Subject: RE: IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 17:52:33 +0100

James,

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  The phrase about applications protocols was an hypothetical case, not an actual occurrence.  

See my follow-up posting for details of attempts to get work initiated.

	Regards,

	Graham Travers

	International Standards Manager
	BT Exact

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-----Original Message-----
From: James Kempf [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: 15 October 2003 16:58
To: Travers,G,Graham,XVT TRAVERG R; [email-masked];
[email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission 

Graham,

> It's *getting* worse !
>
> A few years ago one operator was prepared to fund about 20 individuals to
participate in the IETF;  now that's reduced to about 5, with no guarantee
that such a level will be sustained.
>
> This is not just about the downturn in the industry.  Real problems that
operators have are not being addressed by the IETF.  If the IETF won't
address my concerns, and if I have to go to the OMA to meet my requirements
for application protocols, for example, that's where I'll go.

Can you cite an example? I am not aware of any case where a group of
operaters has come to the IETF with a proposal for an application protocol
and had the charter turned down at some point during the process of new work
startup (i.e. no BOF consensus or charter rejected at I* review).

> You may say "That's fine".  OK, if that's the policy.  But, then, don't be
surprised if it happens !

Well, personally, coming from an operator I don't think it is fine. Having
operators involved is important, but I don't think that it is just a matter
of how many people they send to IETFs. Operators need to take the initative
to start new work and contribute their perspective to ongoing work. And,
they need to contribute people to sit on Nomcom and otherwise be involved.
If an operator sends 20 people and they just sit in the audience, never
contribute to mailing lists, it doesn't help get the operator perspective
represented.

            jak

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 18:02:33 +0100

James Kempf wrote:

I have not checked into this in detail, but I have heard that 3GPP has been
responding positively to IETF suggestions for improving utilization of SIP.
There was a very good and frank technical discussion at the joint meeting in
January this year.

That said, there are a few other areas of concern in some peripherial
support for 3GPP's system, which are not directly under control of 3GPP (I'm
speaking here of GRX). 3GPP has been quite helpful in addressing IETF's
concerns in this area where there is interaction with 3GPP's system, but
since the specifications are not directly under its control, there is only
so much 3GPP can do.

            jak

If this is true, it's the sort of cooperation that I referred to earlier - and of which I would like to see more.  Sure, the IETF can't force 3GPP to do anything;  but it *can* offer advice and design help, etc.  Similarly, 3GPP can't force the IETF to do anything;  but it can present requirements, which should be listened to sympathetically by the IETF.

	Regards,

	Graham Travers

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 10:39:13 +0200

Harald,

>
> > I almost feel that this should just be dropped from the statement.  My
> > reasons being that I have been told by the IESG about protocol
> > extensibility is that the IETF wants to have a tighter control over protocol
> > extensibility, even for extensions thought to be for limited use
> > or specific networks (for example, cellular networks).  The reason
> > being is that once something is out there, it often starts to be used
> > in ways which were not originally planned or used outside of its
> > original 'limited use' plans.  Therefore, in order to ensure proper
> > protocol behavior & interoperability, the IESG wants to manage
> > extensibility.  This has been very true in SIP & Diameter, 
> > for example.
> 
> True. Nearly a year ago, we attempted to publish 
> draft-iesg-vendor-extensions, to describe these problems in more detail - 
> but we failed to get that finished.

So, I think we have to be careful about what we consider part of
the IETF mission, if we cannot get basic agreement upon the implications
of the mission statement.

> > On the other hand, we see a protocol like RADIUS, which the IETF
> > has never done a good job at working with or standardizing, being
> > developed in 4 or more SDOs, and not in a colaborative manner.  This
> > makes a big mess with the RADIUS spec, and RADIUS does seem like a
> > protocol that has a big effect on the Internet.
> 
> You'll have no disagreement from me that RADIUS is a problem!
> 
> > So, in summary, the IESG has shown not to follow the above paragraph,
> > sometimes even for good reasons.  I can't think of a way in which
> > modify the paragraph to make it any better - because there will always
> > be examples of work that the IETF choses to standardize (or not)
> > which will violate that part of the mission.  Perhaps moving the
> > 'for the internet to the previous paragraph is what is needed.
> 
> as I've said before - I don't think we can come up with a mission statement 
> that retroactively blesses everything we've done well before, or 
> retroactively curses everything we've done badly. And we do require 
> flexibility to "do what's right". But without the ability to talk about 
> what the mission of the IETF ... I think we'll do badly.

The past is the past, I don't want to revisit the past.  What I want
to do is to look forward.  We should have flexibility in terms of
how to decide what the IETF can do, what it can't do and what it
should (or shouldn't do).  I think we cannot make a blanket statement
in the mission that covers this.

thanks,
John