Cross-Area Review (was: Fwd: RE: A follow up question onietf@ietf.org)

[Brian E Carpenter]

One of the questions here is why the mechanisms that we have today
don't always work.

We have open review of WG charters, where cross-area issues
really ought to be identifiable.

We have the IAB, which keeps an eye on all BOFs and is supposed to
have a cross-area mandate in general.

We have IAB workshops, which are definitely supposed to take a wide
view.

Are we lacking something a bit later in the process, after a WG effort
has been started but before its results have crystallized?

   Brian

Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> >  I've seen a number of postings that are coming
> > close to saying "we approved IPv6 site locals as part of a
> > proposed standard in RFC 1884, and again in RFC 2373, and again
> > in RFC 3515, without enough application community review to
> > shake out the issues we're shaking out now on the IETF
> > discussion list".
> ...
> 
> > But I am curious what the lesson might be, for those of us
> > thinking about the problems with IETF standards process.
> 
> well, rather than extrapolating from one data point, maybe we should consider
> some other snafus also.
> 
> I'd argue that IPsec largely missed the boat by sticking to a view that hosts,
> and in particular IP addreses, were generally appropriate to use as security
> principals.  As a result applications still don't use it today.
> 
> lots of work has been invested in service location stuff which for some reason
> has never resulted in much use.
> 
> URNs (one of my pet projects) don't seem to have been as useful as
> anticipated.
> 
> The zeroconf work has produced multiple disasters, including both v4 linklocal
> addressing and LLMNR (which was spun off to the DNS folks but still suffers
> from flawed assumptions IMHO).
> 
> --
> 
> one kind of problem seems to occur when there is a long delay between the time
> that the fundamental design decisions are made and the time that they actually
> start to get used.  a tighter feedback loop between specification authors and
> early adopters might help.