Subject: [dhcwg] Notes from informal Failover mtg at IETF-67

From: Kim Kinnear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:37:00 -0400

In San Deigo, at IETF-67, there was meeting of people interested
in the future of the failover draft in the DHC WG.  Attending
this informal meeting were:

Bernie Volz 
Mark Stapp 
April Marine
Vivian Neou 
Jim Paugh 
David Hankins 
Markus Stenberg 
Shane Kerr 
John Brzozowski 
Kim Kinnear

Apologies to anyone who I've missed -- these are all of the names
on my list of paper that was handed around.  

We had a fairly energetic discussion of the future of the
failover draft and protocol within the working group.  The
possibilities discussed ranged from pressing forward with the -12
draft on the standards track to dropping the entire enterprise.

There was a surprising amount of interest in moving the draft
forward in some way, but those of us who have been with it the
longest felt that actually getting it moved forward on the
standards track was unlikely given the complexity of the problem
and the length of the draft.

Nevertheless, interest remained.  We discussed the differences
between experimental and informational drafts.  In subsequent
research, I've located this useful explanation:

http://www.ietf.org/u/ietfchair/info-exp.html

We had a lot of discussion about the pro's and con's of
informational and experimental drafts in the informal meeting,
and this continued one-on-one with different folks for the rest
of IETF.  We can certainly continue that here, but as I read the
above document describing the differences between informational
and experimental and criteria for a decision, it seems to me that
informational is the only choice that is likely to meet with the
hierarchical approval necessary to move forward.  But that's just
my interpretation -- and of just these words.  Real-world
experience may teach difference lessons, so let's discuss that
here.   I'm going to say "publish as informational" when I
discuss other issues, below, but that isn't to say that this is
an irrevocable decision.  I just don't want to say "informational
or experimental" all the time.

Leaving aside the informational/experimental choice for a moment,
we have several possible approaches we can consider for the
draft(s).  I see three primary approaches:

  (A) Take the current -12 draft, clean it up (based on some of
  Ralph's comments), and publish it as informational, and be
  done.

  (B) Take the current -12 draft, clean it up, and everyone who
  has implemented failover can take it and customize it to match
  their implementation, and publish multiple drafts as
  informational.  This would yield as many drafts as there are
  discrete implementations.

  (C) Take the current -12 draft, clean it up, and split it into
  two parts.  One part is Architecture, and the other part is
  Implementation.  We have a common Architecture draft and every
  discrete implementation publishes their own Implementation
  draft.  This yields one more draft than (B), but a lot more
  commonality.

Of these three approaches, (C) is the most work, (B), next and
(A) maybe the least.  But maybe not -- hard to agree on the
definitive (A), I expect.

I think the goal now is to discuss two issues:

1.  Informational or Experimental.

2.  Pick approach (A), (B), or (C) ...  or add additional
approaches.

To aid in this discussion, Bernie set up a mailing list for
people interested in these topics.  The mailing list is:

[email-masked]

Anyone is welcome to join this list and enter the discussion.
When we have some kind of consensus, we'll report back to the
full DHC WG on the regular working group mailing list.

That's it for now.

Cheers -- Kim

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