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

[Martin Duke <[e-mail]>]

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.

- 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.


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
>>
>