Network Working Group C. Huitema
Internet-Draft Private Octopus Inc.
Intended status: Informational August 7, 2019
Expires: February 8, 2020
RFC Evaluation Project - First Step
draft-huitema-rfc-eval-project-01
Abstract
This document presents a first attempt at evaluating the recently
published RFC. We analyze a set of randomly chosen RFC approved in
2018, looking for history and delays, and using Google Scholar as a
proxy for the RFC popularity. The results are interesting, and
inform further evaluation efforts.
Status of This Memo
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Table of Contents
1. RFC Evaluation project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Analysis of 20 selected RFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. 8411 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. 8456 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. 8446 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4. 8355 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.5. 8441 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.6. 8324 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.7. 8377 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.8. 8498 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.9. 8479 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.10. 8453 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.11. 8429 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.12. 8312 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.13. 8492 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.14. 8378 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.15. 8361 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.16. 8472 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.17. 8466 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.18. 8362 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.19. 8468 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4. Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.1. Publication delays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2. Preparation and Publication delays . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3. Copy editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.4. Independent Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.5. Citation Counts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5. Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
1. RFC Evaluation project
As stated on the organization's web site, "The IETF is a large open
international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and
researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture
and the smooth operation of the Internet." In this memo, we attempt
to evaluate the RFC production process.
The IETF data tracker provides information about RFC and drafts, from
which we can infer statistics about the production system. We can
measure how long it takes to drive a proposition from initial draft
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to final publication, and how these delays can be split between
Working Group discussions, IETF reviews, IESG assessment, RFC Editor
delays and final reviews by the authors.
Just measuring production delays may be misleading. If the IETF
simply rubber-stamped draft proposals and published them, the delays
would be short but the quality and impact might suffer. We hope that
most of the RFC that are published are useful, but we need a way to
measure that usefulness. We try to do that by measuring the number
of references of the published RFCs in Google Scholar, and also by
checking whether the protocols and technologies defined in the RFCs
were implemented and used on the Internet.
2. Methodology
In this exploration, we want to evaluate not just the mechanics of
the RFC production, but also the quality and impact of the results.
This evaluation of quality and impact is subjective. We start with
two ideas:
1- Use Google Scholar to assess the citation counts of published
documents
2- Ask the RFC authors whether the specifications resulted in the
deployment of products or services
When accessing Google Scholar, we search for quoted strings of the
form "RFC xxxx". This is an arbitrary choice, we could for example
have chosen to search for "RFCxxx" or a combination of the two forms.
We retained the simpler alternative, because we don't believe that
picking one or the other would introduce a significant bias.
Basic production mechanisms could be evaluated by processing data
from the IETF tracker, but subjective data requires manual assessment
of results, which can be time consuming. Google Scholar also
requires manual access because the site does not offer an open API.
Since our resources are limited, we will only perform this analysis
for a small sample of RFC, selected at random from the list of RFC
approved in 2018. Specifically, we will pick 20 RFC at random
between:
o RFC 8307, published in January 2018, and
o RFC 8511, published December 2018.
In order to avoid injecting personal bias in the random selecton, we
use a random selection process similar to the Nomination Committee
selection process defined in [RFC3797]. The process is seeded with
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the text string "vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas", and the results
are:
Picking 20 numbers between 8307 and 8511,
using MD5(vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas)
Rank 1: 8411 -- md5=daba041224a879199b698748808f917d
Rank 2: 8456 -- md5=f5570484d91ada6a672edbdca61d808c
Rank 3: 8446 -- md5=8340e918bb8faf69d197f79c9a58d7b8
Rank 4: 8355 -- md5=19474df74efd9917cf3fe8acce2ac374
Rank 5: 8441 -- md5=5acce2b730f3c24a4a91a5fc1921d1cd
Rank 6: 8324 -- md5=411c11a1cf4c292f83458865599c6921
Rank 7: 8377 -- md5=ac16a89192c0f0727febd35aacbc1f24
Rank 8: 8498 -- md5=bba44f2ba1ab240a1265a82ab71f7e02
Rank 9: 8479 -- md5=1653606b0af95d529a473a8f85ffaea4
Rank 10: 8453 -- md5=0cbfe105667c5a83b027dcfa85062f98
Rank 11: 8429 -- md5=fa51d7738562d990926a0d199fb060b8
Rank 12: 8312 -- md5=96d061523b1a57343356ae7a1e498ca5
Rank 13: 8492 -- md5=1b72b746eb05f79af40ed2bd3faccbe8
Rank 14: 8378 -- md5=645833b936d36cdcc797256518d7c483
Rank 15: 8361 -- md5=2064622c868e410beb0d9c18d0cb522c
Rank 16: 8472 -- md5=ca8a823072a21df011d0ea8b96a6aa47
Rank 17: 8471 -- md5=01b293a7dd0793e6f3297f2a973cd7e3
Rank 18: 8466 -- md5=8e411babe271557fe83bcdececc1643f
Rank 19: 8362 -- md5=8a1ba3efd82856a12b2b35fc5237e1b7
Rank 20: 8468 -- md5=57ae50ee0e1e0708d356d96d116dbfe1
When evaluating delays and impact, we will compare the year 2018 to
2008 and 1998, 10 and 20 years ago. To drive this comparison, we
pick 20 RFC at random among those published in 2008, and another 20
among those published in 1998. We use the same nomcom-like
methodology.
For 2008, we picking random RFC numbers between RFC 5134 (January
2008) and RFC 5405 (December 2008), using the sentence "sed fugit
interea fugit irreparabile tempus" as a seed. We actually list here
21 numbers, because the random draw place RFC 5315 in 20th position,
but that RFC was never issued. We replace it by RFC 5301, which came
in 21st position.
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Picking 21 numbers between 5134 and 5405,
using MD5(sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus)
Rank 1: 5227 -- md5=61e5b3cd97fda4e75450e93df0744b6d
Rank 2: 5174 -- md5=eed49542394e9d392bcd756ee0f5beed
Rank 3: 5172 -- md5=72055ca953d6a8ee0d60a9fca0b8d738
Rank 4: 5354 -- md5=7a00ef15897479d1d15255159f6d8674
Rank 5: 5195 -- md5=54813be7bb56f48a05af8c894799b51f
Rank 6: 5236 -- md5=153263bbd8c0349501b75a33f3d66f6c
Rank 7: 5348 -- md5=b2d19aa9c1250ef2ddf169045f6e99d7
Rank 8: 5281 -- md5=1c3e61643d46d1da4ba16f0fd7a0aff5
Rank 9: 5186 -- md5=5e87001b830183b1a9427d479a7b0e42
Rank 10: 5326 -- md5=024347839f83d8082549c08bdfa1b43e
Rank 11: 5277 -- md5=049a83016ab08552841c59400480cd9d
Rank 12: 5373 -- md5=a1ce374aaebdacca2e7d6eeff039d970
Rank 13: 5404 -- md5=fb0d6b582a27ce34175e39de33598556
Rank 14: 5329 -- md5=df043ef1f9d42ba12a03a84434d26ead
Rank 15: 5283 -- md5=c40d3f966bc7800d6508d3d82df2371d
Rank 16: 5358 -- md5=6fea5bdb26b19e68befd409a09cb335d
Rank 17: 5142 -- md5=a8844b73287781762e6548fc6f533508
Rank 18: 5271 -- md5=c19eb02984265ecfe4ca076f2c160cfa
Rank 19: 5349 -- md5=33d756f81bf6e40ff344cf6ccaf29f13
Rank 20: 5315 -- md5=d4c30875f88328d72c9f78def2d1dde5
Rank 21: 5301 -- md5=3356419e5560901f0d31309b39d14a80
For 1998 we picking random RFC numbers between RFC 2257 (January
1998) and RFC 2479 (December 1998), using the sentence "pulvis et
umbra sumus" as a seed.
