Administrative Plenary
Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Minutes by Mirjam Kuehne
Additional Notes from Spencer Dawkins


AGENDA

  Part 1: Standards Track Maturity Ladder

  Part 2: Administrative Plenary

    1. Welcome
    2. Host Presentation
    3. Postel Award
    4. Reporting
        - IETF Chair Report
        - NOC Report
        - IAOC Chair & IAD Reports
        - Trust Chair Report
        - NomCom Chair Report
    5. Recognition
    6. IAOC Open Mic
    7. IESG Open Mic


STANDARDS TRACK MATURITY LADDER

1. Presentation and Discussion
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-1.ppt)

Russ Housley presented his (individual) Internet-Draft on changing the
three-level standard maturity level to two levels.

STD mechanism isn't used much in practice, but it could be used for any
standards-track document, and could be used for grouping RFCs.

Russ collected ideas from various places; this isn't all his idea.

Ed Jankiewicz: likes the idea of grouping documents.

Russ: even though this draft has my name on it, it  is a collection of
ideas from various people. If the community thinks that having one STD
number that points to a group of documents, we're certainly open to
that idea.

Bob Hinden: likes the idea. We need to go back to having running code,
we lost that idea a bit. Particularly likes the idea of having draft
standards be the final stage.

Olafur Gudmundsson: likes the idea. But worries about the advancedment
straight to the higher standards level, in particular for complicated
drafts. Many times we had people say this works and we have
interoperable implementations but then soon found out there was a
problem and the documents needed fixes.

Russ: What do you propose as fix?

Olafur: IESG should use their judgement. Not all standards are of equal
complexity. IESG could reject early implementation reports for complex
documents (or at least defer them).

John Klensin: I am sympathetic to adjusting things in this area. I am
however concerned that the proposal is trying to distract from problems,
instead of solving them. If too few documents move to Draft Standard,
why would renaming Draft Standard as Full Standard help? The IESG has a
lot of control about how much review they do at proposed standard and
could, in theory, change that without the proposal. Conversely, if they
can't change it without the proposal because the community won't let
them, why should we believe that approval of the proposal will change
things?
  (see more details in John's post to ietf@ietf.org on 4 July 2010:
  https://www.ietf.org/ibin/c5i?mid=6&rid=49&gid=0&k1=933&k2=52262&
  tid=1280418189).

Russ: The bulk of the delay in elevation is happening at the WG level.
The community seems to have adopted a higher review level than really
required by RFC 2026.

John: Separately from the defects in the proposal, there is a procedural
problem. To the extent that this proposal comes out of an IESG retreat,
the IESG seems to say that they get to develop a proposal, have one of
their number write that proposal up, decide how the proposal will be
discussed with the community and evaluated, and then determine consensus
and approve the proposal. As the same time, they can block other process
change proposals from being seriously discussed, even when those
proposals specifically provide alternative approaches to address the
problems identified in their proposal. Then we are told that the issues
with determining consensus that way are solved by turning the counting
and evaluation process over to a different IESG member. That violates
good sense, our procedures, and what we normally consider an unbiased
way to determine consensus.

Russ: the document is a collection of ideas, none of them is originated
in the IESG.

John: In the past, interesting ideas have been proposed and discussed,
but then the ADs and IESG have refused to bring them to Last Call.

Russ: yes, this has happened, hopefully not in the last years.

Ross Callon: I don't have strong opinions about STD going away, but
like the rest of it, and especially about abolishing downward reference
restrictions. Without this proposal we have a very good process that is
not perfect, with it we have a very good process that is a little better
but not perfect. Should be open to other proposals that could also
improve things.

Thomas Narten: we have to be careful that we understand why the process
is so slow in practice and whether this change will fix that. The
possibility of elevating an I-D to standard on the first try, might not
always be desired. Gives an example from when he was an Area Director:
one of the very first documents was from the L2TP WG: The WG said the
protocol had been implemented. The IESG had a long discussion about it
and sent it back to the WG. Consequently the protocol was significantly
re-written. It is not good enough that there are implementations, but
they must be based on the actual text in the document!

Russ: good point, thank you.

Jari Arkko: on STD numbers, no one knows how to find the documents
Just use RFC numbers.

