Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-6lo-path-aware-semantic-addressing

Document History

1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?

The working group reached broad agreement.

2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?

The first WG adoption call for this document triggered significant discussion
on the mailing list. The main reason was that the document aimed to define a
header compression mechanism that did not leverage the already existing
6LoWPAN/6lo framework or other IETF frameworks (e.g., SCHC). Then, the document
was updated to properly plug into the 6LoWPAN/6lo specifications, while
extending them for the target use cases of the draft. This new approach
encountered actual support and no objections from the WG.

After becoming a WG document, the document has been revised several times based
on working group feedback. There have also been two Early reviews, one from
GENART (by Paul Kyzivat), and another one by the RTGDIR (by Joel Halpern). The
document was updated accordingly, and the corresponding reviewers were
satisfied with the updates.

The draft has also received WGLC comments, along with shepherd's comments. The
last version of the draft addresses these comments as well. The WGLC included
the 6man WG in CC', triggering some feedback from 6man participants, which
however did not contain actual objections to the document, but rather requests
for some clarifications and minor improvements.

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

From the authors’ side, an implementation is underway, and some of their
partners are interested in the datacenter networks monitoring use case, but
there are not deployments in production yet. On the other hand, some of the
authors presented simulation results on their tree address assignment function,
and also published an academic paper on an early version of the core
functionality in this document:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3527974.3545722.

Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

Since the document enables stateless forwarding, we (6lo chairs) requested an
Early review from the RTGDIR. Joel Halpern kindly provided such review and
subsequent discussion with the authors. Joel Halpern had initial concerns about
the intended status of the document (at first, he was rather in favor of
“experimental”, but he was convinced by the authors that other related
documents, such as RPL, had been directly specified as “standards track”). He
also had concerns about resilience/reliability, which were further discussed by
the authors, and was satisfied with subsequent draft updates. Also, the WGLC
included the 6man WG in CC', triggering some feedback from 6man participants,
which however did not contain actual objections to the document, but rather
requests for some clarifications and minor improvements.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

Not applicable.

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

Not applicable.

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

Not applicable.

Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

This document (starting from version -09) has been reviewed by the shepherd.
The review did not encounter major issues. Most of the shepherd's comments were
editorial. The few shepherd's technical comments were of minor nature, although
they were needed for clarity and completeness of the specification.  In the
shepherd's opinion, the document (version -11) is ready to be forwarded to the
IESG.

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

This specification belongs to the Internet Area. It mostly focuses on address
assignment and how packets can be compressed and carried in a domain that uses
such address assignment mechanism. No other particular issues have been
identified, from the Internet Area or other areas.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

The intended status of the document is 'standards track'. This intended status
is indicated in the document header. This is the proper type of RFC for the
document, since it defines a technique for address assignment based on
topological information, intended to enable stateless forwarding. The document
also specifies the formats needed to carry IPv6 packets in the intended domains
in compressed form, exploiting and extending existing 6LoWPAN/6lo functionality.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

An IPR Disclosure has been filed and recorded in the Datatracker:  
https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/6298 Each author or contributor has confirmed
that they are not aware of other IPR that would read on this document, as shown
in the responses to this message:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/6lo/ExSNii-JImE4rrKZ3NsJaDR-GDs

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

Yes, each author, editor and contributor has shown their willingness to be
listed as such. In the latest version of the draft, there are five authors on
the front page and two contributors shown towards the end of the document.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

No issues found after using the ID nits tool
(https://author-tools.ietf.org/idnits). The document follows the content
guidelines pointed to by the above link. (see
https://authors.ietf.org/recommended-content) Regarding a possible
implementation status section, such a section is probably not worth in this
document, since the authors explain that there is no currently available
implementation.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

References are correctly classified into normative or informative.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

All normative references are freely available to anyone.

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

There is a normative downward reference: draft-ietf-6lo-nd-gaao-02 (not listed
in the DOWNREF registry).

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

The document mentioned in the previous answer, draft-ietf-6lo-nd-gaao-02, is a
companion draft that defines the Generic Address Assignment Option for 6LoWPAN
Neighbor Discovery. There is an associated milestone for this normative
reference, with a deadline of July 2025 for submission of the draft to the IESG.

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No. This document will not change the status of any existing RFCs.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

This document requests IANA to assign one value of the "Critical 6LoWPAN
Routing Header Type" registry, and one value from the "Address Assignment
Function" registry that will be created by draft-ietf-6lo-nd-gaao. These
requests are consistent with the body of the document, and are associated with
the appropriate IANA registries (one of them, to be created by
draft-ietf-6lo-nd-gaao). The document itself does not request the creation of
any new IANA registry.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

This document does not request the creation of any new IANA registry.

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