Subject: [Sip] Draft writeup for draft-ietf-sip-outbound

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:22:54 -0500

I've been tagged as proto shepherd for outbound.

Here's a draft writeup. Please look through it. If there are no  
objections, it will accompany the publication request to the IESG on  
Friday.

--------

    (1.a)  Who is the Document Shepherd for this document?  Has the
           Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
           document and, in particular, does he or she believe this
           version is ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication?

SIP chair Dean Willis is serving as the Document Shepherd for this
document.  He has personally reviewed this document and believes it is
as ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication as it is ever
going to get.

    (1.b)  Has the document had adequate review both from key WG members
           and from key non-WG members?  Does the Document Shepherd have
           any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that
           have been performed?

The document has been intensively reviewed within the working
group. It was formally reviewed by John Elwell:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/sip/current/msg22870.html.

which resulted in several small changes.

    (1.c)  Does the Document Shepherd have concerns that the document
           needs more review from a particular or broader perspective,
           e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with
           AAA, internationalization or XML?

The shepherd has no such concerns.

    (1.d)  Does the Document Shepherd have any specific concerns or
           issues with this document that the Responsible Area Director
           and/or the IESG should be aware of?  For example, perhaps he
           or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document,  
or
           has concerns whether there really is a need for it.  In any
           event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated
           that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
           concerns here.  Has an IPR disclosure related to this  
document
           been filed?  If so, please include a reference to the
           disclosure and summarize the WG discussion and conclusion on
           this issue.

The shepherd has no specific concerns with this document.

    (1.e)  How solid is the WG consensus behind this document?  Does it
           represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
           others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
           agree with it?

Working group consensus is quite strong for this document. It was
considered "high profile" during the entire cycle, and has been very
thoroughly discussed. Numerous design changes were made in the process
in order to accomodate various points of view.

    (1.f)  Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated  
extreme
           discontent?  If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in
           separate email messages to the Responsible Area Director.   
(It
           should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is
           entered into the ID Tracker.)

The shepherd is unaware of any extreme discontent with this version of
the draft. A previous version that did not require two "outbound
proxy" entries was disparaged on-list, but the document was revised to
accomodate this issue.

    (1.g)  Has the Document Shepherd personally verified that the
           document satisfies all ID nits?  (See
           http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html and
           http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/).  Boilerplate checks are
           not enough; this check needs to be thorough.  Has the  
document
           met all formal review criteria it needs to, such as the MIB
           Doctor, media type and URI type reviews?

The document appears to satisfy the various checklist nits.

    (1.h)  Has the document split its references into normative and
           informative?  Are there normative references to documents  
that
           are not ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear
           state?  If such normative references exist, what is the
           strategy for their completion?  Are there normative  
references
           that are downward references, as described in [RFC3967]?  If
           so, list these downward references to support the Area
           Director in the Last Call procedure for them [RFC3967].

References are appropriately divided. There is one reference to a
draft that has been revised, but this does not impact the document.

    (1.i)  Has the Document Shepherd verified that the document IANA
           consideration section exists and is consistent with the body
           of the document?  If the document specifies protocol
           extensions, are reservations requested in appropriate IANA
           registries?  Are the IANA registries clearly identified?  If
           the document creates a new registry, does it define the
           proposed initial contents of the registry and an allocation
           procedure for future registrations?  Does it suggest a
           reasonable name for the new registry?  See [RFC2434].  If the
           document describes an Expert Review process has Shepherd
           conferred with the Responsible Area Director so that the IESG
           can appoint the needed Expert during the IESG Evaluation?

This document specifies seven IANA actions that appear to be valid and
complete. It defines no new registry or expert review process.

    (1.j)  Has the Document Shepherd verified that sections of the
           document that are written in a formal language, such as XML
           code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc., validate correctly in
           an automated checker?

The document shepherd verified the ABNF using Bill Fenner's checker.

    (1.k)  The IESG approval announcement includes a Document
           Announcement Write-Up.  Please provide such a Document
           Announcement Write-Up?  Recent examples can be found in the
           "Action" announcements for approved documents.  The approval
           announcement contains the following sections:

Technical Summary

This document defines a n extension to the Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) that provides for persistent and reusable connections between
SIP User Agents and SIP Proxy Servers. In particular, this allows
proxy servers to initiate TCP connections or to send asynchronous UDP
datagrams to User Agents in order to deliver requests.  However, in a
large number of real deployments, many practical considerations, such
as the existence of firewalls and Network Address Translators (NATs)
or the use of TLS with server-provided certificates, prevent servers
from connecting to User Agents in this way.  This specification
defines behaviors for User Agents, registrars and proxy servers that
allow requests to be delivered on existing connections established by
the User Agent.  It also defines keep alive behaviors needed to keep
NAT bindings open and specifies the usage of multiple connections from
the User Agent to its Registrar.

Working Group Summary

The working group process on this document was exceptionally long. The
first WG version of the draft appeared in the summer of 2005. Working
group last call initiated in the summer of 2006 and extended until the
summer of 2008, requring several iterations of the draft and the
assignment of Francois Audet as a "process champion" for the draft
within the working group. Most delays seem to have been related to
slow cycle time on the part of the authors, but the process was also
delayed by a number of changes occurring during the review cycle.

Particular sticking points included the keepalive mechanism and a
requirement for binding to multiple outbound proxies if so
configured. The latter was eventually resolved by a widely-accepted
compromise, but the keepalive topic is still being debated.  Although
there is a strong consensus for the keepalive technique specified in
this document, there is some reason to believe that there may be a
need for the keeplaive mechanism independently of the outbound
relationship. There is currently a draft proposing such a mechanism.

This suggests that it might have been more effective to document the
outbound binding and keepalive mechanisms independently.

Document Quality

There are numerous implementations of the protocol, and it has been
tested at SIPit events since 2005.

_______________________________________________
Sip mailing list  https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sip
This list is for NEW development of the core SIP Protocol
Use [email-masked] for questions on current sip
Use [email-masked] for new developments on the application of sip