Hi Fred, You wrote:
>> I am trying to prompt people into actually debating proposals, rather >> than just talking about their own. Point 1 doesn't include people >> arguing why Ivip is the best choice, but I would be happy for someone >> to do so. > > I think part of the problem is that with a few exceptions > (such as yourself) those who have their own proposals may > be so deeply engrossed in understanding and expressing what > they are trying to accomplish that it is impossible to bring > our heads up above water long enough to give a deeper > consideration for other proposals. Or maybe I am just > speaking for myself... This is the problem I am trying to overcome. As noted by k claffy and Eliot Lear: feature comparison chart, conscripted peer review ? http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg06024.html http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg06044.html http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rrg/current/msg06054.html the RRG suffers from lack of critiques of proposals. k claffy suggested everyone who wrote a proposal be required to critique three or so others. Eliot concurred: I think this is a great (and necessary) idea to give authority to the work people are doing. I learn a great amount by reading and discussing other proposals. Some of the most significant improvements to Ivip arose when I was trying to understand or improve on someone-else's proposal. These were all proposals I didn't think would work - but I still learnt about scalable routing by reading and discussing them, and I was prompted into thinking things which turned out to be improvements to Ivip where I never thought there was a need for improvement. The modified header forwarding stuff arose when I was discussing Six/One Router, though there's no such thing in Six/One Router. The DRTM idea - which overcomes some big objections to Ivip - came from imagining an improvement to a recent proposal (I think it was Compact Routing), then thinking it would be a possible improvement to LISP and only then developing it further and seeing it would be an improvement to Ivip. There is absolutely nothing of DRTM in whatever proposal I was writing about - but writing prompted a line of thinking which turned out to be productive. Of course I learn basic things about scalable routing from discussing other proposals - especially discussing things with you. Now's the time to quote Brian Eno (Backwater 1977) and his critique of the straight-line, overly self-focused, approach you mentioned: But if you study the logistics And heuristics of the mystics You will find that their minds rarely move in a line So it's much more realistic To abandon such ballistics And resign to be trapped on a leaf in the vine. I learnt a bunch of stuff reading and discussing the 14 other proposals even though I _knew_ none of them were as good as Ivip. I think others would have the same experience - and that this would be a better way of improving their proposal than by working on it in isolation. - Robin _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list rrg@irtf.org http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg