Subject: Cost vs. Benefit of Real-Time Applications and Infrastucture Area

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:02:25 -0700

I am very worried about the discussion on the new proposed area.
Most mails are along the line that it sounds "nice" to have a new area
formed.

Forming a new area comes at a cost for the IETF, while there are also
potential benefits. I believe it is very important for the community
to consider and understand the costs versus the benefits for the
creation of a new area.

As for the benefits, I see that we would give more well deserved
attention to an important area of work within the IETF. In addition,
it should help to alleviate overload within the transport area.

However, there are also many costs associated with this proposal,
among others:

- we need two more people out of the community who are going to spend
  a lot of their time on the administrative side of our organization
  instead of producing real work for the IETF.
 
- the nomcom will need to do more work to appoint more ADs.

- IETF documents will receive more scrutiny in the IESG. While this
  could be considered a good thing, there has been a significant
  amount of backlash in the community that enough is enough. I for one
  believe that we currently already provide enough review, and possibly
  already too much.
  
- Management research has shown that optimal group sizes are in
  general quite a bit smaller than the current IESG. In fact, I see
  already significant strains within the IESG due to our group size.
  For example, we have a hard time to find a time, date and location
  for our retreats that work for all of our members. The definition of
  "A hard time" is that we spend significant amount of time trying to
  find a date and time that works for all of us. Other examples in
  terms of meetings where we all have to attend is a conference call
  regarding an appeal. We spend time on checking out who is actually
  present during an IESG call. We have issues with conference calls
  where somebody causes an echo on the conference system. The more
  people attend, the more time it takes to debug the problem. We send
  mail among each other, the more members we have the more mail we
  will receive and the more time we will need to read and respond to
  IESG internal mails. The more we specialize the function of areas,
  the more inter-area coordination will be needed. We have discussions
  about drafts and many other issues during the telechats, the more
  people we have the more time we will spend on these discussions.
  
  Adding two more ADs has the potential to make this quite a bit worse
  as our group size is already in the territory of too large to
  operate efficiently. Two more ADs will bring us yet another step
  closer to the tipping point of where we will only be busy among
  ourselves instead of serving the community.
  
I guess it comes as no surprise that I have serious issues with this
proposal. 

While the idea sounds nice, the operational details will cause us more
pain than it provides benefits. An IESG that doesn't operate
efficiently is not in the benefit of the IETF. I believe that many of
the benefits of a new area can be had without adding a new area.
Alternatives could be to create a special attention area towards Real
Time Applications within the Application area with one of the two ADs
in the Applications area specializing on such applications.

Another approach could be to do serious surgery on how the IESG
operates to make it a more scalable group.

I believe it is very dangerous to add an area before addressing the
issues associated with a larger IESG as it will get ever harder to
make such changes while our group grows less efficient by piecemeal
fixes instead of looking at the larger issue of how the IESG as a
whole can become more efficient to the benefit of the IETF.

David Kessens
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From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:45:27 -0700

Ok, I'll bite :-).  I for one, think it is a good idea to have the 
additional area and this is inline with my support of additional ADs for 
areas that have a large number of drafts in waiting.  I consider this more 
than "nice to have"; it is essential IMO and a natural way of areas being 
formed and "deleted" from the IETF.  Now, if only we can find an area to 
delete: SEC anyone ;-).  Just kidding, of course.

>it should help to alleviate overload within the transport area.

In addition to that, the argument made to me was that some topics didn't 
quite belong in the APPS area or the TRANSPORT area.  So there were meeting 
scheduling conflicts and the like as a result of that.

>   instead of producing real work for the IETF.

Unless the work increases due to the formation of the new area, the flip 
side is that we have 2 people doing 4 people's work.

>- the nomcom will need to do more work to appoint more ADs.

I wish you said this last year :-) with all the IAOC work we had to do (I 
am on the outgoing Nomcom).  Frankly, I would have found it easier to 
select two more people with technical expertise than two with 
administration type of expertise -- there are only a few of those in the 
IETF and they are already active in ISOC activities and are now pulling 
double duty (actually triple, considering they all want to be active in the 
technical side of things as well).

