Subject: RE: IPORPR Presentation to IEEE 802.17WG

From: Albert Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:31:36 -0400

Ran,

You're right. I should step aside and get back
to chairing. So I'll let others that share an 
opposite viewpoint have their opinions be heard.

Albert

> -----Original Message-----
> From: RJ Atkinson [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 2:11 PM
> To: Albert Herrera
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: IPORPR Presentation to IEEE 802.17WG 
> 
> 
> At 14:01 18/07/01, Albert Herrera wrote:
> >However, if you look back at how we tried to do
> >IP after most ATM was done, you don't exactly
> >find a smooth integration. And maybe you're right,
> >maybe we shouldn't have made any changes to IP
> >to accommodate ATM. We're just trying to be
> >pro-active here and hopefully bypass any bumps 
> >as we had with ATM.
> 
> ATM is radically different than a LAN technology
> such as 802.17 is developing, so is a tremendously
> poor comparison point.  ATM had actual circuits
> and signalling and packet shredders and other gorp.
> Comparing with ATM is an approach with tremendous
> intellectual poverty.
> 
> in contrast, FDDI makes for a good comparison.  Neither 
> FDDI nor IP needed changes for the two technologies
> to work well together.  FDDI had dual-counter
> rotating rings and lots of Layer-2 capabilities
> (e.g. in SMT).
> 
> >As for presenting at IEEE, I presented the draft 
> >as NOT a final consensus but as a work-in-progress
> 
> Folks at IEEE 802.17 report that it came across as
> being an "IETF perspective", so your disclaimers
> need work for next time.  Also, the WG ought to
> have been given a chance to review the proposed
> presentation, given that it came across as an IETF
> position.
> 
> >I guess you'd rather someone design a pan for you to boil 
> >water on rather than suggesting that maybe you need a kettle
> >if it would serve them just as well.
> 
>         I'd rather have WG Chairs focus on chairing,
> instead of using their position to advance their
> personal views which are not supported by WG
> consensus.
> 
> >I believe we have very useful work here and the parallel
> >efforts can only benefit both IEEE and IETF in the long 
> >run.
> 
>         At the last meeting there was a lot of vocal disagreement
> with the sentence above.  I guess you didn't hear that part.
> The primary useful work proposed here so far has been 
> some joint work with 802.17 on an SNMP MIB, IMHO.
> 
> Ran
> [email-masked]
> 
>

---

From: "Kastenholz, Frank" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:01:33 -0400

At 04:45 PM 7/18/01 -0700, Raj Sharma wrote:

>I think the IPORPR WG is very speculative and premature
>at this stage. My suggestion below was to reduce the 
>document to a one page document - in essence it makes
>sense NOT to have such a draft since what is leftover
>is of little or no value to anyone. 

Raj

The working group's charter is to 
        "produce a requirements and framework document which 
        will be used as input to the IEEE RPRSG to help it 
        formulate its requirements"
I believe that the current draft is doing this. To reduce
the draft to something that
        "is of little or no value to anyone" 
is not an option, given our charter requirement.

The working group is certainly free to try and recharter
itself. However, the IESG are the (re)charter-ers, so we
would have to go to them. I do not see any consensus on the
part of the working group to get rechartered, so would not
be able to, as co-chair, support such a request. You could
go to the IESG yourself and say "the charter should be 
changed", but, speaking as a retired IESG-oid now, the first
thing the IESG would do is ask the co-chairs whether there
is consensus in the working group to recharter; I'd have to
report that no such consensus exists. The rechartering
would then likely as not, die.

As to your comments on the document I do not see anything
that is compelling either one way or the other. I do not
see anything that is technically incorrect in what you are
saying, nor do I see anything technically wrong in the draft
that you point out and correct. (I could be wrong, of course.)
So basically, I see your comments as editorial in nature
and, as Albert is the document editor, as far as I am
concerned, as co-chair, it is up to him to decide what to
do with them. 

Please do not take my response the wrong way; I am not trying
to be offensive. If, never the less, you do take offense at 
what I say, please accept my apologies ahead of time.

