RE: Target times for MIB Doctor Review

["Romascanu, Dan \(Dan\)" <dromasca@avaya.com>]

 I do not believe that declaring an administrative 30 days review period
is of any good. I do not believe that MIB modules (or any IETF
documents) should be released without proper scrutiny. The solution of
the problem is not in lowering the threshold of quality. Andy, Dave
Perkins and Harrie already made valid points that I mostly agree to.
They inspired me into making the proposal below, which basically changes
the way the MIB Doctors 'institution' operates. 

1. Provide MIB compilation and CLR checking tools publicly available on
the IETF Web site. MIB submissions should be subject of proper
compilation requirements by using the publicly available tools, same as
I-Ds can be checked by using idnits. This would allow for consistent
compilation by all authors and lead the WG chairs to verify the syntax
problems of MIB modules submitted in their realms without being MIB
experts.
2. MIB advisors should be assigned to WGs who have MIB modules in their
charter. By doing this they will encounter the MIB modules in early
phases of design, and will have time to understand better the
technology. In some cases this is their current field of technology -
for example my employer is in VoIP and real-time communications, and
it's much easier for me nowadays to provide support in this area. The
advisers will perform the full MIB Doctor review during the WGLC, and
their recommendation will be part of the proto submission. 

By using the combination of publicly available tools, MIB advising from
earlier stages of design, and MIB review during the WGLC we eliminate
the need for MIB Doctor review at AD / IESG level. The AD will need to
deal only with individual submissions and requests from external SDOs. 

Regards,

Dan


 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-mreview@ops.ietf.org 
> [mailto:owner-mreview@ops.ietf.org] On Behalf Of Wijnen, Bert (Bert)
> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 4:33 AM
> To: Mreview (E-mail)
> Subject: Target times for MIB Doctor Review
> 
> I am here in an IESG retreat about improving IESG/IETF performance.
> 
> One of the things being discussed is that MIB doctor review 
> (one of the situations where some ADs put the doc in "expert 
> review" status as the substate in the I-D tracker) can take 
> enourmously long.
> 
> The main reason is that it is often difficult to find a 
> reviewer, and then the doc sort of by defaults ends up in my 
> queue (which is too long already).
> 
> So the suggestion is that we would like to have a target of 
> MIB Doctor review to be done within 30 days of the request.
> 
> I want to hear from you how to deal with that?
> If we cannot find a good solution, then the only alternative 
> that I can see is that we will get MIB documents onto IETF 
> Last Call and onto IESG without the normal MIB Doctor review, 
> and so the OPS-NM AD (for now that is me) will only check for 
> fatal errors.
> 
> The result might be that we end up with MIB documents in much 
> worse shape than what we have seen over the last few years.
> 
> What do we think about this?
> 
> Bert
> 
>