Skip to main content

Dispatch (dispatch)

WG Name Dispatch
Acronym dispatch
Area Applications and Real-Time Area (art)
State Active
Charter charter-ietf-dispatch-03 Approved
Document dependencies
Additional resources Issue tracker, Wiki, Zulip stream
Personnel Chairs Jim Fenton, Shuping Peng
Area Director Murray Kucherawy
Mailing list Address dispatch@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dispatch
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/dispatch/
Chat Room address https://zulip.ietf.org/#narrow/stream/dispatch

Charter for Working Group

The Dispatch working group is chartered to consider proposals for new
work in the ART area and identify, or help create, an appropriate venue
for the work.

Guiding principles for the proposed new work include:

  1. Providing a clear problem statement, motivation and deliverables for
    the proposed new work.

  2. Ensuring there has been adequate mailing list discussion reflecting
    sufficient interest, individuals have expressed a willingness to
    contribute and there is WG consensus before new work is dispatched.

  3. Looking for and identifying commonalities and overlap amongst
    published or ongoing protocol work. Such commonalities may indicate
    the possibility of reusing existing protocols or elements thereof
    published by other WGs, or expanding and/or refactoring the scope of
    deliverables in an active WG.

  4. Protecting the architectural integrity of IETF protocols and ensuring
    that new work has general applicability.

  5. Ensuring that the new work considers and seeks to improve security
    and privacy.

Options for handling new work include:

  • Directing the work to an existing WG.
  • Developing a proposal for a BOF.
  • Developing a charter for a new WG.
  • Making recommendations that documents be AD-sponsored
    (which ADs may or may not choose to follow).
  • By agreement with ART ADs, processing simple administrative documents.
  • Deferring the decision for the new work.
  • Rejecting the new work.

If the group decides that a particular topic needs to be addressed by a
new WG, the normal IETF chartering process will be followed, including,
for instance, IETF-wide review of the proposed charter. Proposals for
large work efforts SHOULD lead to a BOF where the topic can be discussed
in front of the entire IETF community. The DISPATCH WG will not do any
protocol work. Specifically, DISPATCH will always opt to find a location
for technical work; the only work that DISPATCH is not required to
delegate (or defer, or reject) is administrative work such as IANA
actions. Documents progressed as AD-sponsored would typically include
those that do not have general applicability to IETF protocols, but
rather are only applicable to specific use cases and network
deployments, for which the scope must be clearly specified.

Proposed new work may be deferred in cases where the WG does not have
enough information for the chairs to determine consensus. New work may
be rejected in cases where there is not sufficient WG interest or the
proposal has been considered and rejected in the past, unless a
substantially revised proposal is put forth, including compelling new
reasons for accepting the work.

A major objective of the DISPATCH WG is to provide timely, clear
dispositions of new efforts. Thus, where there is consensus to take on
new work, the WG will strive to quickly find a home for it. While most
new work in the ART area is expected to be considered in the DISPATCH
working group, there may be times where that is not appropriate. At the
discretion of the area directors, new efforts may follow other paths. For
example work may go directly to BoFs, may be initiated in other working
groups when it clearly belongs in that group, or may be directly AD
sponsored.