>   believe that we currently already provide enough review, and possibly

I am not sure.  I have been somewhat active in other SDOs and my take is 
that they seem to look to the IETF for thoroughly reviewed documents.  Sure 
they want things done quickly, but I don't think the suggestion is to move 
things along even if documents are in bad shape.

On the points below, I can't argue with you.  Perhaps a more hierarchical 
structure is needed or perhaps only a subset of the IESG (randomly picked 
or voluntary+assignment based allotment might reduce the number of people) 
needs to review documents and discuss them.  Anyway, I don't have the 
insight to discuss IESG operation (people say you have to be in it to know) 
:-).  If IESG review is what's substituting for cross-area review, we need 
to fix that.

Anyway I like that a new area is being formed to properly divide the work.

cheers,
Lakshminath

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:37:43 -0400

--On Tuesday, 20 September, 2005 17:02 -0700 David Kessens
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
> I am very worried about the discussion on the new proposed
> area. Most mails are along the line that it sounds "nice" to
> have a new area formed.
> 
> Forming a new area comes at a cost for the IETF, while there
> are also potential benefits. I believe it is very important
> for the community to consider and understand the costs versus
> the benefits for the creation of a new area.
>...

David,

I've been silent on this one, not because I didn't understand
the tradeoffs but because I am willing to accept an IESG
conclusion that they work out in favor of doing it.

I do share your concern about the IESG becoming too large an
unwieldy, both in terms of numbers of members and in the number
of people with an opportunity to object to things and nit-pick
them.  There is also the question of whether a new area and a
couple of new ADs will be seen as justification for taking on
even more work, rather than spreading the existing work around.
There is a case to be made that we have passed several of those
points already, but also a case that nothing works in the case
of IESG overload.

If it is possible, I'd be most happy to see this viewed as an
experiment in the general spirit of RFC3933 but without some of
the trappings.  Treat it as a real area, appoint AD(s) as
appropriate, but go into it with an agreement and the
expectation that it, and the area structure more generally, will
be carefully reviewed, and these tradeoffs reexamined, in a year
or so.  If it turns out to cause more problems then it is worth,
perhaps we could then get rid of it --with no assumption of poor
behavior on the part of the ADs-- and try something else.  I
don't know a better way to sort out the answers to the questions
you are raising (and which, again, I share): debating them
further is unlikely to be very informative.

regards,
    john

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:47:28 -0500

Dear David,

> operates to make it a more scalable group.

If my faulty memory is not faulty on this point, you joined IESG after 
Harald's two-level proposal was posted - version 00 says it was discussed 
with the IESG, but may not have been discussed (again) after you joined.

Does 
http://bgp.potaroo.net/ietf/all-ids/draft-iesg-alvestrand-twolevel-00.txt 
help with any of these concerns?

Not sure whether either of us should be posting here, on PESCI, or somewhere 
else. If your answer is "no", it's probably for the ietf list, if "yes", for 
PESCI :-)

Thanks,

Spencer

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:46:15 -0700

David,

The main problem with your note is that the IETF community has shown a
consistent lack of desire to pay serious attention to cost/benefit discussions.

You list issues with doing X and the response you get is "I like the idea of
doing X" or "I don't like the idea of doing X".  No meaningful consideration
of the tradeoffs.  An individual here, or there, might try to respond with 
some thoughtfulness, but we don't seem to have the attention span needed to 
pursue it.

The common thread to all of your points is that the community has limited
resources.  Given that packet-switching is predicated on careful attention to
the sharing of scarce resources, it really is quite impressive how little
respect -- nevermind consideration -- is given towards it in making IETF
management and operations decisions.

If we applied much more strict quality, relevance and timeliness measures to
the existing IETF load, we would probably get rid of 1/3 to 1/2 of our current
activities.  And possibly more.

