Re: [secdir] review of draft-arkko-pana-iana-02

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

Dan,

> This draft changes the IANA rules for allocation of protocol fields
> to include "IESG approval". It really has no security considerations
> and this draft shouldn't warrant much attention from the ADs.
>   

OK. Thanks for your review.

> That said, however, I did find the rationale for relaxing the rules a
> bit unconvincing. When RFC 5191 was approved the reasons in the rationale
> applied but "IESG approval" was not included. Perhaps it was an oversight
> and the WG didn't really want such rigid rules. Or maybe deployment
> experience has caused a change of heart. Why now? And why add "IESG
> review"? Why not "First Come First Served" or "Expert Review"? What is
> it about "IESG review" that makes it appropriate to add now? The
> rationale in section 2 could use a bit more explanation. And it seems
> strange, to me at least, that a non-WG draft is relaxing rules the WG
> set up intentionally for its protocol.
>
>   "IESG approval" is supposed to be rare (according to RFC 5226) so maybe
> it would be possible to partition the ranges, leaving the lion's share
> the way it was-- "IETF review"-- and giving a reasonable chunk to "IESG
> approval" for the rare cases that this route is going to be used? If this
> was considered and rejected it might be good to mention that in section 2.
>   

Oversight: As far as I am concerned, not including IESG Approval *is* an 
oversight on all strict IANA allocation rules. If we are not ready to 
say FCFS for various reasons (and there are often good reasons) then at 
least we should provide an ability for someone to decide whether the 
strict rule is absolutely required in all cases. In the IETF the way to 
allow that judgment call to happen is to add "or IESG Approval" to the 
IANA rule.

Why now? Because we have a document (pana-preauth) on IESG review, and 
it cannot be approved since it would need one of the flag bits that is 
Standards Action only per the existing PANA rules. But no one in the 
working or the IESG actually thinks we should block the document.

Non-wg draft: We would have brought this through the working group, but 
I happened to close the working group a while ago, thinking that we were 
done. However, the document has been brought up for review on the PANA 
mailing list.

I hope this helps shed some light on the background, or at least my 
thoughts on it.

Jari