Re: [alto] AD review of draft-ietf-alto-performance-metrics-15

["Y. Richard Yang" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Martin,

On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 2:24 PM Martin Duke <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Sorry for the fragmented review, but there are a couple of more issues:
>
> - The authors should do a review of all lower-case occurrences of must,
> should, may, and recommended. At least a few of them should be capitalized
> to indicate normative requirements.
>

Yes. We are taking a pass and are almost done.

>
> - IMO, from a quick review,  I-D.ietf-ippm-initial-registry as written is
> normative and should be listed as such. However, I think it would be better
> to simply refer to the actual registry (
> https://www.iana.org/assignments/performance-metrics/performance-metrics.xhtml)
> rather than tie it to the initial entries.
>
> Agree that referring to the registry is a better design and we will do the
normative reference in the update.

Thanks!
Richard



> On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 5:30 PM Martin Duke <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
>> One small correction: I'm jumping the gun on the author policy; 6 is
>> probably OK for now.
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 11:33 AM Martin Duke <[e-mail]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello authors,
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for writing this draft. It is clearly a useful
>>> extension to ALTO and is quite clearly written, even to someone who is not
>>> a practitioner. I have numerous comments/questions and a few nits.
>>>
>>> These points are all invitations to discussion, rather than commands
>>> about what to change, as I've missed much of the WG deliberations that led
>>> to this text.
>>>
>>> COMMENTS:
>>> - There are six authors. Having more than 5 editors/authors listed on
>>> the front page requires strong justification and chair/AD approval. See the
>>> RFC Editor statement [1]. You are encouraged to designate a few editors for
>>> the front page and list as many authors as desired at the end.
>>>
>>> - Sec 2.1. The cost-source model is conceptually sound, but the
>>> justification for it seems underexplained. What exactly is a client going
>>> to do with this information? What different behaviors would a client
>>> execute if the context was e.g. "sla" instead of "nominal?" To the extent
>>> the parameters are not machine readable, like links to webpages, are we
>>> really expecting this information to be presented to the humans behind ALTO
>>> clients?
>>>
>>> - Sec 2.1 I am confused about the meaning of the "sla" cost-source. Does
>>> this refer to an SLA the ALTO client has with the network? Between the
>>> target IP and the network? Or something else? If the first, does this link
>>> to client authentication in some way? If the second, what are the privacy
>>> implications of exposing these SLAs?
>>>
>>> - Sec 2.1. Related to the above, the text suggests that any cost-source
>>> expressed as "import" could also be expressed as "estimation". Why would
>>> the server do this? The text should say, or perhaps it would be
>>> conceptually cleaner if "estimation" and "import" were mutually exclusive
>>> sources by definition.
>>>
>>> - Sec 3. I would prefer it if the parameters field in each of these
>>> definitions was a bit more strict. This relates to my confusion about
>>> machine-readable vs. human readable data; if this is meant to be
>>> machine-readable, then e.g. Sec 3.4.4 should be more specific in spelling
>>> out that the IGP protocols should be in a format with the RFC number, for
>>> instance. If it's to be human readable for a purpose I don't understand,
>>> then these looser definitions are probably OK.
>>>
>>> - Sec 3.4 Unlike the other metrics, I have no idea what a client is to
>>> do with the hop count metric, since clients don't care about hop count.
>>> Hops only affect users through delay and loss rate, which is present in
>>> other metrics. Is the intent here to provide a proxy for delay when direct
>>> delay information is not available? If so, we should say so.
>>>
>>> - Sec 5.3. I suggest a reword.
>>>
>>> OLD:
>>> To address this issue, the only defined "routingcost" metric can be
>>>    only "estimation".
>>>
>>> NEW:
>>> To address this issue, if the "routingcost" metric contains a
>>> cost-context field, it MUST be "estimation."
>>>
>>> What should clients do if it's not "estimation?" Can they use it or
>>> reject the metric
>>> as malformed?
>>>
>>> - Sec 5.4.1: "...the ALTO server may provide the client with the
>>> validity period of the exposed metric values."
>>>
>>> Shouldn't there be a standard format for this? Or are you implying the
>>> use of cost-calendar?
>>>
>>> - Sec 5.4.2: I don't understand what this section is saying. Can the
>>> server provide new metrics not in the spec? Or is it saying that the server
>>> can take singletons about link one-way delays and compose path one-way and
>>> two-way delays, for example?
>>>
>>> NITS:
>>> - Sec 1. An initial sentence introducing ALTO at the beginning would be
>>> helpful, e.g.
>>>
>>> "ALTO [RFC 7285] provides a means for client to identify the most
>>> efficient information source when multiple copies of such information
>>> exist, by quering path information from an HTTP server."
>>>
>>> - Sec 2. The second paragraph is a little hard to read. Suggestion:
>>>
>>> OLD:
>>>
>>> On the other hand, to be able to use coarse-grained information such
>>>    as routing system information (e.g., [RFC8571 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8571>]), which may not
>>>    provide fine-grained information such as (iii) Method of Measurement
>>>    or Calculation and (vi) Measurement Timing, this document provides
>>>    context information to indicate the source of information and hence
>>>    available metric details.
>>>
>>> NEW:
>>>
>>>   This document specifies context information to indicate the metric
>>> source, which can allow clients to obtain fine-grained information like
>>> (ii) Method of Measurement or Calculation and (vi) Measurement Timing."
>>>
>>> - Sec 2.1 In Fig. 1, please expand "NBI" on first use.
>>>
>>> - Sec 3.1.3 Expand "PID" on first use.
>>>
>>> - Sec 3.1.4 s/recommended/RECOMMENDED
>>>
>>> - Sec 3.4 s/metric hopcount/hopcount metric
>>>
>>> - Sec 4.1.3 would this be correct: s/give the throughput/give the
>>> maximum throughput
>>>
>>> - Sec 6. s/is a highly sensitive/is highly sensitive
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> https://www.rfc-editor.org/pipermail/rfc-interest/2015-May/008869.html
>>>
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