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It is great fun to dive into the details and flesh out a concept. We
all like to do this, because we are responsible engineers. We want to
learn, and we want to understand, and we want to do a good job.
Eventually, we will produce a complete and thorough specification for
10 Gigabit Ethernet.
But that's not what we are doing right now. Right now, we are
tasked to define and justify a project. The required output is:
1) Project Authorization Request (PAR)
A two page, very formal document. The only "interesting" parts
are the title, the scope, and the purpose. Scope and purpose
amount to a paragraph each. Everything else is "fill in the blanks".
This document gets reviewed by 802.3, the 802 Sponsor Executive
Committee (SEC), the IEEE-SA Standards Board New Standards Committee,
and finally by the IEEE-SA Standards Board itself. None of these
groups wants to see technical details.
2) 5 Criteria
5 "slides", aka vue-graphs. Each of the 5 Criteria has three or
four bullet points that must be addressed. The 5 Criteria are
Broad Market Potential, Compatibility with 802 Standards, Distinct
Identity, Technical Feasibility, Economic Feasibility.
This document gets reviewed by 802.3 and the 802 SEC. 802.3 takes
this document very seriously. You have to address each of the
bullet points.
3) Objectives
A set of bullets which defines the project in slightly more detail
than the Scope and Purpose sections of the PAR. We use the Objectives
to guide our work, and to describe ourselves to the outside world.
We hope to leave the York meeting with agreement on the contents of
each of these documents. If we have agreement on a PAR, 5 Criteria,
and Objectives, then we can pre-circulate these documents to 802.3 and
the 802 SEC so that they can take action on them at the November 802
Plenary meeting. The documents have to be made available 30 days
before the meeting, so they need to be sent out on October 8th. If we
miss that date, we will have to wait another 4 months until the next
plenary meeting.
I believe that we should direct our discussions and our work to the
contents of these 3 documents. At this point in the process, everything
else is a lower priority.
Howard Frazier
Cisco Systems, Inc.