flowers bloom'
and there are 'this is now a service' folk.  and, there are folk
who are trying to find seriously innovative change.

    It's perfectly appropriate to be upset.  I thought of it in a slightly
    different way--like a space that we were exploring and, in the early
    days, we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP,
    and so on.  What's been happening over the last few years is that the
    IETF is filling the rest of the space with every alternative approach,
    not necessarily any better.  Every possible alternative is now being
    written down.  And it's not useful.  -- Jon Postel

randy

---

From: Eric Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 10:01:09 -0400

It would certainly be interesting to  know exactly which of the IESG members
think that they  are on a mission to protect  the users against exploitation
by the  vendors.  Naturally, anyone who is  on such a mission  will think it
very important to  replace the operation of the  marketplace by his personal
vision of the future, and will do whatever he can to purge the IETF of other
views.   But let's not  pretend that  such an  overtly political  agenda has
anything to do with technical quality.

And people still wonder why the IESG is not trusted!

---

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 10:14:04 -0400

>    standards for internet technology.

With limited time, I've off and on tracked this mail list.  From this 
thread I can see two different states in which the IETF can wind up, 
both meeting the above goal, yet the problems in achieving one state 
are different from one achieving the other state.  (These two states 
do not necessarily constitute an exhaustive list.)

One state is being a strongly authoritative SDO, being a leader to 
the vendor and operator community through quality and timely 
documents describing protocols and practices.  Getting there from 
here means solving the perceived-by-some latency, hidden criterion, 
and opaque decision making process. (Note "perceived-by-some.")

The other state is a being an engineering collective that fosters 
goodness in individual contributions via a strong mentoring program, 
letting the market decide from there on.  The problem to solve before 
reaching this state is the reversal of the IETF's long standing 
tendency to downgrade education as part of its mission.  (This state 
is much lighter weight than the first, which is why it might be a 
viable alternative.)

Both states can achieve the goal as stated above, but the different 
approaches to doing so require different problems to be solved. 
Perhaps the state in which we wind up will depend on which problems 
are easier to solve.
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Edward Lewis                                            +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer

Your office is *not* a reality-based sit-com TV show.

---

From: Geoff Huston <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 10:04:50 +1000

>And people still wonder why the IESG is not trusted!

On the other hand the IETF still manages to undertake a certain amount of
Bad Idea filtering, and the criteria for a Bad Idea has some reference to
a generic engineering model of the Internet as we know it. Markets are not
usually seen as discriminators of quality, and invoking the market as some
discriminator of technical quality for this work is not a view that I can agree
with.

If the only role of the IETF is to bless the offerings from certain vendors
who hold significant market share and to soundly rubbish offerings from
those vendors to whom the Market has shown displeasure, then
we are all wasting our time. From that perspective I find I simply cannot
accept Eric's perspective that the operation of the marketplace
Knows Best, for in that world there is no credible role for interoperable
standards, no opportunity for customers being able to make independent
choices of technology and vendor, and, as far as I can tell, we are
then pretty much back to the bleak mainframe years of the 70s where
vendor abuse of customers through lock-in with proprietary technology
was a common mode of operation. i.e. the role here (among others) is
to balance the various perspectives of vendors and consumers, and in such a
role one cannot ignore the legitimate interests of either sector. I would be
very reluctant to characterize this important role as being "a mission
to protect the users from exploitation by the vendors", but I do see that part
of the rationale of the existence of the IETF is to provide a means of
balancing the various interests of consumers and competing vendors when
defining rational, useful and, hopefully, high quality, technology standards.

regards,

   Geoff

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 20:04:44 -0700

Geoff,

GH> On the other hand the IETF still manages to undertake a certain amount of
GH> Bad Idea filtering, and the criteria for a Bad Idea has some reference to
GH> a generic engineering model of the Internet as we know it. Markets are not
GH> usually seen as discriminators of quality,
...

GH> If the only role of the IETF is to bless the offerings from certain vendors
GH> who hold significant market share and to soundly rubbish offerings from
GH> those vendors to whom the Market has shown displeasure, then
GH> we are all wasting our time.

This is an absolutely key point.

There is a difference between 'let a thousand flowers bloom' and 'let a
thousand weeds bloom'.

The IETF process is intended to exert quite a bit of quality control.

The difficulty is in thinking that quality control necessarily means
permitting only one solution to be issued.

Or that letting multiple solution be issued means that we exert no
quality control.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 23:41:40 -0400

> permitting only one solution to be issued.

has this really been a problem in practice?  do we have any reason to believe
that issuing multiple solutions will improve the quality of life on the
Internet?

seems like in most cases we have a difficult enough time producing a single
solution of appropriate quality, and when we're reluctant to issue multiple
solutions it is not usually out of concern for quality of those solutions but
for the interactions and lack of interoperability between them.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 22:03:56 -0700

Keith,

>> permitting only one solution to be issued.

