[homenet] homenet: what now? ... next?

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Dear WG,

At IETF-103 Ted lead a good discussion of where we're at and where we
and others in the homenet space may be heading. One key aspect of that
discussion is that we might (or might not) be working on specs that have
been overtaken by events e.g. in the sense that perhaps there are now
sufficient other options that people are less likely to implement the
specs we currently have as WG documents.

As chairs, we have also noted the relative lack of activity on the list
in recent months, which could also be related to a lack of interest in
implementing and deploying our current WG drafts.

We'd therefore like to have a discussion on the list, between now
and IETF-104 as to what the WG ought be doing.

It's fine to offer general opinions, but as a way to break it down, we
basically have two bits of work in-hand: (a) work on simple naming [1]
and (b) the drafts on handling names with help from your ISP. [2,3]
(We also have a chartered work item [4] on security that has seen no
progress but you can comment on that as item (c) if you like;-)

Ted also has some concrete ideas for work to do at the upcoming
hackathon. We've asked him to start a separate thread on that and
would love to see people participate in that.

We think there are a few potential positions that participants in the
discussion may have (or end up having) with respect to each of those,
perhaps:

(1) it's great work and I plan to implement or deploy - see
    you at the hackathon!
(2) it's great work and I'll be actively engaged with it in
    the coming months reviewing drafts and posting to the
    list
(3) I do care about this stuff getting done, but I don't have
    the time/management interest to spend the time I'd like.
(4) I'm not that interested in this stuff, but I don't object,
    and I'll read some drafts as I'm able to.
(5) it's fine stuff, but IMO not going to be used, so there's
    not much point in producing RFCs
(6) not sure at the moment, maybe the WG should go quiescent for
    a while 'till we know more

If one of those positions captures your opinion, feel free to respond
in shorthand. Otherwise, please tell us where you think we ought be
going, as a WG, with (a), (b) and/or (c).

To be clear, we're happy to proceed according to the consensus of the
WG participants whatever that may be. That could mean trying to
accelerate some work, or closing down the WG, or anything in between,
assuming we see enough engagement in discussion and that there's a
rough consensus that we can call.

As chairs, we want to allow plenty of time for this, and are considering
devoting (part of) a f2f session to bottoming out on this topic at
IETF-104 if that's needed, but we'd like to be reassured that the WG
think we're working on the right things now, and that those are likely
to be implemented and hopefully deployed.

We'd really appreciate it if you can send an initial response to
this mail in the next week so we can start to build an agenda for
our session at IETF-104.

Thanks
B&S. (As chairs)


[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-simple-naming
[2]
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-front-end-naming-delegation
[3]
https://tools.ietf.org/wg/homenet/draft-ietf-homenet-naming-architecture-dhc-options/
[4] https://tools.ietf.org/wg/homenet/charters