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Appeal of IESG Decision of July 10, 2006 from Dean Anderson (Dean Anderson) - 2006-09-10
Response - 2006-09-27

From: Leslie Daigle

To: Dean Anderson

Cc: iab; iesg

Subject: Appeal of IESG Decision of July 10, 2006

On September 10, the IAB received an appeal from Dean Anderson on the

IESG’s decision to Last Call draft-ietf-grow-anycast-03.

  1. SUMMARY OF IAB RESPONSE

The appeal is denied.

  1. BACKGROUND

draft-ietf-grow-anycast, “Operation of Anycast Services” is a work item

of the GROW WG. In response to a request [0] from the WG chair, Geoff

Huston, to advance the document to BCP the IESG issued an IETF Last Call

on June 2, 2006. Mr. Anderson appealed the issuing of the Last Call to the

IESG which denied the appeal. Mr. Anderson subsequently appealed to the IAB.

Timeline:

Jun 2, 2006: The IESG issues an IETF Last Call for draft-ietf-grow-anycast-03.

Jun 13, 2006: Mr. Anderson appeals the Last Call.

Jul 1, 2006: Mr. Huston issues a WG LC for draft-ietf-grow-anycast-04

Jul 10, 2006: The IESG rejects Mr. Anderson’s appeal.

Jul 26, 2006: Mr. Huston calls WG consensus.

Aug 30, 2006: The IESG issues an IETF Last Call for draft-ietf-grow-anycast-04.

Sep 10, 2006: Mr. Anderson appeals to the IAB.

Mr. Anderson’s appeal raises four objections, one substantive and three

procedural:

S1. The document is technically flawed.

P1. The WG Chair (Mr. Huston) was incorrect to declare consensus

on the document as advanced and therefore the IESG was incorrect

to Last Call it.

P2. The document relies upon claims by Daniel Karrenberg about the

behavior of Anycast DNS and these claims were scientifically

fraudulent.

P3. That a number of IETF participants, including, but not limited to

IESG members Brian Carpenter and David Kessens had conflicts

of interest which should have caused them to recuse themselves

from decisions.

  1. ANALYSIS

S1. Technical Flaws

Because the disposition of this document has not yet been decided on

by the IESG and part of the purpose of IESG review is evaluating the

quality of the technology, the possible existence of technical flaws

is not yet appealable. The IAB notes that the IETF Last Call has expired

and encourages the IESG to treat the technical comments in this appeal

as Last Call comments.

P1. Adequacy of WG Process

Mr. Anderson argues that the WG Chair was incorrect to declare consensus.

The IAB has reviewed the mailing list traffic during the Last Call and is

satisfied that there was indeed rough consensus to advance the -02 version

of the draft to the IESG. Indeed, Mr. Anderson appears to have conceded

this point [1]:

Rather, my interest now is to record that there were objections

raised at the time. I’m willing to acknowledge that these

objections were a minority view. I appreciate your attention

to the accuracy of the record.

Mr. Anderson also raises the issue of the WGLC having been made on the

-02 draft, whereas the -04 draft is being advanced. The changes between

these document versions are minimal in the judgement of the IAB and are

with the range of normal changes made without issuing subsequent WGLCs.

Finally, on July 1, 2006, Mr. Huston issued a WGLC [2] on the -04 draft

and called consensus on July 26, 2006 [3]. This WGLC occurred subsequent

to Mr. Anderson’s appeal to the IESG but prior to the issuance of the IETF

Last Call. In this WGLC, responses were overwhelmingly in favor of

advancement, with only Mr. Anderson objecting. Mr. Anderson’s objections

to the decision to IETF Last Call the -03 version of the document are

therefore moot.

P2. Scientific Fraud

Mr. Anderson claims that this document is based on scientific fraud in that

it relies on assertions that stateful DNS worked, made by Daniel Karrenberg

without showing supporting measurements. The IAB’s review of Anderson’s

appeal uncovers only a presentation [4] by Mr. Karrenberg in which he

presents some measurements about BGP stability and says (on slide 72):

Plea

This does not mean that anycast for DNS root service is unstable

or broken.

Please do not spread this false rumor!

However the data and its possible interpretations are judged, Mr. Anderson

does not show that the WG relied upon Mr. Karrenberg’s claims in order to

advance the document. Indeed, draft-ietf-grow-anycast-04 contains substantial

material about situations in which use of Anycast is problematic (see

Section 4), so it is clear that the WG considered this issue.

P3. Conflicts of Interest

Mr. Anderson argues that IESG members Brian Carpenter and David Kessens

and WG Chair Mr. Huston had conflicts of interest and should have recused

themselves from this decision. The IAB has reviewed the record and found

no evidence of relevant conflict of interest.

CONCLUSION

The technical issue raised by Mr. Anderson is not appealable at this time.

The IAB has reviewed the procedural issues raised by Mr. Anderson and on

the basis of the available record, the IAB concludes that the WG Chair

acted correctly in calling WG consensus and the IESG acted correctly in

issuing the IETF Last Call. We therefore conclude that the appeal should

be denied and the original IESG decision upheld.

Note: IAB members Kurt Lindqvist and Olaf Kolkman recused themselves from

this decision.

Leslie,

for the IAB.

[0] http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/grow/msg00580.html

[1] http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/grow/msg00462.html

[2] http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/grow/msg00553.html

[3] http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/grow/msg00580.html

[4] http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-50/presentations/ripe50-plenary-tue-anycast.pdf