Re: [babel] Alissa Cooper's No Objection on draft-ietf-babel-applicability-07: (with COMMENT)

[Alissa Cooper <[e-mail]>]

Hi Juliusz,

> On Aug 5, 2019, at 11:54 AM, Juliusz Chroboczek <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Dear Alissa,
> 
> Thanks for your review.
> 
>> I find the use of "we" and "our" odd for a consensus document. I think the
>> document would be improved if these used the document itself as the subject
>> (e.g., "this document describes" instead of "we describe").
> 
> Agreed.  Fixed in -08.
> 
>> I think the claims made in the bulleted list at the end of Section 2.2 need
>> citations.
> 
> I agree, but I won't do it.  Please let me explain.
> 
> The fact that Babel has the claimed properties has been proved, but
> I haven't published the proof yet.  (The proof has been reviewed by
> a competent specialist of the area, who concluded "that looks like a proof
> to me".  Which, knowing the individual, I consider as high praise indeed.)
> 
> As for the fact that realistic networks have the required properties --
> that's something that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been studied
> much.  The best source IMHO is Griffin and Sobrinho (already cited as
> [METAROUTING] in this draft), but it's mostly about properties of BGP
> networks, and therefore doesn't directly apply to the kind of networks
> considered in this document.
> 
> So there's not much I can do at this time.  If you know otherwise, please
> let me know.

In that case I think not making the claims is a better option. The one about bugs seems particularly problematic — with my layperson’s understanding of this protocol, it seems as though if new developers start looking to implement this it would be very hard to predict how often any particular bug that any implementer might introduce would interfere with the protocol operation. If there isn’t some evidence to back this up it seems wiser not to claim it.

Thanks,
Alissa

> 
> -- Juliusz