On 7/10/11 6:29 PM, Randy Bush wrote:
The IETF is run by volunteers. They volunteer because they find designing protocols to be fun. For the most part, operators are not entertained by designing network protocols. So, for the most part they don't partiticpate.
Randy Bush, "Editorial zone: Into the Future with the Internet Vendor Task Force: a very curmudgeonly view, or testing spaghetti," ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume 35 Issue 5, October 2005. http://archive.psg.com/051000.ccr-ivtf.html
I agree with Randy. Well, that's no surprise, I usually agree with Randy. But I didn't know/remember that he'd managed to get his rant published! Good work.... But the problem has been pretty apparent since circa 1991. I remember calls for an Internet Operator's Task Force (IOTF) to parallel IETF sometime in '92 or '93. Folks have asked me from time to time why I stopped participating in the IETF a decade or so ago. My usual tongue-in-cheek reply is, "it's more important to use the protocols we already have before we build more." (CF. nukes.) IPv6 was certainly a part of it (as was security). As I remind folks from time to time, I'm the guy that originally registered v6 with IANA. But PIPE->SIP->SIPP was a much simpler, shorter, cleaner extension using 64-bit addresses. My proposal used the upper 32-bits extending the then 16-bit BGP ASN, making addresses match topology, shrinking the routing tables.... Although I *do* find designing protocols to be fun, these days I only post Experimental drafts. There are committees (dysfunctional "working groups") where the chair cannot get his own drafts through the process in under 4 years. It took about 7 years to publish the group negotiation extension to SSH, many years after it was shipping. It's no wonder that operators don't want to participate.