Subject: Establishment of Temporary Sub-IP Area

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 16:52:37 -0600

There has been some concern over the scope of the IETF sub-IP effort. This 
is an attempt to help clarify the view of the IESG on a number of issues.

RFC 2026 defines the Internet as:
         "a loosely-organized international collaboration of 
autonomous,  interconnected
         networks, supports host-to-host communication through voluntary 
adherence to
         open protocols and procedures defined by Internet Standards. There 
are also many
         isolated interconnected networks, which are not connected to the 
global Internet
         but use the Internet Standards."

RFC 2026 also says that the Internet Standards processes (the IETF)
         "is concerned with all protocols, procedures, and conventions that 
are used in or
         by the Internet, whether or not they are part of the TCP/IP 
protocol suite."

The IETF sub-IP effort will conform to these descriptions and deal with the 
measurement and control of sub-IP technologies with the aim of supporting 
their use in the Internet or private IP networks. Extensions to this effort 
to support other purposes are out of scope unless they require no 
additional compromise or significant effort. The sub-IP directorate, 
consisting of the Area Directors for the Operations and Management, 
Internet, Routing and Transport Areas, the chairs of the sub-IP working 
groups and other individuals that the directorate feel would be helpful, 
will be maintained for the duration of the sub-IP area. This body, like 
other directorates, is a set of advisors to the area directors. The ADs 
will also seek advice from other members of the IESG, especially those 
tasked as technical advisors to specific working groups. These advisors 
will participate in decisions made concerning the area.

By their nature the working groups in the new area have some overlaps in 
what they are working on, which was a major reason to form the area in the 
first place. We attempted to clarify the individual working group charters 
as much as we could and to allocate tasks to the working groups in a way 
that seemed best. Some reallocation of tasks may happen as the work 
progresses.

The IESG has decided to incorporate the sub-IP working groups, which are 
currently chartered in the General Area, into a temporary area. It is 
temporary because the IESG believes that this concentrated sub-IP effort 
will likely be of short duration, on the order of a year or two. We feel 
that much of the work will be done by then, and the working groups closed. 
Any working groups that have not finished when the IESG determines that the 
area should be closed will be moved into existing the IETF areas where they 
seem to have the best fit. Because of the short duration, we have not asked 
the nominating committee to select additional area directors; instead two 
current Area Directors have been asked to temporally manage the sub-IP area 
in addition to their current area. The area directors will be Scott Bradner 
and Bert Wijnen. With that change, and perhaps some jiggling of IESG 
Technical Advisers, the current working group charters remain unchanged.

The IESG expects to review the development process and charters, however; 
if we conclude that this expectation is incorrect, we will need to make 
this area more formal. At that point, the nominating committee will be 
asked to supply dedicated area directors.

Part of that discussion will have to be the meta-question of exactly what 
the boundaries of the IETF's role are. Clearly, the Internet Engineering 
Task Force is interested in the Engineering of the Internet, which we 
define as including any network, private or public, metropolitan, local, or 
global, which content embedded in an IP packet crosses between two domains. 
It includes a discussion of any link or intra-network technology IP uses, 
as in the past it has included discussions of Ethernet and extended 
Ethernets, occasional and continuous serial links, X.25 networks, Frame 
Relay, and ATM. But it does not necessarily include all aspects of those 
technologies, or all of their users. Clearly, we need to be prepared to 
step in when nobody else is doing a bit of work that the Internet depends 
on. Equally clearly, we do not presume expertise in every area, and are 
willing to capitalize on work done by other bodies such as ITU-T and IEEE. 
This dividing line is fuzzy and needs clarification.

The arguments that bring us to accept sub-IP work in the IETF are 
principally that
· The work depends on IP expertise, which is here,
          · That it is critical to the development of the IP 
infrastructure, and
          · That it directly or indirectly affects operations or routing at 
the IP layer.

For example, optical networking is clearly a next generation requirement 
for service providers and for fiber consortia. However, the obvious next 
hop router in a general network may differ from the obvious next hop router 
in an optical network. Therefore, the use of optical networking may change 
the results that we need to get from routing protocols. It would be better 
for us to determine how the routing protocols should model those networks 
than for another body to arbitrarily change them or substitute others.

That is our plan. Specific questions may be sent to the area directors 
(Scott and Bert), or to the IESG.

---

From: "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:06:31 +0700

Fred Baker wrote:

> ....

Suggestion:

I believe that this (type of) message should be copied to the
ietf-announce list.

regards,

-- 
Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim - VLSM-TJT - http://rms46.vlsm.org
- Blowfish, n (coup d'poisson) --- a secure blow job -----