Subject: [manet] Decision on Reactive Protocol

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:41:44 -0000

Hello MANET working group.

Thank you to all the people (23) who expressed an opinion on or off the list in
answer to my three questions. Thank you, too, to those of you who felt the need
to give me more background on your thinking.

It is overwhelmingly clear that the WG wants to find a way to pursue a Reactive
Protocol. Very few of you said that removing Reactive from the charter was
something they would be happy with. So we will try to find a way to struggle on
with the charter we have.

A significant minority (roughly one in three), said they would be willing to
progress two Experimental I-Ds in parallel within the working group. However,
many of these people expressed reservations, preferences for variations, or
noted that this was a last resort in their view. Thus, although this is clearly
the easiest option to the production of an RFC describing a Reactive protocol, I
am also rejecting this option. Not an insignificant factor for me was the
observation that MANET has already produced an Experimental Reactive protocol
and made the decision to move on with a Standards Track protocol.

OK, so that means that we will work on a single Standards Track reactive
protocol, and I (oh, lucky me!) get to choose which document will form the basis
of this work. I feel rather like the vicar announcing the results of the
beautiful baby competition - I know that the mothers of the babies that don't
win will gouge my eyes out later in the cream tea tent. 

We will run with the current working group I-D (draft-ietf-manet-dymo), but with
several significant caveats:
- The document will be renamed draft-ietf-manet-aodv-v2-00.txt
- The chairs will announce a new editor team
- I expect the new document to be rewritten/restructured as necessary
  for readability and utility according to the demands of the WG
- I expect all people who provide text to be suitably credited
  - Acknowledgments section for small pieces of text
  - Contributing Author section for larger pieces of text
- I expect ideas and text to be freely taken from draft-clausen-loadng
  with appropriate credit to the authors
- I expect the editors of the new draft to bow to WG consensus at all
  times (even when they personally think the idea is wrong)
- I would not be surprised if the content of the document changed
  radically over the next few revisions

To achieve all this, the editor team will need to do more than hold the pen. I
expect them to use the issue tracker system and to patiently work through the
issues bringing them up for debate in small numbers so that everyone can
participate in the discussion without losing track of the issues. For the
editors, this will be as much a management challenge as a protocol design task. 

I note that, when I asked my question, I made it clear that if this option was
selected I would expect the whole working group to pull behind the single draft.
That does not prevent anyone from raising their concerns about the technical
direction and from suggesting alternative mechanisms and text. But it does
require that everyone gets behind the consensus when it emerges or is called,
and it assumes that no-one will be disruptive to the working group process in
producing the Standards Track document.

I know there will be a huge temptation to debate this decision, express
dissatisfaction/disappointment, or raise new points that I might not have
considered. However, the decision is made and I hope the WG will now buckle down
to the difficult job of pursuing the technical work using the normal tools of
IETF debate and documentation.

Please be aware that this is not the first time in the history of the IETF that
a choice between documents has been necessary where no consensus could be found.
In one case a coin was tossed to make the choice! AFAIK, in every case the
working group quickly got behind the decision and went ahead to make a
high-quality protocol specification.

Thank you all for your patience during this decision process. As the chairs and
I have all agreed, we (the three of us - and our predecessors) should have
stepped in and made decisions sooner. We are where we are, and I hope we can now
move forward.

Please look out for a further email from the chairs announcing the editorial
team.

Adrian

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:00:10 +0100

Hi Adrian,

I thank you for this email. I understand that the new WG
draft-ietf-manet-00 will be submitted actively and editor team
informed by the WG chairs. However, I will continue discussion ideas
on the drafts available so far until I receive the
draft-ietf-manet-aodv-v2-00.txt that you mentioned, thanking you

AB

On 1/14/13, Adrian Farrel <[email-masked]> wrote:
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