Telechat Review of draft-kivinen-802-15-ie-04
review-kivinen-802-15-ie-04-opsdir-telechat-bradner-2017-03-01-00

This is an OPS-DIR review of draft-kivinen-802-15-ie-04.txt.

IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF (draft-kivinen-802-15-ie-04.txt) is a
request to the IEEE 802.15 Assigned Numbers Authority (ANA)for a Payload
Information
 Element (IE) number and a request that the IANA manage suballocations of the
 number for the IETF.

overall status: not ready for publication - non-technical updates needed

in my opinion the document assumes to  many things and should be revised to
assume less. For example it never defines what IEEE 802.15.4 is - Wikipedia
says that it is "a technical standard which defines the operation of low-rate
wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs)" - adding that information would
make the document much more approachable to most people.

 The document also does not explain what IEs actually are or what types of
 extensions they
enable.  Providing a pointer to an example of what type of information to be
inserted in the 802.15.4 frame & why would help make things clearer. (maybe a
6TiSCH document)

2nd paragraph in section 4 starts:
"Because the frame contains a list of payload IEs, there is no need for this
document to specify the internal structure inside the IETF IE."

I do not understand what this is trying to say - can it be rewritten to be
clearer?  I have the same problem with the rest of the same paragraph.

In section 7 the document calls for "expert review" - it seems to me that one
would want to also require documentation (in fact the 1st paragraph in section
6 says that documents are required) and I wonder, if this is only for use in
IETF protocols, why it should not require IESG approval (or even standards
action) - I would also reference RFC 5226 and follow its specific wording

the last paragraph in section 4 seems out of place in this document since it
describes how to use the IETF IE and nothing else in the document seems to
cover that topic - if this document wants to cover use I would expect more
information would be needed

Scott