What’s wrong with the IETF. And what’s right
I have not counted the IETF’s I have attended; I only know the first RFC on which I’m listed as a co-author was published in 2000, so this must be close to 20 years of interacting with the IETF community, and I’m pretty certain I’ve attended at least two meetings a year across that time, and three meetings a year in most of those years. Across that time, there has never been a time when I have not been told, at least once, “the IETF is broken.” And there has not been a single time I cannot remember agreeing with the sentiment.
So, how is the IETF broken? The trend that bothers me the most right now is the gold rush syndrome. A new technology is brought into the IETF, and if it looks like it might somehow be “important,” there is a “land rush” as people stake out new drafts, find use cases, find corner cases, and work to develop drafts and communities around those drafts. This generally results in a sort of ossification process, where there are clear insiders and outsiders, an entirely new vocabulary is developed, and the drafts fly so fast and furious there is Continue reading