At that point, we would not need to ask whether to add a new area, because the 
existing structure would be sufficient for giving the additional attention 
that real-time issues very much warrant.

d/

-- 

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  +1.408.246.8253
  dcrocker  a t ...
  WE'VE MOVED to:  www.bbiw.net

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From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:38:54 -0700

John,

On Tue, Sep 20, 2005 at 09:37:43PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> behavior on the part of the ADs-- and try something else.

I am all for experiments but this one would be particularly tricky to
setup. It is extremely hard to measure whether productivity of the
IESG increased in a given period as none of the determining factors
remain unchanged. Eg., the number of appeals in a given period is not
the constant, the number of documents that we process is not the same,
the number of new working groups considered is not the constant, the
total number of working groups that is being managed is not constant
either and finally the cast of area directors (outside of the area
directors that would be added) is different too.

I wonder how productive it is to do an experiment about efficient
group size while we already know that it hasn't worked in so many
other settings. It is not like there are no warning signs already that
we are spending already a significant amount of time on overhead
instead of doing the work that we were appointed for.

At some point we have to decide that the IESG cannot become any
larger. It is very easy to add one/two ADs at a time. Each time, it is
unlikely that the addition of a single AD would cause the system to
collapse. However, at the same time this is a very slippery slope. I
believe that at some point we have to draw a line in the sand.
Considering that we are already larger than optimal, now would be good
time to make such a decision.

David Kessens
---

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From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:25:24 -0700

Lakshminath,

> delete: SEC anyone ;-).  Just kidding, of course.

I would have a lot less trouble with the proposal of adding an area if
we would be able to find another one that could be abolished, or
reorganize ourselves in some way or form that would result in no net
addition of Area Directors.

Just like a company that has limited resources available, I would very
much prefer to keep a constant number of ADs (or actually even less
than our current number) and allocate the resources where we need them
most, instead of keeping to throw more resources at the problem.
Although we don't have money changing hands, there still is a real
cost of adding such resources and we should be very careful that we
don't ignore these costs.

> scheduling conflicts and the like as a result of that.

I hope that we have more effective ways to deal with scheduling
conflicts than adding an area.

> side is that we have 2 people doing 4 people's work.

The latter is true, unfortunately, I believe that the first part of
this statement is also true (though obviously, the workload increase
will be felt more in the areas that are not able to move working
groups to the new area).

> technical side of things as well).

;-). Thanks for doing this work. Serving on the nomcom is a lot of
hard work with very low payout.

> :-).  If IESG review is what's substituting for cross-area review, we need 

Feel free to comment on IESG operations ;-). While it helps to be on
the IESG to understand it's workings, it is also very useful to have
people taking a fresh look at our operating procedures. And as you can
see from the postings by various ADs, we have our own diverse views on
our own role and how the IESG should operate too.

David Kessens
---

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 11:46:08 +0200

David,

as you know, I have been very worried about the size of the IESG too. And 
I've even used that argument in the discussion of some other suggestions 
that would add people to the IESG - I did not see that the benefits of 
those other proposals were higher than the costs.

But - I think this proposal is addressing a well known problem; the 
division of groups between APPS and Transport hasn't made sense for at 
least the last 10 years, and the realignment suggested makes the divisions 
a little more reasonable. When people's thoughts align to the point where 
doing a sensible thing to this problem is possible, it is my opinion that 
it is time to do it.

Once Brian's PESCI group gets off the ground, and if they ask for my input, 
I'll certainly recommend that they recommend to the community that they do 
drastic surgery to the effective group size of the IESG - the -twolevel- 
draft was one suggestion for how that could be done.

But adding another area can be done NOW, and (in my opinion) won't delay 
the solution to the "size" problem - which (in my opinion) has to be solved 
anyway.

In my opinion, the benefits outweigh the costs.

                        Harald

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 07:31:23 -0400

> addition of Area Directors.

