Re: [Ianaplan] CWG draft and its impact on the IETF

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Excuse front posting, but I just want to say that John is correct;
of course Plan B would be neither desirable nor smooth sailing, but there
are circumstances in which it would be the IETF's only choice.

Regards
   Brian

On 21/05/2015 06:08, John C Klensin wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> A quick comment on this analysis only:
> 
> --On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 12:17 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> ...
>> I've been mulling over the implications of this. Either PTI
>> will be controlled by ICANN or it won't. If it *is*
>> effectively controlled by ICANN, the IETF can sit back and
>> relax until our SLA is no longer met, in which case we go to
>> Plan B (i.e. no change in the state that has existed for 15
>> years).
>>
>> If PTI is *not* effectively controlled by ICANN, we are
>> straight into Plan B: giving notice to ICANN and bidding out a
>> protocol parameter services contract, with PTI as an obvious
>> bidder, hopefully at zero cost. (I would seriously expect
>> several zero- cost bids to show up.)
> 
> The difficulty with "Plan B" is that the costs to the IETF and
> the IETF's user community, or invoking it and making some sort
> of transfer would be considerable and disruptive.  Good planning
> and cooperation from ICANN (or PTI or some other current
> operator) could significant reduce that pain, but not either
> eliminate it or reduce it to something trivial.  As a result
> "SLA is no longer met" is less like to be a simple binary
> decision but a collection of evaluations and tradeoffs about
> whether things are sufficiently out of hand, or showing enough
> of a patter of deterioration, to justify making that move.  
> 
> Even if PTI were, by your definition, not controlled by ICANN,
> under most scenarios I'd assume the position of the IETF/IAOC
> would be to stick with PTI-IANA unless (or until) something went
> seriously wrong.  Making a change just because the
> organizational structure changes seems to me unlikely in
> practice (I note that neither of us would be part of making the
> decision other than as members of the community so there are no
> commitments in that prediction).   
> 
> In either case, the IETF community would need to evaluate costs
> and risks of the scenario.  I don't believe that PTI implies
> enough advantages for us (or anyone else) to justify that
> investment.   Milton doesn't believe that is a legitimate reason
> for not going ahead.  And that leaved us at a little bit of an
> impasse that your analysis does not address.
> 
>    john
> 
>