[routing-wg]Four byte ASN notation

Geoff

Interesting.

I was unsure whether or not this WG was familiar with the Internet Draft I
referred to and thought that in case it was not, I would mention it.

Before doing so, I checked the status on the Internet Drafts and was puzzled by
what I saw - but posted here anyway.

The discussion on the IETF idr list a year ago was in response to a Last Call of
an individual submission (as opposed to a chartered item of a Working
Group)after which, I would expect it either to be approved as an RFC, or revised
and resubmitted.  A year later it is not an RFC - hence my reference to meeting
resistance - nor have I seen any further discussion about it on the idr list.

So when I checked the Internet Drafts database, I wouldn't have been surprised
to see that the ID had expired.  Instead, it has advanced from version -01 to
version -05; five versions in a year is the progress of a swift, rather than
that of a snail,  hence my reference to 'winging it'.  And you have joined in as
an editor of it.

So I remain puzzled; is it being discussed somewhere else? (NANOG?:-) what has
triggered all revised versions?  where has it been in the past year and where is
it going?

Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoff Huston" <gih at apnic.net>
To: "tp" <ripe at dial.pipex.com>
Cc: "Rob Evans" <rhe at nosc.ja.net>; <routing-wg at ripe.net>
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 3:48 PM
Subject: Re: [routing-wg]Four byte ASN notation


> Tom Petch wrote:
> > Not sure if you aware but there is an IETF Internet Draft winging its way
> > through the system on this topic, namely
> >
> >
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-michaelson-4byte-as-representation-05.
> > txt
> >
>
>
> speaking as a co-author here: "winging its way" is not a phrase I'd use
> for almost any draft in the IETF system, but in this case its an
> entirely inappropriate characterization of the pace of this document.
>
> The tracked state of this draft is "AD is Watching", but if you look a
> little closer you see that the IETF Area Director listed is not a
> current Routing Area director.
>
> So this characterization is just a little exaggerated!
>
> Like the 4byte AS draft itself I'd tend towards an adjective to describe
> thepace of this document through the IETF as "glacial" but maybe others
> would see "geological" as being closer to reality ;-).
>
> Even so, I encourage those who have some interest in this topic to read
> the draft and comment, either to the authors, to this mailing list, to
> the idr mailing list where the 4 byte ASN work was undertaken in the
> context of the IETF, or wherever else that might take your fancy.
>
>
> >
> > It did get discussed on the IETF idr list in October 2006, and met
significant
> > resistance.
>
> Again I have to say that this characterization is just a little exaggerated!
>
>
> >  There were also comments then about NANOG taking a position on
> > this.
>
>
> err? NANOG "taking a position" ? How? Though some subliminal collective
> subconscious alignment? Or via some alignment of the planets?
>
>
> >  I haven't seen any discussion since.
>
>
> Notation is such a strange thing - all kinds of folk have flash opinions
> about notation but in the end notation is like pronounciation - informal
>   use accretes social weight through continued usage and then the
> informaal use becomes a convention which then becomes usage rules. But
> when we try to apply this social process to technology we run into the
> issue of formal notation and rigid grammars because of the issues of
> have a notation that can be used conveniently by both human and machine
> parsers. So it makes some sense to try to define a notation convention
> early on in the process.
>
> The draft notes some alternatives for notation that have been observed
> so far and makes a recommendation to adopt one such notation ("asdot" in
> this case, using the terminology as described in the draft)
>
> >
> > Current status is Application Director Watching
>
> Actual status is "previous AD might have been watching"
>
> Rob Evan's advice to the folk on this list that:
>
> "people do need to review their in-house tools and scripts to ensure
> they will work with numbers expressed in this notation."
>
> is still appropriate and extends far beyond mere notation. The issue is
> one of looking at your operating support system and provisioning tools
> and even if you are not going to upgrade your routers' BGP anytime soon,
> what happens when your customers or peers front up with a 4 byte ASN and
> your systems start to see AS23456 popping up everywhere?
>
> (see slides 38 and 39 of http://www.iepg.org/2007-12-ietf70/asns.pdf for
> some additional pointers here as to what to review and why)
>
>
>
> regards,
>
>    Geoff
>
>