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Picking 20 numbers between 2257 and 2479,
using MD5(pulvis et umbra sumus)
Rank 1: 2431 -- md5=6eba444bb3349339fcde7e2be726f0f0
Rank 2: 2381 -- md5=0ce53f69f1a49a49309054af1e9a1d42
Rank 3: 2387 -- md5=53726e77ffeed903d244155d28e30f10
Rank 4: 2348 -- md5=69fcab2d2085555bac9eb0e0f4346523
Rank 5: 2391 -- md5=93358a26a7fce9fa9d61a31cdfdb87b7
Rank 6: 2267 -- md5=652dcab91bd9d5c58f98bdab21b23d80
Rank 7: 2312 -- md5=2505b0bed4af0a00ee663891c6f294d8
Rank 8: 2448 -- md5=6ede4b0dfa935f6ca656a5104b8dc5d0
Rank 9: 2374 -- md5=5312bfe5a9ca45563eb0bf35510d8daa
Rank 10: 2398 -- md5=7748a6deec3860898678f992b0b22792
Rank 11: 2283 -- md5=d73ff67466eb42d971a0e134b9284f83
Rank 12: 2382 -- md5=de1f667ac3e4c64aa529872e08823dff
Rank 13: 2289 -- md5=37773c2569dc25fdd0ab400ea401d5c7
Rank 14: 2282 -- md5=6b3df671a0a0becf9e42d203b59acd08
Rank 15: 2404 -- md5=e1b6819e5355924f456eb79f93beb8fd
Rank 16: 2449 -- md5=4f057df7c226efea773e7013c9c62081
Rank 17: 2317 -- md5=40eee3b536abe4afdb8834a0650c0a04
Rank 18: 2394 -- md5=044f09c53fc9fd1c50fe6bd0c39318e1
Rank 19: 2297 -- md5=78ee7e128436c969c80900fef80c075c
Rank 20: 2323 -- md5=ea6935bbda5f6d97756d3df5c3e2fdfb
3. Analysis of 20 selected RFC
We review each of the RFC listed in (#methodology) for the year 2018,
trying both to answer the known questions and to gather insight for
further analyzes. In many cases, the analysis of the data is
complemented by direct feedback from the RFC authors.
IANA Registration for the Cryptographic Algorithm Object Identifier
Range [RFC8411]:
Informational, 5 pages
4 drafts (personal),first May 8, 2017. Published August 2018.
Last call announced 2017/10/09
IESG evaluation starts 2017/12/28
Approved 2018/02/26, draft 03
Auth 48 2018/04/20
Auth 48 complete 2018/07/17
Published 2018/08/06
IANA action: create table
The draft underwent minor copy edit before publication.
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The long delay in Auth48 is probaby due to clustering with [RFC8410],
which entered AUTH 48 on 06/05. The MISSREF tracker code was cleared
then.
2 references on Google Scholar.
Benchmarking Methodology for Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
Controller Performance [RFC8456]:
Informational, 64 pages
2 personal drafts, 9 WG drafts, first in March 2015
Last call announced 2018-01-19
IESG evaluation starts 2018-02-27
IESG approved 2018-05-25
Auth 48 2018-08-31
Auth 48 complete 2018-10-16
Published 2018-10-30
The draft underwent very extensive copy editing, covering use of
articles, turn of phrases, choice of vocabulary. The changes are
enough to cause pagination differences. The "diff" tool marks pretty
much every page as changed. Some diagrams see change in protocol
elements like message names.
According to the author, the experience of producing this draft
mirrors a typical one in the Benchmarking Methodologies Working Group
(BMWG).There were multiple authors in multiple time zones, which
slowed down the AUTH process somewhat, although the Auth48 delay of
46 is only a bit longer than the average draft.
The RFC was part of cluster with [RFC8455].
Google Scholar shows 3 references. BMWG publishes informational RFCs
centered around benchmarking, and the methodologies in RFC 8456 have
been implemented in benchmarking products.
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3 [RFC8446], as
the title indicates, defines the new version of the TLS protocol.
From the datatracker, we extract the following:
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Proposed standard
160 pages
29 WG drafts first April 17, 2014.
Last call announced 2018/02/15
IESG evaluation starts 2018/03/02
Approved 2018/03/21, draft 28
Auth 48 2018/06/14
Auth 48 complete 2018/08/10
Published 2018/08/10
The RFC was a major effort in the IETF. Working group members
developed and tested several implementations. Researchers analyzed
the specifications and performed formal verifications. Deployment
tests outlined issues that caused extra work when the specification
was almost ready. These complexity largely explains the time spent
in the working group.
Comparing the final draft to the published version, we find
relatively light copy editing. It includes explaining acronyms on
first use, clarifying some definitions standardizing punctiation and
capitalization, and spelling out some numbers in text. This
generally fall in the category of "style", although some of the
clarifications go into message definitions. However, that simple
analysis does not explain why the Auth48 phase took almost two
months.
This document's Auth48 process was part of the "Github experiment",
which tried to use github pull requests to track the AUTH48 changes
and review comments. The RPC staff had to learn using Github for
that process, and this required more work than the usual RFC. Author
and AD thoroughly reviewed each proposed edit, accepting some and
rejecting some. The concern there was that any change in a complex
specification might affect a protocol that was extensively reviewed
in the working group, but of course these reviews added time to the
Aouth48 delays.
The RFC has 123 references in Google Scholar. There are 21
implementations listed in the Wiki of the TLS 1.3 project. It has
been deployed on major browsers, and is already used in a large
fraction of TLS connections.
Resiliency Use Cases in Source Packet Routing in Networking (SPRING)
Networks [RFC8355] is an informational RFC. It originated from a use
case informational draft that was mostly used for the BOF creating
the WG, and then to drive initial work/evolutions from the WG.
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Informational, 13 pages.
2 personal drafts (personal), first January 31, 2014. 13 WG drafts.
Last call announced 2017-04-20
IESG evaluation starts 2017-05-04, draft 09
Approved 2017-12-19, draft 12
Auth 48 2018-03-12
Auth 48 complete 2018-03-27
Published 2018-03-28
Minor set of copy edit, mostly for style.
9 references on Google Scholar. No implementation of the RFC itself,
but the technology behind it such as Segment Routing (architecture
RFC 8402, TI-LFA draft-ietf-rtgwg-segment-routing-ti-lfa) is widely
implemented and deployment is ongoing.
Bootstrapping WebSockets with HTTP/2 [RFC8441]
Proposed standard, 8 pages. Updates RFC 6455.
3 personal drafts (personal), first 10/15/2017. 8 WG drafts.
Last call announced 2018-05-07, draft 05
IESG evaluation starts 2018-05-29, draft 06
Approved 2018-06-07, draft 07
Auth 48 2018-08-13
Auth 48 complete 2018-09-15
Published 2018-09-21
IANA Action: table entries
This RFC defines the support of WebSockets in HTTP/2, which is
different from the mechanism defined for HTTP/1.1 in [RFC6455]. The
process was relatively straightforward, involving the usual type of
discussions, some on details and some on important points.
