CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_


Reported by Brian Carpenter/CERN and Tim Dixon/RARE with additional text
from Phill Gross/ANS

Minutes of the IPng Decision Process BOF (IPDECIDE)



Summary and Results


The IPng Decision Process BOF was intended to help re-focus attention on
the very important topic of making a decision between the candidates for
IPng.  The BOF focused on the issues of who should take the lead in
making the recommendation to the community and what criteria should be
used to reach the recommendation.  The discussion ranged widely, but
some key points emerged:


  o Vendors and operators look to the IETF to reach a clear decision.

  o It would be bad to offer the market an ambiguous decision.

  o The market will resist any IPng that does not just look like a new
    release of IP. Co-existence, and ease and cost of transition,
    should be key decision criteria.

  o It is unclear how to prove that any proposal truly scales to a
    billion nodes.

  o Timescales for IPv4 address depletion and for IPng deployment are
    not well understood.

  o The IESG needs to figure out how to pursue the decision process and
    avoid wasted effort on competing proposals.  Making a reasonable
    well-founded decision earlier was preferred over taking longer to
    decide and allowing major deployment of competing proposals.


In the end, the BOF led very productively to a follow-up discussion in
the Thursday afternoon open plenary.  During the open plenary, a
proposal that the IESG should take the lead responsibility for
recommending an IPng choice to the IETF community met with strong
consensus.  This proposal included a series of steps that the IESG
should take, with strong community involvment, toward a recommendation.

We now give a more detailed review of the BOF discussion, in the
interest of recording the wide range of opinions expressed.

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Meeting Goals

The purpose of the BOF was to focus on the decision process for IPng
rather than on technical criteria, the proposals themselves, or on the
working group process.


Attendance

About 200 people attended, plus about 100 MBONE auditors.  Members of
the audience represented the IETF's typical wide community of service
providers, equipment vendors and engineers.


The Need for a Decision

The view was frequently expressed that a decision was needed.  Vendors
and operators looked to the IETF to reach a clear decision.  The IPng
issue had been widely publicized for some time and the expectation
clearly was that it was the responsibility of the IETF to decide.
Operators simply reacted to the demands of their customers:  the IETF
must set the technical standards.  The IETF was doing a disservice to
the community by appearing to be indecisive.

The alternative of ``letting the market decide'' (whatever that may
mean) was criticised on several grounds:


  o There are infrastructural issues, like DNS, which go hand-in-hand
    with the choice of a protocol and which cannot reasonably be
    expected to deal with 4 protocols.

  o There are already enough other choices (both proprietary and
    otherwise) in the marketplace.

  o The decision was too complicated for a rational market-led
    solution.


The fact that the Internet is doubling in size about every 11 months
means that the cost of transition to IPng (in terms of equipment and
manpower) is also increasing.  The longer it takes to reach a decision,
the more costly the process of transition and the more difficult it is
to undertake.

There were some minority views expressed, including:


  o The decision will inevitably be controlled by the pricing policy of
    vendors.


                                  2





  o Router vendors are already supporting multiple network-layer
    protocols; in principle it would not be significantly more
    difficult to support several IPng solutions at the same time.


Should there be a decision to recommend one proposal, or simply to
eliminate some of the candidates?  Concern was expressed about the
feasibility of conducting reasonably-sized trials of more than one
selected protocol and of the confusing signals this would send the
market:  IETF decisions now have an enormous potential economic impact
on suppliers of equipment and services.  It was also likely that
uncertainty would lead to customers holding back on their purchases of
networking equipment until the situation was clearer.

A straw poll showed a clear majority view that there should be a
decision for one solution.


The Time Scale for a Decision

The best guesstimates for the remaining lifetime of the IPv4 address
space put the figure at around five to seven years, assuming CIDR is
widely deployed.  A margin of potential error in these figures is to be
expected---one suggestion was that they could be out by a factor of four
in either direction.  However, the address space is only five doublings
away from exhaustion.

It was strongly recommended that more work be done on investigating the
feasible remaining lifetime of IPv4.

It is also difficult to estimate the time taken to implement, test and
then deploy any chosen solution:  it was not clear who was best placed
to do this.  The ordering of the decisions might also have a different
priority for customers and vendors than for the IETF. For example, it
might be necessary to have a decision about DNS changes early in order
to deploy the infrastructure necessary to support IPng in advance of the
availability of the IPng protocol itself.  The IETF work was not
proceeding in this order.


The Evaluation Process

Concern was expressed that the evaluation criteria which had so far been
discussed were too general to support a defensible choice on the grounds
of technical adequacy.  The criteria had emerged in parallel with the
protocol designs, and had so far not gelled enough to eliminate any
candidate.  There were also potential legal difficulties if the IETF
appeared to be eliminating proposals on arbitrary grounds.

