Re: Intermediate wg summaries

I think it is helpful to distinguish at least three types of IETF  
work products:
(1) fully new protocols, at the level of (say) MPLS or NSIS

(2) extensions of existing protocols, such as a new DHCP option or a  
new RTP payload type (another huge fraction of our current activities)
(3) "bis" versions of existing protocols (a very large chunk of our  
current repertoire)
Some efforts will fall somewhere in-between, but I suspect that we're  
mainly worried about (1), and maybe (3) ["ten years hence, what have  
we learned and should we scrap the old stuff instead of adding a  
layer of paint"].
Fortunately or unfortunately, the number of concurrent (1) efforts is  
very small.
Currently, WG and IETF meetings could be a good opportunity to get  
people to do cross-area review, as they are in IETF mode. However, we  
seem to have intentionally or unintentionally made this difficult.
In WG meetings, we're encouraged to talk about open issues, which  
often means that the same three people that have been arguing some  
angels-on-a-pin point on the mailing list, having lost everybody  
else, take turns at the microphone, while the remaining 247 people in  
the audience are paying full attention - to their email. I would find  
it much more helpful to have the ability to walk into a WG as an  
interested party that's not on a mailing list and catch up quickly.  
Interim meetings and phone conferences often seem better suited to  
that level of detail, particularly for large WGs.
Similarly, in the plenaries, we rehash NAT and RFC-over-HTML  
arguments or learn about the number of enterprise numbers that have  
been assigned. That time might be better spent in giving not just the  
IRTF slot time, but also any (1) and significant (3) development,  
with an emphasis on the architectural issues being raised by the  
effort and maybe an attempt to highlight the big-ticket open issues.  
Right now, the only time this tends to happen, at best, is during the  
BOF, which is usually and hopefully too early.
Henning


> necessarily interested in the subject area are few and far between.
> Extra documents don't help much, either, because they're *strongly*
> resented by WG members who see them as just more process imposed by  
> the
> IESG.
>
> I tried several things myself when I was AD.  If I were still AD, I'd
> keep trying.  But I don't have any new ideas, and I'm skeptical of
> repeating old ones.
>
>
>
>                 --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
>
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