RE: New work items

[Ross Callon <rcallon at juniper.net>]

At the Dublin IETF, Mark Townsley, who was AD for L3VPN at the time, gave L3VPN a six month time limit to get the currently chartered multicast work completed. The threat was that if it wasn't completed then multicast would be removed from the WG charter and the documents would need to be submitted as individual submissions via the RFC editor. Given the very many options in the two L3VPN multicast drafts that have recently been submitted for publication, and the resulting potential lack of interoperability, I don't regard the currently chartered work to be complete until the considerations draft is submitted for publication. At the Dublin IETF I fully supported Mark's deadline. As AD for the L3VPN working group I still fully support Mark's deadline but with one slight change (see next paragraph). The L3VPN working group has been working on multicast for more than 5 years. For example, the minutes from IETF 60 (August 2004) state "A new working group charter has been approved. In particular the new charter adds the following items (which are heavily involved in this meetings agenda): l3vpn support for multicast and l3vpn support for IPv6". If the group can't get its currently chartered multicast work completed in more than five years then why should we charter additional multicast work?

Clearly more than six months have passed since the Dublin IETF. However, very considerable work has been completed since then and my inclination is to not drop the "six months is over" axe on the group as long as it appears that the group is about to complete its originally charted multicast work. 

Also, the chairs have informed me that the considerations draft appears to be quite close to being complete. My reading of the draft suggests the same thing. After this is complete, then it makes sense to re-charter the WG to take on additional work. I fully expect that the additional work will be mostly (or perhaps entirely) multicast related. I also think that it is perfect reasonable to want useful work to continue in the L3VPN WG without a hiccup caused by rechartering, and recent emails suggest that achieving consensus on rechartering might be non-trivial. This implies that we should think now about what additional work is needed. I would expect that as soon as possible (hopefully immediately?) after completion of the considerations draft then the group will be rechartered and the additional work will begin. Hopefully this implies that the additional work can begin at the Hiroshima IETF meeting. 

However, don't expect the updated charter to be approved until the current work is completed. Given the large number of options available in the two multicast specifications that have already been submitted, don't expect the IESG to approve these without some guidance regarding what subset of the many available options we expect in interoperable implementations. 

Ross (speaking as AD for L3VPN)

-----Original Message-----
From: l3vpn-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:l3vpn-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf Of NAPIERALA, MARIA H, ATTLABS
Sent: 15 September 2009 16:57
To: Yakov Rekhter; Danny McPherson
Cc: l3vpn at ietf.org
Subject: RE: New work items 

Danny, et al.,

the progress of draft-ietf-l3vpn-mvpn-considerations-04 (which is an
*informational* document) should not interfere with the actual progress
of MVPN technology (i.e., with the progress of the documents that define
the technology). The new work items which were listed are required to
support MVPNs already deployed in production networks. 
The draft-ietf-l3vpn-mvpn-considerations-04 should and can progress
independently of the technical work.

Maria

> -----Original Message-----
> From: l3vpn-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:l3vpn-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf
> Of Yakov Rekhter
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:06 PM
> To: Danny McPherson
> Cc: l3vpn at ietf.org
> Subject: Re: New work items
> 
> Danny,
> 
> > Top post only..
> >
> > Eric,
> > Apologies for taking so long to respond on this, thanks for
> > kicking off the thread!
> >
> > Do other folks have comments on these items or other items that
> > should be added to the charter?  We'd like to have a new one in
> > front of the IESG before the .jp meeting.
> 
> From the L3VPN WG minutes:
> 
>  Danny McPherson:
> 
>     There is work.  There are things that need to be considered. We
> should
>     revisit our milestones now that the MVPN documents have been
> submitted
>     to the IESG, that was a gate for an official new work in the WG,
> now we
>     can consider new work items.
> 
> The consideration document (draft-ietf-l3vpn-mvpn-considerations-04),
> which is part of the MVPN documents, have not (yet) been submitted
> to the IESG. Therefore, until this document is submitted to the IESG,
> the WG should not be considering any new work items.
> 
> Yakov.