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

[Robert Wilton via Datatracker <[e-mail]>]

Robert Wilton has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-bier-te-arch-10: Discuss

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DISCUSS:
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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.


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COMMENT:
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Thanks for your work on this document.

I'm not an expert on the BIER technology, and I didn't have the time to
properly read the core references before reviewing this document.  However, I
didn't spot any obvious issues on the text, beyond the question on the document
status.  But I also appreciated the detailed section on the operational
considerations related to managing the bit position assignments, which I
interpret not as a strict requirement of this specification, but likely to be
very helpful to controller implementations and operators.

Regards,
Rob