Bernard Aboba: It is about how the system evolves. Draft standard became
less important over time without any formal process changes. After this
proposal the system will continue to evolve, but it is hard to predict
how. The question is if this proposal will actually have an impact.
Could be that if we lower the bar, we have lower quality, but still
not change the rest of the process. All of these suggestions feel
reasonable but I am not confident that they will improve things.

Dave Crocker: The plenary audience is a poor sampling of the community.

Russ: previous attempts at process change were discussed in BoFs. That
is even a smaller sampling.

Dave: My point is that it is just a sampling, and not a representation
of the community.

Dave: I found the portion of the proposal related to downrefs confusing.

Russ: possibly not clear in the document.  The idea is to allow one
standards-track document to reference another regardless of the maturity
level. A statement at Last Call is needed to normatively reference an
Informational RFC. Normative reference to an Internet-Draft is still not
allowed.

Dave:  It is possible to skip proposed and go directly to what is now
Draft Standard. Maybe we need to think about this some more. There were
other proposals made in the past and they didn't get the same air time
here. I don't see how getting rid of Draft Standard will increase the
use of Full Standard.

Andrew Sullivan: skeptical that the document will make a difference. If
people have no interest or ability to advance documents, then this will
not make a change. What I am worried about is that you should have some
assessment of the quality of implementation reports. That could turn
into another three-level system. Seems to be a way of creating another
three level process, but in two parts.

Cullen Jennings: applauds the effort. Best sampling of community review
is this room. On the flip side this is very expensive to use plenary
time like that.

Sam Hartman: I am not sure this document will accomplish any of its
goals, but it might. It seems it wouldn't be a bad step forward. Agrees
that this is a good way to achieve consensus. You've done everything
right so far. Also agrees with John Klensin that this needs more review
time, probably not good enough to do Last Call before the IETF in
Beijing. Would prefer if going straight to Internet standards would go
away, but could live with it.

2. Hums (Alexey leads the process)

Alexey: Would prefer if people would raise hands and not just hum.

Russ: Show hands if you believe that going from a three to a two-tier
model is a good thing to do.

Alexey: many YES, almost no NO.

Russ: Show hands if you believe that bundling the ability to go straight
to the top of the maturity level is a good idea.

Alexey: very few YES, many NO.

Russ: Show hands if you believe that the ability to reference any
document within the standards track without calling it out in Last Call
is a good idea.

Alexey: more people show hands for YES than for NO (But very few people
showed hands at all).

Bert Wijnen: what does that mean: Calling it out in the Last Call?

Russ: that is how it is defined in the document (related to downrefs).

Russ: how many people think the STD numbers should be abandoned?

Alexey: More people show hands for YES than for NO (But very few people
showed hands at all).

Russ: Maybe the majority does not care?

Thomas Narten: Suggests that we should make clear in the minutes what
actually happened here at the meeting (important to have a good record).

Dave Harrington: There is another option: The problem is that I care,
but I don't know if I want to say yes or no. I do care, but I don't
know what the right answer is.

Some people agree with that statement.

Greg Lebovitz: Believes we need to distinguish between 'don't care' and
'needs more discussion'.

Russ asks (Alexey estimates hands raised):

Who wants to keep the STD numbers: 10 - 15 people
Who wants to abandon the STD numbers: 30 - 40 people
Who is undecided: 50+ people
Who doesn't care: very few people

Russ: That means there is no consensus and there needs to be more
discussion on the list. Someone also questioned that it is possible to
count the number of hands in this big and dark auditorium.

Russ thanks the room and says he found this to be very valuable input.


ADMINISTRATIVE PLENARY

1. Welcome by Russ.
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-0.ppt)

2. Host Presentation
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-7.ppt)

SIDN CEO tells that the first meeting he attended as an CEO of SIDN was
an ICANN meeting, didn't think there was ever anything useful coming out
of these meetings. Now believes these meetings are actually quite
valuable. Now he just followed the discussion above and has no idea
what the outcome of the discussion was, or what the issue was it
started with ... ;-)

People warned him prior to the meeting that he could run into all kinds
of difficulties (for instance when wearing a suit). He was worried about
the t-shirts (applause. people like the t-shirts). And he was worried
about the social (big applause - people really liked the social).