KM> has this really been a problem in practice?  do we have any reason to believe
KM> that issuing multiple solutions will improve the quality of life on the
KM> Internet?

esmtp and mime were competitive efforts, initially.

dominant forces probably would have opted for CMIP.  and ISIS.

etc.

terminating credible efforts prematurely is silly.

d/

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 01:12:35 -0400

> terminating credible efforts prematurely is silly.

so is spreading ourselves too thin.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 22:17:44 -0700

Keith,

>> terminating credible efforts prematurely is silly.
KM> so is spreading ourselves too thin.

ahh,  right.

that was the argument for not doing xmpp.

better to worry about multiple efforts, each of which has serious
support, than it is to worry about unproductive efforts that drag on for
years.

d/

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 10:41:13 +0200

Eric,

if, somehow, we came to the point where we split the IETF between "those 
who are on a mission to protect the users against exploitation by the 
vendors" and "those who are on a mission to help the vendors exploit the 
users", I'd reluctantly have to join the first camp.

Reluctantly, because I believe the dichtonomy to be entirely false and 
unproductive.

If we're going to have an useful IETF, it has to be based on some shared 
metric of what "good" is - and "exploitation by the vendors" (less 
demagogically - maximizing vendors' short-term profits at the expense of 
making the Internet a tool that is useful to the users) is certainly not a 
goal that I think we can get wide buy-in on.

[I happen to think that maximimzing users' benefits is critical to 
maintaining vendors' *long*-term profits, though - and that the marketplace 
is one, but not the only, critical part of the picture]

Now, can we stop this useless sniping about secret personal agendas and get 
back to talking frankly and honestly about what core values we want the 
IETF to be based on?

                     Harald

--On 22. mai 2003 10:01 -0400 Eric Rosen <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> It would certainly be interesting to  know exactly which of the IESG
> members think that they  are on a mission to protect  the users against
> exploitation by the  vendors.  Naturally, anyone who is  on such a
> mission  will think it very important to  replace the operation of the
> marketplace by his personal vision of the future, and will do whatever he
> can to purge the IETF of other views.   But let's not  pretend that  such
> an  overtly political  agenda has anything to do with technical quality.
>

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 07:38:21 -0400

As long as we understand this as a tension, we are probably fine.  Treating 
this as simple produces bad results.
For example, as worded Dave's note suggests that there is no drawback from 
having too many efforts.  I don't think anyone believes that there are no 
drawbacks.
Just in case, let me suggest one of the many drawbacks.  I believe that no 
matter what organizational structure we craft for ourselves, there will 
always be a leadership load based on the number of "things to be lead" 
(working groups, activities, ...)  As such, taking a view that we should 
allow more competing efforts (which at least some of the time is indeed 
what we should do) puts more load on our leadership.  I would be very 
surprised if we could find a structure in which such loading was not 
warning for care to prevent system failure.

Another major issue with allowing competing efforts is that the results do 
not interoperate.  If there is any technical mantra that has driven our 
work and our success, I think that a focus on interoperability (rather 
than, for example, conformance) has been critical.  It is why we try very 
hard to have as few options in protocols as possible,, for example 
(although we seem to fail about as often as we succeed on that particular 
goal.)

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 08:52:33 -0400

> cool thing from breaking" (or "let's not confuse the marketplace").

It probably has. Speaking personally, the longer I've participated in
the IETF, the more I can look at past decisions and conclude "we
shouldn't have done that", or "if only we had pushed back a bit more".

Ten years ago, the Internet wasn't being viewed as something that had
to be 7x24 and part of the basic infrastructure of our economy and
society.  But times have changed. Protocols that might easily be
considered "90% finished" (as in "Good Enough" for PS) ten years ago
don't get the same deference today. In many cases, one just can't
assume that we can fix the serious bugs after we get experience. In
today's world, where a PS can be implemented/shipped via a Windows OS
release or cell phones to tens-hundreds of millions of devices, stuff
that gets deployed has to be dealt with as part of the infrastructure
for years afterwards. Security is the obvious example where if we
screw up in what gets deployed, the potential for damage is huge.

This goes back to a thread earlier (Brian?) about how the industry has
matured and expectations have changed as well.

Thomas

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 09:07:50 -0400

> support, than it is to worry about unproductive efforts that drag on for

I think I'd agree that if you have fundamental differences that you cannot
resolve, sometimes it's better to have multiple competing efforts than to
either give up entirely or try to force everyone to work together --
especially if the efforts are trying to solve different (though overlapping)
problems.  And there might be some potential for merging at a later time as
the problems become better understood.

But if the groups aren't really trying to solve different problems,  would IETF
really be serving the Internet community by promoting non-interoperable solutions?

---

From: Eric Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 11:15:28 -0400

Geoff> I do see that  part of the rationale of the existence  of the IETF is
Geoff> to provide  a means of  balancing the various interests  of consumers
Geoff> and competing vendors 

The "balancing  of interests"  is a political  matter that is  orthogonal to
the issue of  technical quality.  People will have  different opinions about
how well the  marketplace balances the various interests,  of course.  There
have been many cases in which small groups of people use closed processes to
"balance  interests" according  to their  own  view of  the proper  balance.
Rarely does this work out well.  I'd remind you that the spread of TCP/IP is
due to the market demand for interoperable standards, NOT due to any attempt
on the part of the IETF to manipulate the market. 

Harald> if, somehow,  we came to the  point where we split  the IETF between
Harald> "those  who  are   on  a  mission  to  protect   the  users  against
Harald> exploitation by the vendors" and "those who are on a mission to help
Harald> the vendors  exploit the  users", I'd reluctantly  have to  join the
Harald> first camp.

