Re: [Bier] Robert Wilton's Discuss on draft-ietf-bier-te-arch-10: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

[Alvaro Retana <[e-mail]>]

On August 25, 2021 at 9:50:55 AM, Robert Wilton wrote:


Rob:

Hi!

Both RFC8279 and RFC8296 are in fact Standard Track documents.  The
bier WG was originally chartered to produce experimental work, right
as those documents were published (as Experimental), the WG was
rechartered and the status of the documents was changed to Standards
Track:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-bier-core-to-proposed-standard/

FWIW, the datatracker shows the correct status even if the document
doesn't.  Yes, that is confusing. :-(


Thanks!

Alvaro.


> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> DISCUSS:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi,
>
> I would like to please double check with the authors, responsible AD, and IESG
> that publishing this as standards track is the right choice (as opposed to
> experimental).
>
> From the first line of the introduction:
> "BIER-TE is based on architecture, terminology and packet formats with
> BIER as described in [RFC8279] and [RFC8296].
>
> Both RFC 8279 and RFC 8296 are experimental RFCs, hence (1) I wanted to check
> that by publishing this draft as Std Track, that this draft isn't being built
> on an unstable footing.
>
> This draft has a normative reference to RFC 8279, but only an informative
> reference to RFC 8296.
>
> Hence, I further wanted to check:
> (2) Should RFC 8296 really be a normative reference?
> (3) The IETF LC announcement didn't seem to flag the downref to RFC 8279. RFC
> 8067 says that is not strictly required, but in this case I think that would
> have been useful.
>
> I can see from the document history that the WG has flip-flopped on whether
> this document should be experimental or stds track, but I couldn't quickly
> find this discussion, and it wasn't covered in shepherds writeup. If it is
> possible for someone to provide a quick summary as to why it is okay and
> right to publish this as standards track that would be appreciated.