Comparing final draft and published RFC shows a minor set of copy
edit, mostly for style. However, the author recalls a painful
process. The RFC includes many charts and graphs that were very
difficult to format correctly in the author's production process that
involve conversions from markdown to XML, and then from XML to text.
The author had to get substantial help from the RFC editor.
No references on Google Scholar. (RFC 6455 had over 1000 results)
There are several implementations, including Firefox and Chrome,
making RFC 8441 a very successful standard.
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DNS Privacy, Authorization, Special Uses, Encoding, Characters,
Matching, and Root Structure: Time for Another Look? [RFC8324].
This is an opinion piece on DNS development, published on the
Independent Stream.
Informational, 29 pages. Independent stream.
5 personal drafts (personal), first June 2, 2017.
ISE review started 2017-07-10, draft 03
IETF conflict review and IESG review started 2017-10-29
Approved 2017-12-18, draft 04
Auth 48 2018-01-29, draft 05
Auth 48 complete 2018-02-26
Published 2018-02-27
This RFC took only 9 months from first draft to publication, which is
the shortest in the 2018 sample set. In part, this is because the
text was privately circulated and reviewed before the first draft was
published. The nature of the document is another reason for the
short delay. It is an opinion piece, and does not require the same
type of consensus building and reviews than a protocol specification.
Comparing the final draft and the published version shows only minor
copy edit, mostly for style. According to the author, because this
is because he knows how to write in RFC Style with the result that
his documents often need a minimum of editing. He also makes sure
that the document on which the Production Center starts working
already has changes discussed and approved during Last Call and IESG
review incorporated rather than expecting the Production Center to
operate off of notes about changed to be made.
2 references on Google Scholar.
Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL): Multi-Topology
[RFC8377]
Proposed standard, 20 pages. Updates RFC 6325, 7177.
3 personal drafts (personal), first September 3, 2013. 7 WG drafts.
Last call announced 2018-02-19, draft 05
IESG evaluation starts 2018-03-02, draft 06
Approved 2018-03-12, draft 05
Auth 48 2018-04-20, draft 06
Auth 48 complete 2018-07-31
Published 2018-07-31
IANA Table, table entries
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Minor set of copy edit, mostly for style, also clarity.
1 reference on Google Scholar.
A P-Served-User Header Field Parameter for an Originating Call
Diversion (CDIV) Session Case in the Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) [RFC8498].
Informational, 15 pages.
5 personal drafts (personal), first March 21, 2016. 9 WG drafts.
Last call announced 2018-10-12, draft 05
IESG evaluation starts 2018-11-28, draft 07
Approved 2018-12-10, draft 08
Auth 48 2019-01-28
Auth 48 complete 2019-02-13
Published 2019-02-15
IANA Action, table rows added.
Copy edit for style, but also clarification of ambiguous sentences.
No references on Google Scholar.
Storing Validation Parameters in PKCS#8 [RFC8479]
Informational, 8 pages. Independent stream.
5 personal drafts (personal), first August 8, 2017.
ISE review started 2018-03-29, draft 02
IETF conflict review and IESG review started 2018-03-29
Approved 2018-08-20, draft 03
Auth 48 2018-09-20, draft 04
Auth 48 complete 2018-09-25
Published 2018-09-26
The goal of the draft was to document what the gnutls implementation
was using for storing provably generated RSA keys. This is a short
RFC that was published relatively quickly, although discussion
between the author, the Independent Series Editor and the IESG lasted
several months. In the initial conflict review, Tthe IESG asked the
ISE to not publish this document before IETF working groups had an
opportunity to pick up the work. The author met that requirement by
a presentation to the SECDISPATCH WG in IETF 102. Since no WG was
interested in pickup the work, the document progressed on the
Independent Stream.
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Very minor set of copy edit, moving some references from normative to
informative.
No reference on Google Scholar.
The author is not aware of other implementations than gnutls relying
on this RFC.
Framework for Abstraction and Control of TE Networks (ACTN) [RFC8453]
Informational, 42 pages.
3 personal drafts, first June 15, 2015. 16 WG drafts.
Out of WG 2018-01-26, draft 11
Expert review requested, 2018-02-13
Last call announced 2018-04-16, draft 13
IESG evaluation starts 2018-05-16, draft 14
Approved 2018-06-01, draft 15
Auth 48 2018-08-13
Auth 48 complete 2018-08-20
Published 2018-08-20
IANA Action, table rows added.
Minor copy editing.
8 references on Google Scholar.
Deprecate Triple-DES (3DES) and RC4 in Kerberos [RFC8429]
BCP, 10 pages.
6 WG drafts, first 5/1/2017.
Last call announced 7/16/2017, draft 03
IESG evaluation starts 8/18/2017, draft 04
Approved 5/25/2018, draft 05
Auth 48 7/24/2018
Auth 48 complete 10/31/2018
Published 10/31/2018
IANA Action, table rows added.
This RFC recommends to deprecate two encryption algorithms that are
now considered obsolete and possibly broken. The document was sent
back to the WG after the first last call, edited, and then there was
a second last call. The delay from first draft to working group last
call was relatively short, but the number may be misleading. The
initial draft was a replacement of a similar draft in the KITTEN
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working group, which stagnated for some time before the CURDLE
working group took up the work. The deprecation of RC4 was somewhat
contentious, but the WG had already debated this prior to the
production of this draft, and the draft was not delayed by this
debate.
Most of the 280 days between IETF LC and IESG approval was because
the IESG had to talk about whether this document should obsolete or
move to historic RFC 4757, and no one was really actively pushing
that discussion for a while.
The 99 days in AUTH48 are mostly because one of the authors was a
sitting AD, and those duties ended up taking precedence over
reviewing this document.
Minor copy editing, for style.
1 reference on Google Scholar.
The implementation of the draft would be the actual removal of
support for 3DES and RC4 in major implementations. This is
happening, but very slowly.
CUBIC for Fast Long-Distance Networks [RFC8312]
Informational, 18 pages.
2 personal drafts, first 9/1/2014. 8 WG drafts
Last call announced 9/18/2017, draft 06
IESG evaluation starts 2017-11-14
Approved 2017-10-04, draft 07
Auth 48 2018-01-08
Auth 48 complete 2018-02-07
Published 2018-02-07
IANA Action, table rows added.
Minor copy editing, for style.
9 references on Google Scholar.
The TCP congestion control algorithm Cubic was defined first in 2005,
was implemented in Linux soon after, and was implemented in major
OSes after that. After some debates from 2015 to 2015, the TCPM
working group adopted the draft, with a goal of documenting Cubic in
the RFc series. According to the authors, this was not a high
priority effort, as Cubic was already implemented in multiple OSes
and documented in research papers. At some point, only one of the
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authors was actively working on the draft. Ths may explain why
another two years was spent progressing the draft after adoption by
the WG.
The RFC publication may or may not have triggered further
implementations. On the other hand, several OSes picked up bug fixes
from the draft and the RFC.
Secure Password Ciphersuites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)
[RFC8492]
Informational, 40 pages. (Independent Stream)
10 personal drafts, first 9/2/2012. 8 WG drafts
ISE review started 2017-05-10, draft 01
IETF conflict review and IESG review started 2017-09-04
Approved 2017-10-29, draft 04
Auth 48 10/19/2018, draft 05
Auth 48 complete 2/19/2019
Published 2/21/2019
IANA Action, table rows added.