Any suggestion that if  you're not in one of these camps  you must be in the
other would indeed be useless demagoguery.

As  long as the  IESG asserts  the right  to make  decisions that  go beyond
issues of technical quality and correctness, we have a problem.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 08:30:56 -0700

> have been many cases in which small groups of people use closed processes
> to "balance interests" according to their own view of the proper balance.
> Rarely does this work out well.

i agree.  i can specifically remember whan a large vendor whose
employees caucused internally and tried to apply *corporate*
pressure at all sorts of points in the ietf, including the chair,
to achieve their marketing goal.  and you're right, it didn't work
out well.

but frank is right, thinking we can change this is naive.  learning
to deal with it is not.

randy

---

From: "Daniel O. Awduche" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 12:37:44 -0400

Advancing multiple incompatible specifications addressing the 
same requirements is a disservice to the industry. 

Such actions diminish the wider impacts of "standardization," 
induce an unnecessary and avoidable partition in the market, 
increase the *real* cost of business, and diminish end user 
choice (rather than enhance it).

If requirements differ, but overlap, then it is realistic
to advance incompatible specifications. In that case, however, 
reasonable best effort should be made to reuse commonalities 
if at all possible.

This does not preclude the need, as occasion warrants, for 
experimental specifications, and informational documents 
highlighting proprietary solutions.

Cheers,
/Dan

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 11:25:49 -0700

Keith,

If the IETF ever gets serious about the question of spreading things too
thin, it will need to worry far more about 1) the scope of what is
legitimate to charter within the ietf, 2) the clarity, precision and
utility of working group charters, and 3) the timely progress of working
groups.

Competing efforts have a natural filter, called critical mass. If they
can't develop a critical mass of serious effort, they die of their own
accord. If they *can* develop competent effort, then it is essentially
hubris for IETF management to arbitrarily choose between competing
proposals.

For all of the times we have efforts to create competing proposals, most
die of their own lack of credible technical support. They do not need
arbitrary management 'help'. For the few that are serious, we do not
need to worry about the "drain" on IETF management.

d/

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:32:59 -0400

> If the IETF ever gets serious about the question of spreading things
> too thin, it will need to worry far more about 1) the scope of what is
> utility of working group charters, and 3) the timely progress of
> working groups.

At least when I was on IESG, we *did* worry about such things.

> For all of the times we have efforts to create competing proposals,
> most die of their own lack of credible technical support. They do not
> need arbitrary management 'help'. For the few that are serious, we do
> not need to worry about the "drain" on IETF management.

My experience indicates otherwise.

Keith

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:53:41 -0400

--On Friday, 23 May, 2003 11:25 -0700 Dave Crocker 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Competing efforts have a natural filter, called critical mass.
> If they can't develop a critical mass of serious effort, they
> die of their own accord. If they *can* develop competent
> effort, then it is essentially hubris for IETF management to
> arbitrarily choose between competing proposals.

Dave,

While I think I agree in general, I think we need to be a bit 
careful here.  It can sometimes be exceptionally difficult to 
tell a mob from "critical mass" and even more difficult to 
distinguish between a pack of wolves in full chase and "strong 
consensus".  Both mobs and wolf packs typically have some 
organizing leadership, although often, when the leaders are good 
at their work, the only clear symptom is that everyone is headed 
in the same direction, or baying more or less in unison, rather 
than running off in all directions at random.

If something dies from lack of critical mass, fine: we generally 
should wish the effort well and speed it on its way to a happy 
rest.  I'm really pleased about the number of WGs the IESG has 
succeeded in closing in the last several months --both the 
"closed/sucessful" and "closed/wasn't doing much" ones-- I think 
it is a great trend that should be applauded and continued.  But 
the combination of "they have critical mass" and "there is 
competent effort" are wildly subjective and both are subject to 
gaming.  And what is, and is not, "arbitrary" is even worse: I 
don't think any of us would argue for, or encourage, the "IETF 
management" to make arbitrary choices between competing 
proposals (or any other arbitrary choice unless a choice is 
important and the particular choice really makes no difference). 
But that doesn't imply that some work with WG consensus behind 
it shouldn't be killed, or that choices should not be made on 
the grounds that one is better for the Internet than the other, 
and so on, even if the WG doesn't agree with the reasoning.

I'm not opposed to competing standards, although I'd hate to see 
us make a habit of it (and, in most cases, would prefer 
competing Experimental protocols with a clear plan about review 
and real decision-making).  I think that there are some 
circumstances in which we really should say "nice try, but no 
sale and no standard" to WGs -- again, I would be very upset if 
it became a habit and extremely concerned if it emerges as a 
"late surprise", but I think it is dangerous when the IESG 
doesn't believe it has that power and, indeed, responsibility to 
make those decisions when the WG has been getting, and 
resisting, push-back for some time without any real effort to 
engage in a dialogue on the issues the AD is raising.

