IETF 82 Administrative Plenary Taipei, Taiwan Wednesday, 16 November 2011 Minutes by Alexa Morris 1. Welcome Russ welcomes the IETF participants and presents the agenda. 2. Host Presentation (see slides) TWNIC Chairman of the Board steps up to podium. Professor Shian-Shyong Tseng introduces Taiwan, and he gives information about the Internet users in Taiwan as well as plans for future developments. 3. Postel Award Lynn St. Amour and Dr. Jun Murai come to stage. Lynn gives background on Jonathan Postel, and the history of the award. Jun Murai presents the award to Professor Kilnam Chon, for his significant contributions in the development and advancement of the Internet in Asia. 4. Itojun Service Award Lynn St. Amour and Dr. Jun Murai remain on stage. Lynn explains that the award was established by Itojun's friends; it is administered by ISOC. The aim is to encourage pragmatic contributions to IPv6 development in the spirit of serving the Internet. Jun Murai presented the award to Alexandre Cassen and Remi Despres. Remi accepts the award for both, as Alexandre was unable to attend. 4. Reporting 4.1. IETF Chair Report by Russ Housley (see slides) Russ presented statistics for I-D publications, IETF 82 attendees, IANA activity, RFC Editor activity, and the recent transition of the Time Zone Database to IANA. 4.2. NOC Report by Mark Kao (see slides) Presented the IETF 82 meeting network topology, traffic patterns, and so on. 4.3. IAOC Chair and IAD Report by Bob Hinden and Ray Pelletier (see slides) Bob Hinden spoke first. IAOC minutes for 16 of the last 21 meetings have been published. It reamins a struggle for volunteers to produce timely minutes for IAOC meetings, and as a result, future IAOC meeting minutes will be produced by Internet Society staff. Bob summarized IETF 81 costs, and presented preliminary IETF 82 budget results. Attendance at IETF 82 less than expected, so the income from registration fees is $142,000 USD less than expected. Bob presented 2012 IASA Budget. Expenses have increased, while revenue has stayed relatively constant. So, Internet Society support will increase for several years. Bob shared the status of the of 3-year advance meeting planning. For 2012, 2013, and 2014, 8 out of 9 venues are under contract. Bob noted that finding venues in Asia has been challenging. He also shared a chart tracking hotel room pricing history, and pricing in each region. Bob announced that IETF 87 will be in Berlin, and he announced that that the IETF has agreed to return to Japan sometime in the future. Bob also noted that IETF 83 (Paris) does not have a host, and he asked the community to help find one. Sponsors are needed as well. Ray Pelletier spoke second; he acknowledged staff and volunteers. 4.4. Trust Chair Report by Marshall Eubanks (see slides) Marshall covered topics that included the response to recent subpoenas, insurance for IETF Trustees, and upcoming termination of US copyright grants. 4.5. NomCom Chair Report by Suresh Krishnan (see slides) This is the second NomCom to follow the open list process detailed in RFC 5680. Suresh asked the community to provide feedback on this list of candidates, and he announced NomCom office hours. Suresh also shared an idea to increase the number of people who volunteer for the NomCom. He suggested an opt-in checkbox on the meeting registration for the first meeting of each year. The checkbox would only appear for participants that are eligible for NomCom. The room took a hum, and the hum indicated significant support of the proposal. 5. Recognition Einar (Stef) Stefferud, email pioneer, passed away this year. There was a moment of silence in his honor. 6. IAOC Open Mic Dan Romascanu: I noticed that there is a sharp decrease in investment for tools in the proposed budget for the next several years - why? Bob Hinden: We've invested a lot in the last couple years, we need to get experience with what we've done. We will continue to invest, but we don't think we'll need to do so at the same level. That said, I can imagine that a remote participation tool might require significant investment. [Unknown]: Can we find a travel agent to issue letters of invitation for Paris since there is no host. A local contact is needed to issue the letters. Bob: We'll work with Secretariat; we will find a way. John Klensin: I've had the opportunity this week to talk to others who were around when BCP 101 was created. All were under impression that RFPs would be exposed to community while in draft form. It is clear from other conversations that IAOC believes that RFPs should be shared only if community input is specifically deemed necessary. What is the position on exposing at least vetted portions of RFPs? Bob: Most RFPs should be public in advance, and they are. For example, the draft Secretariat RFP was public. For others, it does note seem that community review is essential. John: So, your position is that the IAOC makes decisions on a case by case basis? Bob: And most RFPs will be exposed in advance. By my reading of BCP 101, I think we are complying with the transparency requirement. John: BCP 101 does not specify this level of detail. Charlie Perkins: A lot of times at a meeting, you want to leave a session in order to talk in the hall. Here, there are not a lot of places to sit and talk. Bob: I've noticed that as well. It's a good comment, and we should see if we can get more chairs. Russ: At some venues we are able to arrange a lounge, and those are popular. Charlie: Yes, there are 20-30 chairs against the wall in this room, and those could be spread around the hallways. Margaret Wasserman: I want to comment on this meeting. I actually think this is a great meeting. I like that there is a lot of stuff around the venue. Another thing that stood out to me: Taiwan is well configured to have an international meeting of largely English speaking people. Bob: I was also pleasantly surprised to have my electrical things match easily. Maybe next time we can find a time of year that it's not raining. 