[Nea] IESG query re Expert Review

[Stephen Hanna <shanna at juniper.net>]

Alexey Melnikov (APP AD) has provided many useful comments
on PA-TNC and PB-TNC. One issue that he has raised is
whether Expert Review should be required for IANA registration
of vendor-specific values in the NEA registries and, if so,
what the expert guidelines should be. Alexey has asked the
NEA WG to reconsider and discuss this matter. Therefore,
I'm raising this topic on the NEA list and cc'ing Alexey.

The text in draft-ietf-nea-pb-tnc-05.txt on this matter
is in section 7.1:

>    For all of the IANA registries defined by this specification,  
>    new values are added to the registry by Expert Review with  
>    Specification Required, using the Designated Expert process  
>    defined in RFC 5226 [3].  
>
>    This section provides guidance to designated experts so that  
>    they may make decisions using a philosophy appropriate for these  
>    registries.
>
> [snip]
>
>    All values in these IANA registries MUST be  
>    documented in a specification that is clear, permanently and  
>    publicly available, and likely to ensure interoperability. IETF  
>    standard values MUST be useful and not harmful to the Internet.  
>
>    Designated experts should encourage vendors to avoid defining  
>    similar but incompatible values and instead agree on a single  
>    IETF standard value.  However, it is beneficial to document  
>    existing practice.  

I will let Alexey make the full case for removing the requirement
for expert review of vendor-specific values. I think that the main
thrust of the argument is that we should encourage vendors to
document the values that they use.

Thanks,

Steve