OPSAWG - IETF 125 Meeting Minutes

Date: IETF 125 Session
Chairs: Joe Clark, Benoît Claise
Secretary: Chongfeng Xie

## Summary

The Operations and Management Area Working Group (OPSAWG) met at IETF 125 to discuss the status of active documents, new proposals for IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX), and initiatives to improve protocol operations and YANG module development. Key highlights included the advancement of draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis (Guidelines for Considering Operations and Management), the promotion of draft-ietf-opsawg-yang-provenance, and multiple presentations regarding IPFIX extensions for SAV, ECN, and multi-layer encapsulation. The group also discussed the "VELOCE" experiment aimed at accelerating YANG module development through source control workflows.

## Key Discussion Points

### WG Status and Administration

RFC Updates: Joe Clark announced that TACACS+ over TLS 1.3 is now RFC 9887.
Document Progress:
- draft-ietf-opsawg-discardmodel is ready for submission to the IESG.
- draft-ietf-opsawg-pcap and draft-ietf-opsawg-pcapng have been revived with updates from Michael Richardson.
- draft-ietf-opsawg-ipfix-alt-mark and draft-ietf-opsawg-scheduling-oam-tests are nearing completion, with chairs requesting final coordination on alignment between IPFIX and YANG models.
Chair Remark on IPFIX: Benoît Claise noted the high volume of IPFIX drafts. He reminded authors that IANA registration via expert review is often sufficient and that drafts should only be pursued if they provide significant use-case context or complex logic beyond simple Information Element (IE) registration.

### YANG Provenance

Presentation: YANG Provenance
Draft: draft-ietf-opsawg-yang-provenance

Ana Minaburo presented updates, including correcting JSON signature placement and adding CBOR implementation details using SID files.
Discussion: Carsten Bormann raised concerns regarding JSON canonicalization (RFC 8785) potentially being a "downref" for standards track documents. Thomas Graf suggested referencing the message broker draft to clarify where verification should occur in the pipeline (after deserialization but before schema validation).

### Guidelines for Considering Operations and Management

Presentation: Guidelines for Considering Operations & Management in IETF Specifications
Draft: draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis

Benoît Claise highlighted that the draft is now a WG document. Because the chairs are authors, Alvaro Retana has been appointed as the document shepherd.
Discussion: The primary debate centered on whether the "Operational Considerations" section should be mandatory. Benoît argued for a compulsory section with a "no considerations identified" escape clause to ensure early thought. Mahesh Jethanandani suggested softening the justification requirement. Adrian Farrel and Dan King supported the mandatory requirement to ensure operational thinking is forced early in the design process.

### IPFIX Extensions

Export of SAV Information: Slides
- Chao Chen presented new IEs for Source Address Validation (SAV). Thomas Graf recommended linking this work to the SAV capabilities and YANG documents for operational consistency.
Application Layer Export: Slides
- Xin Xin proposed exporting HTTP/HTTPS metadata. Alexandre Petrescu (Alex) noted that several proposed IEs might already exist in the IANA registry and advised a thorough cross-check.
ECN Information: Slides
- Shunsuke Song proposed exporting ECN bits for L4S monitoring. Benoît Claise questioned creating specific IEs for 2 bits when the existing "IP Class of Service" IE already covers the full byte.
Multi-Layer Encapsulation and BGP VPN: Encapsulation Slides, BGP VPN Slides, Flex-Algo Slides
- Xiao Min addressed the ambiguity in multi-layered packets (e.g., IP-in-IP). Benoît Claise noted that even structured data (Option 2) does not strictly guarantee ordering between the metering and export processes. Regarding BGP VPN, Thomas Graf supported the new IEs as current implementations are "abusing" existing fields.

### Security Operations Fundamentals

Presentation: Security Operations Fundamentals and Guidance
Draft: draft-ietf-opsawg-security-operations-fundamentals-and-guidance

Michael Richardson (remote) explained the draft's goal: educating protocol designers on the practical needs of Security Operations Centers (SOCs), such as threat intelligence, indicators of compromise (IOCs), and digital forensics.
Discussion: Feedback included requests for more specific examples of when incidents should be handled by a NOC versus a SOC.

### VELOCE (YANG Module Development Experiment)

Presentation: VELOCE

Mahesh Jethanandani presented an experimental process to accelerate YANG development using GitHub/Git-based workflows.
Discussion: The group debated whether "time to publish" (2-year goal) is the correct metric. Italo Busi emphasized that the "bis" process is currently too slow and that a more decoupled YANG/document model would be beneficial. Joe Clark and Jeff Haas noted that participation and consensus are often the real bottlenecks, not just the tooling.

## Decisions and Action Items

RFC 5706bis: The chairs/authors will proceed with addressing the final 8 issues on GitHub and prepare for IETF Last Call.
YANG Provenance: Chairs will initiate Directorate reviews (Security, YANG Doctors) for draft-ietf-opsawg-yang-provenance.
IPFIX SAV: Authors to coordinate with SAV group authors to include operational consideration cross-references.
IPFIX ECN/Encapsulation: Authors to follow up on the mailing list regarding the technical efficiency of the proposed IEs (specifically whether existing TOS/COS fields suffice).

## Next Steps

VELOCE: Mahesh Jethanandani will set up regular meetings for volunteers to test the experiment on both a new YANG module and a "bis" module update.
OAM Test Scheduling: Qin Wu to follow up on the list with a summary of changes made to draft-ietf-opsawg-scheduling-oam-tests to resolve comments from Daniel King and Joe Clark.
GPON-GEM: Thomas Graf to request early IANA allocation for code points in draft-ietf-opsawg-ipfix-gpon-gem before requesting Last Call.

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