Welcomes the IETF again to Maastricht, believes the IETF is contributing
a lot to the development of the Internet.

The host receives a plaque from the IETF Chair.

3. Postel Award
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-2.ppt)

Lynn St.Amour introduces the Jon Postel award and this year's winner of
the Jon Postel award: Prof. Jianping Wu from CERNET at the University of
Tsinghua, China.

Prof. Wu thanks for the honor and describes the Internet development
in China.

4. Reporting

Russ Housley: IETF Chair Report
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-6.ppt)

Prof. Lee shows some information about the the IETF meeting in Beijing
in November and invites everyone to attend IETF 79.
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-10.ppt)

Jim Martin: NOC Report
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-8.pdf)

Bob Hinden: IAOC Chair & IAD Reports
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-3.ppt)

Ray Pelletier: acknowledges the sponsors, volunteers and other who
helped with this IETF meeting.

Marshall Eubanks: Trust Chair Report
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-4.ppt)

Thomas Walsh: NomCom Chair Report
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-5.ppt)

5. Recognition
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-11.pdf)
(http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/plenaryw-9.ppt)

Russ and Olaf show a movie to thank all those individuals who helped
DNSSEC along during the past 17 years! More than 200 names are shown
on the screen. The list was composed in the following way: a wiki was
set up where people could add their own name or other names they felt
were missing from the list. This seems like a fair process.

Champagne was handed out to everyone in the room! Russ makes a toast
to everyone who contributed to the development, testing, implementation
and deployment, and to the universal deployment of DNSSEC! People really
appreciated the recognition.

6. IAOC Open Mic (with the IAOC on stage)

Russ Mundy: when making deals with hotels  in the future suggests we
add one additional criteria: requirement to use DNSSEC from your hotel
room. Most hotels do not allow this today. And he is serious: this
would help to deploy DNSSEC.

Bob Hinden: agrees and we should also add IPv6 to the requirements list.

Charlie Perkins: complains that the hotel is not lenient at all about
their cancellation policy (he booked his room early and now had to
cancel one night, because of another meeting he has to attend somewhere
else. They charge 50% of the price for that one night he is not staying
in the hotel). The hotel is not helpful at all in these cases.

Bob: Hard to always convince hotels to amend their policies for us. But
the hotel cancellation policy could be make clearer on the web site.

Ray Pelletier: it is typical in the industry that a commission is paid.
The hotel tells us: if you forgo your commission we're not lowering the
price. In some cases it is different, e.g. when a booking service is in
place. In Hiroshima for instance we didn't get anything back. Here we
at least get something back. We need a contract with the hotel booking
service. We negotiate prices with them. We cannot compete with deals
hotels have with online booking services. Sometimes we win when the
hotel's pricing structure changes prior to the meeting, sometimes we
loose.

Dave Crocker: was on NomCom last year and learned how much the IAOC is
actually doing. Realised that he was pretty ignorant before and that
the IAOC does not get enough cudos for what it does. There has been a
consistent resistance to stabilise in a few places (16 years old
resistance). Attempts to pursue that discussion is persistently
difficult (how to find a host, if we don't find a host registration
fees will go up). Firstly, there is always the opportunity to get
sponsors. Secondly, when we go to secondary locations like this we
spend about 300 USD more money on travel. Thirdly, it takes a extra
day.

Bob: train costs 25 EUR from AMS to Maastricht.

Dave: hm, I paid more. Ok, in Hiroshima it was more expensive. Point
is that it ought to be the total cost when calculating the price of a
meeting.

Bob: if we go in this direction, there is a whole lot of detail: what
is a appropriate venue etc. (lower air fare vs. but more expensive
city etc...). It is good to get more information and feedback from
the community about these issues.

Eric Burger: and we will still continue to look for sponsors (talk
to Drew Dvorshak).

Bob: yes, and we cannot print the money, there are always tradeoffs.

Ed Jankiewicz: suggestions for the next champagne toast: in 3 IETFs
we should have the IETF network IPv6-only (to eat our own dog-food).

Russ: you may remember that at IETF 72, we turned IPv4 off during the
plenary. All of the IETF content on ietf.org is available via IPv6.

Cullen Jennings: what is the actual ratios of the last few years
(participants from various regions).

Bob: can't do this out of the top of my head, but promises to post
them to the list.

