Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-keytrans-architecture
# Shepherd Review of draft-ietf-keytrans-architecture-09
6 July 2026 — Rev. 3
## Document History
1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?
This architecture document has consensus, and has seen feedback and
contributions, from a relatively small group of people who do research and/or
engineering on key-transparency systems.
2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?
There have been no significant objections to the working group's process, the
adoption of this document, or its substance as of the working group's last
call. All feedback from the last call has been addressed.
3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent?
If so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)
No.
4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents
of the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere, either
in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere (where)?
*Not applicable.*
## Additional Reviews
5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which reviews
took place.
Key transparency is a free-standing building block of a user-level PKI.
Although it draws on ideas from certificate transparency (RFC 6962) and makes
use of verifiable random functions (RFC 9381), it does not have significant
interdependencies with other technologies, standards, or working groups.
6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.
*Not applicable.*
7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module comply
with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified in RFC
8342?
*Not applicable.*
8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.
*Not applicable.*
## Document Shepherd Checks
9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that
this document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and
ready to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?
Yes.
10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified and
addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent reviews?
The "Security Considerations" section includes detailed discussion of security
and privacy considerations, including its implications for operators under
emerging privacy regulations. Indeed, much of the document exists to address
the first several "common issues" within the Security Area: - Threat modeling -
Trusted and untrusted parties - Terminology relating to security concepts -
Matching threats to threat mitigation
11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard, Informational,
Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type of RFC? Do all
Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?
Informational.
12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To the best
of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If not, explain
why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links to
publicly-available messages when applicable.
There are no such obligations known to the author as of 29 June 2026.
13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page is
greater than five, please provide a justification.
Yes.
14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on authors.ietf.org.
(Also note that the current idnits tool generates some incorrect warnings; a
rewrite is underway.)
There are two warnings still present in `-09`:
> There is 1 instance of lines with non-ascii characters in the document.
This is the name Velák in the citation for RFC 9381.
> Outdated reference: A later version (-05) exists of
draft-ietf-keytrans-protocol-04
This can be updated with the latest version of this informational reference
immediately prior to publication.
15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.
See #18.
16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative references?
*Not applicable.*
17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP 97) that
are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so, list them.
No.
18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state? If
so, what is the plan for their completion?
The intended Informational RFC is the necessary foundation for
`draft-ietf-keytrans-protocol` and clearly lays out its architectural needs and
goals.
19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs?
If so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the introduction?
If not, explain why and point to the part of the document where the
relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.
No.
20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm that
any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm that each
newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents, allocations
procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).
*Not applicable.*
21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear? Please
include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.
*Not applicable.*
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