Re: [DNSOP] meta issue: WG to discuss DNS innovation (was Re: draft-hzhwm-start-tls-for-dns-00)

[Suzanne Woolf <[e-mail]>]

On Feb 17, 2014, at 1:15 PM, David Conrad <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Ted,
> 
> On Feb 17, 2014, at 9:57 AM, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> If dnsop wants to do this work, that's fine.
> 
> Given the various topics being discussed in DNSOP and the relatively high interest/reviews/comments/etc being shown, I think DNSOP is working fine.

This hasn't always been the case. At the moment, we've got a couple of high-profile issues by the tail and we're working to get some items that had gone dormant in front of the WG again. I hope the current level of interest can be sustained as needed to get work meaningfully defined and completed. Ask me in Toronto how I think we're doing :)
> 
>> Unfortunately, the dysfunction will arise wherever DNS improvements are suggested, so not trying to fix it is not an option.   And of course I realize that many good IETF contributors have been ground to a nubbin trying to fix the aforementioned dysfunction, and have no particular reason to think I would have been more able to fix it than my predecessors.
> 
> Given experiences, I have to wonder if the whole idea of a long-term working group just leads to dysfunction -- perhaps the IETF version of an echo chamber (or perhaps even inbreeding).  Perhaps a better approach would be to use something like DNSOP which has an operations bent is use to see if there are ideas/interest in particular topics that can drive the creation of working groups that focus on the specific DNS-related issues?

This seems to me to be the function v6ops has in its charter as "Solicit input from network operators and users to identify operational issues with the IPv4/IPv6 Internet [for us, with DNS], and determine solutions or workarounds to those issues….This work should primarily be conducted by those areas and WGs which are responsible and best fit to analyze these problems, but v6ops may also cooperate in focusing such work."

In preliminary discussion of the re-chartering that will be on the agenda for London, we've already stumbled on the possibility that what's really needed here is something similar to what v6ops does-- a way to support getting a feedback loop closed between DNS operators and the assorted DNS users elsewhere in the IETF. The actual mechanism of that interaction may well include "problem statement" documents to be handed off to other WGs, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing; the work should go where there are people motivated and able to do it, but still should be informed by focused expertise on the infrastructure, including DNS.

MHO (no hat): The balancing act is not only between operators and vendors/implementors, but also between DNS as an application that needs to evolve with the uses of the Internet and DNS as infrastructure that everyone relies upon and therefore should probably maintain some level of predictability and consistency. If DNSOP can't do anything useful towards managing that balance under its current charter, or a new charter that can get consensus support and action, we can and should shut it down.


Suzanne