Re: [mpls] MPLS-RT review of PSC related drafts

[Markus Jork <[e-mail]>]

Huub,

>  > Was having a set of update drafts somehow meant to ease  > coordination
> with the ITU?
> 
> Yes. This was requested in the liaison from IETF to ITU and the concatenation
> of the options is in draft ITU mode.

Ok, so as I suspected the current format of the I-Ds was chosen for procedural reasons.
While that is understandable, the resulting I-Ds are pretty hard to digest.
I think producing good and readable RFCs should be more important than making it easy to get them through the standardization process. 

> > Anyway, the main audience for a standards track RFC are
>  > the implementers and users of the technology. So an RFC  > should be
> written to be easily understood and digested  > by its audience. And in my
> opinion the format chosen for  > this set of PSC drafts is not ideal in that
> regard.
> 
> What is the format you would like to see?

I think we need one draft that is a new revision of RFC 6378. It would incorporate all the corrections and new features.
That's what you want to do with "draft-xxx-mpls-tp-ITU-mode" anyway:

> Currently there will be two modes:
> = none option supported: existing RFC6378 = all options supported: draft ITU mode
> 
> In this way implementations (currently) have to support two modes.

So if the current set of drafts describing optional features can't be arbitrarily combined anyway, why not produce one new ITU-mode draft that describes all of this together?

Just to illustrate the problem with the current set of drafts, here is one example: 3 of the drafts modify the same section of RFC 6378:

* draft-rhd-mpls-tp-psc-priority-01.txt:

  4.2.  Updates to Section 4.3.3.2.  Unavailable State
     Remove the following bullet items and their text:
     [...]


* draft-cdh-mpls-tp-psc-non-revertive-00.txt:

  4.8.  Updates to Section 4.3.3.2. Unavailable State
     Replace the following bullet item in the reaction to local input
     list:
     [...]
     With:
     [...]

     Replace the following bullet item in the reaction to remote message
     list:
     [...]
     With:
     [...]


* draft-rhd-mpls-tp-psc-sd-00.txt:

  5.9.  Updates to Section 4.3.3.2 Unavailable State

     The second paragraph of Section 4.3.3.2 Unavailable State in
     [RFC6378] shows the intention of including the signal degrade on the
     protection in the Unavailable state.  This document follows the same
     state grouping as [RFC6378] for SD-P, even though the protection path
     can be partially available under the condition of the signal degrade
     on the protection path.

     Replace the following text in the first paragraph of Section 4.3.3.2
     Unavailable State for further clarification on SD on the protection
     path:
     [...]
     With:
     [...]

     Replace the following bullet item text in the transitions in reaction
     to a local input:
     [...]
     With:
     [...]

     Replace the following bullet item text in the transitions in reaction
     to a local input:
     [...]
     With:
     [...]


Each draft with its "diff" format is bad enough on its own. But any combination of these drafts would be incomprehensible. So why have these separate RFCs?

-Markus