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Re: WG review: Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks (l2vpn)

2003-06-25 11:22:24
Paul,

At 10:15 AM +0200 6/18/03, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
I can think of some possible reasons, not necessarily exclusive

- this is a bad idea/impossible to do well, so we shouldn't do it
- some other organization is already doing it, so we shouldn't
- we're too stupid to get it right, so we shouldn't do it
- the IETF is too large, so we shouldn't be adding more work

This might be a combination of the latter three, but I think it is 
clearer for this WG:

- the IETF's track record for this work so far is quite poor

the attached e-mail that have been posted to the PPVPN mailing
list sheds some light on why the IETF's track record for this
work so far is quite poor.

Yakov.
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Date:         Sun, 4 May 2003 13:24:58 -0700
Reply-To:     PPVPN <PPVPN(_at_)NORTELNETWORKS(_dot_)COM>
Sender:       PPVPN <PPVPN(_at_)NORTELNETWORKS(_dot_)COM>
From:         auto92679(_at_)HUSHMAIL(_dot_)COM
Subject:      Strategy for VPN work in IETF
Comments: To: ppvpn(_at_)nortelnetworks(_dot_)com
Comments: cc: problem-statement(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no
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Alex Zinin writes:

Since San Francisco IETF meeting the IESG has been considering the
situation in the SUB-IP area and in the PPVPN Working Group in
particular.

Such close attention to this WG was triggered by numerous concerns

thatthe IESG members received from the WG participants about limited
and slow progress within the WG despite the efforts of the WG chairs
and its members. The IESG also used this opportunity to consider
the IETF area that the PPVPN work would fit best.

After much deliberation, the involved ADs (Bert, Thomas, and I) are
considering the following organizational changes in order to
improve WG focus and productivity and ensure faster progress of the
VPN-related work:

1. Split of Layer-2 and Layer-3 VPN work in separate Working Groups.

  The L2 and L3 VPN work spaces are each big enough to warrant a
  separate WG. While concentration of all VPN-related work in a
  single forum was the right thing to do to ensure coordination
  of efforts when the PPVPN WG was created and L2 VPN work came in,

  such concentration is causing scaling problems within the WG at
  this moment.

  Migration of work into two separate WGs for L2 and L3 VPN
  technologies with more specific WG charters will help to focus
  discussions, prevent staff and meeting time overloading, and will
  aid faster progress of corresponding technologies.

Alex,
The proposed solution ignores the origins of the problem.

The fact that PPVPN has been making any progress at all, despite the
bureaucracy imposed on it by the IESG is rather comendable.

This is a typically example of a WG which was setup despite many architectural
objections that it doesn't fit in the "internet" design. One cannot help
but to suspect that there was the hope ammoung the inner circles that
it would fail altogether. At least giving the ammount of "framework"
nonsense required and the interdiction to discuss solutions before a
framework is agreed upon.

The work of this working group is particularly harder given that this
is todays "fashion" area... work is much harder on such areas (like mpls
was a couple of years ago). One would suspect that the IESG
efforts to slow the WG steem also from concerns that fashion areas tend
to create a fair ammount of nonsense proposals most of which tend to
be naturally eliminated by the WGs.

Given the environment the performance of the ppvpn WG seems to me to
rather positive. It has actually come up with several documents that
are useful and deserve publication.

One of the reasons given here for this proposed disolution of the WG
is that the "L2VPN and L3VPN work spaces are big enought". However both
in the list and WG meetings it seems to me that the current l3vpn WG
is close to 0. The base document on l3vpn has been rather stable for
a while and it is not likely to change. The IESG/inner-circle has chosen
for mostly ideological reasons to attempt to marginalize this work so
it can hardly expect to be heard now.

It seems to me that if there is a problem w/ PPVPN that problem lies
within the IESG itself. As such i would like to propose to split the
IESG in two WGs: one that concerns itself w/ architecture and one group
that concerns itself with the process of documenting interoperable solutions
that are not known to be good or bad ideas until used in pratice. This
latter group should have the task to assure that the process is fair
and that both the pluses and minus of a solution are considered and documented.


One of the ideal caractheristics of the latter group would be if they
where to realize that by definition an IESG member is much less of an
expert in a given domain than the membership of the WG it steers. It
is humanly impossible for it to be otherwise. Unless you assume that
the membership of WG is 100% incompetent which is never the case. A steerer
cannot possibly be an expert in 20 groups it oversees... usually it can't
even keep up with the problems and technology due to the fact that there
is only 24 hours in each day.

In the rather arrogant terms of internet engineering, the IESG is by
definition the set of people that are "clueless". It is not possible
for it to be the other way around. No matter how wise and inteligent
IESG memebers are...

It is necessarly that the IESG understands that latter point and restricts
its job to document in a timely manner interoperable solutions for the
problems at hand regardless of personal opinion on the value of such
problems and technologies.
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