Re: [trill] Should we make draft-mrw-trill-over-ip-01 a WG document?

[James Carlson <[e-mail]>]

Tissa Senevirathne (tsenevir) wrote:
> That sounds a bit backwards to me.
> 
> [Answer] Doing small piecemeal work, is not the right approach. 

We might agree on that point, but it's not the question at hand.  The
question at hand is whether to adopt a draft.

> The document is clearly in scope of the working group, and I believe the
> only other question regarding adoption is whether the wg wants (and the
> authors want) to steer the document by the working group consensus
> process.
> 
> [Answer] Good point, I re-read the charter one more time and there is no
> where it says TRILL over IP or other encapsulation, so it seems the
> document is not in charter. Please could you point to the WG, which line
> item in charter that qualifies this work to be in scope ?
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/trill/charter/

Sure:

	"This includes a MIB module and
other pieces needed for operations, but also additional ways to
extend and optimize TRILL for the properties of the networks on
which it is deployed."

This seems to me to be an additional way to extend TRILL for the
property of a network -- specifically, an IP network.

Granted, I'm not thrilled about the idea of adding a new means to reach
mutual encapsulation.  I assume the authors have a good reason to do
this, and have interesting ideas on how and why it should be done.  The
important point is that I think this working group is the best possible
forum to air those ideas.

> [Answer] IETF tradition has been to start with a problem space and
> create a common solution not making every draft that is in scope of
> charter a WG document. Your point on "too many solutions" exactly that
> is my point having subset of solutions finally leads to too many small
> pieces.

Some efforts do indeed follow that simple linear path -- idea, BOF,
charter, WG, publication.  But that's certainly not the only path, nor
perhaps even the most common.  Adoption by an existing WG of new
in-scope documents is something that I view as crucially important to
continued WG viability.  Without it, protocols just grow like weeds as
new extensions are otherwise developed, deployed, and documented without
the help of WG consensus using the individual-submission RFC publication
track.

Failing to adopt does not foreclose publication of an RFC describing
this extension, nor any other work by the authors.  It simply
disconnects the WG from the process.

Sending TRILL over IP off to the individual-submission world without WG
input would, I think, be a poor result of this exercise.  I've been
through that problem as PPPEXT chair, and it's no fun.

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <[e-mail]>