Re: What's the alternative to "snarling"?

[Richard Shockey <[e-mail]>]

In Line..


On 4/19/21, 5:00 PM, "ietf on behalf of Keith Moore" <[e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]> wrote:

    On 4/19/21 4:09 PM, Leif Johansson wrote:

    > On 2021-04-19 21:46, Keith Moore wrote:
    >> On 4/19/21 11:51 AM, Leif Johansson wrote:
    >>
    >>>> In other words, they can spend all of their time politely explaining in detail why proposals are Bad Ideas, instead of getting useful work done.
    >>> Point to where the useful work will be done if we don’t stop this.
    >> I don't want to either dismiss your concern (which I share) or sound flippant, but I also wonder where the useful work will be done if we DO stop this.
    > I appreciate your attempt to keep sticking to your point and trying to be serious
    > about it but... I just don't buy the IETF as the group of brilliant but tortured
    > souls who have "snarl" at each other to make themselves heard over the din of "Bad
    > Ideas".

    Well, again, I'm not even sure we're all talking about the same thing 
    when we use the word "snarling".   And while I'm pretty sure that we 
    need a way to push back on Bad Ideas, I'm not sure that what people are 
    calling "snarling" is only or even mostly about discouraging Bad 
    Ideas.   Maybe, for example, some of it is about "baggage" - old 
    resentments for hard-fought battles lost, perceived insults, or even 
    genuinely bad behavior.

    > Where is this apocalyptic horde of Bad Ideas that is sucking up all of our precious
    > resources?
    One doesn't have to look very far to find some, just follow ietf@ or any 
    of several mailing lists.   In theory at least, the situation would be 
    worse if we didn't try to discourage them.

RS> IMHO its already gone too far.  This whole thread is case in point. 

    > The IETF meetings are growing smaller. Clearly we have figured out how
    > to turn people away at the door.

RS> That’s easy ... the process has become way too complicated. The IETF has become what it always despised the ITU-T.   I would never take new work into the IETF and I was a WG chair for almost 10 years (RFC 6116 ENUM) .   Work on improving or fixing problems in Real Time Communications protocols in ART has stalled. Look at the DISPATCH list for instance. Other than WEBRTC the last useful thing ART did was STIR and even with that we had to re-form as a SDO outside the IETF with the ATIS/SIP Forum NNI TF to get the operational standards ready.  Snarling is definitely allowed there and encouraged in our TF.  

We backtracked Rich Call Data only after we had the documentation ready if for no other reasons to make sure it had enough eyeballs on it.  The savings in time and effort was enormous.  Our TF meets every single month.  

    With respect, it doesn't follow from just that information.  I'm sure we 
    have surveys which have shown that some people have stopped attending 
    because of what they perceived as rudeness, but there may be many more 
    reasons than that.

RS> Its not rudeness and IMHO rudeness has its place.  There is a whole lot of stupid out there. I've seen serious proposals about using Hyperledger for TN to URI translation. 

I cannot empathize enough the issues with  STIR/SHAKEN protocols is regulatory.  I spend a unique amount of time explaining S/S to an alphabet soup of national regulators. I could go on and on about that.  BTW based on my conversations most of us are well served by our national regulators and if ever offered to serve on a National or State Technical Advisory Committee do so. For those of you in the US write your Governor.  BTW the FCC has openings for CSRIC. You can self-nominate.  

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-intends-re-establish-csric-and-solicits-membership-nominations

 It’s a very pleasant a rewarding experience.  I'm currently on the FCC NANC. 

BTW the surest way to get a protocol adopted is have it mandated by the relevant legislature which is what we did with S/S and the US TRACED Act.  You want BGP security ...mandate it.  

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151


    What is IETF doing these days that's exciting, that helps make the 
    Internet generally better in a way that's obvious to most participants, 
    that gives participants a sense of purpose and makes them proud to work 
    with IETF?   I don't think it's the null set, but it's certainly not 
    like it was 30 years ago when there was a general sense of excitement 
    about making this wonderful resource available to the world.

RS>  +1 Keith 

    In conversations with IETFers I often get a sense of futility, as in 
    "sure we could theoretically improve X, but we'd have to deal with these 
    technical constraints and/or these people and/or these Big Companies". 

RS> Well there are certainly constraints and "those people" namely the <fill in the blank> Mafia around certain protocols and certainly companies if you have to deal with routing protocols.  The largest single problem the IETF has now is what I refer to as the 'Persistence of Protocol'  Once something get imbedded in the network it is nearly impossible to extract or modify.  Professionally I've spent 30 years trying to kill off Time Division Multiplexing and Signaling System 7 in the Phone networks and it's still there.  I literally have to argue with regulators. "If you want real Calling Line Authentication S/S" Tell THEM to shut it F* off. Pick a date.  In the US we did that with Digital Television and made the US Treasury 40B richer when the spectrum was sold off. 
  
    There's a lot more inertia around many kinds of Internet development 
    than there used to be.   

RS> Keith its not  lack of inertia. Its Entropy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics


It's probably not IETF's fault, so much as a 
    symptom of success.   But it has changed the landscape and how we feel 
    about our work.

    And yet, conditions have changed enough that the constraints around 
    deployment of new features in some applications protocols and some 
    layers of the stack may be less than they once were. Understanding where 
    we can make a positive difference may be as important as understanding 
    what limitations there are.

    Keith

RS> There are issues ISOC might be helpful in working with the general IETF community on some of these issues but I know they are extremely careful treading on areas that look like lobbying.  Realistically the IETF is not unlike any major SDO dealing with "essential" networks. The electric power people certainly are well organized. IEEE etc. EPRI.  IMHO we are being way way to idealistic about what we do. 

— 
Richard Shockey
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