9. IESG Open Mic Charlie Perkins: Short question: Are there any guidelines from the IESG on how much notice a working group should get before it is shut down. Russ: Before an Area Director closes a working group? I think the record is that someone in the back of the room shut down a working group while it was meeting. Sean: I've closed a copule of working groups in the last couple of years, and I usually wait for all the I-Ds out of the working group to actually get published, and then I send an email to the chairs to say that I am planning to close the working group, asking if they are in agreement. The chairs simply make sure that there are no more working group items. Pete Resnick: It stinks to try and get those last few comments resolved if the working group has been closed, especially comments that ought to go back to the working group. Such comments can come as late as Auth48. Jari: Charlie, I think I may know the working groups that you are thinking of and, I think, in a lot of these cases, the situation is that at some point there will be an email from me or the chairs, indicating that it is time to take some action. Perhaps closing the working group is the right action, or re-chartering, or something else if there is still energy available. Like we are doing currently, in the case of the one working group. However, before this happens, there is usually a period, a very long period, actually sometimes years, where nothing useful happens, and the chairs cancel meetings because nothing has happened, and no documents are updated. So usually no one is surprised. Charlie: Well the specifics can be discussed, but I was just asking a rather general question. If there is any agreement that guidelines are needed, I think it might be useful to at least write them down. Pete Resnick: Do you want the process to go faster, or slower? Charlie: Well in the case when the working group has been going around for a long time without producing any documents and not meeting the charter goals and the authors are unresponsive, probably shorter is better than longer. Jari: Yes, I think the period itself may not be that important. The important thing is that there is a community discussion. It is not like the AD suddenly says, well, maybe in some cases it has happened, but the AD usually does not just decide, but normally it is about the community making a decision. Let's discuss this, what should we do? Normally we do that, I think. Glen Zorn: I just wanted to note that I would like a written guideline too, to avoid surprises. I was once chairing a working group and we had an extremely successful meeting. And had virtually complete consensus, amazingly enough, on the direction ahead. And the next day, the AD sent an email to the working group, not me first, or my co-chair first, but to the whole working group, announcing that it had concluded. That's it. Bye. Things like that are distressing. If there are no guidelines of any variety, then that could reasonably happen any time, right? Although you guys who have talked about shutting down working groups while you are sitting up there, especially Sean who was very thoughtful, but without any guidelines, there is no guarantee. I don't want to put words in Charlie's mouth, but I think that he was looking for something simple. We do not want arbitrary and capricious activities. Maybe the reasons for closing a working group should at least be required to be explained. Stephen Farrel: so you are going to write the Internet-Draft about those guidelines, right? Jari: Like so many things that we do at the IETF, community discussion seems appropriate, and a last call period seems appropriate. Margaret: I think that if members of the IESG start acting capriciously, we have a lot more problems. And writing documents to close every gap where they could screw us over if they start wanting to screw us over, is a waste of time. I mean, we cannot close every gap. They can stop us from meeting. They can fire both the chairs and not apoint another one. They can refuse to process any of our documents. If our IESG members start behaving that way, we need to get them out and get new ones, but there is not any amount of process documents that will protect us from an IESG member who wants to be a jerk. Pete: I mentioned this during the WG Chairs lunch, if IESG members are being morons, start by telling them that they are being a moron, and half the time they might say, oops, I'm being a moron, and fix the problem. If that doesn't work, the next chain of appeal is the IETF Chair and say, my AD is being a moron. And appeal there. If an AD is really out of control, there is a recall process. We have mechanisms to deal with that. And for all 15 of us to go off the rails and not stop the other person from doing something really dumb, the likelihood gets increasingly weird. Use the mechanisms we have at hand. Glen: Guess I'm just a lucky guy. Elliot Lear: Earlier in the evening Russ mentioned the Time Zone Database and the fact that IANA is now hosting it. I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts. I wanted to call out Russ, Pete and Peter -- the Applications ADs. And of course, Robert Elz, who stepped in very quickly under trying circumstances. I am proud of the community and the leadership for having done what they did in order to keep a resource on line that is very important to a number of our applications and to nearly every computer in this room. Russ: And don't forget the IANA staff, and the legal review that occurred at ICANN, and the fact that in the face of the lawsuit, they said, yes, we are going to do the right thing for the community. I think that was brave and really helpful for the whole world. Pete Saint-Andre: Thanks Elliot for his leadership in taking that on, and in working with the time zone community as well. So, thank you, Elliot. Joel Jaeggli: I would like to observe that we actually have a pretty good precedent about what happens when there is disagreement between participants in the working group and Area Directors as to what should happen to the working group. There is a working group that is still with us as the product of an appeal. So, we have pretty good history and precedent for what to do when that happens. Now, I'm reasonably certain that lots of people were not happy with that outcome, in both directions, but that is not really germane to the question of what happens when it does. Russ: For those of you who do not know what Joel was talking about, an Area Director closed a working group, an appeal was lodged, and then the group was re-opened. That working group is still operating today. Russ: I do not see anybody coming to the microphones. Enjoy your dinner.