Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-taps-transports

1. Summary The document shepherd is Aaron Falk. The responsible Area Director is Spencer Dawkins. This document describes, surveys, classifies and compares the protocol mechanisms provided by existing IETF protocols, as background for determining a common set of transport services. Protocols addressed include TCP, SCTP, UDP, UDP-Lite, DCCP, ICMP, RTP, FLUTE/ALC, NORM, TLS, DTLS, and HTTP when used as a pseudotransport. It captures important analysis needed for the TAPS working group goal of developing an abstract API enabling applications to make use of modern transports with the help of TAPS mechanisms, for example to probe and verify end-to-end protocol transparency. This is a useful first step by the TAPS working group to proposing future abstractions and mechanisms. 2. Review and Consensus All the protocols referenced in this document are products of the IETF. The goal here is to introduce consisten terminology and pull together a common view of a number of well-known protocols. The working group struggled early on in finding the right level of abstraction but was able to achieve consensus on the approach contained in the doc. Each protocol section had one or two active authors who are experts in their section and went through multiple revisions. The result is that about a dozen contributors have provided text so the engagement was high, compared to the active mailing list members. A few objections have been raised about whether the overall effort will be useful but the contents of this draft have not been controversial. The working group held a last call that spanned an IETF meeting with a number of cleanup tasks identified. Some new introductory text and restructuring on the doc was introduced and a second, online last call, produced no comments. It is the opinion of the shepherd that the document is ready for publication. 3. Intellectual Property This document introduces no new technologies beyond those already published. 4. Other Points There are no normative references, no IANA considerations. 

Back