Geert Jan de Groot: as a local dutch person, tried to help as much as
possible to make life easier by answering some questions on the list
(regarding trains, ATMs, etc.)

(applause)

Geert Jan: if you are in Rome, do as a Roman (i.e. this is still mostly
a cash country, credit cards are not accepted everywhere). On the other
hand, people seem to like to have a room that costs 10 EUR, have DNSSEC,
IPv6 enabled with excellent connectivity, directly connected to an
airport and in an interesting place. People, be reasonable!

Peter Lothberg: offers to host a meeting in his home (very quiet there,
but good connectivity) ;-)

Pete Resnick: can you explain the difference between the host and a
sponsor? Have there been hosts that had fixed location requirements?

Bob: SIDN wanted to have the meeting in the Netherlands. We looked at
various locations and we came up with this one. Mostly the hosts want to
have the meeting in their home region. Certainly within their country.
The host is typically the one that makes the highest financial
contributions.

Bob Moskowitz: reports that IEEE 802 meetings have to pay 300 USD
surcharge if you do not stay in the venue hotel.

Geoff Thompson: there are features of North-American hotels that tend
not to apply in other regions (e.g. the relatively good room rate when
booking conference facilities at the same time).

Ekr: stays in a different hotel, because it looks like a better deal.
Would encourage the IAOC to add everything up when calculating costs
for a meeting, as was suggested by Dave Crocker.

Olaf: we also want to take geographic distribution into account.

Ekr: agrees. However, some locations would have been more convenient,
like Amsterdam vs. Maastricht.

Bob: that decision is often driven by the host.

???: Bob said the host wanted to have the meeting in the Netherlands,
but why could it not be in Amsterdam.

Bob: there were a number of tradeoffs: both the facility was more
expensive and the distance to the hotels was further, so there would
have been more transportation. So, it was largely costs.

Alexey: the champagne for DNSSEC was about global adoption. Suggests
to have champagne next time when IPv6 has been globally adopted. On the
topic of venues: RIR usually have their meetings at exotic locations.
That might not always be necessary. IETF tend to be in sensible
locations and he likes that. As to continent distribution: the current
model is good (mild applause). Even though would like to see in the
next few years one meeting in South Africa and one in South America to
see if that works out and if we can attract more people from those
regions.

John Klensin: over the years the IETF methodology was that we welcome
contributions form individuals or small enterprises. There was a comment
on the list: that anyone who is not contributing to sponsoring such a
meeting should not be commenting to the venue or location of the IETF
meetings. What do you think about that?

Bob: we are here as individuals and everyone has a say. Fund raising is
a different issue.

Jari Arkko: agrees with the 1-1-1 model (one meeting in the US, one
in Europe, one in Asia each year). First people attend, then they
participate, then they write drafts and contribute.

Margaret Wasserman: if you are going to change the location of the
meetings, it would help to announce it early, then we can budget for it.
If we move to 1 meeting in Europe, 1 in Asia, 1 in the US, it would be
nice to know that.

Eric Burger: we are sending out a survey on the issue of geographic
distribution. Please all participate if you care about the location.

Margaret: another issue: we don't seem to have enough food during the
coffee breaks (and that seems to be mostly a problem in meetings
outside the US).

???: in November the IETF meeting clashes or overlaps with the IEEE 802
meeting. How did that happen and how can we try to avoid that in the
future?

Bob: apparently IEEE 802 has been re-scheduled and moved - so there
wasn't much we could have done about that. We can talk more about
this off-line.

Joe Jeaggli: the requirements of low costs on one side and the
determination of venues two years ahead on the other side seems to
be mutually exclusive.

Bob: fair point. Thank you.


7. IESG Open Mic

Bob Moskowitz: there is no process to make additions to the xml2rfc
reference repository.

Russ: recently the xml2rfc tool set was deemed to be critical. That tool
we need to figure out how the volunteers and Secretariat will cooperate
on maintenance.

Ross Callon: would like to use the opportunity to thank the IESG and
acknowledge that they are doing a difficult job.

Spencer Dawkins: also wants to thank the IESG for wants to thank the
IESG for recruiting additional scribes to produce narrative minutes.

Russ: the scribes that produce the narrative minutes removed the
mystery and that was good.