A Way Forward

[Sean Doran <smd@ab.use.net>]

(public message follows)

Kurtis -

On Saturday, Mar 22, 2003, at 05:23 Europe/London, Kurt Erik Lindqvist 
wrote:

> I have no problem with loading the chairs (I guess Sean will give me a 
> hard time for this...:) )
No.  Setting out a (fairly typical) process and trying to convince the
volunteers here to come to consensus on the first item was a
nearly-complete failure, so I am watching to see if a consensus
develops over other approaches.

I have to say that at least three stark contrasts -- that advanced by
tli/rja suggesting a new process, that advanced by Christian Huitema
(and apparently attractive to you) suggesting a parallelization of 
labour,
and that advanced by Ohta-san, suggesting all-out warfare, each
have their alluring qualities (and some drawbacks), as well as 
considerable
history within other parts of the IETF.

There is also an unstated but discussed-in-the-background
approach of developing consensus over a document stating that:
	
	- scalable site-multihoming IS in the critical path of deployment
	- the problem is not currently well-understood within the IETF
	- there are many ideas about the problem, and about its solution
	- there are no known working-code/tested solutions
	- there is no agreed way to evaluate such solutions properly anyway
		- however, some are worth development & experimentation
		  (even those that would require a fundamental revisiting of
		  the architectural underpinnings of IPv6 by the Internet Area)
		- some are plainly stupid
	- "we tried and failed"

Which approach to support officially is not clear to me right now,
although *personally* I am leaning towards the last one.   Since that
approach can be done later if necessary ("we tried twice and failed"...
"we tried n times and failed"), I shall probably continue to hover in 
the
background until what looks like a very very very rough consensus
starts to develop on this.

	Sean.