Re: draft-enns-*.txt

[Andy Bierman <abierman@cisco.com>]

At 03:02 PM 2/17/2003 -0500, RJ Atkinson wrote:

>On Monday, Feb 17, 2003, at 11:11 America/Montreal, Andy Bierman wrote:
>>I can't speak for other vendors, but the company I work for is very
>>interested in standardizing XMLCONF and has near-term plans for
>>implementing it.  It it important that the specification be detailed
>>and precise enough to foster multi-vendor deployment and inter-operability.
>>
>>The primary goal of the BOF (if it happens) will be to gauge
>>consensus on the path the IETF should take (e.g., do nothing,
>>start a WG to publish a PS, publish an Informational RFC without
>>any WG input).  IMO, a standards-track document produced by a WG
>>offers the best chance of a high-quality specification supported
>>by lots of vendors and operators.
>
>I think that trying to standardise *now* would yield a suboptimal
>technical result, because we don't have enough hands-on implementation
>and operations experience with any proposal yet.  Note that there is
>ample recent evidence that the IETF is not good at this sort of
>protocol design by committee, and also that the IETF is quite good
>at protocol standardisation AFTER there has been ample practical
>hands-on experience (both implementation and operations).

The problem with this approach is that it fosters proprietary 
solutions. Every vendor either has or will come up with their
own solution approach.  On the other hand, a standard solution
offers the chance of convergence on a single approach.

As for your concerns about a sub-optimal protocol, I don't
think every IETF effort has to be doomed to failure because
some efforts have turned out this way.  I guess I don't expect
as much of a Proposed Standard as you do.  I have some faith
in the 3-tier standards process.  If a PS is worthy enough,
it will move on to Draft Standard. If a DS is worthy enough,
it will move on to Full Standard.  I don't expect a fully
optimized, close-to-perfect standard until it reached FS.


>So nothing I said was objecting to *eventual* standardisation of
>*something*.  Rather it was a suggestion that we ought to do some
>implementing and get more operations experience before we PREMATURELY
>try to standardise something.
>
>Clearly your mileage varies from mine.
>
>Ran
>

Andy


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