Minutes
IAB Teleconference

Wed 2010-08-25

1. Roll-call, agenda-bash, administrivia, approval of minutes

1.1. Attendance

PRESENT
   Bernard Aboba
   Ron Bonica (IESG liaison to the IAB)
   Ross Callon
   Spencer Dawkins
   Aaron Falk (IRTF Chair)
   Russ Housley (IETF Chair)
   John Klensin
   Olaf Kolkman (IAB Chair)
   Glenn Kowack (RFC Editor Liaison)
   Danny McPherson
   Jon Peterson
   Lynn St.Amour (ISOC Liaison)
   Dow Street (IAB Executive Director)
   Dave Thaler
   Hannes Tschofenig
   Vittal Krishnamurthy (IAB Scribe)
   Hassan Zaheer (IAB Scribe)
APOLOGIES
   Marcelo Bagnulo
   Vijay Gill
   Andrei Robachevsky

1.2. Agenda

The meeting began with a round of introductions for the benefit of the scribes, who also introduced themselves.

1.3. Administrivia

Olaf reminded everyone that the ISOC techchat is on 9/1, and he expects there to be some discussion of the privacy program (an area in which ISOC has recently been working). He asked the IAB if there were any other specific issues that need to be discussed. He and Dow will work with Leslie for next week’s agenda. The EFF/ISOC workshop on privacy is scheduled in two weeks, and Bill Graham had asked if someone from IAB can participate. Lynn then requested the members to respond to the survey from Bill Graham. Hannes is doing a write-up on privacy for the EFF/ISOC workshop and will send it to the IAB for feedback. There was a short discussion of whether this paper would be an individual submission or “for the IAB”; the previous paper to W3C was not a formal IAB document, but had several IAB members as authors and pointed to things for which there is already documented consensus. Due to the timeline, this write-up is likely to follow a similar approach, but Hannes will seek feedback on the paper from the board anyway.

1.4. Meeting Minutes

No meeting minutes were reviewed during this call.

2. Liaison Reports

2.1. ISOC Liaison

There was a short discussion of Lynn’s written report. Olaf inquired about the status of the ITU-T IPv6 meeting. Lynn replied that there were many interesting discussions, but that the direction as to where the work would go next was to be determined.

<begin ISOC Liaison written report>

ISOC’s Liaison Report to the IAB
Wednesday, August 24th, 2010

Topics:

I. DNSSEC History Project –- submitted by Leslie Daigle

After discussion with Steve Crocker and other individuals, ISOC pulled together a wiki to set up a data collection project for the history of the development of DNSSEC. At this point, we are looking to collect as much data as possible, and will see what can be mined from that at a future point. Apart from the specific interest in DNSSEC, we’re hopeful this will provide an illustration of the many important pieces in the puzzle of developing, refining and deploying Internet technologies. You can see the wiki page (and contribute!) at:
https://wiki.tools.isoc.org/DNSSEC_History_Project

A. ITU IPv6 Group Meeting – submitted by Bill Graham

ISOC is preparing to attend the ITU IPv6 Group Meeting in Geneva, Sept 1st and 2nd. This is the second meeting of the group, jointly convened by the ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization and Telecom Development Sectors. At its March meeting, two Correspondence Groups were formed to enquire if there are problems with the current system of Internet address allocation (i.e., RIRs) and what should be the ITU’s role going forward, particularly in capacity building. ISOC’s position will be that the current system is working, is legitimate, and is able to effectively involve all interested stakeholders in the process.

B. Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) — submitted by Leslie Daigle

We mentioned, in early June, that we were supportive of the US companies’ efforts to put together a discussion forum to address operators’ technical issues, particularly as regards questions coming from the FCC. We’ve been participating in their development discussions. So far, it is still shaping up to be fairly US-centric, and the emphasis on member participation is making it look like the range of topics it could possibly address will be limited.

<end ISOC Liaison written report>

2.2. IESG Liaison

Olaf suggested deferring the question from Dan Romanscanu until later in the meeting (item #8 below), and asked Ron if there were other items. Ron reported that the CCSA (China Communication Standard Association) sent a liaison to the ITU saying that it was concerned about the speed of execution on MPLS at IETF. He wanted to know how the IETF should respond. The board briefly discussed the matter and concluded that since this is purely about a China communications standards organization, the IETF should wait and track, but retain focus on the ongoing IETF work in MPLS. In general, the IAB and IETF do not work directly with organizations of individual nations, but rather coordinate (often via ISOC) through multi-national bodies and through the work of individual IETF contributors.

<begin IESG Liaison written report>

IAB Response to Appeal from J.F.C. Morfin Regarding IDNA 2008 Publication
=================================================================== The IESG has received this response. The IESG will notify the community via the IETF-Announce mailing list of the decision not to advance draft-ietf-idnabis-mappings.

