Re: [rrg] [IRSG] IRSG Review: draft-irtf-rrg-recommendation-12.txt

Robin Whittle <rw@firstpr.com.au> Wed, 01 September 2010 11:44 UTC

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Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:44:48 +1000
From: Robin Whittle <rw@firstpr.com.au>
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Cc: irsg@ISI.EDU, Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org>
Subject: Re: [rrg] [IRSG] IRSG Review: draft-irtf-rrg-recommendation-12.txt
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Short version:  I think it would make no sense to do more work on the
                RRG Design Goals draft now, since it resulted from
                minimal discussion in early 2007 and has not been
                discussed or revised since then.

                Likewise, I think it would make no sense to use the
                current draft as a normative reference in the Report,
                or to pretend that the RRG completed a "list of
                prioritized design goals", as required by our Charter.


Hi Tony and Paul,

Tony, you wrote, in part:

> The expired normative reference is the design goals document.
> We'll be updating that and passing that up for IRSG review as
> well.

This is the first time I am aware of you expressing interest in
working on:

  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-rrg-design-goals-01

since 8 July 2007 when you created this version 01.

As I wrote in March this year:

  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg06160.html

this version 01 resulted from very few list messages.  Your
announcement of it was:

  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg00183.html

The scalable routing phase of the RRG began on 2007-03-17, with
message 29.  We are now up to message 7287.  There have been 40.5
months since then, averaging 179 messages a month.

The Design Goals version 01 resulted from about 36 list messages,
between about 11 people - though I guess there were off-list
discussions too.  Most of these messages were no more than a few
sentences.  By message count, this is half a percent of our list
discussions to date.

A week after you released version 01, I wrote some detailed suggestions:

  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg00203.html

thinking there would be further discussions and a new version within
weeks.  However, nothing happened.  I wrote more suggestions in
December 2007:

  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg00733.html
  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg00786.html

and there was one brief response from Xiaohu Xu.

Neither you, nor (I think) anyone else has discussed the Design Goals
on the mailing list in any substantial fashion since July 2007.

We should have worked much harder on this.

I think the proposals in the Report are not based to any substantial
degree on the Design Goals version 01, since that was a very early
document, rarely discussed or mentioned on the list.  All the actual
material is in Section 3 - just 1047 words.

A week ago, 18 people voted (all Yes) on publication of the Report:

  Tony Li, Joel Halpern, Ran Atkinson, Mohamed Boucadair, Fred Templin
  Wes George, Klaas Wierenga, K. Sriram, Robin Whittle, Ruediger Volk,
  Hannu Flinck, David Williamson, Patrick Frejborg, Stephen Strowes,
  Shane Amante, Bruce Curtis and DY (Dae Young Kim).

These people wrote about 39% of the list messages to date.  These 18
people do not include anyone from the LISP team, or proponents of
about half the 14 proposals.

Even if these 18 people, and whoever else is still engaged in the RRG,
did agree on a revised Design Goals document, it would not be a
document which was used in the preparation of the proposals.

Each proposal should, I think, contain an explicit discussion of its
goals and non-goals.  Ivip has 18 pages of goals and non-goals:

  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-whittle-ivip-arch-04

Due to the 500 word limit on the Summary for each proposal, the RRG
Report can't be expected to convey the full set of goals and non-goals
for each proposal.

Rather than pretend that all the proposals referred to the Design
Goals draft, it would be better to let the reader delve into each
proposal's documentation regarding goals and non-goals.

Another requirement of the Charter was to produce a taxonomy.   Bill
Herrin worked towards this and I tried to refine it in 2009:

  http://www.firstpr.com.au/ip/ivip/rrgarch/

A second attempt at a taxonomy was the Core Edge Separation (CES) vs.
Core Edge Elimination (CEE) distinction:

  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg06219.html
  (17.3.3)

  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg06110.html

Though at least one person supported writing up the CES/CEE
distinction material as an RFC, I have not had time to do it, and the
distinction and terminology has been rejected by some people,
including Ran Atkinson.

  - Robin