I suspect that this ties to the general technical problem of
it often being unclear what someone means by "scaling."  Something
that scales well in one direction may scale very badly in another,
and this is probably one of those cases.  Rather than focusing
exclusively on the problems introduced by growing the IESG we also
need to discuss the problems introduced by not growing the IESG,
which as someone pointed out include having a large number of working
groups per AD.  That's a scaling problem, too.  I think it generally
works well to have the two ADs in a given area have differing broad
interests, but I think there's got to be a limit on how large the
gap is between their areas of specialization (there does need to
be some overlap) and the gap between network transport issues and
multimedia application signaling issues really is enormous.

There's a structural problem here.  A lot of what's going on
in the Transport Area today simply isn't transport.  Of course RTP
is a transport protocol, but SIP and RTSP and so on simply are not,
and I think the work required to move those along is too demanding
to consider them ancillary to transport (as emergency services
would be to the new proposed area).  If the same people are to remain
responsible for the technical and administrative shepherding of both
TCP and telephony signaling, then perhaps it should be the case that
we get rid of the area concept entirely, have a fixed size IESG, and
have the IESG members be responsible for working groups based on personal
interest or obligation or the roll of a 13-sided die.

Melinda

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:50:12 -0400

FWIW, I fully support creation of this new area. This is based both on
the contents of Brian's note (though I agree with some of the followup
about naming and what really goes in), and on private discussions I
had with some of the ADs in Paris when the idea was still a proposal.

I firmly believe that one of keys to getting the IETF to work better
is to get more focus on key issues earlier in the process (e.g., WG
formation, early architectural/sanity review, etc.). That happens best
when there is active mananagement of the WGs as early as possible,
e.g, when AD's are to some extent following the mailing lists in real
time.

One of the key benefits of the proposal is that it adds more IESG
day-to-day focus to individual WGs. The reality today is that not
enough of that is happening. :-(

Decreasing the WG-to-AD ratio is a good thing to be doing, both for
the WGs and for the individual ADs who are constantly juggling too
many demands.

While I do see that increasing the size of the IESG has some
downsides, IMO, the benefits outweigh the downsides.

Still, having said that,

[email-masked] writes:

> If there was a way to lighten-up the IESG review process, then this
> would be a good idea. For example, having a single DISCUSS per Area
> would be one way to reduce this could be one solution.

I agree that there would be value in looking at this question. But I
don't believe creation of the new area should be gated on this.

Thomas

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From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:51:35 -0500

I agree with Melinda here regarding scaling is an issue *on* the ADs in 
those areas and that certain WGs in the Transport area are simply not 
transport related. I believe those WGs need to be moved out to another area 
of common focus. We have a critical mass of those WGs in the Apps and 
Transport area to do this rearrangement now (whether or not that's called 
"major surgery") - we should take advantage of this mass to make *each* of 
the three areas more efficient and synergized.

>interest or obligation or the roll of a 13-sided die.

cheers,
James

                                 *******************
                 Truth is not to be argued... it is to be presented.

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From: "Nicholas Staff" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:35:27 -0700

I thought it was interesting that there were 8 areas at the time RFC 2418
was written and I couldn't  see anything in the 50% of it I read that hinted
at 8 being a problem (and there are only 7 now I believe?).

The way I see it is that in many ways everyone subscribed to this list is an
AD for the IESG "area".  This means at all times there are hundreds of very
smart people who love finding and pointing out mistakes focused intently on
the IESG (some may be drooling), waiting to pounce.  This to me feels like
sufficient oversight and makes me fairly sure that an IESG breakdown would
be rapidly (and violently) rectified. (the overseers to overseen ratio here
is thousands to one).

The areas are a little trickier because an AD has x amount of time they can
spend doing AD stuff and once that is used anything left unattended is
delayed until the AD returns with more time.  Whether this time is taken up
by one WG or fourteen will vary based on the neediness of an areas WG's and
whatever x equals for that particular AD. Provided there are times when AD's
do reach critical mass then I'd say adding more nodes is smart load
balancing - unless we can just increase their capacity by adding processors
and RAM... ;)

I've been a part of this list for less than a year so my opinion has little
history or context.  Thanks.

Nick.