[E-impact] Re: Moving draft-various-eimpact-arch-considerations along

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

Alex,

> One more thought:  The E-Impact program was originally formed when there was no clear landing spot for work related to environmental sustainability.  Since then, a WG (GREEN) and a RG (SUSTAIN) have been formed.  It might be useful (at least I would find it useful) for someone to clarify the role of the IAB program and how it evolves vs those groups that were formed.    

Indeed, the program was established at the time when there was very little room of discussion of this topic elsewhere in the IETF and IRTF. But we’ve had a workshop, and last year the GREEN WG was established to address energy usage monitoring and energy consumption management. And then the research group was founded to address a broad set of topics in this space. I don’t speak for Suresh or Mark, but my personal view is that we should decide what to do with the document at hand but after that the program can be closed. Just as a data point, outside the design team that wrote the document, most of the discussion of this document has happened around the research group.

Note though that just because we have some topics in the IETF program around sustainability doesn’t mean that all topics are addressed or that all topics have a home. Working groups have specific charters and there’s likely new things that need to be developed in terms of actual IETF protocols, data models, and the like, even after the creation of GREEN. Potentially, a number of IETF technologies could have sustainability aspects that would deserve future work. Though measurements and energy management certainly is a high priority one.

Similarly, there may be other topics, such as understanding the state of sustainability issues in our networks or research on hard problems in this area. These can be discussed in the research group. And then we can have even further topics such as architectural issues or advice beyond specific protocols, which can be something that is considered useful for the IAB to publish documents on. They’ve done that for a number of topics in the past, but of course one could also publish similar discussions in the research group’s RFC series. No strong opinion there. The document that this thread is about is in this category, trying to provide some architectural advice on topics that may influence sustainability.

Does this clarify?

Jari