This RFC has a complex history. The first individual draft was
submitted to the TLS working group on September 7, 2012. It
progressed there, and was adopted by the WG after 3 revisions. There
were then 8 revisions in the TLS WG, until the WG decided to not
progress it. The draft was parked in 2013 by the WG chairs after
failing to get consensus in WG last call. The AD finally pulled the
plug in 2016, and the draft was then resubmitted to the ISE.
At that point, the author was busy and was treating this RFC with a
low priority because, in his words, it would not be a "real RFC".
There were problems with the draft that only came up late. In
particular, it had to wait for a change in registry policy that only
came about with the publication of TLS 1.3, which caused the draft to
only be published after RFC 8446, and also required adding references
to TLS 1.3. The author also got a very late comment while in AUTH48
that caused some rewrite. Finally, there was some IANA issue with
the extension registry where a similar extension was added by someone
else. The draft was changed to just use it.
Changes in AUTH48 include added reference to TLS 1.3, copy-editing
for style, some added requirements, added paragraphs, and changes in
algorithms specification.
2 references on Google Scholar. Only the author implemented the
specification.
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Signal-Free Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) Multicast [RFC8378]
is an experimental RFC, defining how to implement Multicast in the
LISP architecture.
Experimental, 21 pages.
5 personal drafts, first 2/28/2014. 10 WG drafts
Last call announced 2018-02-13, draft 07
IESG evaluation starts 2018-02-28, draft 08
Approved 2018-03-12, draft 09
Auth 48 2018-04-23
Auth 48 complete 2018-05-02
Published 2018-05-02
Preparing the RFC took more than 4 years. According to the authors,
they were not aggressive pushing it and just let the working group
process decide to pace it. They also did implementations during that
time.
Minor copy editing, for style.
1 reference on Google Scholar. The RFC was implemented by
lispers.net and cisco, and was used in doing IPv6 multicast over IPv4
unicast/multicast at the Olympics in PyeungChang. The plan is to
work on a proposedstandard once the experiment concludes.
Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL): Centralized
Replication for Active-Active Broadcast, Unknown Unicast, and
Multicast (BUM) Traffic [RFC8361]
Proposed Standard, 17 pages.
3 personal drafts, first 11/12/2013. 14 WG drafts
Last call announced 2017-11-28, draft 10
IESG evaluation starts 2017-12-18, draft 11
Approved 2018-01-29, draft 13
Auth 48 2018-09-17
Auth 48 complete 4/9/2018
Published 2018-10-08
According to the authors, the long delays in producing this RFC was
due to a slow uptake of the technology in the industry.
Minor copy editing, for style.
1 reference on Google Scholar.
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There was at least 1 partial implementation.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extension for Token Binding Protocol
Negotiation [RFC8472]
Proposed Standard, 8 pages.
1 personal drafts, first 5/29/2015. 15 WG drafts
Last call announced 2017-11-13, draft 10
IESG evaluation starts 2018-03-19
Approved 2018-07-20, draft 14
Auth 48 2018-09-17
Auth 48 complete 2018-09-25
Published 2018-10-08
This is a pretty simple document, but it took over 3 years from
individual draft to RFC. According to the authors,the biggest
setbacks occurred at the start: it took a while to find a home for
this draft. It was presented in the TLS WG (because it's a TLS
extension) and UTA WG (because it has to do with applications using
TLS). Then the ADs determined that a new WG was needed, so the
authors had to work through the WG creation process, including
running a BOF.
Minor copy editing, for style, with the addition of a reference to
TLS 1.3.
5 references on Google Scholar.
Perhaps partially due to the delays, some of the implementers lost
interest in supporting this RFC.
A YANG Data Model for Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN) Service
Delivery [RFC8466]
Proposed Standard, 158 pages.
5 personal drafts, first 9/1/2016. 11 WG drafts
Last call announced 2018-02-21, draft 07
IESG evaluation starts 2018-03-14, draft 08
Approved 2018-06-25, draft 10
Auth 48 2018-09-17
Auth 48 complete 2018-10-09
Published 2018-10-12
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Copy editing for style and clarity, with also corrections to the yang
model.
2 references on Google Scholar.
OSPFv3 Link State Advertisement (LSA) Extensibility [RFC8362] is a
major extension to the OSPF protocol. It makes OSPFv3 fully
extensible.
Proposed Standard, 33 pages.
4 personal drafts, first February 17, 2013. 24 WG drafts
Last call announced 2017-12-19, draft 19
IESG evaluation starts 2018-01-18, draft 20
Approved 2018-01-29, draft 23
Auth 48 2018-03-19
Auth 48 complete 2018-03-30
Published 2018-04-03
The specification was first submitted as a personal draft in the IPv6
WG, then moved to the OSPF WG. The long delay of producing this RFC
is due to the complexity of the problem, and the need to wait for
implementations. It is a very important change to OSPF that makes
OSPFv3 fully extensible. Since it was a non-backward compatible
change, the developers started out with some very complex migration
scenarios but ended up with either legacy or extended OSPFv3 LSAs
within an OSPFv3 routing domain. The initial attempts to have a
hybrid mode of operation with both legacy and extended LSAs also
delayed implementation due to the complexity.
Copy editing for style and clarity.
7 references on Google Scholar. It either was or will be implemented
by all the router vendors.
IPv4, IPv6, and IPv4-IPv6 Coexistence: Updates for the IP Performance
Metrics (IPPM) Framework [rfc8468].
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Informational, 15 pages.
3 personal drafts, first August 6, 2015. 7 WG drafts
Last call announced 2018-04-11, draft 04
IESG evaluation starts 2018-05-24, draft 05
Approved 2018-07-10, draft 06
Auth 48 2018-09-13
Auth 48 complete 2018-11-05
Published 2018-11-14
RFC8468 was somehow special in that there was not a technical reason/
interest that triggered it, but rather a formal requirement. While
writing RFC7312 the IP Performance Metrics working group (IPPM)
realized that RFC 2330, the IP Performance Metrics Framework
supported IPv4 only and explicitly excluded support for IPv6.
Nevertheless, people used the metrics that were defined on top of RFC
2330 (and, therefore, IPv4 only) for IPv6, too. Although the IPPM WG
agreed that the work was needed, the interest of IPPM attendees in
progressing (and reading/reviewing) the IPv6 draft was limited.
Resolving the IPv6 technical part was straight-forward, but
subsequently some people asked for a broader scope (topics like
header compression, 6lo, etc.) and it took some time to figure out
and later on convince people that these topics are out of scope. The
group also had to resolve contentious topics, for example how to
measure the processing of IPv6 extension headers, which is sometimes
non-standard.
The Auth48 delay for this draft was longer than average. According
to the authors, the main reasons include:
o Work-load and travel caused by busy-work-periods of all co-authors
o Time zone difference between co-authors and editor (at least US,
Europe, India, not considering travel)
o Editor proposing and committing some unacceptable modifications
that needed to be reverted
o Lengthy discussions on a new document title (required high effort
and took a long time, in particular reaching consensus between co-
authors and editor was time-consuming and involved the AD)
o Editor correctly identifying some nits (obsoleted personal
websites of co-authors) and co-authors attempting to fix them.
