Re: [Banana] Charter

[Margaret Cullen <[e-mail]>]

Hi Sri,

> I have the same comment. It is not clear to me either on what exactly this
> WG intends to do. In the BOF (WG-forming) meeting, there was no
> opportunity given to raise any questions on the problem statement.  The
> entire focus of the meeting was on some charter text without any
> discussions on 1.) problem statement, 2.) currently known art, 3.) efforts
> in other WG groups,4.) the gaps.  There was no agreement on IETF 98 BOF
> meeting (non-WG forming) either on the problem statement.

Actually, the non-WG forming BOF was held at IETF-97, and it is true that we did not yet have agreement on a clear and well-understood problem statement at that time. We didn’t hold a BOF at IETF-98.  Instead, about 30 of us met for a publicly-scheduled "Bar BOF" and discussed the problem statement and possible charter text. There was also _considerable_ discussion of the problem statement on the mailing list between IETF-97 and IETF-99, and we reached general agreement on our problem statement on the mailing list.

At IETF-99, we reviewed the charter text, which included our agreed problem statement as the first few paragraphs.  To wit:

"The BANdwidth Aggregation for Network Access (BANANA) Working Group is chartered to develop solution(s) to support dynamic path selection on a per-packet basis in networks that have more than one point of attachment to the Internet.

Bandwidth Aggregation consists of splitting local traffic across multiple Internet links on a per-packet basis, including the ability to split a single flow across multiple links when necessary.

It is the goal of this WG to produce a Bandwidth Aggregation solution that will provide the following benefits:

	• Higher Per-Flow Bandwidth: Many Internet links available to homes and small offices (DSL, Cable, LTE, Satellite, VPNs, etc.) have relatively low bandwidth. Users may wish to run applications (such as streaming video, or content up/downloads) that require (or could benefit from) more bandwidth for a single traffic flow than is available on any of the local links. A Bandwidth Aggregation solution could supply the needed bandwidth by splitting a single traffic flow across multiple Internet links.
	• Reduced Cost: Traffic sharing on a per-packet basis allows the full bandwidth of the lowest-cost link to be used first, only using a higher-cost link when the lowest-cost link is full.
	• Increased Reliability: When one Internet link goes down, ongoing application flows can be moved to another link, preventing service disruption.”

We went through the charter text, sentence by sentence, at the BOF and the only change we made to the problem statement portion of the charter was to add VPNs to the list of low bandwidth Internet links.  There was an opportunity to discuss every sentence in this section, but people didn’t have much to say about it, probably because we had already spent months discussing it on the list and in a Bar BOF.

During the question period at the end of the BOF, we asked whether the problem was clear and well-understood.  The large majority of  the people who responded said “yes”.  This was recorded in the minutes as a “decent hum” for yes, and a “low murmur” for no. 

> So, I do not
> understand why we are jumping on charter text discussion without clear
> agreements on the problem statement.

Based on the agreement on the mailing list and in the room in Prague, I would say that we _do_ have agreement on a clear and understandable problem statement.  What makes you think we don’t?

> I really hope IESG will review all the notes/discussions carefully.

I am sure that Suresh can be trusted to review things carefully before he puts our charter on the IESG agenda.  If there are any particular notes or discussion that you would like him to review, please feel free to draw his attention to them.

Margaret