RE: [newtrk] web-based lists of RFCs

[Pekka Savola <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Wed, 6 Jul 2005 [e-mail] wrote:
> There's still another half you forgot to mention - RFC Editor's Queue.
> I suppose you are familiar with
> ftp://ftp.isi.edu/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipv6-node-requirements-11.txt
>
> Its been in the RFC Editor's queue since 2004/08/26. This document kicked
> of a revision of a number of RFC's, which know are in IESG review, meaning
> that by the time it is actually published, it will be out of date.  It was
> first published as a draft on June 18th, 2002.

I excluded the RFC editor's queue intentionally, for two 
reasons:

   1) the users of roadmap (and similar) documents should be able to 
use the latest, approved draft in the meantime, before the RFC is 
published.

   2) the delay of in the RFC publication (after approval) can 
typically be optimized by not including normative references to 
work-in-progress.  In the case you cite, the document has been sitting 
idle basically because is had to wait for the completion of other 
work.

For the TCP roadmap, there had been discussion whether to include 
references to work-in-progress, but such attempts were wisely rejected 
by sufficient justification that we want to document the state as it 
is now, not which we hope it to be in a year or two.  In some cases, 
this may or may not be possible. [For node requirements, I recall that 
security ADs requested these changes; maybe it would have been 
possible to convince them of the timeliness requirements, if there 
were any, maybe not.]

However, I've noticed that 2) incurs another "penalty" for the waiting 
drafts.  When, at last, all the normative references have entered the 
RFC editor's queue, it will take the usual ~2-4 months (or 
thereabouts) for the referred documents to pop out.  On the other 
hand, if the handling of documents which are required by the other 
documents was more or less automatically expedited, we might be able 
to cut off a couple of months from the publication of a document which 
has normative references to works in progress.

Whether such an automatic expedition process might or might not have 
unfortunate steering effects on the work flow is another debate, 
though.  (The IESG, as it is, has the ability to request expedited 
processing of drafts in RFC-editor's queue.)

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
.
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