We have both seen situations in which a relatively 
well-organized, but very narrowly-focused, group comes to the 
IETF wanting either ratification, or an umbrella organization 
for, standards it wants to produce.  These groups have critical 
mass by any objective measure we could apply. What they often 
lack is a strong sense of responsibility to and for the Internet 
as a whole as distinct from their narrow efforts and focus. 
Sometimes they can be educated, sometimes they can't.  But they 
routinely argue "critical mass" (often in the form of how many 
people they can get to hum loudly at a BOF) as evidence for 
their entitlement to have a WG.  If they get such a WG, it often 
requires superhuman efforts on the part of the relevant AD to 
get and keep their work on-track with basic functionality and 
interoperability goals on the public Internet, and the ADs are 
often damned for those efforts when we, as a community, should 
be thanking them.

The same situation applies late in the process: if there is a 
controversial issue, and dollars are at stake, it is rarely 
difficult for someone who is good at whipping up crowds to get a 
number of folks to yell loudly in unison either for or against a 
proposal or some push-back about it.

Ultimately, someone needs to make a judgment about whether a 
particular size group, or a particular volume of comments 
--favorable or unfavorable-- represent true "critical mass" or 
"rough consensus", and whether the result is competent, or 
whether they represent a possibly-well-organized effort to push 
a special interest or insufficiently-thought-out protocol 
through the IETF.  Even from my perspective as someone who has 
had more than the usual quota of disagreements with the IESG as 
a whole and with how individual IESG members have handled 
particular situations, I think our best hope is to let --and 
expect-- the IESG to do its job in these areas.  That means 
avoiding getting into the kind of second-guessing in which "John 
(or Dave) thinks there is critical mass" or "everyone who spoke 
more than twice at the last plenary agreed" are presumed to take 
precedence over IESG deliberation and decision-making.

Does "let the IESG do it" have a potential for abuse?  Sure.  Do 
I, personally, think it has been abused occasionally?  Yes.  Do 
I believe they have made the wrong decisions, or have been much 
too slow to make a decision, sometimes?  Yes, more certainly 
than I think there has been intentional abuse in getting there. 
But, for those issues, I think we need to concentrate on having 
the basis on which decisions are made be much more public and 
transparent.  I think we also need to look at improving the 
efficiency and effectiveness of the checks and balances 
--including the appeals and recall procedures-- if we conclude 
that they aren't usable enough.  But I think that blanket 
statements about criteria that, themselves, are subject to abuse 
and require subjective interpretation just take us around in 
circles.

> For all of the times we have efforts to create competing
> proposals, most die of their own lack of credible technical
> support. They do not need arbitrary management 'help'. For the
> few that are serious, we do not need to worry about the
> "drain" on IETF management.

In general, yes.  But, perhaps because I seem to like worrying, 
I don't want to do anything that would say to the IESG "even if 
you think this is important and should be encouraged, if they 
don't have critical mass on their own, you are not to go try to 
nurture them or figure out ways to move the effort along".  And 
I do think it is important to examine, or help the IESG examine, 
their workload so that, if something _is_ serious, the cycles 
are available to deal with it without setting off crises about 
how other things are getting delayed or "blocked".

regards,
    john

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 14:33:53 -0700

I think John has made a very important point here, and want to pull it up
to the named problem level (though I'm not sure I've written the right name
above).  Here's the critical text for me:

>
>We have both seen situations in which a relatively well-organized, 
>but very narrowly-focused, group comes to the IETF wanting either 
>ratification, or an umbrella organization for, standards it wants to 
>produce.  These groups have critical mass by any objective measure 
>we could apply. What they often lack is a strong sense of 
>responsibility to and for the Internet as a whole as distinct from 
>their narrow efforts and focus. Sometimes they can be educated, 
>sometimes they can't.  But they routinely argue "critical mass" 
>(often in the form of how many people they can get to hum loudly at 
>a BOF) as evidence for their entitlement to have a WG.  If they get 
>such a WG, it often requires superhuman efforts on the part of the 
>relevant AD to get and keep their work on-track with basic 
>functionality and interoperability goals on the public Internet, and 
>the ADs are often damned for those efforts when we, as a community, 
>should be thanking them.

Another way to put this is that what is a rational decision for a 
working group may not
be the right decision for the IETF as a whole.  From some 
perspectives, it may be rational
to resist change to deployed clients, even though they contribute to 
congestion or lack security.
It may be rational to avoid interoperability with competing systems, 
so that a larger
scope for the current effort may be planned.  It may even be rational 
for the working
group to replicate at one layer a suite of services developed or 
being developed
at another, so as to avoid dependencies.  Looked at from a broader 
perspectives,
these are rarely the right choices, but we have to acknowledge the 
tension between
the needs of a single effort and the needs of the network as a whole.

At the moment, we have poor mechanisms to deal with those tensions, even though
I believe most IETF participants would agree that congestion control, 
security, interoperability,
and the reuse of a common core set of services are all laudable 
design goals.   The
community reviews charters and constrains them such that efforts are 
expected to
meet certain design goals.  There can be pushback during IETF Last 
Call or during
the IESG's review.  Fundamentally, though, we lack a clear way of handling this
tension as working groups go through the process.  We trust that 
participants have internalized
the issues and that they, therefore, will handle the tension 
themselves.  That can
and does work, but we need other mechanisms to reinforce it:  some of those may
be training, some may be structural reviews at periodic intervals, 
and some may be
creating methods to ensure that cross-speciality expertise is more consistently
available.  But I believe this is one of the key issues at stake in 
our reform efforts:
keeping in balance the global and local.