It was stated frequently and forcibly that the transition costs should
be a significant factor in the selection criteria.  Concerns were
expressed by several service providers that the developers had little

                                  3





appreciation of the real-world networking complexities that transition
would force people to cope with.  If the cost of transition outweighed
the pain of other solutions (application gateways or address
translators) customers would not deploy IPng.

It was suggested a couple of times that the working groups should be
invited to evaluate each others' proposals in order to investigate their
weaknesses, or that the proposals should be vetted by disinterested
parties.  It was suggested that the proposals were too similar for any
reasonable choice to be made on the grounds of technical strength.
However there was no consensus on these points.

Although one of the goals of IPng had been to use the inevitable
transition required by address exhaustion and routing problems to
incorporate new features, there were a number of concerns about bundling
too much additional complexity into an already difficult problem.  It
wasn't even clear that the technology yet existed to handle some of the
new features that had been touted for IPng.  IPng should appear simply
like a new release of IPv4; although this would not necessarily bring
new features, people would still transition through enlightened
self-interest---to avoid disconnection from the global Internet in the
future.  There was no consensus about how to resolve this dilemma, since
both smooth transition and multimedia support are musts.

Various parties were identified as needing to assist in the evaluation
process:


  o Operators, who need to understand deployment costs and scenarios.
  o Vendors, who understand the implementation consequences.



The Decision Process

There is an IETF process for making a decision on protocol standards:
working groups can be given deadlines to submit papers to the IESG which
then decides which to progress as standards.  It was suggested that this
process has only broken down in that the deadlines had not been applied.

Other suggestions included:


  o Urging coalitions between the different working groups.

  o Forming an ``IPng'' working group either to make recommendations or
    to draw together the different proposals.

  o Asking the IESG or even the IAB to drive the decision process.


On the basis of a straw poll, there was strong consensus that the
decision should be made on technical grounds alone (subject to

                                  4





reasonable costs of implementation, deployment and transition).

It was repeatedly stated that an obvious requirement was that the
proposed solution should work.  There were at least two components to
this:  interoperability and scaling.  This would be difficult to
establish without large-scale piloting.  There was no consensus on who
might reasonably be expected to participate in such an exercise.

The following day, at the Thursday open plenary session, a proposal that
the IESG should take the responsibility of recommending an IPng choice
to the IETF met with strong consensus.  This proposal included a series
of steps that the IESG should take to develop a progressive decision
with community involvement.


Attendees

George Abe               [email protected]
Chris Adie               [email protected]
Nick Alfano              [email protected]
James Allard             [email protected]
Bernt Allonen            [email protected]
Harald Alvestrand        [email protected]
Frederik Andersen        [email protected]
Per Andersson            [email protected]
Toshiya Asaba            [email protected]
Josee Auber              [email protected]
Anders Baardsgaad        [email protected]
Dennis Baker             [email protected]
Jim Barnes               [email protected]
Tony Bates               [email protected]
Nutan Behki              [email protected]
Axel Belinfante          [email protected]
Vincent Berkhout         [email protected]
Per Bilse                [email protected]
Jim Binkley              [email protected]
Robert Blokzijl          [email protected]
Rebecca Bostwick         [email protected]
Jim Bound                [email protected]
Robert Braden            [email protected]
Stefan Braun             [email protected]
Thomas Brisco            [email protected]
Ronald Broersma          [email protected]
J. Nevil Brownlee        [email protected]
Steve Buchko             [email protected]
Ross Callon              [email protected]
Peter Cameron            [email protected]
C. Allan Cargille        [email protected]
Brian Carpenter          [email protected]
Vinton Cerf              [email protected]
George Chang             [email protected]
A. Lyman Chapin          [email protected]
Chris Chiotasso          [email protected]

                                  5





Henry Clark              [email protected]
Richard Colella          [email protected]
David Conrad             [email protected]
Al Costanzo              [email protected]
Stephen Crocker          [email protected]
Dave Cullerot            [email protected]
Geert Jan de Groot       [email protected]
Stephen Deering          [email protected]
Steve DeJarnett          [email protected]
Kurt Dobbins             [email protected]
Jeffrey Dunn             [email protected]
Francis Dupont           [email protected]
Toerless Eckert          [email protected]
Kjeld Borch Egevang      [email protected]
Ed Ellesson              [email protected]
Robert Enger             [email protected]
Hans Eriksson            [email protected]
Deborah Estrin           [email protected]
Dino Farinacci           [email protected]
Stefan Fassbender        [email protected]
Eric Fleischman          [email protected]
Peter Ford               [email protected]
Osten Franberg           [email protected]
Paul Francis             [email protected]
Dan Frommer              [email protected]
Shoji Fukutomi           [email protected]
Vince Fuller             [email protected]
Peter Furniss            [email protected]
Eugene Geer              [email protected]
Robert Gilligan          [email protected]
Joseph Godsil            [email protected]
Tim Goodwin              [email protected]
Ramesh Govindan          [email protected]
Marcel Graf              graf%[email protected]
Terry Gray               [email protected]
Ron Greve                [email protected]
Phillip Gross            [email protected]
Chris Gunner             [email protected]
Joel Halpern             [email protected]
Susan Hares              [email protected]
Denise Heagerty          [email protected]
Marco Hernandez          [email protected]
Robert Hinden            [email protected]
Frank Hoffmann           [email protected]
John Hopkins             [email protected]
Marc Horowitz            [email protected]
Chris Howard             [email protected]
Christian Huitema        [email protected]
Erik Huizer              [email protected]
Geoff Huston             [email protected]
Phil Irey                [email protected]
Ole Jacobsen             [email protected]
David Jacobson           [email protected]
Ronald Jacoby            [email protected]

