Re: text suggested by ADs
2005-04-28 16:57:08
On Apr 28, 2005, at 3:28 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
And, FWIW, when the AD suggests specific text changes, it's often
enough the desire of that AD rather than based on feedback from some
other WG.
I don't see anything wrong with that. It's the ADs' job to push back
on documents with technical flaws. They're supposed to use their
judgments as technical experts, not just be conduits of information
supplied by others.
That's fine when that is what they do. What you're hearing here is that
it is not uniformly so.
Let me give you a specific case. I have a document which is at this
instant in the RFC Editor's queue. It was supposed to describe the
outlines of a procedure for renumbering a network without a flag day -
starting with a network using prefix A and ending with a network using
prefix B, what steps does one go through to transition prefixes while
providing all services all the time? The key issue is that one working
group had in essence said "there is a protocol designed; this is a done
deal" while the operations community was shaking its head in wonder at
the naivety of that position. I wanted to get the wisdom of both groups
on paper in one place and make specific actionable recommendations to
operational staff planning to do such a thing.
The IESG gave us a number of comments, some of which we dropped
verbatim into the draft without much concern, and at least one of which
sent the authors back into a fairly serious discussion amongst
ourselves and resulted in a block of entirely new text. This is as you
describe and how it should be.
But one comment from the IESG was that they wanted a specific paragraph
added that said (in essence) "ULAs might be useful to help in
renumbering", presumably by making one not need to renumber. As an
aside, I don't see the real difference between a ULA and a site-local
address - I think the RFC 3879 issues apply to both. But regardless, I
don't see a procedural difference between changing from a ULA to some
other kind of prefix or from some other kind of prefix to a ULA, and
the statement that ULAs might be a third prefix that could be used by
users of a site while other prefixes are being renumbered is at best
conjectural and at worst a flat numbering system. The IESG statement
did not address a technical flaw, was not specific, and was not
actionable by a network manager who had decided to renumber his network
and was looking for a procedure for doing so. And in my very private
and most humble opinion, it was horse pucky. The AD simply wanted a
reference to ULAs in the draft.
The good news is that I was able to argue him out of it. I asked him
for something specific and actionable, in the form of a statement of
exactly what way the renumbering procedure was different when
renumbering from or to a ULA as against some other prefix, and told him
that if he provided specific actionable text I would include it. He
dropped the discussion.
The issue here is that ADs are human, with all the flaws the rest of us
have. Yes, they try pretty hard to make the documents that come out of
working groups "right", and they have to work pretty hard to make that
happen. They also have their hobby-horses, and make comments during
IESG review that should have been made "AD hat off" on the mailing
list.
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
<Prev in Thread] |
Current Thread |
[Next in Thread>
|
- Re: text suggested by ADs, (continued)
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Joe Touch
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Fred Baker
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Dave Crocker
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Ralph Droms
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Keith Moore
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Ralph Droms
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Keith Moore
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Jari Arkko
- Re: text suggested by ADs,
Fred Baker <=
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Keith Moore
- Re: text suggested by ADs, Jeffrey Hutzelman
- Re: text suggested by ADs, John C Klensin
RE: Voting (again), Hallam-Baker, Phillip
|
|
|