[babel] Roman Danyliw's No Objection on draft-ietf-babel-applicability-09: (with COMMENT)

Roman Danyliw via Datatracker <noreply@ietf.org> Wed, 07 August 2019 19:38 UTC

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Subject: [babel] Roman Danyliw's No Objection on draft-ietf-babel-applicability-09: (with COMMENT)
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Roman Danyliw has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-babel-applicability-09: No Objection

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COMMENT:
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(1) Section 2.1. This section makes a number strong claims that I would
recommend be tempered:

-- Per the sentence, “Given a sufficiently friendly audience, the principles
behind Babel can be explained in 15 minutes, and a full description of the
protocol can be done in 52 minutes (one microcentury)”, what does this mean? 
If this is to suggest to the reader that they too can learn Babel in 15
minutes, it is unconvincing and reads like a marketing statement.

-- Per the phrase, “…including one that was reportedly written and debugged in
just two nights“, this statement is not convincing without context.

-- Per the sentence, “In addition to the above, our implementation experience
indicates that Babel tends to be robust with respect to bugs: more often than
not, an implementation bug …”, this text is an improvement over -07 (thank
you), but I still view this as a high risk, anecdotal claim.  I strongly
recommend it be removed.

(2) Section 2.2.  This section uses the designation of “strong” vs. a “weak”
property.  Where are those defined?

(3) Section 2.2.  Per the sub-bullets of “These weak requirements make Babel a
robust protocol …”, what assurance does the phrase “does most likely not”
suggest?  Furthermore, the claim that implementation bugs won’t collapse the
network based on an uncited “extensive” experience seems too strong of claim.

(4) Per Section 3.1.  How big is a “medium-sized hybrid network”?

(5) Per Section 3.1.  What are “meshy wireless bits”?

(6) Section 3.2.  Is there a citation for the successful deployment in “large
scale overlay networks, built out of thousands of tunnels spanning continents”?

(7) Section 3.4. The utility of Babel in small and home offices surprised me as
I wasn't expecting such networks to mix IPv4 and v6; and use an IGP.

(8) Section 5.  Per the sentence “Due to its simplicity, Babel-HMAC  …”, I’m
not sure that simplicity should be driving the choice of the security
properties.  It seems like it should be the security requirements.