                                  6





Ola Johansson            [email protected]
David Johnson            [email protected]
Laurent Joncheray        [email protected]
Philip Jones             [email protected]
Cyndi Jung               [email protected]
Thomas Kaeppner          kaeppner%[email protected]
Tomaz Kalin              [email protected]
Scott Kaplan             [email protected]
Anders Karlsson          [email protected]
Daniel Karrenberg        [email protected]
Frank Kastenholz         [email protected]
Peter Kaufmann           [email protected]
Sean Kennedy             [email protected]
Stephen Kent             [email protected]
Zbigniew Kielczewski     [email protected]
John Klensin             [email protected]
Mark Knopper             [email protected]
Peter Koch               [email protected]
Rajeev Kochhar           [email protected]
Ton Koelman              [email protected]
Mark Kosters             [email protected]
Glenn Kowack             [email protected]
John Krawczyk            [email protected]
Arnold Krechel           [email protected]
John Larson              [email protected]
Eliot Lear               [email protected]
Jose Legatheaux Martins  [email protected]
Tony Li                  [email protected]
Susan Lin                [email protected]
John Lindsay             [email protected]
Robin Littlefield        [email protected]
Anne Lord                [email protected]
Peter Lothberg           [email protected]
Paul Lustgarten          [email protected]
Paolo Malara             [email protected]
Allison Mankin           [email protected]
Bill Manning             [email protected]
David Marlow             [email protected]
Cynthia Martin           [email protected]
Ignacio Martinez         [email protected]
Jun Matsukata            [email protected]
Keith McCloghrie         [email protected]
Peter Merdian            [email protected]
Greg Minshall            [email protected]
Keith Mitchell           [email protected]
Pushpendra Mohta         [email protected]
Keith Moore              [email protected]
Kees Neggers             [email protected]
Peder Chr.  Noergaard    [email protected]
Erik Nordmark            [email protected]
David O'Leary            [email protected]
Masataka Ohta            [email protected]
Jorg Ott                 [email protected]
Christian Panigl         [email protected]

                                  7





Andrew Partan            [email protected]
Michael Patton           [email protected]
Geir Pedersen            [email protected]
Charles Perkins          [email protected]
Drew Perkins             [email protected]
David Piscitello         [email protected]
Mel Pleasant             [email protected]
Willi Porten             [email protected]
Mark Prior               [email protected]
Juergen Rauschenbach     [email protected]
Alex Reijnierse          [email protected]
Victor Reijs             [email protected]
Robert Reschly           [email protected]
Georg Richter            [email protected]
Dan Romascanu            [email protected]
Luc Rooijakkers          [email protected]
Marjo Rottschaefer
Hal Sandick              [email protected]
Miguel Sanz              [email protected]
Jon Saperia              [email protected]
Eve Schooler             [email protected]
John Scudder             [email protected]
Tim Seaver               [email protected]
Kitty Shih               [email protected]
William Simpson          [email protected]
W. David Sincoskie       [email protected]
Simon Spero              [email protected]
Vladimir Sukonnik        [email protected]
Fumio Teraoka            [email protected]
Marten Terpstra          [email protected]
Kamlesh Tewani           [email protected]
Richard Thomas           [email protected]
Susan Thomson            [email protected]
Martin Toet              [email protected]
Antoine Trannoy          [email protected]
Robert Ullmann           [email protected]
Willem van der Scheun    [email protected]
Guido van Rossum         [email protected]
Werner Vogels            [email protected]
Ruediger Volk            [email protected]
Steven Waldbusser        [email protected]
Sandro Wallach           [email protected]
Abel Weinrib             [email protected]
Douglas Williams         [email protected]
Kirk Williams            [email protected]
Steven Willis            [email protected]
Sam Wilson               [email protected]
Wilfried Woeber          [email protected]
Jessica Yu               [email protected]
Paul Zawada              [email protected]



                                  8

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