Subject: RE: IANA document

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:31:42 -0500

(1) ??? In some sense the IETF has ENORMOUS experience with Expert Review. That was the policy for essentially all parameters before the death of Jon Postel. He was the sole Expert.

An expert is expected to be familiar with the protocol and the protocol parameter space situation and would apply increasingly stringent criteria as the space gets exhausted.

(2) I can't understand why there are argument about "Specification Required" as defined in RFC 2434. It says

      Specification Required - Values and their meaning must be
           documented in an RFC or other permanent and readily available
           reference, in sufficient detail so that interoperability
           between independent implementations is possible.

Which is clearly NOT restricted to RFCs. A public domain and widely distributed document from some company describing their privately developed foo option would quality.

Donald
===========================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake III       [email-masked]
 Motorola Laboratories               1-508-786-7554 (work)
 111 Locke Drive                     1-508-634-2066 (home)
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-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Michael Richardson
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 9:45 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IANA document 
>>>>> "Theodore" == Theodore Ts'o <[email-masked]> writes:
    Theodore> My understanding was that an Expert represented a much higher
    Theodore> bar, because human is in the loop.  My assumption was that an
    Theodore> Expert would 

  Specification Required involves the RFC-editor, or possibly another
peer-reviewed journal. I think that this is a much higher bar.

  The only category that is mechanical would be First-Come/First-Served.

  I don't think that that IETF has a lot of experience with expert review yet.
  And, while the expert may ask to see a specification, (not necessary
though), the specification may be proprietary, require NDA, specific-national
security clearance, etc.

  So, expert review does not, in my opinion, mean that we get any
specifications to look at. It just avoids silly stuff.

    Theodore> Actually, anything permanent will qualify.  So any crackpot
    Theodore> idea in a raduate student's thesis, or a Technical Report
    Theodore> published by a lab might be enough to get a number assigned.

  I don't read 2434 as saying that it is that wide open.
  You may be correct though.
  
    Theodore> publishes a single paper that consumes half a dozen or more
    Theodore> payload id's.  Presumably that would be a case where an human
    Theodore> expert would hopefully say, hey now, wait a moment!

  True. 

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson,    Xelerance Corporation, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked]      http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/mcr/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another Debian GNU/Linux using, kernel hacking, security guy"); [

---

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 17:26:16 -0500

Note that since "Experts" are normally appointed by and serve at the pleasure
of the the IESG, as a practical matter their decisions, at least negative
ones, are effecitvely subject to appeal to the IESG.

"Public review and consensus" would be to make everything "IETF Consensus",
a ponderous process.

It is also good to keep in mind that we are in no way limited to what
RFC 2434 says. Those were intended to be examples. Realistic useful
examples but just examples nevertheless. We are free to say "RFC required"
or "Both Publication AND Expert Review required" or whatever we think
appropriate (and the IESG will approve).

Donald

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Scott G. Kelly
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 3:27 PM
To: Michael Richardson
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IANA document

Michael Richardson wrote:
> 
> I think that the consensus of the WG list is that all values should
> be a consistent "Expert Review". Please disagree.

As you wish :-)  This is a difficult question, but given that the IETF 
is a political organization, effectively concentrating this power in one 
individual seems inappropriate.

Personally, I liked the summary of allocation policies you first 
suggested, and thought your rationale was well founded. I think Jari 
raised some reasonable questions, but I don't think a case was made for 
giving the whole kit and kaboodle over to a benevolent dictator.

There is much to be said for public review and consensus.

Scott

---

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 14:12:56 -0500

See at @@@

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Paul Hoffman / VPNC
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 5:01 PM
To: Scott G. Kelly; Michael Richardson
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IANA document

At 12:27 PM -0800 2/3/04, Scott G. Kelly wrote:

...

>There is much to be said for public review and consensus.

Exactly right. It is quite reasonable for the IPsec community to ask 
the IESG to make sure that the IKEv2 IANA reviewer does everything in 
public, and even asks for comments on each action. This is a trivial 
task (mailing lists and web sites, you know), and would  certainly 
make it so that if the reviewer said "no" to something, people who 
cared would know immediately to talk to the IESG.

@@@ I would note the MIME type and charset type procedures, which
require that the request be posted on a public mailing
list for two weeks, and subject to discussion, before an allocation/
registation can be made. These are generally considered to be quite
successful.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium