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Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-channel

(1) What type of RFC is being requested (BCP, Proposed Standard, Internet
Standard,

Informational, Experimental, or Historic)? Why is this the proper type of RFC?
Is this type of RFC

indicated in the title page header?

draft-­ietf­-rtcweb­-data­-channel is targeted at the Standards track, and this
write­up is for Proposed

Standard. This is reflected on the title page and in the data tracker. Note
that there is a related

draft: draft­-ietf­-rtcweb­-data­-protocol. I recommend that the two drafts be
sent to IETF last call

together and be considered by the IESG together.

(2) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document Announcement Write­Up.
Please

provide such a Document Announcement Write­Up. Recent examples can be found in
the

"Action" announcements for approved documents. The approval announcement
contains the

following sections:

Technical Summary:

This document specifies the non­media data transport aspects of the WebRTC

framework. It provides an architectural overview of how the Stream Control
Transmission

Protocol (SCTP) is used in the WebRTC context as a generic transport service. 
It also contains a set of use cases and requirements.

Working Group Summary:

There was early discussion of the stacking order, but there has been no
significant

controversy since that was fixed. There have been a number of discussion on how
to manage

particular aspects of the larger context (e.g. WebRTC­level congestion control,
since SCTP

manages congestion control at the association level) and this has played a part
in those, but

not in any way that made it the focus of controversy.  There was a late request
for additional compatibility with the WebSockets API, which resulted in
significant additional text in section 6.4.  This has been reviewed in the
working group, but additional attention to this text in AD and IESG review may
be warranted.

Document Quality:

Are there existing implementations of the protocol? Have a significant number
of vendors

indicated their plan to implement the specification? Are there any reviewers
that merit

special mention as having done a thorough review, e.g., one that resulted in
important

changes or a conclusion that the document had no substantive issues? If there
was a MIB

Doctor, Media Type or other expert review, what was its course (briefly)? In
the case of a

Media Type review, on what date was the request posted?\

There are implmentations of previous versions of this document, and we expect
updates to

them to the final version. Vendor support seems solid. This document did not
require

expert review of the types noted.

Personnel:

The document shepherd is Ted Hardie; the responsible Area Director is Richard
Barnes.

(3) Briefly describe the review of this document that was performed by the
Document Shepherd. If

this version of the document is not ready for publication, please explain why
the document is

being forwarded to the IESG.

This document and its companion document were re­read, the IPR tracker
consulted, and the

minutes of the most recent meetings (plenary and interim) reviewed.  The final
changes caused by the additional of the labels were reviewed.

(4) Does the document Shepherd have any concerns about the depth or breadth of
the reviews

that have been performed?

I do not have any concerns about the working group reviews to date, nor about
the reviews

conducted by SCTP folks or DTLS folks. Because of the complexity of this stack,
however, I

remain eager to solicit community review of the whole. The number of working
group participants

who actively contributed to more than one aspect of the document was low
compared to the

overall size of the group,

There have been implementations of previous versions of this specification, so
it is clear that the

whole works, but additional thought on the whole stack from new perspectives
would valuable.

(5) Do portions of the document need review from a particular or from broader
perspective, e.g.,

security, operational complexity, AAA, DNS, DHCP, XML, or internationalization?
If so, describe

the review that took place.

Security review is always welcome. Because portions of the specification rely
on work in the

SCTP working group, review of the spec from within that community has already
taken place.

(6) Describe any specific concerns or issues that the Document Shepherd has
with this document

that the Responsible Area Director and/or the IESG should be aware of? For
example, perhaps

he or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or has concerns
whether there

really is a need for it. In any event, if the WG has discussed those issues and
has indicated that it

still wishes to advance the document, detail those concerns here.

As noted above, the stack appears to be a workable, but additional thinking
about the problem

space may eventually yield more elegant approaches. Real­ world deployment
will, I expect,

eventually guide the development of a bis. In the mean time, this should be
finished so that the

current state converges.

