Subject: Re: DLSw: "To IETF or not to IETF..."

From: [email-masked] (Edward L. Stern)
Date: Mon, 2 May 94 15:38:44 EDT

Louise, Riggers,

I am quite pained, but not surprised, at the incredible amount
of confusion that we have caused, both in the press and with
our customers, by our test probe into the IETF.  We knew this
was a risk when we decided to take our current course of action.
Now that we know the extent of this confusion, I strongly believe
that any advantages that would be gained by forming an IETF working
would be more than offset by the disadvantages.

It is extremely important that we head down a path to dispel this
confusion, which seems to be taking 2 forms.  The first, which is the
most important, is "how many standards are we producing, and which one
is the official one?".  We have to give a clear answer, and give it
NOW.  The only way to do this, and have a standard in a reasonable
length of time (i.e. this year) is to drop any attempt to form an
IETF working group.  Otherwise, we WILL be producing 2 standards, and
even though we may know (or believe) that the AIW and IETF standards
will be the same, we will never get that message out to the press and
our customers.  It is too hard to explain, the press WANTS conflict
and confusion because it makes good headlines, and we will be spending
a majority of the next year at our meetings wasting our time with
these kinds of issues rather than technical ones.  

The second form of confusion is that we are a "split camp" of some
sort.  Depending on who I am talking to (these are customers I am
talking to) the split is either 1) pro IBM vs. pro cisco, 2) pro DLSw
vs. anti DLSw, 3) pro IETF vs. pro RIG.  And there are a score of
variations on and theories about these splits.

Now maybe there are some issues where we are divided, but I believe
that we are all in agreement (i.e have CONSENSUS) on one issue, which
is that we all want ONE DLSw STANDARD.  We have to get that message
out, loud and clear.  That message, which is far and away the most
important one, is being lost.

I know we all wish we could just go about the business of producing a
technical document and not have to worry about the rest of this
garbage.  If we make the right decision now we can have that wish.

Therefore I would vote for number Louise's #2, no IETF working group, but
publish the RIG standard as an informational RFC.

Ed Stern
Proteon, Inc.

---

From: Wayne Clark <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 May 94 07:49:00 PDT

Louise, Ed, et.al. -

    When we started the whole DLSw process over a year ago, the
    decision was made to meet at the AIW to work on the technical
    details of making it a standard.  We also stated at that time that
    the eventual product of that work would be a submission to the IETF
    so that our efforts could result in a standard.  What I now hear is
    that some people want to retract that goal.

    This whole issue surrounding "2 standards" is a smokescreen.  I
    sense this feeling that, by being a part of the IETF, the sanctity
    of our work at the AIW is going to somehow be compromised.  Both
    organizations operate on the consensus model and there is no way
    that stray requests for alterations can come into the process at
    the IETF and change the spec without consensus.  The people
    interested in working on DLSw at the IETF is a subset of vendors
    working on it at the AIW.

    With that said, I would like to make the following points:

	(1) An informational RFC is not a standard.  Anyone off the
	    street can write something down and use the IETF
	    respository to hold their thoughts.  While companies can
	    claim anything they want (and we've gots lots of good
	    examples of this lately), a vendor cannot claim conformance
	    to an informational RFC.  I suggest people check out
	    Section 2.4.3 of RFC 1602 (The Internet Standards Process
	    -- Revision 2).

	(2) There is nothing that can replace the value of having an
	    Internet Standard.  Internet Standards are recognized
	    by the industry.  No offense, Lee, but the AIW is not
	    completely recognized yet as a stardards body.

	(3) The industry's expectations have been raised with respect
	    DLSw and the industry is expecting an Internet Standard.
	    Anything less than this would be viewed as a failure of
	    the DLSw working group.

    By the way, many people are at Interop this week so you might not
    get many responses until Interop is over.

Wayne