Subject: Re: [tcpm] poll for adopting draft-gont-tcp-security

From: Alfred Hönes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:22:35 +0200 (MESZ)

TCPMers,
I strongly support adopting draft-gont-tcp-security as a work
item for TCPM, and I recommend the target being BCP.

This adoption SHOULD be accompanied by an ambitious timeline.
Experience has sadly shown that absent that, discussion is not
focussed, folks are getting tired, the discussion fades out, and
implementers and other IETF WGs start taking the draft as the
truth (as happened with other work).

Therefore, I suggest that a fix deadline for WGLC of *one year*
after adoption be set, and a forward-to-IESG deadline of another
IETF meeting, i.e. IETF 79.
That seems aggressive but reasonable, given that the draft of the
original document has been under broad discussion for already many
years.  I hope the chairs will manage to keep discussion straight
and tightly oriented towards progress with the deadlines in mind.

Additionally, the WG should take the opportunity of this assessment
to identify work items where the TCP specifications need to be
clarified / updated / revised (on the Standards Track) in the
subsequent year.
I hereby restate previous comments that the WG should eventually
take its name seriously after so many years and start effectively
*maintaining* the TCP specifications -- or it (and the IETF) will
loose even more credibility.  If we do not undertake this task
soon, many parts of the TCP specs will become irrelevant and
outdated/superseded by the predominant implementations soon.

I already have spent several weeks for reading and discussing draft
versions of the original document, and I commit more working cycles
in discussion of topics set aside in the final CPNI prepublication
steps (in order to get the document out) and other/new points of
discussion.

I hope that the discussion of the draft will be based on strong
support and cooperation of implementers, and that the chairs will
manage to keep the "gatekeepers of the holy grail" from obstructing
the process by endlessly recycling threads not leading to progress.

Kind regards,
  Alfred Hönes.

-- 

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