Subject: [shara] Concerns about shara BOF

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:13:08 +0900

After attending the aplusp BOF yesterday, I am very uncomfortable with  
its apparent outcome.  There were enough problems with how the BOF was  
planned, structured and run, that I believe that it would be both  
unwise and unfair to draw any conclusions from the BOF about the  
IETF's interest in aplusp or other shared addressing proposals, in the  
DS-Lite context or elsewhere.

In it's ideal form, a BOF should be an opportunity for proponents of a  
proposal to present their proposal to the IETF, so that the IETF can  
decide whether or not to adopt the work.  It might include a  
presentation of other alternatives and/or architectural  
considerations, but _all_ of the presentations should be based on  
previously published drafts, so that people can prepare for the  
discussion.  The aplusp BOF was nothing like that, though...

It didn't appear (from the outside) that the aplusp BOF was proposed  
by proponents of any aplusp-related proposal, and no actual aplusp (or  
aplusp/DS-Lite) proposals were presented at the BOF.  There was a very  
high level overview of a group of proposals, none of which are DS-Lite- 
specific, followed by a slightly off-topic presentation on mobility,  
followed by an architectural presentation that was firmly against the  
entire idea of aplusp.

The agenda of this BOF was quite unique in my experience, since it  
didn't include any drafts that actually described the proposal being  
discussed.  There is a (very brief, non-detailed) description of how  
aplusp could apply to DS-Lite in the softwires DS-Lite draft, but that  
draft wasn't on the agenda.  That proposal would (IMO) be an internal  
discussion for the softwires WG, so I'm not sure why we would have a  
BOF about it.  Ralph Drom's summary of what the proposed WG would do  
mentioned provisioning and included other terms that didn't seem to  
relate to the use of aplusp in DS-Lite.  I read and understood the  
drafts on the agenda, I've been reading the shara mailing list, I  
think I understand the actual aplusp proposal, but  I made it all the  
way through this BOF without fully understanding what work was being  
proposed.

There was no draft associated with Dave Thaler's "architecture"  
presentation, making it impossible to understand the issues he raised  
in any depth or prepare for a real discussion of the issues raised.  I  
have a pretty good understanding of addressing architecture, but it is  
not clear to me how some of the points on the architecture  
presentation related to aplusp.

Although this BOF was ostensibly run to start a WG, there was no WG  
charter text proposed.

At the end of the BOF, several questions were asked.  The first was  
"Do you understand the problem? yes/no".  When more people answered  
"no" than "yes", the questioning should have stopped there.  There is  
no reasonable way to interpret the answer to the question "Should we  
work on this problem in the IETF? yes/no" when the room has just told  
you that they don't understand the problem.

I'm not an aplusp proponent.  I haven't done enough work to understand  
all of the trade-offs between aplusp and CGN, so I honestly don't know  
if it would be better to deploy an aplusp version of DS-Lite or a CGN  
version, nor do I understand why we'd want to constrain aplusp to that  
use.  The BOF did nothing to advance my thinking, though.

 From an IETF process standpoint, I think that the best thing we can  
do with the outcome of the aplusp BOF is to ignore it completely.

Margaret

---

From: Rémi Després <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:57:13 +0900

Hi Margaret,

Full support for your conclusion.

FYI, here are two sets of slides that I successively asked to be  
authorized to present at the aplusp bof?

The first presentation was refused because it was considered out of  
scope.
The second one was implicitly rejected when the new agenda was known,  
at the beginning of the meeting, with no openness to have it  bashed.

draft-despres-softwire-mesh-sam-01 is a comprehensive draft I have  
prepared for this IETF.
It includes pure softwire considerations, very briefly presented in  
Softwire, and also includes an A+P variant.
This variant is different from the ds-lite variant, and is IMHO very  
promising, somewhat like 6rd.
Having a bof on A+P without permission to present it at all is not,  
in my understanding, how the IETF should treat paying participants.

Best regards,

RD

Le 12 nov. 09 à 15:13, Margaret Wasserman a écrit :

>
> After attending the aplusp BOF yesterday, I am very uncomfortable  
> with its apparent outcome.  There were enough problems with how the  
> BOF was planned, structured and run, that I believe that it would  
> be both unwise and unfair to draw any conclusions from the BOF  
> about the IETF's interest in aplusp or other shared addressing  
> proposals, in the DS-Lite context or elsewhere.
>
> In it's ideal form, a BOF should be an opportunity for proponents  
> of a proposal to present their proposal to the IETF, so that the  
> IETF can decide whether or not to adopt the work.  It might include  
> a presentation of other alternatives and/or architectural  
> It didn't appear (from the outside) that the aplusp BOF was  
> proposed by proponents of any aplusp-related proposal, and no  
> actual aplusp (or aplusp/DS-Lite) proposals were presented at the  
> BOF.  There was a very high level overview of a group of proposals,  
> none of which are DS-Lite-specific, followed by a slightly off- 
> topic presentation on mobility, followed by an architectural  
> presentation that was firmly against the entire idea of aplusp.
>
> didn't include any drafts that actually described the proposal  
> being discussed.  There is a (very brief, non-detailed) description  
> of how aplusp could apply to DS-Lite in the softwires DS-Lite  
> draft, but that draft wasn't on the agenda.  That proposal would  
> (IMO) be an internal discussion for the softwires WG, so I'm not  
> sure why we would have a BOF about it.  Ralph Drom's summary of  
> what the proposed WG would do mentioned provisioning and included  
> other terms that didn't seem to relate to the use of aplusp in DS- 
> Lite.  I read and understood the drafts on the agenda, I've been  
> reading the shara mailing list, I think I understand the actual  
> aplusp proposal, but  I made it all the way through this BOF  
> without fully understanding what work was being proposed.
>
> presentation, making it impossible to understand the issues he  
> raised in any depth or prepare for a real discussion of the issues  
> raised.  I have a pretty good understanding of addressing  
> architecture, but it is not clear to me how some of the points on  
> the architecture presentation related to aplusp.
>
> "no" than "yes", the questioning should have stopped there.  There  
> is no reasonable way to interpret the answer to the question  
> "Should we work on this problem in the IETF? yes/no" when the room  
> has just told you that they don't understand the problem.
>
> I'm not an aplusp proponent.  I haven't done enough work to  
> understand all of the trade-offs between aplusp and CGN, so I  
> honestly don't know if it would be better to deploy an aplusp  
> version of DS-Lite or a CGN version, nor do I understand why we'd  
> want to constrain aplusp to that use.  The BOF did nothing to  
> advance my thinking, though.
>

Full support for the conclusion.

  Draft-despres-softwire-mesh-sam-01, which I wrote especially for  
this IETF 76, describes a generalization of 6rd which, among various  
use cases, has some with a variant of A+P. (This variant is for point- 
to-multipoint tunnels, i.e. softwire mesh topologies, which makes it  
complementary complementary to DS-lite A+P).
I worked on several successive sets of slidesslides prepared
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