Just my opinion,
				regards,
					Ted Hardie

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:30:34 -0400

--On Friday, 23 May, 2003 14:33 -0700 "[email-masked]" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I think John has made a very important point here, and want to
> pull it up to the named problem level (though I'm not sure
> I've written the right name above).  Here's the critical text
> for me:
>
>> well-organized,  but very narrowly-focused, group comes to
>> the IETF wanting either  ratification, or an umbrella
>> organization for, standards it wants to  produce.  These
>...
> Another way to put this is that what is a rational decision
> for a working group may not be the right decision for the IETF
> as a whole.  From some perspectives, it may be rational to
> resist change to deployed clients, even though they contribute
> to congestion or lack security. It may be rational to avoid
>...

Ted,

I agree with everything you say and, if my note helped you 
formulate it, I'm pleased.   But I am equally concerned about 
the startup- and mid-process versions of the problem. I see that 
problem as one of the community claiming the "right" to have 
particular things happen if some vague, but important-sounding 
condition is claimed to be met.  You may have missed that; it 
may be a separate problem.   Let me take the part you have 
addressed as a given (i.e., if people want to argue about it, 
I'm happy to have them argue with you :-)).  But I want to give 
an extended, if made-up (or at least deliberately disguised) 
example, of that other part.  I think it represents one of our 
key problems, and one that generates many opportunities for 
heaping abuse on IESG for doing things we _want_ them to do.

--------------

Suppose that we have a large handful of people who have gotten 
very interested in frobitzes.  How they got together isn't 
important -- perhaps they are part of the Frobitz Consortium, 
perhaps they had a discussion in a bar bof and got excited about 
it.  To make the example a bit more interesting, suppose they 
write, and post, draft-bozo-frobitz-requirements-00 and 
draft-fudd-frobitz-implementation-scenarios-00 (we routinely 
kill bad ideas that don't have supporting documents).

Now they ask for a BOF.  "Ask" may not be quite the right word: 
they go to a relevant AD and _demand_ a BOF, based on their 
having interest, critical mass, and documents on the table.  If 
the AD says "this isn't interesting, it isn't relevant to the 
IETF, and no one cares about frobitzes anyway", they say "we 
care, we are part of the IETF, we think it is relevant, and we 
have critical mass".  Then they start looking for over-ripe 
fruit with which to decorate the AD.  At this point, all but the 
most hard-nosed of ADs gets tired of the abuse and need to wear 
a raincoat around the IETF, and gives them the BOF on the theory 
that it is worth finding out what they have to say (and, 
sometimes, in the hope that they will self-destruct).

At the BOF, the AD and a handful of others question whether 
anyone really cares about frobitzes.  A few members of the 
community, possibly including the overworked AD, have read the 
documents and point out that, even if people cared about 
frobitzes, the proposed solution scenarios --and every other 
solution scenario that they can imagine-- will work only on LANs 
containing fewer than 30 hosts and will pose grave security 
risks if that LAN has any connection at all to the public 
network.  The discussion rapidly deteriorates into "you are 
wrong" / "no, you are wrong" and continues until the BOF is 
nearly out of time.  Then the BOF chair asks for a hum about who 
wants to form a WG and the usual suspects, along with a handful 
of other people (a few of them known to scare off any clues 
which see them coming) all hum ...really loudly.

Now approximately the same process repeats itself.  The 
advocates of a frobitz effort point out that they have critical 
mass and that they held a BOF and got a really loud hum.  They 
claim that the scaling and security issues are really irrelevant 
to anyone who would want to use a frobitz.  They note that they 
have documents on the table (maybe at version -01 or -02 by 
then) and are anxious to move forward.  And they tell the AD 
that they are _entitled_ to a WG and that the AD is being 
unresponsive and arrogant by not having set up the WG already.

I suggest that almost everyone who has served as an AD for more 
than a few months has encountered some more or less clear 
version of this story, at least up to that point.

As you nicely put it, we have poor mechanisms to deal with these
tensions.  Most IETF participants would agree that the frobitz 
crew should be encouraged to go away and stop wasting AD and 
IESG time -- unless they are _members_ of the frobitz crew. 
The pushback process works poorly: the AD often gets tired of 
the noise and goes into a charter review process, hoping that 
the effort will disappear --or get constrained into reality-- 
during that process.  Sometimes that works.  It always takes a 
lot of time, with the would-be WG members claiming (often with 
some justification) that the AD is foot-dragging and nit-picking 
-- after all, they have critical mass, documents, and all that 
other stuff.

Often the pattern continues: The noise level may reach the point 
where the AD --and the IESG as a whole-- get worn down enough to 
just approve the WG in the hope that it will self-destruct or 
acquire wisdom...  Well, it wastes a lot more time on education, 
guidance, attempts to inject clues that are not happily 
accepted, etc.   That time has to come from somewhere, and 
other, more relevant, WGs may suffer.  If the AD gets worn down 
enough to be unwilling to close this misguided effort, and they 
produce a document, it either gets Last Called or the AD, who 
concludes that he or she would be too embarrassed to Last Call 
the thing, sits on it (and gets more abuse).  No one responds to 
the Last Call because no one reads it.  And no one reads it 
because no one outside the core of the WG cares enough about 
frobitzes to justify putting in the time... note that we can't, 
in general, even get people to read documents that are obviously 
critical to the infrastructure.