Frank Kastenholz
co-chair, IPORPR

---

From: Raj Sharma <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:05:09 -0700

Frank, 

Let us explore why this proposal is premature.

In the very first paragraph of section 1 the document
states 

"The primary goal of IETF's IPORPR WG is to articulate a set of 
features that integrates the RPR MAC functions as defined by the 
802.17 RPRWG with network layer routing" 

Does the IETF WG have a list of the RPR MAC functions 
and definition of these functions? 

As a current participating working group member in IEEE 802.17 
my observation is that the 802.17 group does not have a comprehensive 
list of all the functions and is far from consensus on their definition.

Frank, I am not taking offense to any of your comments and
consider this dialog to be constructive. What I am trying to
understand is the value proposition of having this current draft to:
1. The IETF community
2. The IEEE 802.17 WG.

Raj

-----Original Message-----
From: Kastenholz, Frank [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 6:02 AM
To: Raj Sharma; 'Albert Herrera'; 'RJ Atkinson';
[email-masked]
Subject: RE: IPORPR Presentation to IEEE 802.17WG 

Raj

Frank Kastenholz
co-chair, IPORPR

---

From: "Kastenholz, Frank" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 18:10:34 -0400

Raj

In general, if one believes the religion of providing to
802.17 input and commentary on what is and is not 'good'
for IP and the Internet, then now is the time to do it,
_before_ the 802.17 effort gets too far down one path
or another. It is much easier to influence events before
they happen than to back up and start over.

802.17 are, of course, free to pay as much or as little
attention to the IETF work as they wish. Furthermore,
if 802.17 does something that is "really bad" for
IP, there is nothing that the IPORPR working group,
or the IETF as a whole, institutionally can do about. 
There is nothing they should do about it. And there 
is nothing they will do about it. (I say 'institutionally'
because individual participants in the working group or
the IETF are, of course, free to participate in the IEEE's
work and make whatever exertions they feel necessary and
proper).

The group has been chartered to produce a document to "be used 
as input to the IEEE RPRSG to help it formulate its requirements"
(I am quoting from the charter here). My belief is that this
is the time to produce such a document and, as co-chair, will
make every effort to see to it that the working group does
produce such a document. That's my job. If you believe that
my interpretation of the charter is incorrect, you should
contact the IESG people to whom I report -- Scott Bradner
([email-masked]) and Bert Wijnen ([email-masked]).

Now, that leaves the question of whether the document that
Albert is editing fulfills this charter requirement or not.
This is a valid question. One of the tasks of the chairs 
is to gauge the working group's feelings on these sorts 
of questions. In this case, that question is whether this 
document is proper or not. That will be gauged by the discussion
on the mailing list.

But, as the group has been chartered to produce a document
and in my belief, now is the appropriate time to produce that
document, having the working group produce no document, or a
document that is content-free would be inappropriate. To 
conciously produce a content-free document (or none at all)
is, to me, a charter change and that is not a matter solely
for the working group, or its chairs, to decide. That requires
IESG (and if memory serves, IAB) input and approval. 

Frank Kastenholz

---

From: Martin Brewer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:31:59 -0700

I completely agree with Raj - this effort, although noble, is definitely
putting the cart before the horse.

Once the standard takes direction, work could start in IETF to build
extensions to protocols or whatever to take advantage of the knowledge of
running over RPR.  What those extensions would be or how they would work
remains to be seen, but let's get the IEEE .17 working group in a common
direction first before starting anything else.

Martin,
Alcatel.

-----Original Message-----
From: Raj Sharma [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:05 PM
To: 'Kastenholz, Frank'; Raj Sharma; 'Albert Herrera'; 'RJ Atkinson';

Frank, 

Raj

-----Original Message-----
From: Kastenholz, Frank [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 6:02 AM
To: Raj Sharma; 'Albert Herrera'; 'RJ Atkinson';

Raj

Frank Kastenholz
co-chair, IPORPR