Speaking of Standards

It’s no secret that within the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF), work on the SIP-related protocols under the “Realtime Applications and Infrastructure” (RAI) area has frequently seemed to get bogged down under the weight of everything that is trying to be done. Back at IETF 73 in Minneapolis, there was in fact a special “open session” with discussion about how best to restructure internal IETF processes and working groups so that work related to SIP could progress faster.

To this end, RAI Area Directors Jon Peterson and Cullen Jennings today issued a statement and request for feedback related to reorganizing the RAI area. It began:

Since the open area meeting in Minneapolis, Cullen and I have given some thought to the best way to try to act on the discussion and suggested changes. As a continuing part of that process, though certainly not the last step, we’d like some input from the community on the following proposal and accompanying draft.

The rest of the text is in Jon’s email to the RAI general mailing list. They are very definitely looking for feedback in how to improve the process. (And the best place to send that feedback is to the RAI mailing list, which is open to anyone to join.) I think the proposal is a good start, because the reality is that much of the “new” work does indeed get bogged down in either the existing SIP or SIPPING working groups.

I think there’s a larger issue that the pool of people contributing documents and working on SIP-related issues is not growing very quickly… but this change could make it so that people find a more positive reception to new work than in previous years. We’ll have to see.

Related to this reorganization, Jon and Cullen also posted an Internet Draft that is intended to update/replace RFC 3427 that defines how the SIP protocol can be changed. I have some thoughts on this that I need to think about before writing down… but in the meantime I thought I’d mention that they are looking for feedback on this document as well.

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Technorati Tags: ietf, standards, sip, rai

Related posts:

1. New release of “Media Server Control Protocol Requirements” – time to get your feedback in!
2. On the need for a visual indicator for “trusted identity” in SIP
3. FYI – Conference Call/Podcast tomorrow (July 9) about P2PSIP with David Bryan, co-chair of IETF P2PSIP Working Group
4. My schedule next week in the long days of IETF-71…
5. Notes from the IETF P2P Infrastructure Workshop now available…

Tags: IETF, SIP

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