Why a RADEXT BOF?

[Bernard Aboba <aboba@internaut.com>]

Recently I was asked what the purpose of the RADEXT BOF is... and how we
can measure success.

The RADEXT BOF was started as the result of a dinner that we had at IETF
57, where draft authors described their ongoing RADIUS work.  Attendees
also included representatives from SDOs such as 3GPP2 and IEEE 802 as well
as trade associations such as WFA.  The ongoing work was surprisingly
extensive and if anything was accelerating.

It became apparent that RADIUS standards work had not stopped when the
IETF RADIUS WG ended;  rather it moved outside the IETF. In addition to
defining new attributes (some of which were duplicative), SDOs were also
defining new RADIUS commands, sometimes by requesting allocation
of attribute values defined as "First Come First Served" in RFC
2865.

Furthermore, IETF WGs such as PPVPN and SIPPING were expressing interest
in doing their own RADIUS extensions. Given all the activity, it became
apparent that the IETF needed a plan for managing RADIUS-related work.
"Just say no" wasn't working any more, and the IESG was becoming concerned
over the increasing number of RADIUS-related individual submissions
looking to be published as RFCs.

The dinner at IETF 57 and the RADEXT BOF are efforts to understand
the potential scope of a RADIUS repatriation effort -- bringing RADIUS
work which had been done within SDOs and trade associations back into the
IETF.

"Fixing" RADIUS is outside the scope.  Major protocol changes
are out of scope -- RADIUS is far too widely deployed at this
point. Accounting reliability would be likely to require major protocol
changes, and so is also probably out of scope.  Changes to the dictionary,
running over new transports, changes to the attribute format,
etc. are also out of scope.

As I see it, the goal of a RADEXT BOF is to understand the minimum work
required to satisfy existing IETF WGs, SDOs and trade associations that
plan additional RADIUS-related work.  Success is measured by the timely production
of documents satisfying the needs of these SDOs, trade associations and
IETF WGs.

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