Bernard,
I also agree that the change is appropriate.
Good.
However, I am also aware of
significant frustration being voiced with respect to the speed by which
the expert review process moved -- and this change could slow it
further. It's worth keeping in mind that the IETF has no power to prevent
people from using unallocated protocol numbers.
For example, see:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/2873
I would like to separate three things: 1) this change which is for IPv4
and IPv6 protocol numbers, 2) expert review process speed, and 3)
the specific case that you pointed to in the above.
For 1), I do not think we can have a blanket IANA rule for everything.
What the numbers are for impacts what the policy should be. I believe
what we are suggesting for the proto numbers is the right thing,
given that we are dealing with this specific space. Since the new
policy is IESG Approval or Standards Approval, the IESG can grant
requests based on a judgment call. For what it is worth, if, e.g., some
open source developers approached me for an allocation I would
work to get it approved in a timely manner, assuming the request
was reasonably sane.
For 2), this is indeed a problem. The IESG and IANA have been
in discussions on how to track these cases, what deadlines
we should set for raising the issue to the IESG if the expert
does not respond, etc. I think there's definitely room for
improvement here.
In addition, as has been discussed before on this list, we need
to think about what policies make sense. A restrictive
Standards Action/Expert Review/IESG Approval does not
always make sense unless there are field size or
interoperability issues. The rest should be as open as
possible. In general, the IANA policies need monitoring
and updates; WGs should look at their current policies
and determine if they are correct in today's environment
This is part of the reason why I said that the port case
is being handled separately. I think people should be
able to request ports much more easily than protocol
numbers.
For 3), I respectfully disagree with Ryan's statements on
the web page. He said "... you pay for "experts" to review
your protocol and if they agree that it requires the numbers
you're asking for, you get it. If you look at the list of assigned
protocol numbers, this method appears to be the favored one.
Getting a number allocation has more to do with having money."
This is obviously completely incorrect. All you have to do to
get an expert looking at an allocation is ask. And experts
who are unresponsive -- they appear to be capable of stalling
requests even from the big business guys :-(
Jari
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