Re: Requirements for reliable message delivery

The issue is really that the number of people who have designed protocols 
for even a large class of applications (e.g. Bob Scheifler's and my 
development of the X protocol), who are involved in the IETF is very low.  
For whatever reasons, the development of these general (or domain wide) 
protocols go on elsewhere.  We are again observing this with XML/RPC, 
SOAP, etc.  In fact, there seems to be some hostility toward these classes 
of protocols expressed by some of the IETF participants, along with
some fundamental misunderstandings of requirements of application protocols
by some truly talented IETF old-timers.

Unless/until this changes, I don't see the IETF venue being useful beyond
formal standardization of such a protocol framework "after the fact",
as in what happened with HTTP.

The unfortunate consequence is that alot of the kinds of interaction that 
should take place between the systems security and transports parts of 
the IETF does not, until it is too late.

Can this get fixed?  Dunno.  But it is a summary of the situation from
my perspective.

				- Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg@pa.dec.com

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2001 10:29:56 UTC