RE: Generic TC Module

["Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <bwijnen@lucent.com>]

Inline

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-mreview@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-mreview@ops.ietf.org]On
> Behalf Of C. M. Heard
> Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 03:08
> To: Mreview (E-mail)
> Subject: Generic TC Module
> 
> 
> [Discussion of MIB Doctor-like issues diverted to mreview list]
> 
> On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> > Now w.r.t. the TC names [indraft-ietf-isis-wg-mib-22.txt]:
> > - AdminState, can in my view best be named IsisAdminState
> > 
> > But I am not sure about the other 2 [Unsigned16TC and
> > Unsigned8TC]. Renaming them to be Isis-prefixed would be OK.
> > They are somewhat generic though, and we have allowed such
> > generic names in some other MIB modules. But this is a real
> > strange MIB module to have such generic TCs. If they do name
> > them IsisXxxx, then of course if we ever do such TCs in a more
> > generic place, then they can easily replace theirs in a later
> > revision and import from our generic MIB module.
> > 
> > Again it seems time that we start a IANA Maintained
> > GENERIC-TC-MIB module or some such, which extends RFC2579. Maybe
> > we should just do a document that picks up RFC2579 MIB and then
> > add a set of TCs we allready agree on, and then at the same time
> > hand it over to [IANA] for further maintenenace.?
> 
> While I can see the value in a "living document" of generic TCs,
> I am not sure that we would want to hand such a thing over to the
> IANA, nor am I sure that they would want to take on the job.  It
> seems to me that this would be a technical document rather than a
> registry, and they are not really equipped to handle the
> maintenance of technical documents.
> 
> The problem, of course, is that the IETF doesn't really have a
> any process for publishing and maintaining living technical
> documents.  Maybe this is an issue we need to raise over in newtrk.
> 

I would think that if we declare that the TC first needs to be 
documented (not in a MIB module, but just as a simple TC) and
that we need IETF consensus on it, then we can do it. It would
be OK (as far as I am concerned) to just have such a document
as Informational. The IESG does a 2 week Last Call on them,
and only after approval will IANA add the TC.

For many simple TCs (like the Unsigned16TC and Unsigned8TC) I
would think that this can be done fairly easy and quickly.
For more complicated TCs I see problems. But if they are 
complicated, then I doubt they are always genereic. In such
cases we can require them to just be done in some other
document first.

And I think we can defend the idea that the IANA maintained
TCs are good enough for documents at PS, DS and STD level.
We can write that up in our initial document where we 
set the rules for additions and an initial set of TCs.
Maybe that initial doc should be BCP and it is OK to
have a ref to a BCP from a DS or STD doc. And we can
make it explicit that IETF has consensus and IESG approves
that such an IANA MIB module can be referenced from PS,
DS, STD.

See... I'd like to be practical and just DO it.

But if two of our core MIB doctors (Mike and Juergen)
already have an issue with it... then we won't get far.

Bert

> Mike
> 
>