The differences between the final draft and the publish RFC show copy
editing for style and clarity, but do not account for the back and
forth between authors and editors mentioned by the authors.
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2 references on Google Scholar. In contrast, RFC 2330 has more than
3000 references, including over 70 that are more recent than RFC
8468. The authors believe that many of these references include IPv6
work that should formally reference RFC 8468 in addition to RFC 2330,
but do not.
4. Observations
We examine the 20 RFC in the sample, measuring various
characteristics such as delay and citation counts, in an attempt to
identify patterns in the IETF processes.
4.1. Publication delays
We look at the distribution of delays between the submission of the
first draft and the publication of the RFC. We break out the total
delay in three components:
o The working group delay, from the first draft to the start of the
IETF last call;
o The IETF delay, which lasts from the beginning of the IETF last
call to the approval by the IESG, including the reviews by various
directorates;
o The RFC production, from approval by the IESG to publication,
including the Auth48 reviews.
For submissions to the independent stream, we don't have a working
group. We consider instead the progression of the individual draft
until the adoption by the ISE as the equivalent of the "working
group" period, and the delay from adoption by the ISE until
submission to the RFC Editor as the equivalent of the IETF delay.
The following table shows the delays for the 20 RFC in the sample:
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+------+---------+-------+---------+------+------+------+
| RFC | Status | Pages | Overall | WG | IETF | Edit |
+------+---------+-------+---------+------+------+------+
| 8411 | Info | 5 | 455 | 154 | 140 | 161 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8456 | Info | 64 | 1107 | 823 | 126 | 158 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8446 | PS | 160 | 1576 | 1400 | 34 | 142 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8355 | Info | 13 | 1517 | 1175 | 243 | 99 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8441 | PS | 8 | 341 | 204 | 31 | 106 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8324 | ISE | 29 | 270 | 38 | 161 | 71 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8377 | PS | 8 | 1792 | 1630 | 21 | 141 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8498 | Info | 15 | 1061 | 935 | 59 | 67 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8479 | ISE | 8 | 414 | 233 | 144 | 37 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8453 | Info | 42 | 1162 | 1036 | 46 | 80 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8429 | BCP | 10 | 548 | 76 | 313 | 159 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8312 | Info | 18 | 1255 | 1113 | 16 | 126 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8492 | ISE | 40 | 2358 | 1706 | 172 | 480 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8378 | Exp | 21 | 1524 | 1446 | 27 | 51 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8361 | PS | 17 | 1612 | 1477 | 62 | 73 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8472 | PS | 8 | 1228 | 899 | 249 | 80 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8466 | PS | 158 | 771 | 538 | 124 | 109 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8362 | PS | 33 | 1871 | 1766 | 41 | 64 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8468 | Info | 15 | 1196 | 979 | 90 | 127 |
| | | | | | | |
| | average | 35 | 1161 | 928 | 110 | 123 |
+------+---------+-------+---------+------+------+------+
The average delay from first draft to publication is about 3 years,
but this varies widely. Excluding the independent stream
submissions, the average delay from start to finish is 3 years and 3
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months, of which on average 2 years and 8 months are spent getting
consensus in the working group.
The longest delay is found for [RFC8492], 6.5 years from start to
finish. This is however a very special case, a draft that was
prepared for the TLS working group and failed to reach consensus.
After that, it was resubmitted to the ISE, and incurred atypical
production delays.
On average, we see that 80% of the delay is incurred in WG
processing, 10% in IETF review, and 10% for edition and publication.
We can compare these delays to those observed 10 years ago and 20
years ago:
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+------------+--------+-------+-------+
| RFC (2008) | Status | Pages | Delay |
+------------+--------+-------+-------+
| 5326 | Exp | 54 | 1584 |
| | | | |
| 5348 | PS | 58 | 823 |
| | | | |
| 5281 | Info | 51 | 1308 |
| | | | |
| 5354 | Exp | 23 | 2315 |
| | | | |
| 5227 | PS | 21 | 2434 |
| | | | |
| 5329 | PS | 12 | 1980 |
| | | | |
| 5277 | PS | 35 | 912 |
| | | | |
| 5236 | ISE | 26 | 1947 |
| | | | |
| 5358 | BCP | 7 | 884 |
| | | | |
| 5271 | Info | 22 | 1066 |
| | | | |
| 5195 | PS | 10 | 974 |
| | | | |
| 5283 | PS | 12 | 1096 |
| | | | |
| 5186 | Info | 6 | 2253 |
| | | | |
| 5142 | PS | 13 | 1005 |
| | | | |
| 5373 | PS | 24 | 1249 |
| | | | |
| 5404 | PS | 27 | 214 |
| | | | |
| 5172 | PS | 7 | 305 |
| | | | |
| 5349 | Info | 10 | 1096 |
| | | | |
| 5301 | PS | 6 | 396 |
| | | | |
| 5174 | Info | 8 | 427 |
+------------+--------+-------+-------+
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+------------+--------+-------+---------+
| RFC (1998) | Status | Pages | Delay |
+------------+--------+-------+---------+
| 2289 | PS | 25 | 396 |
| | | | |
| 2267 | Info | 10 | unknown |
| | | | |
| 2317 | BCP | 10 | 485 |
| | | | |
| 2404 | PS | 7 | 488 |
| | | | |
| 2374 | PS | 12 | 289 |
| | | | |
| 2449 | PS | 19 | 273 |
| | | | |
| 2283 | PS | 9 | 153 |
| | | | |
| 2394 | Info | 6 | 365 |
| | | | |
| 2348 | DS | 5 | 699 |
| | | | |
| 2382 | Info | 30 | 396 |
| | | | |
| 2297 | ISE | 109 | 28 |
| | | | |
| 2381 | PS | 43 | 699 |
| | | | |
| 2312 | Info | 20 | 365 |
| | | | |
| 2387 | PS | 10 | 122 |
| | | | |
| 2398 | Info | 15 | 396 |
| | | | |
| 2391 | PS | 10 | 122 |
| | | | |
| 2431 | PS | 10 | 457 |
| | | | |
| 2282 | Info | 14 | 215 |
| | | | |
| 2323 | ISE | 5 | unknown |
| | | | |
| 2448 | ISE | 7 | 92 |
+------------+--------+-------+---------+
We can compare the median delay, and the delays observed by the
fastest and slowest quartiles in the three years:
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+------+-------------+--------+-------------+
| Year | Fastest 25% | Median | Slowest 25% |
+------+-------------+--------+-------------+
| 2018 | 604 | 1179 | 1522 |
| | | | |
| 2008 | 869 | 1081 | 1675 |
| | | | |
| 1998 | 169 | 365 | 442 |
+------+-------------+--------+-------------+
The IETF takes three to four times more times to produce an RFC in
2018 than it did in 1998, but about the sametime as it did in 2008.
The increased delay does not mean increased work per RFC. The number
of RFC published per year remained between 200 and 300 all those
years, and the number of participants is not greater now than in
1998. If we estimated the "level of attention" by dividing the
number of participants by the number of RFC produced, we would see a
number that remains stable. People are probably not working much
more on each RFC now than they were 20 years ago, but the same amount
of work is stretched over a much longer period.
4.2. Preparation and Publication delays
The preparation and publication delays include three components:
o the delay from submission to the RFC Editor to beginning of
Auth48, during which the document is prepared;
o the AUTH48 delay, during which authors review and eventually
approve the changes proposed by the editors;
o the publication delay, from final agreement by authors and editors
to actual publication.
