George,
I think Dan's
suggestion went too far - very specific media descriptions (like references to
11801) have always been for the objectives rather then the PAR. On the other
hand, the existing scope is much more broad than previous
projects:
Current
scope:
The
scope of this project is to specify additions to and appropriate modifications
of IEEE Std 802.3 (including all approved amendments and corrigenda) to add a
copper Physical Layer (PHY) specification.
Howard's suggested scope:
Specify a Physical
Layer (PHY) for operation at 10 Gb/s
on
horizontal structured copper cabling, using the existing
Media Access Controller, and with extensions to the
appropriate
physical layer management
parameters, of IEEE Std
802.3
CX4
scope:
The scope of this project is to specify
additions to and appropriate modifications of IEEE Std 802.3 as amended by
IEEE Std
802.3ae-2002 (and any other approved amendment or
corrigendum) to add a copper Physical Medium Dependent (PMD) option for
10
Gb/s operation, building upon the existing 10GBASE-X
Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) and 10 Gigabit Attachment Unit Interface
(XAUI) specifications.
The CX4 scope text is much
more similar to Howard's suggested scope. Both have a
statement about the speed. I can't recall any scope statement we have
done for a PHY project that omitted mention of speed. The CX4 scope doesn't
say anything about the type of copper, but it specifies that the PHY will
be based on the X PCS and the XAUI specs which limits it pretty clearly. For
10GBASE-T, the intent to work over the wiring types used in structured cabling
and the 10 Gbit/s speed are the defining
factors.
Look at it this way. IEEE Std 802.3 already has many
copper Physical Layer specifications. Therefore the job listed in the current
scope statement has already been done. If the PAR is approved with the current
scope, the scope will be published by the IEEE. How would a reader seeing that
scope know what the project was about and whether they were interested?
Howard's scope is a more clear statement of what we want to
do.
If something in Howard's scope is too confining, then
please propose an alternative that is reasonably descriptive of the particular
nature of this project - not something that could describe 5 or
more other projects we have already done.
Regards,
Pat