Re: IMPORTANT: Strategy for VPN work in IETF

Hi Alex,

> > I believe that it can also be read as indicating that many feel that
> > most of the (current) L3VPN work is stable and agreed upon, and doesn't
> > need more discussion within the WG.
> 
> I'd like to make a particular comment on those documents considered
> "stable" and "done". Very often it seems that once the active
> discussion in the WG is settled, this is it, the document is ready to
> fly and not much attention is needed. My experience as an AD and an
> IESG member is quite different. Quite often considerable issues are
> found during the AD-review and IESG-review processes. I am not talking
> about fundamental disagreements like whether MPLS is good or evil, but
> about plain technical issues, security aspects, etc. These are parts
> of the path of a document through the IETF process and often require
> the same level of attention and focus of the WG as during the first
> (intra-WG) phase of it. So, my point here is that we should not
> underestimate the amount of work that is left for the existing L3
> documents.

I agree with this issue. My fear in fact is that the problem there is
having "the WG" review a work item that is perceived as 'stable' or
non-controversial or should I say 'not hot', and I fear that often this
is ortoghonal to whether the WG has other work on its plate or not.
Other WGs also struggle with this problem and have even proposed to
nominate a 'team of experts' that somehow devotes itself to review WG
docs. In many situations, when a WG considers a doc as being 'stable',
the WG remains silent and the necessary 'plain technical issues' are
discussed between the authors and the ADs... But I don't have a solution
for this problem either.

> > As was already hinted previously, the progress of the L3VPN work has
> > been delayed (for a long time) because the framework and
> > requirements documents needed to be accepted first.
> 
> This sounds like the delays for those docs have been primarily on the
> IESG side. I think it would be interesting to take a look at the logs
> in the ID tracker to see where exactly the delays were.

It was not my intention at all to say that the delays were on the IESG
side. I just pointed out that the 'next steps' for the other L3 work
were delayed because the framework and requirements work was not
finalised. Who is responsible for the delays is a different question
(that I'm not interested in answering ;-). We can just say that
finalising this fw and req work is a task of the WG, and sending good
documents to the IESG is a task of the WG.

> > I do believe however that several proposed new working items (QoS,
> > security, management, multicast, etc.) have received little attention
> > from the WG because of the current L2VPN (VPLS) discussions/urgency. But
> > as many of these are aimed at both L2 and L3VPNs, and as I don't find
> > reference to these items in the proposed charters, I understand that the
> > goal of the proposed split is not to accomodate these.
> 
> Could you send the draft names, pls?

Note that I'm not implying that they should be in the first charters. I
understand your 'basic things first' reasoning. Just wanted to say that
they've had little attention. A few examples:

- draft-ietf-ppvpn-bgp-ipv6-vpn
- draft-ooms-ppvpn-mcast-overview (applies to L2 and L3, expired)
- draft-chiussi-ppvpn-qos-framework (L2 and L3) and
draft-declercq-ppvpn-l3vpn-qos (L3)
- draft-raggarwa-ppvpn-tunnel-encap-sig-00.txt (applies to L2 and L3)
- draft-yacine-ppvpn-mgt-frwk-00.txt

Thanks,
Jeremy.