The breakdown of the publication delays for each RFC is shown in the
following table.
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+-------+---------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-------------+
| RFC | Status | Pages | RFC | Auth 48 | RFC | Edit(total) |
| | | | edit | | Pub | |
+-------+---------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-------------+
| 8411 | Info | 5 | 53 | 88 | 20 | 161 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8456 | Info | 64 | 98 | 46 | 14 | 158 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8446 | PS | 160 | 85 | 57 | 0 | 142 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8355 | Info | 13 | 83 | 15 | 1 | 99 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8441 | PS | 8 | 67 | 33 | 6 | 106 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8324 | ISE | 29 | 42 | 28 | 1 | 71 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8377 | PS | 8 | 39 | 102 | 0 | 141 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8498 | Info | 15 | 49 | 16 | 2 | 67 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8479 | ISE | 8 | 31 | 5 | 1 | 37 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8453 | Info | 42 | 73 | 7 | 0 | 80 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8429 | BCP | 10 | 60 | 99 | 0 | 159 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8312 | Info | 18 | 96 | 30 | 0 | 126 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8492 | ISE | 40 | 355 | 123 | 2 | 480 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8378 | Exp | 21 | 42 | 9 | 0 | 51 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8361 | PS | 17 | 39 | 31 | 3 | 73 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8472 | PS | 8 | 59 | 8 | 13 | 80 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8466 | PS | 158 | 84 | 22 | 3 | 109 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8362 | PS | 33 | 49 | 11 | 4 | 64 |
| | | | | | | |
| 8468 | Info | 15 | 65 | 53 | 9 | 127 |
| | | | | | | |
| | Average | | 77.3 | 41.2 | 4.2 | 122.7 |
| | | | | | | |
| -8492 | Average | | 62 | 37 | 4 | 103 |
+-------+---------+-------+--------+---------+--------+-------------+
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On average, the total delay appears to be a bit more than four month,
but the average is skewed by the extreme values encountered for
[RFC8492]. If we exclude that RFC from the computations, the average
delay drops to a just a bit more than 3 months: about 2 months for
the preparation, a bit more than one month for the Auth48 phase, and
4 days for the publishing.
Of course, these delays vary from RFC to RFC. To try explain the
causes of the delay, we compute the correlation factor between the
observed delays and 4 plausible explanation factors:
o The number of pages in the document,
o The amount of copy edit, as discussed in (#copy-editing),
o Whether or not an IANA action was required.
We find the following values:
+-------------+----------+---------+-------------+
| Correlation | RFC edit | Auth 48 | Edit(total) |
+-------------+----------+---------+-------------+
| Nb pages | 0.50 | -0.04 | 0.21 |
| | | | |
| Copy-Edit | 0.42 | 0.24 | 0.45 |
| | | | |
| IANA | -0.13 | 0.26 | 0.15 |
+-------------+----------+---------+-------------+
None of these indicate strong correlations. The greater number of
pages will tend to increase the preparation delay, but it does not
appear to impact the Auth48 delay at all. The amount of copy editing
also tend to increase the the preparation delay somewhat and the
Auth48 delay a little. The presence or absence of IANA action has
very ittle correlation with the delays.
We also observe that the Auth48 delay varies much more than the
preparation delay, with a standard deviation of 20 days for Auth48
versus 10 days for the preparation delay. In theory, Auth48 is just
a final verification: the authors receive the document prepared by
the RFC production center, and just have to give their approval, or
maybe request a last minute correction. The name indicates that this
is expected to last just two days, but in average it lasts more than
a month.
We tested a variety of hypotheses that might explain the duration of
AUTH48 by computing the correlation coefficients between various
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properties of the RFC and the production delays. The results are
listed in the following table:
+-------------+----------------+---------+-----------------+
| Correlation | RFC production | Auth 48 | RFC Edit(total) |
+-------------+----------------+---------+-----------------+
| Nb drafts | 0.19 | -0.30 | -0.17 |
| | | | |
| Nb Authors | 0.40 | -0.04 | 0.16 |
| | | | |
| WG delay | 0.03 | -0.16 | -0.15 |
+-------------+----------------+---------+-----------------+
The results show that there is no simple answer. The number of
pages, the required amount of copy editing and to a very small extent
the number of drafts can help predict the production delay, but there
is no obvious predictor for the Auth 48 delay. In particular, there
is no numerical evidence that the number of authors influences the
Auth48 delay, or that authors who have spent a long time working on
the document in the working group somehow spend even longer to answer
questions during Auth48 - if anything, the numerical results point in
the opposite direction.
After asking the authors of the RFC in the sample why the AUTH48
phase took a long time, and we got three explanations:
1- Some RFC have multiple authors in multiple time zones. This slows
down the coordination required for approving changes.
2- Some authors found some of the proposed changes unnecessary or
undesirable, and asked that they be reversed. This required long
exchanges between authors and editors.
3- Some authors were not giving high priority to AUTH48 responses.
As mentioned above, we were not able to verify these hypotheses by
looking at the data.
4.3. Copy editing
We can assess the amount of copy editing applied to each published
RFC by comparing the text of the draft approved for publication and
the text of the RFC. We do expect differences in the "boilerplate"
and in the IANA section, but we will also see differences due to copy
editing. Assessing the amount of copy editing is subjective, and we
do it using a scale of 1 to 4:
1- Minor editing
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2- Editing for style, such as capitalization, hyphens, that versus
which, and expending all acronyms at least one.
3- Editing for clarity in addition to style, such as rewriting
ambiguous sentences and clarifying use of internal references. For
Yang models, that may include model corrections suggested by the
verifier.
4- Extensive editing.
The following table shows that with about half of the RFC required
editing for style, and the other half at least some editing for
clarity.
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+------+--------+-----------+
| RFC | Status | Copy Edit |
+------+--------+-----------+
| 8411 | Info | 2 |
| | | |
| 8456 | Info | 4 |
| | | |
| 8446 | PS | 3 |
| | | |
| 8355 | Info | 2 |
| | | |
| 8441 | PS | 2 |
| | | |
| 8324 | ISE | 2 |
| | | |
| 8377 | PS | 3 |
| | | |
| 8498 | Info | 3 |
| | | |
| 8479 | ISE | 1 |
| | | |
| 8453 | Info | 2 |
| | | |
| 8429 | BCP | 2 |
| | | |
| 8312 | Info | 2 |
| | | |
| 8492 | ISE | 3 |
| | | |
| 8378 | Exp | 2 |
| | | |
| 8361 | PS | 2 |
| | | |
| 8472 | PS | 2 |
| | | |
| 8466 | PS | 3 |
| | | |
| 8362 | PS | 3 |
| | | |
| 8468 | Info | 3 |
+------+--------+-----------+
This method of assessment does not take into account the number of
changes proposed by the editors and eventually rejected by the
authors, since these changes are not present in either the final
draft or the published RFC. It might be possible to get an
evaluation of these "phantom changes" from the RFC Production Center.
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4.4. Independent Series
Out of 20 randomly selected RFC, 3 were published through the
"independent series". One is an independent opinion, another a
description of a non-IETF protocol format, and the third was
[RFC8492], which is a special case. Apart from this special case,
the publication delays were significantly shorter for the Independent
Stream than for the IETF stream. This seems to indicate that the
Independent Series is functioning as expected.
