Subject: ECM planning for the San Diego IETF and the future

From: Vern Paxson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 12:03:48 PDT

I'm currently undecided as to whether ECM should meet at the upcoming
San Diego IETF.  There are two reasons that would justify meeting.
The first is if the last call for draft-ietf-ecm-cm-02.txt results in new
issues that we can only resolve during a face-to-face meeting.  I think
this is unlikely, given that we already had a meeting at the last IETF
dedicated to ironing out the final issues.

The second is if someone gets rolling on the ECM scheduler document.
I asked for volunteers at the last meeting, but none were forthcoming, and
no one has contacted me subsequently.  This is a significant problem, and
my thinking is that if no one picks it up during the next month or so, then
I will discuss with the ADs terminating the working group, as we won't be
able to produce our remaining work item in a timely fashion.  I will also
be inclined at this point to argue against rechartering the WG, due to
the apparent lack of sufficient community interest for moving it forward.

		Vern

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:25:35 -0700

> the apparent lack of sufficient community interest for moving it forward.

In that case I would like to suggest that ECM-CM be 'Experimental',
rather than 'Proposed Standard'. A framework without the scheduler
may not be useful as a standard.

Joe

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From: Hari Balakrishnan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 13:32:50 -0400

> may not be useful as a standard.

Independent of whether it be "experimental" or "proposed standard," my response 
is about the comment you made about the CM's usefulness.

I disagree that the framework is not useful without a detailed scheduler.  A 
round-robin default does not need any documentation.  Vendors may choose to 
implement their own schedulers, however sophisticated, as a means to 
differentiate themselves.

The core API and congestion controller themselves can accommodate a wide 
variety of schedulers, which need not be standardized---or even publicly 
documented---in my opinion.

Hari

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 10:57:52 -0700

> documented---in my opinion.

There still needs to be a specification of the scheduler;
the particular algorithm may not be important, but the
architecture is.

Also, 'experimental' is driven perhaps better
by Vern's observation about community interest.

Joe