RE: Last Call: 'Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Codepoints' to BCP (fwd)

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> Mmmm... the general IANA policy is that the IANA in fact CAN
> make asisgnments right after the IESG has approved a document.
> So such can in fact happen a few months before the actuial RFC
> is published. 

I was not aware of that.

> In general, IANA does only assign pretty close before the RFC
> get s published (because that is the time when RFC-Editor asks
> them to do so). So if someone wants a quick allocation, then
> the request for such quick allocation has to be made explicit.

So in principle if a WG wants to have a top-level OID assigned as
soon as a particular MIB document is approved, what they have to do
is say that in the (now-required) IANA Considerations section of the
I-D, and then follow up with the IANA (and the RFC Editor) after
IESG approval.

Although I don't think we necessarily need to advertise this fact
in the MIB review guidelines, it is a good thing for MIB Doctors
to know in case the question comes up with a WG we are advising.

> The reason why the RTG area is doing their "special thing" is
> because they REQUIRE that RTG related protocols have at least
> one (prefereably more) implementations BEFORE they can even
> get published as Proposed Std. So therefore they need allocation
> BEFORE the IESG has approved. We do not have that situation with
> MIB Modules.
> 
> So, given the above, do we really need such an early assignment
> procedure for MIB documents?

Given that current policy allows people to get experimental numbers
early in the process and to get permanent numbers as soon as the
IESG has approved the spec, I see no need for change.

Thanks for the clarification, Bert.

Mike