The authors of these 3 RFC are regular IETF contributors. This
observation motivated a secondary analysis of all the RFC published
in the "independent" stream in 2018. There are 14 such RFC: 8507,
8494, 8493, 8492, 8483, 8479, 8433, 8409, 8374, 8369, 8367, 8351,
8328 and 8324. (RFC 8367 and 8369 were published on 1 April 2018.)
We can ask whether the authors of these RFC are these outsiders, part
of a "wider community" or are people who are also contributing to the
IETF. The overwhelming response is, "insiders". Pretty much all the
authors are or were involved in the IETF, many of them with a
prominent track record. There are just 2 exceptions, a single RFC in
which only 3 of the 5 authors are well associated with the IETF.
4.5. Citation Counts
Part of the exercise is to test whether citation counts provide a
useful measure of the popularity of the IETF production. These
citation counts vary widely:
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+------+--------+---------+
| RFC | Status | Scholar |
+------+--------+---------+
| 8411 | Info | 2 |
| | | |
| 8456 | Info | 3 |
| | | |
| 8446 | PS | 123 |
| | | |
| 8355 | Info | 9 |
| | | |
| 8441 | PS | 0 |
| | | |
| 8324 | ISE | 2 |
| | | |
| 8377 | PS | 1 |
| | | |
| 8498 | Info | 0 |
| | | |
| 8479 | ISE | 0 |
| | | |
| 8453 | Info | 8 |
| | | |
| 8429 | BCP | 1 |
| | | |
| 8312 | Info | 9 |
| | | |
| 8492 | ISE | 2 |
| | | |
| 8378 | Exp | 1 |
| | | |
| 8361 | PS | 1 |
| | | |
| 8472 | PS | 5 |
| | | |
| 8466 | PS | 2 |
| | | |
| 8362 | PS | 7 |
| | | |
| 8468 | Info | 2 |
+------+--------+---------+
The results indicate that [RFC8446] is by far the most popular of the
20 RFC in our sample. This is not surprising, since TLS is a key
Internet Protocol. Of the other publications, only 4 have 5 to 9
citations, and the others have three or less.
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In order to get a baseline, we can look at the number of references
for the RFC published in 2008 and 1998. However, we need totake time
into account. Documents published a long time ago are expected to
have accrued more references. We try to address this by looking at
three counts for each document: the overall number of references over
the document's lifetime, the number of references obtained in the
year following publication, and the number of references observed
since 2018:
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+------------+---------+----------+-------+
| RFC (2008) | Overall | 08 to 09 | >2018 |
+------------+---------+----------+-------+
| 5326 | 234 | 27 | 26 |
| | | | |
| 5348 | 364 | 34 | 13 |
| | | | |
| 5281 | 182 | 27 | 12 |
| | | | |
| 5354 | 30 | 15 | 7 |
| | | | |
| 5227 | 81 | 9 | 7 |
| | | | |
| 5329 | 57 | 11 | 5 |
| | | | |
| 5277 | 85 | 10 | 5 |
| | | | |
| 5236 | 48 | 8 | 4 |
| | | | |
| 5358 | 45 | 6 | 3 |
| | | | |
| 5271 | 16 | 3 | 3 |
| | | | |
| 5195 | 21 | 12 | 1 |
| | | | |
| 5283 | 26 | 5 | 1 |
| | | | |
| 5186 | 13 | 4 | 1 |
| | | | |
| 5142 | 42 | 14 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 5373 | 16 | 4 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 5404 | 12 | 3 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 5172 | 11 | 2 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 5349 | 11 | 1 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 5301 | 11 | 3 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 5174 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
+------------+---------+----------+-------+
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+------------+---------+----------+-------+
| RFC (1998) | Overall | 98 to 99 | >2018 |
+------------+---------+----------+-------+
| 2289 | 369 | 13 | 14 |
| | | | |
| 2267 | 607 | 13 | 7 |
| | | | |
| 2317 | 81 | 9 | 6 |
| | | | |
| 2404 | 446 | 20 | 5 |
| | | | |
| 2374 | 280 | 18 | 4 |
| | | | |
| 2449 | 54 | 6 | 3 |
| | | | |
| 2283 | 240 | 25 | 1 |
| | | | |
| 2394 | 69 | 4 | 1 |
| | | | |
| 2348 | 27 | 2 | 1 |
| | | | |
| 2382 | 89 | 30 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2297 | 68 | 21 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2381 | 86 | 20 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2312 | 115 | 18 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2387 | 292 | 8 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2398 | 72 | 7 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2391 | 110 | 5 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2431 | 25 | 4 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2282 | 12 | 3 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2323 | 12 | 1 | 0 |
| | | | |
| 2448 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
+------------+---------+----------+-------+
We can compare the median number of references, and the numbers of
references for the least and most popular quartiles in the three
years:
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+----------------------------+-----------+--------+------------+
| References | Lower 25% | Median | Higher 25% |
+----------------------------+-----------+--------+------------+
| RFC (2018) | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| | | | |
| RFC (2008) | 12 | 26 | 57 |
| | | | |
| RFC (2008), until 2009 | 3 | 6 | 12 |
| | | | |
| RFC (2008), 2018 and after | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| | | | |
| RFC (1998) | 47 | 84 | 250 |
| | | | |
| RFC (1998), until 1999 | 4 | 9 | 19 |
| | | | |
| RFC (1998), 2018 and after | 0 | 0 | 3 |
+----------------------------+-----------+--------+------------+
The total numbers shows new documents with fewer references than the
older ones. This can be explained to some degree by the passage of
time. If we restrict the analysis to the number of references
accrued in the year of publishing and the year after that, we still
see higher reference counts in 1998 than in 2008 or 2018. For
example, the top quartile of RFC published in 1998 had at least 19
references by the end of 1999, while the top quartile of RFC
published in 2008 only had at least 12 references, which is twice the
corresponding number for the RFC of 2018.
We also see that the number of references to RFC fades over time.
Only the most popular of the RFC produced in 1998 are still
referenced in 2019. The overall popularity of the RFC series benefit
from a history of publishing relevant documents, but over time the
references to historic documents will decrease and the overall
popularity will depend on more recent documents.
We need however to be a bit cautious before asserting that
publications with a low citation count have limited impact:
o some documents may well accumulate more citations over time. For
example, [RFC8377] updates [RFC6455]. There are more than 1000
citations of [RFC6455] on Google Scholar. We might expect that
the citation count of [RFC8377] will increase in the coming years.
o citation counts largely come from academic publications, and thus
reflect popularity within researchers more than popularity with
network operators and vendors.
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We should be able to assess the popularity of specifications with
vendors, operators and designers by asking questions about deployed
services and products.
5. Next steps
This draft is not really complete. We have obtained feedback from
many authors but not all. We should also get a review from the RFC
Production Center. We may want to find a better way of looking at
citations than simple queries on Google Scholar, and in any case we
want to update the reference counts before publication, as they will
keep changing over time. When an RFC describes a protocol, we may
want to also compare the citation counts and the deployment status of
the protocol.
Even with those limitations, the exercise shows some promise, and
also shows the interest of doing more studies.
It is tempting to go from this exercise on published RFCs to a
broader evaluation of the IETF productivity, but this would require
more than just evaluating the RFCs. The IETF produces standard
proposals and informative memos that get published in the RFC series,
but that is not its only purpose. Two other purposes would be the
organization of fruitful discussions between members of the technical
community, and the filtering of ill-thought proposals so they are not
endorsed in IETF publications.
