My thoughts about the problems of the IETF

Jari Arkko jari.arkko at piuha.net
Tue Apr 22 15:49:35 CEST 2003


john.loughney at nokia.com wrote:

> This is still symptomatic of larger problems I believe.  Right now, WG chairs
> / document editors don't (usually) attend IESG conference calls, so insight
> into some of the discussions are missed.  Mode of communication between
> IESG & WGs is usually poor. The Draft Tracker records some comments, but
> does not necessarily encourage insight in the working groups.  

Yes. More seriously, the "last check" performed by the IESG is the
wrong time to detect major cross-area or architectural issues.
By that time, a lot of effort has been put into getting even
the smallest details right.

One possible idea is an "approach review" or "architecture review"
earlier in the process. Say, at the time a draft becomes a WG item
there needs to be an "protocol overview" section which outlines the
main technical ideas in the protocol. This section needs to be signed
off by a review group. This group could be e.g. IESG or a set of at least
one WG chair from all areas. As a part of the review, the WG could
get useful feedback, such as "Ok, you can go ahead with this, but you
must add a congestion control mechanism into your protocol". This
would be a more constructive approach than finding a lot of problems
at the end of the process.

Jari



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