Subject: RE: [newtrk] web-based lists of RFCs

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 15:23:35 +0300

Pekka,

> The work began as draft-duke-tcp-roadmap-00.txt (posted on Feb 2004), 
> the next version was the WG document.
> 
> So you could say from scratch to getting the doc approved probably 
> takes 1-2 years, depending on the interest level of the people working 
> on the technology.
> 
> Always an optimist, I'd say that it could be possible to get these 
> approved in something like 6-9 months, but this requires dedication 
> from the editors, sufficient interest level from the [WG] 
> participants, and resolution skills if tough consensus calls need to 
> be made.
> 
> But as long as you start classifying the RFCs and/or internet-drafts 
> somehow, and add discussion on their applicability etc., I believe the 
> requirement on the time spent is roughly equal.  It's the same sort of 
> issues (editing, getting the community interested, steering towards 
> consensus, etc.) that take time, not the publication format.

There's still another half you forgot to mention - RFC Editor's Queue.
I suppose you are familiar with 
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipv6-node-requirements-11.txt

Its been in the RFC Editor's queue since 2004/08/26. This document kicked
of a revision of a number of RFC's, which know are in IESG review, meaning
that by the time it is actually published, it will be out of date.  It was
first published as a draft on June 18th, 2002.

Of course, the above document is slightly more complicated that what I would
expect your average ISD would be; but then again, this draft was proceded by
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3316.txt "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) for 
Some Second and Third Generation Cellular Hosts" which was first submitted as
an individual submission on July 2, 2001 and finally published as an RFC 
on April 2003, so the WG was primed, so to speak, to discuss the Node Requirements.

YMMV,
John

.
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---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 16:02:37 +0300 (EEST)

Hi,

> first published as a draft on June 18th, 2002.

I excluded the RFC editor's queue intentionally, for two 
reasons:

   1) the users of roadmap (and similar) documents should be able to 
use the latest, approved draft in the meantime, before the RFC is 
published.

   2) the delay of in the RFC publication (after approval) can 
typically be optimized by not including normative references to 
work-in-progress.  In the case you cite, the document has been sitting 
idle basically because is had to wait for the completion of other 
work.

For the TCP roadmap, there had been discussion whether to include 
references to work-in-progress, but such attempts were wisely rejected 
by sufficient justification that we want to document the state as it 
is now, not which we hope it to be in a year or two.  In some cases, 
this may or may not be possible. [For node requirements, I recall that 
security ADs requested these changes; maybe it would have been 
possible to convince them of the timeliness requirements, if there 
were any, maybe not.]

However, I've noticed that 2) incurs another "penalty" for the waiting 
drafts.  When, at last, all the normative references have entered the 
RFC editor's queue, it will take the usual ~2-4 months (or 
thereabouts) for the referred documents to pop out.  On the other 
hand, if the handling of documents which are required by the other 
documents was more or less automatically expedited, we might be able 
to cut off a couple of months from the publication of a document which 
has normative references to works in progress.

Whether such an automatic expedition process might or might not have 
unfortunate steering effects on the work flow is another debate, 
though.  (The IESG, as it is, has the ability to request expedited 
processing of drafts in RFC-editor's queue.)

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
.
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