We don't have good ideas yet for evaluating the propagation of ideas,
but we could perhaps evaluate the filtering: not enough filtering
would cause bad ideas to be published; too much filtering would cause
good ideas to be rejected.
Not enough filtering should be visible by analyzing the published
RFCs. Successful RFC will accrue many references and would drive
many implementations. Unsuccessful RFCs would lack both. These
criterias are hard to predict in advance, so we expect a fraction of
the published RFCs to be unsuccessful. Too small a fraction would
indicate a process that is too conservative, too large a fraction
would indicate a process that's too lax. We can see that in the
current analysis.
On the other hand, a reasonable balance between success and lack of
it does not guarantee that the process is very efficient. It could
be that the culling of bad ideas also culls good ones, and we would
not know by just looking at the publications. For that, we would
need to look at publication attempts that were abandoned, for example
drafts that expired without progressing or being replaced. The
sampling methodology could also be used for that purpose. Pick maybe
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20 drafts at random, among those abandoned in a target year, and
investigate why they were abandoned. Was it because better solutions
emerged in the working group? Or maybe because the authors
discovered a flaw in their proposal? Or was it because some
factional struggle blocked a good idea? Was the idea pursued in a
different venue? Hopefully, someone will try this kind of
investigation.
6. Security considerations
This draft does not specify any protocol.
We might want to analyze whether security issues were discovered
after publication of specific standards.
7. IANA Considerations
This draft does not require any IANA action.
Peliminary analysis does not indicate that IANA is causing any
particular delay in the publication process.
8. Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the authors of the selected RFC who were willing to
provide feedback on the process: Michael Ackermann, Zafar Ali, Sarah
Banks, Bruno Decraene, Lars Eggert, Nalini Elkins, Joachim Fabini,
Dino Farinacci, Clarence Filsfils, Sujay Gupta, Dan Harkins, Vinayak
Hegde, Benjamin Kaduk, John Klensin, Acee Lindem, Nikos
Mavrogiannopoulos, Patrick McManus, Victor Moreno, Al Morton, Andrei
Popov, Eric Rescorla, Michiko Short, Bhuvaneswaran Vengainathan, Lao
Weiguo, and Li Yizhou. Many thanks to Adrian Farrel for his useful
advice.
9. Informative References
[RFC3797] Eastlake 3rd, D., "Publicly Verifiable Nominations
Committee (NomCom) Random Selection", RFC 3797,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3797, June 2004,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3797>.
[RFC6455] Fette, I. and A. Melnikov, "The WebSocket Protocol",
RFC 6455, DOI 10.17487/RFC6455, December 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6455>.
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[RFC8312] Rhee, I., Xu, L., Ha, S., Zimmermann, A., Eggert, L., and
R. Scheffenegger, "CUBIC for Fast Long-Distance Networks",
RFC 8312, DOI 10.17487/RFC8312, February 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8312>.
[RFC8324] Klensin, J., "DNS Privacy, Authorization, Special Uses,
Encoding, Characters, Matching, and Root Structure: Time
for Another Look?", RFC 8324, DOI 10.17487/RFC8324,
February 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8324>.
[RFC8355] Filsfils, C., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Decraene, B., and R.
Shakir, "Resiliency Use Cases in Source Packet Routing in
Networking (SPRING) Networks", RFC 8355,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8355, March 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8355>.
[RFC8361] Hao, W., Li, Y., Durrani, M., Gupta, S., and A. Qu,
"Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL):
Centralized Replication for Active-Active Broadcast,
Unknown Unicast, and Multicast (BUM) Traffic", RFC 8361,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8361, April 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8361>.
[RFC8362] Lindem, A., Roy, A., Goethals, D., Reddy Vallem, V., and
F. Baker, "OSPFv3 Link State Advertisement (LSA)
Extensibility", RFC 8362, DOI 10.17487/RFC8362, April
2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8362>.
[RFC8377] Eastlake 3rd, D., Zhang, M., and A. Banerjee, "Transparent
Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL): Multi-Topology",
RFC 8377, DOI 10.17487/RFC8377, July 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8377>.
[RFC8378] Moreno, V. and D. Farinacci, "Signal-Free Locator/ID
Separation Protocol (LISP) Multicast", RFC 8378,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8378, May 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8378>.
[RFC8410] Josefsson, S. and J. Schaad, "Algorithm Identifiers for
Ed25519, Ed448, X25519, and X448 for Use in the Internet
X.509 Public Key Infrastructure", RFC 8410,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8410, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8410>.
[RFC8411] Schaad, J. and R. Andrews, "IANA Registration for the
Cryptographic Algorithm Object Identifier Range",
RFC 8411, DOI 10.17487/RFC8411, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8411>.
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[RFC8429] Kaduk, B. and M. Short, "Deprecate Triple-DES (3DES) and
RC4 in Kerberos", BCP 218, RFC 8429, DOI 10.17487/RFC8429,
October 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8429>.
[RFC8441] McManus, P., "Bootstrapping WebSockets with HTTP/2",
RFC 8441, DOI 10.17487/RFC8441, September 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8441>.
[RFC8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.
[RFC8453] Ceccarelli, D., Ed. and Y. Lee, Ed., "Framework for
Abstraction and Control of TE Networks (ACTN)", RFC 8453,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8453, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8453>.
[RFC8455] Bhuvaneswaran, V., Basil, A., Tassinari, M., Manral, V.,
and S. Banks, "Terminology for Benchmarking Software-
Defined Networking (SDN) Controller Performance",
RFC 8455, DOI 10.17487/RFC8455, October 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8455>.
[RFC8456] Bhuvaneswaran, V., Basil, A., Tassinari, M., Manral, V.,
and S. Banks, "Benchmarking Methodology for Software-
Defined Networking (SDN) Controller Performance",
RFC 8456, DOI 10.17487/RFC8456, October 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8456>.
[RFC8466] Wen, B., Fioccola, G., Ed., Xie, C., and L. Jalil, "A YANG
Data Model for Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN)
Service Delivery", RFC 8466, DOI 10.17487/RFC8466, October
2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8466>.
[rfc8468] Morton, A., Fabini, J., Elkins, N., Ackermann, M., and V.
Hegde, "IPv4, IPv6, and IPv4-IPv6 Coexistence: Updates for
the IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) Framework", RFC 8468,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8468, November 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8468>.
[RFC8472] Popov, A., Ed., Nystroem, M., and D. Balfanz, "Transport
Layer Security (TLS) Extension for Token Binding Protocol
Negotiation", RFC 8472, DOI 10.17487/RFC8472, October
2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8472>.
[RFC8479] Mavrogiannopoulos, N., "Storing Validation Parameters in
PKCS#8", RFC 8479, DOI 10.17487/RFC8479, September 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8479>.
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[RFC8492] Harkins, D., Ed., "Secure Password Ciphersuites for
Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 8492,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8492, February 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8492>.
[RFC8498] Mohali, M., "A P-Served-User Header Field Parameter for an
Originating Call Diversion (CDIV) Session Case in the
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 8498,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8498, February 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8498>.
Author's Address
Christian Huitema
Private Octopus Inc.
427 Golfcourse Rd
Friday Harbor WA 98250
U.S.A
Email: huitema@huitema.net
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