Dan Romascanu asks for clarification regarding the level of detail required in working group charters (regarding section 4 of the appeal response).

China Communication Standard Association (CCSA) ==========================================
The CCSA sent ITU-T SG15 a liaison that a number of us have discussed around the August 2nd meeting. CCSA tells the ITU-T that the IETF management has been performing slowly and encourages the ITU-T to take on MPLS-TP work.

Working Party 3 of SG15 will be meeting the week after Beijing and will need to send a response liaison.

Adrian Farrel will be asking the IESG for guidance. Options are:

1. Send a liaison to SG15 giving the IETF position that SG15 should respond that:
   • The JWT agreement says all MPLS-TP work should be done in the IETF
   • That it is not appropriate for the ITU-T to comment on the behavior of IETF management, but recommending that the CCSA take any complaint to the IETF.
2. Submit a contribution to the WP3 meeting as input to the liaison response carrying these messages
3. Attend the WP3 meeting and take this position during the discussion of the liaison response
4. Do nothing

<end IESG Liaison written report>

2.3. RFC Editor Liaison

Glenn reported that they are on track with the RFC Editor work. The Maastricht meetings went well – they had meetings with about 30 people. They are currently working on the changes to RFC 5620, job description, hiring process, etc. He expects to get a report out in the first week of September. He noted that the only remaining question is how the report will be received, and in turn, what follow-on work will be needed. He mentioned that they followed a complete escalation procedure on the IDNA docs, and that they are back to moving smoothly in the production center. The citations committee is up and running. There was the request from J.F.C. Morfin about holding publication until the appeal was complete, but Glenn will ask him to talk to the streams owners since they assert control over whether to hold publication (i.e. the RFC Editor takes action per their request).

Glenn’s combined RFC Editor and IAB T-RSE report can be found here:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rse/TransitionalRSE_Report5_Wk25.pdf

2.4. IRTF Chair

Aaron had nothing major to report.

3. IAB Liaison to Nomcom

Spencer Dawkins is the IAB Liaison to Nomcom 2010. He reported that things are moving, but slowly, and had raised two questions in an earlier email to the IAB:

a. The IAB liaison advisory role

Spencer asked “Am I only speaking as IAB liaison, or can I express personal statements also?”. Dave thought the answer had varied by Nomcom, and Jon agreed. Olaf asked whether there was anything in particular that he needed from the IAB. Spencer
replied that internal IAB notes state that the liaison speaks only as an official liaison. Ross explained that it is hard to give complete instructions to liaisons, for example, about whether to comment on the candidates for various positions. He explained that when he was IESG nomcom liaison, his understanding was that he was to not give individual comments, and that any personal input would go via the normal IETF webpage.

Olaf asked whether this has been discussed in the nomcom itself, to which Spencer said that the question came up but he wanted to verify with the IAB. Jon pointed out that liaisons have a particular responsibility to the board. Danny agreed and stated one needs to be very clear whether they are making a comment as an individual or on behalf of the IAB.

b. Requirements for IESG slate confirmation

Spencer asked about IAB correspondence published by Geoff Houston in 2003. Point #6 of that note deals with “what info will be shared with confirming bodies.” Nomcom is now asking the candidates if there is anything for “off the record”, so the expectation is that everything else will be shared with the IAB (and the questionnaires now say this). Bernard said that is what has been done the last few years and it seemed to work.

Spencer took an action point to clarify that in the IAB wiki and confirm with nomcom. Olaf noted that this had been a source of tension between the nomcom and the IAB, and that the proposed approach seemed to work well in recent years.

4. IAB Document Errata – Danny

This item was deferred until the next meeting.

5. ITU Proposal for IPv6 Registry

Spencer said that he, Ross, and Patrik had discussed and edited the text of a liaison, and wanted to know if the liaison is ready to send, and if so
who should send it. The members discussed at length. Olaf asked about a deadline, and there was agreement that the note should delivered before the September coordination meeting. Olaf will conduct a final review tomorrow, and then send it “for the IAB”.

6. EC Group on Internet of Things

Hannes summarized that Gonzalo and Russ were approached by individuals of the European Commission to have a meeting. Gonzalo initially arranged a meeting after IETF, but soon discovered that there were multiple EC groups who may be involved. This initial meeting was postponed due to scheduling constraints in August.

