Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-tsvwg-iana-ports-09.txt> (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Procedures for the Management of the Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry) to BCP

[Michelle Cotton <[e-mail]>]

Cullen,

We do have some technical expertise within the IANA staff, however our
expertise is more aligned with the process of creating and maintaining
registries.  Part of that includes relying on the experts that the IESG
designates to make the decisions for requests that utilize the "Expert
Review" policy in RFC 5226.

In the past, if there is strong disagreement from an expert and the
requester disagrees, we have brought the Transport Area Directors into the
communications to see if all parties can come to an agreement.  In almost
all cases, this is where a final decision is made.  If that set of folks can
not come to a conclusion, we then would default to going to the IESG.  With
all requests, if there is any uncertainty as to what decision should be
made, we go to the IESG for guidance.

We do rely on the technical expertise of the appointed experts for all
registries, but we ALWAYS have the possibility to seek guidance form the
IESG.

I don't believe we have ever had an official appeals with ports (Knocking on
wood really hard!).

Does that help?

--Michelle



On 1/31/11 8:33 AM, "Cullen Jennings" <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> So IANA has a huge amount of technical expertise and takes maintaing the
> registries very seriously. I've seen them catch technical mistakes that made
> all the way through WG and IESG review. I've got huge respect for technical
> competence of IANA and in particular Michelle. So I'm not questions that but
> I don't recall seeing them override an expert on a technical issue. I'd be
> happy to hear of examples but lets consider the example I am actually
> concerned about here.
>  
> I put in a request for a latency sensitive protocol that uses DTLS and request
> a different port for the secure version. Joe as expert review says we should
> redesign the protocol to use something like STARTLS and run on one port. I
> assert, with very little evidence, that will not meet the latency goals of the
> protocol. Joe does not agree.
> 
> So Michelle, in that case, would you be willing to override Joe? I'm sure you
> would be willing to help facilitate any conversations, bring in other people
> such as ADs that can help etc. I was sort of working on the assumption that
> you would not override Joe in this case and the the only path forward would be
> an appeal to Lars but perhaps that is just a bad assumption on my part.
> Appeals are really the worst way possible to resolve things. I have a hard
> time imagining that IANA would want to engage in a technical discussion to
> resolve this and instead relies on the expert reviewer. I'll note that the
> expert review may report to IANA but they are selected by and replaced by the
> IESG. 
> 
> The important point here is that I really don't care if it is Joe or IANA that
> is saying no - I think this document should be clear that this BCP can not be
> used as grounds for rejecting the request for a second port for security.
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 30, 2011, at 12:09 , Michelle Cotton wrote:
> 
>> David has said this well.  Thank you.
>> 
>> Please let me know if there are any other questions.
>> 
>> --Michelle
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 1/30/11 10:52 AM, "David Conrad" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>>> Cullen,
>>> 
>>> On Jan 29, 2011, at 8:54 PM, Cullen Jennings wrote:
>>>>> AFAICT, the experts team reports to IANA. We make recommendations to
>>>>> them. They are the ones who have the conversation with the applicant.
>>>>> They can take our advice or not - that's their decision.
>>>> 
>>>> I think you are pretty misrepresenting the situation. My impression of the
>>>> reality of the situation is that if the IANA did not like the advice of the
>>>> expert reviewer, they might ask the AD to override but short of that they
>>>> pretty much do whatever the expert says.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Joe is closer. 
>>> 
>>> In general, IANA staff are not technical experts in any of the wide variety
>>> of
>>> areas for which they are asked to provide registry services.  As such, they
>>> rely on technical experts to provide input/advice/recommendations.  In the
>>> past, there were some very rare cases in which the advice provided by the
>>> technical experts was deemed insufficient and IANA staff looked to the ADs
>>> or
>>> the IESG for additional input.  However, at least historically, IANA staff
>>> viewed the maintenance of the registries as their responsibility (at the
>>> direction of the IESG), not the technical experts' responsibility. I would
>>> be
>>> surprised if this had changed.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> -drc
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ietf mailing list
>>> [e-mail]
>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>> 
> 
> 
> Cullen Jennings
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>