Re: [babel] WG Last Call for draft-ietf-babel-source-specific (2018-03-26 to 2018-04-09)

[Denis Ovsienko <[e-mail]>]

 ---- On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 09:05:01 +0100 Matthieu Boutier <[e-mail]> wrote ---- 
[...]

 > > (Is it correct that the model in this specification treats 0/0 same as any other source prefix, it is just the encoding convention that 0/0 is always represented with the absence of the sub-TLV? If so, it could be helpful to acknowledge this point in the document for clarity.) 
 >  
 > Thanks, this was not said explicitly in the protocol operation. 

Hello all.

This is an comment for the whole working group, not just Matthieu.

The quote above discusses a property of the draft-ietf-babel-source-specific WG document, in that its protocol encoding potentially provides one way to represent a route that is not source-specific, and 6126bis by definition provides another. This document contains normative text that specifies which of the two potential encodings must be used on the wire, so that the implementations remain compatible.

Having studied the document, on 28 May 2018 I suggested that the normative text is not clear enough in this regard. Matthieu agreed and on 2 June 2018 pushed a commit that among other changes elaborated how this document encoding relates to the encoding of 6126bis:

https://github.com/jech/babel-drafts/commit/801c205e5d9a9cdd22f6d51ba7ca45f28ffbf81f

The document remained unchanged until 28 June 2018, when Juliusz committed a change reverting this clarification in this document, without providing any comments in the commit message or on the mailing list:

https://github.com/jech/babel-drafts/commit/03c04b619eecf51011f7e0549ef1e7bb330680da

I am spelling those details on the list as they have an effect on the quality of a specific deliverable by the Babel WG.

-- 
    Denis Ovsienko