Re: IETF & this list

[RJ Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

An Aside:

	In the old IETF, some folks would build some prototypes in the lab,
work out some issues, identify unresolved issues, let a few users play
with the result and provide feedback, and then maybe those folks would
publish an Experimental RFC (or Informational RFC, though Experimental
seems better suited) on the outcome of that activity.  And then, with 
some
running code in hand and some user feedback, possibly more than one set
of running code possibly implementing different things and more than one
set of user feedback, the IETF would create a WG to actually standardise
a protocol in that area.  This WG would be more focused from early on
because of the R&D time spent before the WG got created.  And the 
results
back then were more often acceptable to the user community than seems
common nowadays.

	In the new IETF, folks decide that they want to work on a new protocol
and spec it, so a WG gets created, then flounders for a bit while folks
discuss what the protocol ought to do (normally without any experimental
code or user feedback on that experimental code), then go write a 
standards-track
document.

	For my own part, I really prefer the old way to the new way.
A feature of the "old way" is that interested folks can make some
headway before we incur the organisational/management overhead of
creating a formal WG.  (And in this particular case, I suspect that
the list admin would not be upset if folks here made the discussions
on this list more concrete and less general.)

Ran
rja@extremenetworks.com


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