The AD, or the IESG as a whole, contemplate just saying "no", 
but the frobitz team argues that their charter was approved, 
they put in months (or years) of effort, the document conforms 
(more or less) to the charter, they, the real frobitz experts in 
the IETF, have consensus, and they are therefore entitled to 
have their document adopted as a proposed standard.  The IESG 
either gives in and approves it, or tries to kill it through the 
death of a thousand cuts.  Either way, we all lose.

I suggest that is a problem.

     john

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 19:48:53 -0400

> But I want to give 

yup.  seen it happen several times.  and on a significant subset of
those occasions we made the mistake of giving them a WG (in the hope
that they'd somehow get a clue along the way) and then regretting it
later.  and in at least one case such a WG has demanded a PS even though
it failed to meet technical concerns that were repeatedly raised at 
multiple (as in three, IIRC) BOFs before the WG was ever formed.

it's things like this that occasionally make me wish that we had public
executions of WGs as part of the Thursday night plenary.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 20:16:44 -0400

--On Friday, 23 May, 2003 19:48 -0400 Keith Moore 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> example, of that other part.  I think it represents one of
>> our  key problems, and one that generates many opportunities
>> for  heaping abuse on IESG for doing things we _want_ them to
>> do.
>
> yup.  seen it happen several times.  and on a significant
> subset of those occasions we made the mistake of giving them a
> WG (in the hope that they'd somehow get a clue along the way)
> and then regretting it later.  and in at least one case such a
> WG has demanded a PS even though it failed to meet technical
> concerns that were repeatedly raised at  multiple (as in
> three, IIRC) BOFs before the WG was ever formed.
>
> it's things like this that occasionally make me wish that we
> had public executions of WGs as part of the Thursday night
> plenary.

I don't know that I've mentioned it on this list (probably 
haven't, and it intrudes into the "solution" space a bit 
anyway), but I've had periodic thoughts that it would be a good 
idea to have ADs "invite" particularly interesting and/or 
problematic WGs to present their problem definition, work in 
progress, ideas, and plans at a plenary, and then take 
questions, etc.  This would act as a way to bring the whole 
community in on questions of relevance and relationship to the 
overall architecture and operation of the Internet.  Both the 
audience and the WG participants might learn a lot.  And while 
"contemplate process changes", "whine at the IESG" and "whine at 
the IAB" have an important place, injecting some community-wide 
_technical_ review and discussion back into the environment 
might be really helpful and interesting.

I would hope the process would rarely resemble a public 
execution, or even a public flogging.  But, in the rare cases 
where that is appropriate and necessary, it might not be a bad 
outcome. :-)

      john

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 02:15:24 +0200

--On fredag, mai 23, 2003 11:15:28 -0400 Eric Rosen <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> Harald> if, somehow,  we came to the  point where we split  the IETF
>> between "those  who  are   on  a  mission  to  protect   the
>> users  against exploitation by the vendors" and "those who are on
>> a mission to help the vendors  exploit the  users", I'd
>> reluctantly  have to  join the first camp.
>
> Any suggestion that if  you're not in one of these camps  you must be in
> the other would indeed be useless demagoguery.

thanks - we have a consensus on that point at least!

> As  long as the  IESG asserts  the right  to make  decisions that  go
> beyond issues of technical quality and correctness, we have a problem.

unfortunately I don't believe we can separate the world that neatly into 
"technical" and "non-technical" issues.

I believe that the *IETF* has a duty to speak to issues that concern the 
impact of our standards on the real world - RFC 1984, the "crypto is good, 
bad crypto is bad" document, has very little to do directly with either 
technical quality or correctness.

Quoting from draft-ietf-problem-process-00 (ok, it's quoting me :-) on IETF 
core values:

    "Cares for the Internet"

    As its name implies, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
    focuses on Internet-related activities.  We care about the
    Internet, and our standards work and operational activities are
    intended to improve the utility, scalability and availability of
    the Internet.

    The Internet isn't value-neutral, and neither is the IETF.  We want
    the Internet to be useful for communities that share our commitment
    to openness and fairness.  We embrace technical concepts such as
    decentralized control, edge-user empowerment and sharing of
    resources, because those concepts resonate with the core values of
    the IETF community. These concepts have little to do with the
    technology that's possible, and much to do with the technology that
    we choose to create.

    The IETF community also cares about making the Internet model a
    viable business proposition.  People who choose to offer Internet
    products and services that fit with our core values should be able
    to do so with maximum benefit and minimum amount of fuss.

    The IETF community wants the Internet to succeed because we believe
    that the existence of the Internet, and its influence on economics,
    communication and education, will help us to build a better human
    society.

The IESG has absolutely no business going beyond the IETF community's 
consensus on these issues. I believe consensus on these issues has a very 
clear core, but gets very fuzzy when trying to apply it to specific 
instances; the rambunctious debate that led to the publication of RFC 2804 
(the "Raven" RFC on wiretapping) is only a recent example.

I believe the IESG has tried to find the best way forward within the 
mandate given it by the IETF community as well as it has been able to see 
it. It may very well have misjudged (it would be a miracle if it never 
did). But I do believe it has tried faithfully.