One of the EC groups wants to meet with IAB to talk about the Internet of Things. There is another group that has created a task force, identified WGs, and asked for an expert from those WGs. Hannes suggested that for the former group, since he, Aaron, and Marcelo are planning to organize a workshop on the Internet of Things, it would make sense to try to involve this group. However, doing so will take a little bit of time, to establish longer relationship. He has coordinated with Lucy Lynch (ISOC) about longer term plans, but there are some funding considerations. He then suggested that if there is someone near Brussels who can stay in touch, that would be good but for now the IAB would need to nominate someone quickly. Olaf asked about specific steps for the IAB, beyond organizing a future workshop and talking to the 2-3 groups within the EC. Hannes saw 3 items.

1. Define the scope of the workshop – focusing on items that affect the internet architecture.
2. Get a new community into the IETF. He noted there are researchers involved, and people trying to work in business in this space (with some possible overlap with smartgrid).
3. Liaison. There could be some political elements involved, as well as privacy aspects. As such, the IAB may get asked for an opinion on many technical and semi-technical topics.

Russ mentioned that there is a group that wants to meet with the IESG and that they are interested in standards processes, etc. They want to meet in Rome, during the RIPE meeting. He has not yet agreed and had asked for an agenda before committing. Marcelo has been the main contact and is still on vacation. He wanted to know whether we are going to have some ongoing interaction with EC, and if so, who would be the lead?

Aaron had a few more data points. He reported that there is a group trying to start an IRTF RG in this space, and that there is interest in trying to get a BOF in Beijing. So suggested that coordination before then would be useful. If there is a BOF then, it could be chance to do pre-work for the workshop.

Hannes again noted that there are several different groups in the EC who are interested to talking to us, that it would be good to meet and see what their concerns are. The board agreed, and will discuss specific next steps on the IAB mailing list.

7. New Work Mailing List – [10 min]

Spencer mentioned that there are two proposals on the mailing list for:

 – New work membership on IAB-IETF side
 – New work membership for other SDOs

He and John came up with a list of categories for the IAB and IETF members, to give the list manager more guidance so that they don’t have to ask about every subscription request. The board discussed at length, noting that some of the current addresses are mail exploders, and that the IETF/IAB does not know who from the other SDOs should be on the list. It was agreed that going forward each external SDO would use a single exploder address, and then manage individual accounts themselves via the exploder. If there are no further comments from the IAB within the next 24 hours, this procedure will be set in motion.

Spencer asked about finding a volunteer to manage this list, and after a brief discussion the group agreed to take the topic to the mailing list. Spencer will keep ownership of this item for now until the other SDOs are informed and the list changes made.

8. Question from Dan Romascanu Regarding “more specific charter items”

The IAB response to the J.F.C. Morfin appeal had the recommendation that WG charters attempt to be more specific in their work items. This will make it easier to judge whether document publication decisions align with the agreed upon goals of a working group. This recommendation triggered an email from Dan Romanscanu asking for clarification from the IAB. In turn, a meta-level question arose regarding IAB recommendations resulting from appeals, particularly those with potential long-term consequences, when part of the IAB is recused from the deliberations. In the Morfin appeal, Russ Housely (IETF Chair), Ross Callon (former IESG during the initial appeal), and John Klensin (author of a relevant document) had been recused.

Olaf suggested the IAB consider these two parts separately:

1. IAB Recommendations: If an appeal is dealt with by a subset of the IAB, and there are broad recommendations, should we have that reviewed by the whole IAB before it goes out?. He was not sure if the board needed to close this discussion in this meeting. He noted email from IAB members discussing this question, but further consideration was deferred until the next meeting.
2. Response to the Dan’s question / IESG Guidance

Dave Thaler mentioned that some well written and up-to-date WG charters commonly have phrases such as “submit X as consideration for draft standard”, which the non-recused portion of the IAB thought was good practice. Other charters are more ambiguous in their deliverables (as was the case in the appeal). Jon added that the most of time this doesn’t matter, and at the outset of a WG it is sometimes hard to anticipate exactly what the work will be. It is only when the appeal comes up, and you have to go to the charter and there is not much to work with, that the problem arises. When the charter is at such a high level, one can’t tell what is supposed to be part of the “contract”. There were suggestions to add “figure out the work, then re-charter” to a WG’s initial charter if deliverables are unknown. John had two quick observations:

a) The IESG has heavy work load, so the IAB should be careful not to increase it just to avoid appeals

b) It is sympathetic to say that “the more specific the WG can make things, the better”, but leave that management judgement to the ADs

Dave Thaler then brought the members’ attention to the fact that only one item in the IAB response “directed” the IESG; for the other two items the IAB used the terms “recommends” and “could have”. These words were chosen deliberately, and can be thought of as analogous to the MUST/SHOULD/MAY language; for the latter two, the IAB at times makes recommendations to the IESG which the IESG may choose not to implement.

9. IAB Chair Selection Procedures / Schedule – [10 min]

This item was deferred until next call.

10. Conclude Call

Olaf thanked IAB members and scribes for their participation and concluded the meeting.