Strategy for VPN work in IETF

Mon May 5 16:21:15 CEST 2003

Isn't it nice to "accuse" while not having to identify yourself.
We will certainly take this anonymous positive advise to heart.

Thanks,
Bert 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: auto92679 at hushmail.com [mailto:auto92679 at hushmail.com]
> Sent: zondag 4 mei 2003 22:25
> To: ppvpn at nortelnetworks.com
> Cc: problem-statement at alvestrand.no
> Subject: Strategy for VPN work in IETF
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> Alex Zinin writes:
> 
> > Since San Francisco IETF meeting the IESG has been considering the
> > situation in the SUB-IP area and in the PPVPN Working Group in
> > particular.
> 
> > Such close attention to this WG was triggered by numerous concerns
> 
> > thatthe IESG members received from the WG participants about limited
> > and slow progress within the WG despite the efforts of the WG chairs
> > and its members. The IESG also used this opportunity to consider
> > the IETF area that the PPVPN work would fit best.
> 
> > After much deliberation, the involved ADs (Bert, Thomas, and I) are
> > considering the following organizational changes in order to
> > improve WG focus and productivity and ensure faster progress of the
> > VPN-related work:
> 
> > 1. Split of Layer-2 and Layer-3 VPN work in separate Working Groups.
> 
> >   The L2 and L3 VPN work spaces are each big enough to warrant a
> >   separate WG. While concentration of all VPN-related work in a
> >   single forum was the right thing to do to ensure coordination
> >   of efforts when the PPVPN WG was created and L2 VPN work came in,
> 
> >   such concentration is causing scaling problems within the WG at
> >   this moment.
> 
> >   Migration of work into two separate WGs for L2 and L3 VPN
> >   technologies with more specific WG charters will help to focus
> >   discussions, prevent staff and meeting time overloading, and will
> >   aid faster progress of corresponding technologies.
> 
> Alex,
> The proposed solution ignores the origins of the problem.
> 
> The fact that PPVPN has been making any progress at all, despite the
> bureaucracy imposed on it by the IESG is rather comendable.
> 
> This is a typically example of a WG which was setup despite 
> many architectural
> objections that it doesn't fit in the "internet" design. One 
> cannot help
> but to suspect that there was the hope ammoung the inner circles that
> it would fail altogether. At least giving the ammount of "framework"
> nonsense required and the interdiction to discuss solutions before a
> framework is agreed upon.
> 
> The work of this working group is particularly harder given that this
> is todays "fashion" area... work is much harder on such areas 
> (like mpls
> was a couple of years ago). One would suspect that the IESG
> efforts to slow the WG steem also from concerns that fashion 
> areas tend
> to create a fair ammount of nonsense proposals most of which tend to
> be naturally eliminated by the WGs.
> 
> Given the environment the performance of the ppvpn WG seems to me to
> rather positive. It has actually come up with several documents that
> are useful and deserve publication.
> 
> One of the reasons given here for this proposed disolution of the WG
> is that the "L2VPN and L3VPN work spaces are big enought". 
> However both
> in the list and WG meetings it seems to me that the current l3vpn WG
> is close to 0. The base document on l3vpn has been rather stable for
> a while and it is not likely to change. The IESG/inner-circle 
> has chosen
> for mostly ideological reasons to attempt to marginalize this work so
> it can hardly expect to be heard now.
> 
> It seems to me that if there is a problem w/ PPVPN that problem lies
> within the IESG itself. As such i would like to propose to split the
> IESG in two WGs: one that concerns itself w/ architecture and 
> one group
> that concerns itself with the process of documenting 
> interoperable solutions
> that are not known to be good or bad ideas until used in pratice. This
> latter group should have the task to assure that the process is fair
> and that both the pluses and minus of a solution are 
> considered and documented.
> 
> 
> One of the ideal caractheristics of the latter group would be if they
> where to realize that by definition an IESG member is much less of an
> expert in a given domain than the membership of the WG it steers. It
> is humanly impossible for it to be otherwise. Unless you assume that
> the membership of WG is 100% incompetent which is never the 
> case. A steerer
> cannot possibly be an expert in 20 groups it oversees... 
> usually it can't
> even keep up with the problems and technology due to the fact 
> that there
> is only 24 hours in each day.
> 
> In the rather arrogant terms of internet engineering, the IESG is by
> definition the set of people that are "clueless". It is not possible
> for it to be the other way around. No matter how wise and inteligent
> IESG memebers are...
> 
> It is necessarly that the IESG understands that latter point 
> and restricts
> its job to document in a timely manner interoperable solutions for the
> problems at hand regardless of personal opinion on the value of such
> problems and technologies.
> - ----
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