Subject: Re: re-chartering L2TP

From: Pat Calhoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:40:56 -0800

>> ...
>> I think we have spent enough of everyone's time on this thread now. I
>> hope that it at least served the purpose for people understanding where
>> I am trying to lead this group. Feel free to disagree, but from this
>> point on I ask you to take it to the next level rather than waste more
>> of our time here.
>
Perhaps I am missing something here (I did not read ALL of the e-mail on
this very topic), but it seems to me that this is exactly what people are
suppose to do. Comment on a charter. Why are you now asking that we shut up
and take it to the next level. I think that you are hearing considerable
objections to the recharter. Are the opposed, supposed to just go away
so that there is a semblance of rough concensus?

Whether or not the recharter occurs, my objection here is to the fact
that you are asking us to stop commenting on the recharter.

PatC

---

From: "W. Mark Townsley" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 17:53:28 -0500

> that you are asking us to stop commenting on the recharter.

Sigh.

I reached the point of asking Vernon, not you, to take his comments to
the next level only when he decided to speak personally of my actions as
Chair of this group. That is, any comment that he feels needs to be
prefaced with "Mr. Townsley did..." I prefer not waste the time of those
on multiple WG lists and instead be taken directly to the Area
Directors, IESG, IAB, etc.

I am very much in support of comment on the technical realities of
taking on this work and have been for many months now. I do, however,
reject comments about whether I or the WG operated in a "stealth" modus
operandi just because some people expect that they can read little more
than subject headings and track a working group's operation. I reject
any comment labeling something as a "bad idea" without strong technical
ground and/or a proposal for a better alternative. I further object to
the opinion that a recharter is out of the question with little more
basis than it was outside the original scope of the WG at its inception. 

My reading of the group after multiple IETF meetings, discussion on the
L2TP list since at least last May, and drafts being produced is that
there is at least as much, if not a good deal more at this point,
substantive technical comment about why L2TP is a good medium for
transport of L2 frames other than PPP than to the contrary. I am not
speaking of the BCP vs. EoL2TP debate here, but of L2TP being adopted as
a more general Layer 2 transport as described in the Service Type draft.

As far as the charter is concerned, I welcome your technical comment and
that of the rest of the group. I do wish that such comment had come a
long time ago, but understand that some people (myself certainly
included) tend to wait until the 11th hour on occasion.

Note that our Area Director has commented on (via telephone) the text I
proposed to the list a few days ago. I will be incorporating those
comments and proposing new text after the iteration is complete.

- Mark