The IESG has one liaison person to the IAB. Every year after the first IETF meeting the IESG selects among themselves one person to act as the IESG liaison to the IAB. The IESG chair takes the initiative for that.
The tasks of this IESG liaison to the IAB are:
- Participate in the IAB conference calls. At the time of this writing that means 2-4 teleconference calls per month:
- 60-minute business meetings are held every other week
- The alternate weeks are held in reserve in case an additional business meetings are needed.
- The IAB tries to use one of the reserve slots each month for a purely technical topic, often with an outside presenter
- Report important (and IAB relevant) topics from IESG to the IAB
- including writing-up a short report of a few paragraphs to the IAB for every second business meeting in the month.
- The recommended method is sending a draft to iesg list first and giving them a day or two to comment. After that, sending it to the IAB mailing list.
- Help the interaction between IESG and IAB. Sometimes that means reminding or asking IAB members to also copy the IESG on certain topics. Sometimes geting a specific task to discuss some topic within IESG to try and get a IESG concensus view on the topic back to IESG.
- The IESG liaison is subscribed to the IAB mailing list
The IETF chair (currently also IESG chair) is also on the IAB, so he/she also can help with this process.
The IAB has one liaison person to the IESG
Every year after the first IETF meeting the IAB selects among themselves one person to act as the IAB liaison to the IESG. The IAB chair takes the initiative for that.
The tasks of this IAB liaison to the IESG are:
- Participate in the IESG conference calls. At the time of this writing that means roughly four teleconference calls per month:
- two times 150 minutes for normal IESG telechat (the calls are biweekly).
- two 90 minute calls for informal-conference calls (the calls are biweekly in the weeks alternate to the IESG telechat calls)
- Report important (and IESG relevant) topics from IAB to the IESG.
- at time of writing this is done verbally at IESG formal telechats (i.e. every other week)
- Help the interaction between IAB and IESG. Sometimes that means reminding or asking IESG members to also copy the IAB on certain topics. Sometimes you get a specific task to discuss some topic within IAB to try and get an IAB concensus view on the topic back to IESG.
The IAB chair is also participating in IESG, so he/she also can help with this process.
- ensure that BOF proposals get bounced onto the IESG and IAB mailing lists for early review/comments
- ensure that WG charters/rechartering get proper review on IESG and IAB (normally this happens automagically when you put a (re-)charter on the IESG telechat agenda. That means, the IESG secretarait will copy it to the IAB and IESG mailing lists.
When we (IESG) want architectural help/review from/by the IAB, then we should properly formulate what we expect.
What we should make clear is:
- What is the exact architural question we have. It is good if IESG has consensus on the question as well.
- What type of response we want to get, e.g. one or more of:
- a document;
- a a (few) paragraph(s),
- a an e-mail to IESG or some specific mailing list
- a discussion with IESG or some specific WG
- By what time we expect the above to happen
- If we believe we know who on the IAB would have the appropriate background to tackle the problem, we should be prepared to inform IAB, IAB-chair or specific person(s) about that.
- Once IESG agrees on the above, the IESG chair sends an email to the iab mailing list.
- The first round of discussions is then to make sure that IAB and IESG have a common understanding of the question and expected delivery and time-frame.
- If IAB however has clarifying questions then we need to discuss and explain, which may result in a re-statement of the question. This discussion is expected to happen on both iab and iesg mailing lists. Sometimes things may be easy and do not need this step.
- Once IAB and IESG agree on the question, the deliverable, and the respective IAB & IESG members who are designated as responsible for seeing this activity to completion, the IAB starts the work and delivers as requested. The designated stuckees may continue to discuss (liaise) refinements as needed.
- When IAB thinks they have delivered, the IAB chair sends an email to IESG saying so and pointing to the deliverable.
- IESG checks and IESG chair lets IAB know if they are happy and if not explain why not.
Under RFC 2850, the IAB is responsible for "oversight of the architecture for the protocols and procedures used by the Internet". An IAB/IESG statement on IAB Member Roles in Evaluating New Work Proposals is available here: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-iab-member-roles-in-evaluating-new-work-proposals/