Subject: [Idr] Martin Duke's Discuss on draft-ietf-idr-bgp-ls-registry-04: (with DISCUSS)

From: Martin Duke via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2021 11:39:15 -0700

Martin Duke has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-idr-bgp-ls-registry-04: Discuss

When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply to all
email addresses included in the To and CC lines. (Feel free to cut this
introductory paragraph, however.)

Please refer to https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html
for more information about IESG DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.

The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-idr-bgp-ls-registry/

----------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCUSS:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to understand the intent of this document a little better.

RFC 8126 subtly implies that "Expert Review" is a little laxer than
"specification required". But the guidance to experts in this draft seems to
closely match "IETF Review" (sec 4.8 of 8126) except that it allows documents
to get an allocation at an earlier stage in the process. The shepherd comment
that "RFC Required" was an alternative proposal also indicates that the intent
to become more, not less, strict. Indeed, the main change appears to be
eliminating allocations to non-IETF-stream documents.

So why not simply change the registry to "IETF Review" and allow provisional
allocations? It would be much easier to use established mechanisms and standard
definitions than rewriting them in this document. Is the SHOULD in Sec 2.1
carrying a lot of weight here?

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2021 19:05:43 -0000

Hi Martin,

Thanks for reading.

Speaking as the pen-holder for the document, but not guaranteeing to represent WG consensus on this point...

> carrying a lot of weight here?

My understanding of IETF Review is that (absent early allocation) assignment cannot be made without publication of an IETF-consensus RFC. The WG wanted to enable assignments to be made sooner.

You are correct that early allocation would meet this requirement, however, the WG said that it found the early allocation procedure annoying because of the "maturity" requirement, and because of the need to renew assignments. The WG wanted to make a one-shot assignment.

You are also correct that the addition of the DE guidance strengthens Expert Review towards Specification Required, but it doesn't quite get there. A lot depends on whether an Internet-Draft is considered to be a stable reference. The working group was aware that opinions vary on this point and did not want to get into that debate. It seemed pragmatic to use Expert Review and set the exact requirements in the DE guidance.

And, before anyone asks 😉, yes, we could have included explanation text in the I-D saying why we have this approach. But, AFAICS, no other document has ever included explanation for the choice of assignment policy. Simply, this is the policy the WG would like to see applied to the registry.

Cheers,
Adrian

---

From: Martin Duke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2021 12:23:39 -0700

I removed the DISCUSS because I don't think this is unimplementable, etc.
The WG just took a very circuitous route to redefine a concept that largely
already exists in 8126.

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 12:05 PM Adrian Farrel <[email-masked]> wrote:

> You are correct that early allocation would meet this requirement,
> however, the WG said that it found the early allocation procedure annoying
> because of the "maturity" requirement, and because of the need to renew
> assignments. The WG wanted to make a one-shot assignment.
>

To me this seems like a circumvention of the provisional assignment
process. You've saved yourselves this process but added an expert review
step, and should it fail, a clunky deprecation mechanism.

> You are also correct that the addition of the DE guidance strengthens
> Expert Review towards Specification Required, but it doesn't quite get
> there. A lot depends on whether an Internet-Draft is considered to be a
> stable reference. The working group was aware that opinions vary on this
> point and did not want to get into that debate. It seemed pragmatic to use
> Expert Review and set the exact requirements in the DE guidance.
>

As I said, this is beyond Specification required, as it requires (well,
recommends) the document to be in the IETF stream. This is more like the
"IETF Review" policy from 8126, modulo how much weight you're putting on
the SHOULD. If there are good reasons that's a SHOULD instead of a MUST, I
guess that's a motivation for the path you've taken.

> And, before anyone asks 😉, yes, we could have included explanation text
> in the I-D saying why we have this approach. But, AFAICS, no other document
> has ever included explanation for the choice of assignment policy. Simply,
> this is the policy the WG would like to see applied to the registry.
>
> Cheers,
> Adrian

I agree that including text to this effect is abnormal.