Early Review of draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis-01
review-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis-01-opsdir-early-tsou-2026-01-24-00

Hi,

I have been selected as the Operational Directorate (opsdir) reviewer for this
Internet-Draft.

The Operational Directorate reviews all operational and management-related
Internet-Drafts to ensure alignment with operational best practices and that
adequate operational considerations are covered.

A complete set of _"Guidelines for Considering Operations and Management in
IETF Specifications"_ can be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis/.

While these comments are primarily for the Operations and Management Area
Directors (Ops ADs), the authors should consider them alongside other feedback
received.

- Document: draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis

- Reviewer: Tina Tsou
- Review Date: 01/24/2026

- Intended Status: Best Current Practice

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## Summary

- Has Nits: This document is basically ready for publication but has nits that
should be considered prior to publication.

Minor issues and suggestions

- Scope/intent: Be explicit early that this document is guidance for WGs and
authors, not a protocol-level requirement. Where RFC 2119/8174 terms are used,
say they are requirements of this BCP for authors, not for protocol behavior. -
Relationship to RFC 5706: In Abstract and Introduction, clearly state whether
this document obsoletes or updates RFC 5706 and summarize the key deltas.
Consider an appendix mapping old checklist items to the new structure. -
Terminology: Define “telemetry,” “monitoring,” “observability,” and
“management/control/data plane” on first use to avoid ambiguity. - Encryption
vs. manageability: Add a checklist question about operational visibility when
end-to-end encryption hides header or payload fields, and expectations for
exposing safe metadata or counters. - Automation and rollback: Add explicit
items on idempotent operations, transactionality, dry-run/preview, and reliable
rollback on failure, since these are frequent sources of outages. -
Configuration and state: Encourage separation of intended vs. applied config
and clarity on how state is derived and exposed, including convergence timing
and failure modes. - Logging and privacy: Include guidance on data
minimization, redaction of sensitive fields, log retention, and key/credential
rotation procedures as part of operational security. - Telemetry breadth: Call
out metrics, events/logs, and traces as first-class signals. Recommend rate
limiting, sampling guidance, units, and stability of metric names. - Backwards
compatibility and deprecation: Add questions on versioning, feature flags,
deprecation notices, and interop during mixed-version rollouts. - IANA and
registries: Remind authors to consider registries that impact operations (e.g.,
error codes, counters, event types) and to document update policies.

Nits/editorial

- Expand abbreviations on first use (OPS, NMS, KPI, MTTR, etc.).
- Normalize section title capitalization and hyphenation (e.g., “end-to-end,”
“machine-readable”). - Avoid ambiguous verbs like “support” in checklist items.
Prefer testable phrasing (“The protocol exposes...,” “The implementation
provides...”). - Provide consistent guidance on whether each checklist item is
“Recommended” vs “Optional,” and keep that labeling uniform across sections.
Ensure references cited in examples are up to date; mark informative vs
normative consistently. - Consider a short “How to use this document”
subsection explaining that WGs can paste the checklist into their draft
templates.

Overall, the document is in good shape for publication after addressing the
above clarifications and editorial cleanups.