Draft Charter 5/10/93 md The goal of this BOF is to seek rough consensus on how to progress in the decision process about the next generation of IP. A set of decision criteria has been established (see Internet-Draft draft-partridge-ipv7-criteria-01.txt) and the BOF will not re-discuss them. A set of four candidates for IPng has emerged (IPv7, PIP, SIP, TUBA in alphabetical order) and the BOF will not discuss their details or merits. Very short-term measures (CIDR) and very long-term measures will not be discussed. The topics to be discussed include: - Who is qualified to decide on behalf of the Internet community? Another way to ask the question: should there be a decision point, or can we let the market decide? - What procedures (analysis, bake-off, etc.) should be used to evaluate each candidate against the criteria? - Whether, when and how to open up the IPng discussion among the Internet user community (broadly defined to include WAN and LAN network operators as well as end users)? How does this community interact with the decision takers? - What timescale is realistic for the decision process? There is a subsidiary technical discussion here: if the Internet truly runs out of addresses in year N, - when (year N-x) should the decision me made? - when (year N-y) should the software be ready for field test? - what is the latest time (N-z) to start the transition? - Does the decision process need specific financial or manpower support? With the goal of being able to write and Internet-Draft on the decison process after the BOF.