<no chair hat>

Little thought exercise.

Let's assume we decide draft-minimal contains an undated reference to
IEEE802.15.4, and is published in 2015.

In 2016, company foo builds and sells products based on
draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal. Company foo goes to a third-party lab which
certifies conformance to draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal. Everything is great,
tens of thousands of networks go out the door. Company foo is happy.
Now IEEE802.15.4-2018 is published. IEEE802.15.4-2018 has small changes
compared to IEEE802.15.4-2015, for example the encoding of the IE header
changes from [type,length,value] to [length,type,value], for whatever
reason, good or bad.
Are company foo's product now stripped off their certification? Even if it
takes foo's engineers 2h to release firmware compliant to
IEEE802.15,4-2015, what is company foo supposed to do with it? Recall all
products? Really!?

Let's get even deeper into trouble: company bar starts making products in
2019 based on the *same* draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal standard as company foo.
These products also pass certification, and start selling. But even foo and
bar implement the *same standard*, their product do not interoperate.

>From what I understand, this is possible if we put an undated reference to
IEEE802.15.4 in draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal. In that case, we have, as a
standardization organization, completely failed. I hope I'm wrong, and I
hope you can show me why.


On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 12:40 AM, Tom Phinney <[email protected]> wrote:

>  Pat,
>
> I agree with you completely. In my experience, many contributors to
> standards believe it to be their job to guide a reader into finding
> material in a normative reference by citing specific 'chapter and verse",
> or in this case detailed subclause numbering, when instead they should be
> indicating the topic area and specific information that is of importance.
> Standards that call out lots of specific subclauses by number are a
> nightmare to maintain, particularly if they reference more than one other
> normative standard in such detail, because they necessarily need to be
> updated whenever ANY of those cited-in-detail normative references are
> updated.
>
> If the writer of such clauses was told that they would be devoting one
> week per year for the rest of their lives to maintaining and updating all
> the detailed references that they included, it seems likely that they would
> find ways to word the text that did not so encumber their future.
>
> -Tom
> =====
> On 2015.04.30 15:13, Pat Kinney wrote:
>
> Qin;
>
>  You are correct that referring only to the standard does not allow you
> to refer to sub-clauses or pages and line numbers.
>
>  I would propose changing the current text:
> " A 10ms time slot length is the default value defined by [IEEE802154e].
> Section 6.4.3.3.3 of [IEEE802154e] defines a default macTimeslotTemplate,
> i.e. the different duration within the slot. These values are summarized in
> the following table and MUST be used when utilizing the default time slot
> duration. In this case, the Timeslot IE only transports the
> macTimeslotTemplateId (0x00) as the timing values are well known. If a
> timeslot template other than the default is used, the EB MUST contain a
> complete TimeSlot IE indicating the timeslot duration and the corresponding
> timeslot timings, requiring 25 bytes. Note however that in case of
> discrepancy between the values in this document and [IEEE802154e], the IEEE
> standard specification has precedence.”
>
>  with the following text:
> “The timing parameters for the default *macTimeslotTemplate* (
> *macTsTemplateID* = 0) are summarized in the following table and MUST be
> used when utilizing the default time slot duration. For the case of the
> default *macTimeslotTemplate*, the Timeslot IE only transports the
> macTimeslotTemplateId (0x00) as the timing values are previously known. If
> a timeslot template other than the default is used, the EB MUST contain a
> complete TimeSlot IE indicating the timeslot duration and the corresponding
> timeslot timings. Note however that in case of discrepancy between the
> values in this document and IEEE 802.15.4, the IEEE standard has precedence.
>
>
>  Pat
>
>     Pat Kinney
> *Kinney Consulting LLC*
> IEEE 802.15 WG vice chair, TG chair
> ISA100.11a WG chair
> O: +1.847.960.3715
> [email protected]
>
>  On 30, Apr2015, at 15:34, Qin Wang <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>   Hi all,
>
>  I understand that reference IEEE 802.15.4 includes IEEE802.15.4e by
> definition. But I have a problem in writing 6TiSCH draft if we remove "e"
> in reference.
>
>  Here is an example. "A 10ms time slot length is the default value
> defined by  [IEEE802154e].  Section 6.4.3.3.3 of [IEEE802154e] defines a
> default  macTimeslotTemplate,...." is in the section 3.4 of minimal draft.
> Then, the question is how to point the exact place if we use IEEE 802.15.4
> as reference.
>
>  Thanks
> Qin
>
>
>
>
>    On Friday, May 1, 2015 12:55 AM, Pat Kinney <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> An amendment references (is based upon) the latest revision when it was
> approved, hence 802.15.4e is based upon (i.e. it references) 802.15.4-2011.
>
> Pat
> Pat Kinney
> Kinney Consulting LLC
> IEEE 802.15 WG vice chair, TG chair
> ISA100.11a WG chair
> O: +1.847.960.3715
> [email protected]
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 30, Apr2015, at 10:37, Pascal Thubert (pthubert) <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> Hello Michael
>
> For All I know 4e TSCH is only defined on 2011. There are known similar
> technologies running over 2006 but they are not 4e...
>
> The undated reference in an RFC to an IEEE spec applies to the present
> state at the date of the RFC and to all future versions unless the RFC is
> revised.
>
> This proved useful for Ethernet; too much maybe since we were fooled into
> extending IP over Ethernet to Wi-Fi...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Pascal
>
> > Le 30 avr. 2015 à 07:50, Michael Richardson <[email protected]> a
> écrit :
> >
> >
> > Pascal Thubert (pthubert) <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Today, undated and without the 'e', IEEE802.15.4 means 2011 plus all
> >> the amendments.
> >
> > Given that we can't run on 802.15.4-2011, this is why I'm concerned about
> > referencing "802.15.4".
> >
> >> So, a reference to IEEE Std 802.3 (without year) today is identical to
> the
> >> 2012 dated reference, but when the current revision is approved
> (expected
> >> this year), a reference to the 2012 revision would not include the
> >> maintenance changes included in the current revision, nor any of the
> >> amendments likely to be approved soon after the revision is approved.
> >
> > How does an outsider know when the reference was made?  Is it by the date
> > of the document making the reference?
> >
> > If the IETF writes a document in 2014, but it doesn't get published in
> Jan. 2015,
> > what IEEE document would "802.15.4" reference?
> >
> > Robert suggests text like:
> >
> >> In development of this RFC, IEEE Std 802.99 documents considered
> included
> >> IEEE Std 802.99-2016 and P802.99/D8.
> >
> > and so if we can do this, then I'm happy.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Michael Richardson <[email protected]>, Sandelman Software Works
> > -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 6tisch mailing list
> > [email protected]
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 6tisch mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 6tisch mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 6tisch mailing [email protected]https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 6tisch mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch
>
>
_______________________________________________
6tisch mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch

Reply via email to