               Harald

---

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 09:34:10 +0200 (CEST)

>     written down.  And it's not useful.  -- Jon Postel

A shared commitment to conservatism is essential, if only to common
values that we won't compromise.

  Validity is by no means the only standard by which a scientific
  proposition is accepted or rejected. ... These three: validity,
  profundity, and intrinsic human interest underlie jointly the
  valuation of scientific results.

  Suppose now that no limitations of value were imposed on the
  publication of scientific contributions in journals.  The selection -
  which is  indispensible in view of the limited space - would then have
  to be done by some neutral method - say drawing lots.  Immediately the
  journalswould be flooded with rubbish an valuable work would be
  crowded out and banished to obscurity.  Cranks are always abounding
  who will send in spates of nonsense.  Immature, confused, fantastic,
  or else plodding, pedestrian, irrelevant material would be pouring in.
  Swindlers and bunglers combining all variants of deception and
  self-deception would seek publicity.  Buried among so much that is
  specious or slipshod, the few remaining valuable publications could
  hardly have a chance of being recognized.  The swift and reliable
  contacts by which scientists to-day keep each other informed would be
  broken; they would be isolated and their mutual reliance and
  co-operation would be paralysed.

  ...Self-governing institutions of science are effective in
  safeguarding the organized practice of science which embodies and
  transmits their premises.  But their functions are mainly protective
  and regulative and are themselves based... on the preexistence of a
  general harmony of views among scientists.

  Michael Polyani, Science, Faith and Society, 1946

Erik

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 21:41:55 -0700

Joel,

JJMH> For example, as worded Dave's note suggests that there is no drawback from
JMH> having too many efforts.  I don't think anyone believes that there are no
JMH> drawbacks.

Including Dave. He certainly did not mean to imply that having multiple
efforts is without its downside. However he is frankly far more
concerned with the downsides of prematurely terminating valid (parallel)
efforts.

I have a simple model of IETF work:

   1. There must be a clear technical need/goal

   2. There must be a core technical competence that can reasonably be
   expected to achieve that goal

   3. There must be a core, committed constituency for developing and
   another for using the result.

Satisfy all 3 and and it is a legitimate IETF effort.

Where the modern IETF gets into trouble is when we try to get clever and
pretend that it can dictate among competing, legitimate efforts.

I claim that all we can or should do is to keep the pressure on to
ensure high technical quality.

Terminate an otherwise-legitimate technical effort early and we are
pretending to have a far better understanding market preferences than we
actually have.

We also will preclude serendipity.

If we had made THE choice of the right way to do international
characters for email, we probably would not have gotten ESMTP. There is
a good chance we would not have gotten SNMP. And so on.

Lest someone feel certain that these various opportunities for shutting
off parallel efforts would have been certain to come out the "right"
way, I'll simply ask why?

JMH> Just in case, let me suggest one of the many drawbacks.  I believe that no
JMH> matter what organizational structure we craft for ourselves, there will
JMH> always be a leadership load based on the number of "things to be lead"
JMH> (working groups, activities, ...)

And I'll repeat that I thoroughly agree that paying attention to
leadership load is an important -- nay, an essential -- concern. But
let's apply that concern diligently, rather than opportunistically.

As a community, we are so grossly inefficiently about this topic, it is
actually hypocritical for us to to apply it in this way. And, no, that
does not mean we should ignore the question of load. Again: it means we
should look at the topic seriously and thoroughly.

JMH> Another major issue with allowing competing efforts is that the results do
JMH> not interoperate.

TCP and UDP do not "interoperate". IS-IS and OSPF do not interoperate.
And so on.

Yes, competing efforts usually do not interoperate.  That is what makes
the phrase "let the market decide" highly non-trivial.  It means that we
do, in fact, let the market choose based on criteria beyond simple
technical evaluation.  The alternative is parental and premature.

d/

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 00:49:15 -0400

Actually, these examples illustrate two very different cases.
TCP and UDP do different things.  They both exist for good reasons.

OSPF and IS-IS are so similar it is frankly a shame and a disservice that 
they both exist.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:54:34 +0200

--On fredag, mai 23, 2003 20:16:44 -0400 John C Klensin <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> I don't know that I've mentioned it on this list (probably haven't, and
> it intrudes into the "solution" space a bit anyway), but I've had
> periodic thoughts that it would be a good idea to have ADs "invite"
> particularly interesting and/or problematic WGs to present their problem
> definition, work in progress, ideas, and plans at a plenary, and then
> take questions, etc.  This would act as a way to bring the whole
> community in on questions of relevance and relationship to the overall
> architecture and operation of the Internet.  Both the audience and the WG
> participants might learn a lot.  And while "contemplate process changes",
> "whine at the IESG" and "whine at the IAB" have an important place,
> injecting some community-wide _technical_ review and discussion back into
> the environment might be really helpful and interesting.

I'm a little bit worried..... not that I don't recognize any number of 
instances of the scenario above, but there are other instances.....

my counterexample is an example of something that is totally irrelevant to 
the Internet architecture per se, but has proved useful to a sharply 
limited community, has (as far as I can tell) not had any really bad 
effects on the architecture, and the only time the managing AD had to do 
some management was in order to insist that they should have some security 
(and they delivered!).

TN3270E - Extending the Telnet protocol to handle IBM 3270 terminals, or 
emulators thereof.

