RE: What to do when moving from experimental to PS

[Andy Bierman <abierman@cisco.com>]

At 05:29 AM 10/25/2002 +0200, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
>> 
>> Bert> MIB reviewers/doctors:
>> 
>> Bert> If you take a look at:
>> Bert> 
>> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ops-rfc2786std-00.txt
>> 
>> Bert> then you can see that the author wants to keep the MIB under
>> Bert> experimental, even when we were to approve it as PS.  I think
>> Bert> this is wrong... but author keeps pushing back
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> Bert> Any supporters (with explanation why) for one or the other
>> Bert> approach?
>> 
>> I support to move the top-level registration.
>> 
>> How many deployed implementations of this MIB are there? How many do
>> we expect in 3 years? If the later number is significantly larger than
>> the first one, we should just do the right thing. (And if the later
>> number is not significantly larger, then there is probably not much
>> value to put this on the standards track in the first place.)
>> 
>Difficult to say if people will actually use it 3 years from now.
>The cable-modem industry has this MIB as "mandatory to implement" if
>the  cable modems want to be certified, so there is very wide 
>implementation and deployment in their industry.
>
>The reason I want it on the standards track is because the security ADs
>and many others tell me that this is very usefull technology. 
>So one would expect people will adopt it and implement... but who are
>we to predict the future.

I am divided on this issue.  On the one hand, there is the notion
of doing the right thing wrt/ standards. On the other is the
pragmatic concern of breaking existing implementations just to
move the MIB root.  The reality is that some vendors will have
to support the MIB in both MIB roots for a number of years if
the root is moved now.  Is this better or worse than the possible
confusion of a standards track MIB rooted under 'experiment'?
I don't know.

There should be a high-level policy that MIBs granted a root
assignment under experimental can never be on the standards
track unless they are re-rooted.  Was that policy known to the
WG when the initial submission was assigned a root?  If not,
then they have a case for not moving the root.


>Bert
>> /js

Andy