Re: [babel] Robert Wilton's Discuss on draft-ietf-babel-rtt-extension-05: (with DISCUSS)

Hi Rob,

As you correctly point out, this document contains two parts:
1) the bits required for interop (wire format and required handling)
2) the algorithm suggested to use the bits from (1)

Conceptually, (1) is standards track and (2) is experimental.
However, RFCs can only have one track for the entire document.
Because of this, the WG landed on having the document be
standards track, while noting that (2) has not been proven
mathematically. The important justification here is that we want
other standards track documents to be able to depend on this
extension. I'll note that (2) here is in better state than many
other algorithms I've seen in other standards track documents;
the warning disclaimer mainly comes from the fact that one of the
authors likes his mathematical proofs and isn't fully satisfied with
an algorithm that only happens to work really well in real
deployments, instead of that plus a mathematical proof.
You can find this conversation on the WG mailing list here [1].

Thanks,
David

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/babel/ZG-6lUophG59gwfC772myVzlicY/

On Mon, Feb 12, 2024 at 7:49 AM Robert Wilton via Datatracker <
noreply@ietf.org> wrote:

> Robert Wilton has entered the following ballot position for
> draft-ietf-babel-rtt-extension-05: Discuss
>
> When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply to all
> email addresses included in the To and CC lines. (Feel free to cut this
> introductory paragraph, however.)
>
>
> Please refer to
> https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/handling-ballot-positions/
> for more information about how to handle DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.
>
>
> The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-babel-rtt-extension/
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> DISCUSS:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for this document.  I've balloted "discuss" on this document
> because I
> would like to have a discussion with the responsible AD and other ADs as to
> whether Standards Track is the right classification for this document
> based on
> the text below, where it seems like a key part of the solution is only
> experimental.  I appreciate that this document is also defining new TLVs,
> but
> the pertinent IANA registry policy is only specification required, and
> there is
> also reserved IANA values for experimental TLVs that could also be used, if
> appropriate.
>
> (1) p 7, sec 4.  RTT-based route selection
>
>    In this section, we describe an algorithm that integrates smoothing
>    and hysteresis and has been shown to behave well both in simulation
>    and experimentally over the Internet [DELAY-BASED].  While
>    implementations MAY use this algorithm, it is considered
>    experimental, since we do not currently have a theoretical
>    understanding of its behaviour, and in particular we do not know by
>    how much it could be simplified without impairing its functionality.
>
> Regards,
> Rob
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> babel mailing list
> babel@ietf.org
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/babel
>