In the current climate of WG creation, we would have a 1000-message debate 
on the IETF list in order to take this on at all. And the debate would 
actually be more costly in terms of management time than the running of the 
activity.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to Alan Kay: "Small things should be easy. 
Big things should be possible."

[I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm totally wrong, and the TN3270E WG 
has now descended into an unmanageable cesspool of conflicts... it's been 
years since I managed it....]

                      Harald

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 15:40:02 -0400

--On Tuesday, 27 May, 2003 08:54 +0200 Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> --On fredag, mai 23, 2003 20:16:44 -0400 John C Klensin
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> anyway), but I've had periodic thoughts that it would be a
>> good idea to have ADs "invite" particularly interesting
>> and/or problematic WGs to present their problem definition,
>> work in progress, ideas, and plans at a plenary, and then
>> take questions, etc.  This would act as a way to bring the
>> whole community in on questions of relevance and relationship
>> to the overall architecture and operation of the Internet.
>> Both the audience and the WG participants might learn a lot.
>> And while "contemplate process changes", "whine at the IESG"
>> and "whine at the IAB" have an important place, injecting
>> some community-wide _technical_ review and discussion back
>> into the environment might be really helpful and interesting.
>
> I'm a little bit worried..... not that I don't recognize any
> number of instances of the scenario above, but there are other
> instances.....
>
> my counterexample is an example of something that is totally
> irrelevant to the Internet architecture per se, but has proved
> useful to a sharply limited community, has (as far as I can
> tell) not had any really bad effects on the architecture, and
> the only time the managing AD had to do some management was in
> order to insist that they should have some security (and they
> delivered!).
>
> TN3270E - Extending the Telnet protocol to handle IBM 3270
> terminals, or emulators thereof.
>
> In the current climate of WG creation, we would have a
> 1000-message debate on the IETF list in order to take this on
> at all. And the debate would actually be more costly in terms
> of management time than the running of the activity.
>...

Hmm.  I'm having trouble understanding what this has to do with 
my suggestion.   I didn't contemplate any discussion on the IETF 
list.  I didn't contemplate doing anything before a WG is 
chartered or, in general, given a work item.  And, since there 
clearly is not enough plenary time (even if we expanded it) to 
get presentations from every WG, I indicated that ADs would need 
to choose useful candidates.

So let me restate what I had in mind (since I obviously wasn't 
clear when I discussed this with you after some plenary a while 
back either).   We have some WGs that raise important 
architectural and/or cross-area issues.  We also have WGs which 
are doing things that might set important precedents for other 
work, or which are headed in a different direction than prior 
work, but which trends are not precisely "architectural". 
Often, but not always, those WGs know who they are.  Often, I 
hope "almost always", the relevant ADs know which WGs these are.

When one of these looms large enough on the radar, the AD gets 
to say "you just won the jackpot and get plenary time to explain 
what you are doing and where you are headed".   The WG presents 
its work, the community gets a chance to ask questions and 
challenge assumptions.   If things go well --which, I presume, 
would have a lot to do with the WG's clarity of thinking and 
degree of preparation-- then everyone learns something, the WG 
may get some mid-course calibration, and the sorts of surprises 
that now tend to show up as violent protests during Last Call 
get headed off.  If things go seriously badly -- if, e.g., the 
community concludes that the WG is doing silly things and 
ignoring important operational or architectural principles -- we 
have what I referred to about as a public flogging.  Not 
pleasant, but, by the time it is over, there would be no 
uncertainty as to whether unhappiness with the WG's approach 
represented some sort of community consensus or was just the 
idiosyncratic position of an unhappy AD.

While I would hope ADs would be responsive to community input on 
what ought to be reviewed, I would assume that, if we had a WG 
that was doing important work that was of interest to a small 
community and whose impact was confined to that community (like 
TN3270x), it would not be a good candidate for this sort of 
presentation.  Ok, so they don't make one... no harm done.

       john

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 10:36:53 +0200

thanks; I see what you are aiming at now.

my worry was probably tangential, but not entirely unrelated - that we 
could concentrate so much on getting the IETF to concentrate on the 
important matters with great impact (for good or bad) on the Internet 
architecture that we forget to allow for the smaller, peripheral things 
that Just Should Be Done.

not that the impact is easy to gauge - see HTTP.....

                  Harald

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 08:23:38 -0400

--On Wednesday, 28 May, 2003 10:36 +0200 Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> my worry was probably tangential, but not entirely unrelated -
> that we could concentrate so much on getting the IETF to
> concentrate on the important matters with great impact (for
> good or bad) on the Internet architecture that we forget to
> allow for the smaller, peripheral things that Just Should Be
> Done.

I think the important point there is that, as with other things, 
we really need ADs and a functional IESG, to give them 
considerable discretion, and to avoid trying to micromanage the 
process from plenaries, mailing lists, or even a whipped-up mob. 
To keep an appropriate balance, that IESG needs to be open about 
its actions general directions, and priorities, and those things 
need to be available in a way that makes them subject to reviw. 
I think we have been doing relatively well, most of the time, on 
the "discretion" part, but somewhat less well on the openness, 
transparancy, and, on the part of a few ADs some of the time, 
receptiveness to review and community-mandated tuning of 
direction, strategies, or procedures.

indeed.
      john