(7) Has each author confirmed that any and all appropriate IPR disclosures
required for full

conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79 have already been filed.
If not, explain

why?

Yes

(8) Has an IPR disclosure been filed that references this document? If so,
summarize any WG

discussion and conclusion regarding the IPR disclosures.

No IPR has been filed on this document, its companion document or the
antecedent drafts.

(9) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it represent the
strong

concurrence of a few individuals, with others being silent, or does the WG as a
whole understand

and agree with it?

The working group as a whole concurs with this approach.

(10) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent?
If so, please

summarise the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the Responsible
Area Director. (It

should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is publicly available.)

No appeal has been threatened nor has extreme discomfort surfaced elsehwere..

(11) Identify any ID nits the Document Shepherd has found in this document. (See

http://www.ietf.org/tools/idnits/ and the Internet­Drafts Checklist).
Boilerplate checks are not

enough; this check needs to be thorough.

The document was updated near the draft deadline, as were several documents on
which it

depends; as a result, it has a number of stale references to previous versions.
There is one

reference to RFC 4347, which has been obsoleted by RFC 6347, but this is an
intentional

reference to DTLS 1.0 in preference to a reference to DTLS 1.2. The working
group discussed

which version to require and preferred the early version, since it was the most
widely

implemented. See the mailing list thread begun here:

http://www.ietf.org/mail­archive/web/rtcweb/current/msg12562.html.  As noted in
the companion write-up, there is a chance that later discussion may result in a
preference for DTLS 1.2 emerging (as time marches on, it will obviously be more
prevalent).  If that takes place, this adjustment will be needed.  There is
also a type in the Security considerations "I should" should be "It should",
but this did not seem to be worth a re-spin.

(12) Describe how the document meets any required formal review criteria, such
as the MIB

Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

This document does not present the need for these reviews.

(13) Have all references within this document been identified as either
normative or informative?

Yes.

(14) Are there normative references to documents that are not ready for
advancement or are

otherwise in an unclear state? If such normative references exist, what is the
plan for their

completion?

There are normative references to two RTCWEB working group drafts (the security
and security- architecture documents) and to two documents the working group
(one in TSVWG: draft­ietf- tsvwg­sctp­ndata and on in SCTP:
draft­ietf­tsvwg­sctp­dtls­encaps). The working group

documents are moving forward well and should reach the IESG shortly; those
outside the working

group have been adopted and are active work items. Until they are approved,
this document will

await their references. We are not requesting downrefs for either.

(15) Are there downward normative references references (see RFC 3967)? If so,
list these

downward references to support the Area Director in the Last Call procedure.

There are no requests for downward references.

(16) Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs?
Are those RFCs

listed on the title page header, listed in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If the

RFCs are not listed in the Abstract and Introduction, explain why, and point to
the part of the

document where the relationship of this document to the other RFCs is
discussed. If this

information is not in the document, explain why the WG considers it unnecessary.

This document does not change the status of any existing RFC.

(17) Describe the Document Shepherd's review of the IANA considerations
section, especially

with regard to its consistency with the body of the document. Confirm that all
protocol extensions

that the document makes are associated with the appropriate reservations in
IANA registries.

Confirm that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified.
Confirm that newly

created IANA registries include a detailed specification of the initial
contents for the registry, that

allocations procedures for future registrations are defined, and a reasonable
name for the new

registry has been suggested (see RFC 5226).

This document requests an update to an existing registry (SCTP Payload Protocol
Identifiers);

the update is not controversial within the working group.  Note, however, that
there is a change in both the registry pointers and, in some case, the name of
the entry, which may cause some further discussion.

(18) List any new IANA registries that require Expert Review for future
allocations. Provide any

public guidance that the IESG would find useful in selecting the IANA Experts
for these new

registries.

This document does not request new registries.

(19) Describe reviews and automated checks performed by the Document Shepherd
to validate

sections of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code, BNF
rules, MIB

definitions, etc.

This document does not use a formal grammar of this type.
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