back to article Net's druids thrash out specs for an independent IETF

The Internet Engineering Task Force has taken another step on its road to independence, publishing a for-discussion proposal covering its likely administrative arrangements. It's part of a process we first reported in April of this year, designed to formalise the arrangements that keep the 'net's technical standards flowing. …

  1. Chronos
    Stop

    Tenuous

    This is a strength. It presupposes any project must be met with "what a good idea" before it becomes a standard. Organisations which can be ignored if they get too new-age whalesong, pet-projecty or creature-feepy are incredibly useful; it keeps the various bit of such organisations honest.

    I, for one, would like to retain Request For Comment rather than Thy Will Be Done.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Tenuous

      Nonsense! The IETF should absolutely be burdened with numerous layers of administrators and bureaucrats, because IT people with failed careers need to eat, too. Plus, let's give people from every nation with a dodgy record on Internet freedoms and human rights priority placement in the new organization, because diversity.

      1. Chronos
        Thumb Up

        Re: Tenuous

        Nonsense! The IETF should absolutely be burdened with numerous layers of administrators and bureaucrats, because IT people with failed careers need to eat, too. Plus, let's give people from every nation with a dodgy record on Internet freedoms and human rights priority placement in the new organization, because diversity.

        Touché, right on the funny bone :)

  2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

    RFC vs STD

    Hi Ho Silver, Away! (New badge, yey!)

    Problem is IETF functions can't be ignored. Well, the meetings and jollies can be, especially if you can't get T&S signed off to attend them. Which is part of the challenge for a commercial IETF, ie how much it'll cost to run, what it'll do with the money and whether fund raising will create real or perceived conflicts of interest.

    But RFCs have a strength and a weakness in that pretty much anyone can submit one. Whether it gets any further depends on whether any significant vendor actually implements it. Then how they implement it, because RFCs can be more losely worded than STDs, or ITU specifications. So if an RFP asks for ITU ODU service per G.709, you should be reasonably certain you can abuse the GCC 1& 2 bytes, or your hardware vendor can. If an RFP asks for 'Which RFCs do you support?', it can be harder to answer. A lot won't be, or might require feature licences, or not play nicely with other vendor's implementations. And in the standards world, there can be a lot of lobbying by vendors to get their preferred method standardised. Or just lobbying from standards bodies themselves, ie ITU vs IETF turf wars. If this proposal gets it wrong, it'll probably give the ITU an excuse to jump in and take over.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: RFC vs STD

      But RFCs have a strength and a weakness in that pretty much anyone can submit one.

      Anyone can submit an RFC, but the RFC Editor won't necessarily publish it. Pretty much anything can get published as an Internet-Draft (though even those have rules that must be met before the IESG will consider them), but the barrier for RFCs is somewhat higher, particularly in the modern (since RFCs 2119 and 2223) era.

      These days it seems RFCs are published at a rate of around 5 - 30 a month. That might seem high, but considering the broad remit of the IETF and interest in RFCs, I think it's pretty tight. After all, there are hundreds of active I-Ds, and a couple dozen actually under IESG evaluation.

  3. handleoclast
    Coat

    An excellent idea!

    Let's take an ad hoc organization that actually works and encumber it with a formal management structure.

    After all, it worked so well with IANA when ICANN was created to oversee it.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why does IETF need to be separated from ISOC at all?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon