[Coin] Comments re. draft-irtf-coinrg-use-cases (was: Re: Cancelling the COINRG meeting at IETF113)

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

Trying to bring back the reply to what Sharon observes to the RGs work, which so
far officially only includes the use-cases it seems.

As a very high-level observation, i find it less than ideal to prefix everything
in that document equally just with "COIN" because it eliminates important differences
and attaches unnecessary a new term to something that already is well known. It would
also be good to remember that just because an RG has a particular name, it is not
necessary for all technical classiciations to re-use that RGs name.

To me, the mayority of use-cases presented is really "just" distributed applications,
which in my view just "use" the network, but which are not "in" the network. Aka:

These use-cases run predominantly on general-purpose compute (x86/arm/risc5) and this
compute is somehow distributed and may include mobile components (like user-endpoints).
And we called this distributed applications for decades without anyone ever complaining
about that term.

These applications need some varying degree of better-than-best-effort services from the
network, such as controlled or guaranteed throughput, latency, loss and availability,
and they also may need some multipoint packet delivery, and some discovery functions from
the network to seed their self-orchestration. But that set of requirements does in my book
not make them "in" the network. That set of requirements existed for decades as well.

Another example: if a vendor like Cisco or Huawei sells a side-edge-device consisting of a
 VM/container host system and you can separately instantiate a router, a firewall, a DNS, 
an email, a web and a bunch of other servers: That to me is not "compute in the network".
That is just softwareization to combine decade old functions/devices into a single box.

So, to me, 5.3, (Virtual Network Programming), is the only proper "in network" case
described in the document. 

Now, my understanding of what's in and whats not in the network might be different
from what the RG mayority wants, but at least it would be great to spend more time
with a somewhat longer list of examples and explain for each of them whether why
and how its considered to be in or out, if in and out is really what the RG wants to define.

IMHO, it would be more productive to come up with a more differentiated set of classifications.
Distributed applications and their needs for better network services do not become less
important by NOT giving them a new name COIN.

One could also simply rename the RG to "Computer Over and In the Network" if one feels
the risk of kicking all the interesting work out of scope by not declaring it to be "in".

Cheers
    Toerless

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 10:51:14PM +0200, Sharon Barkai wrote:
> There is some duality in the list between those focusing on making switches/routers more like computers, and those focusing on using the network cloud as a well .. a cloud - for when it fits - topology, sharding, privacy etc.
> 
> In my view these are simply bottom-up top-down sides of the same you know… so im sure the chairs will settle this in time with proper frameworks. 
> 
> We needn't start from scratch on neither. Theres been good existing proposals for baseline on both fronts already.  
> 
> --szb
> Cell: +972.53.2470068
> WhatsApp: [phone]
> 
> > On Mar 11, 2022, at 10:36, Schooler, Eve M <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Hi Dirk, All,
> >  
> > My apologies about the ambiguity in the comment about the agenda. It was intended to convey that we struggled to have a FULL agenda, and NOT to pass judgement on the quality of the topics that might have been presented. Of the individuals we reached out to present, many stated the day/timing simply did not work out.
> >  
> > As for transparency…If you are a regular reader of this list, then it is painfully obvious that there has been quite a bit of divisiveness happening both on and off the list. As chairs, given the state of the agenda and the tone of the dialog, we felt the need to take a step back from the vitriol and simply take a deep breath to regroup. 
> >  
> > We certainly have valued the continued involvement of the COIN community, which has made many of the discussions vibrant and rewarding.  
> >  
> > Best regards,
> > Eve
> >  
> > From: Coin <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Dirk Trossen
> > Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2022 10:30 PM
> > To: Marie-Jose Montpetit <[e-mail]>; coin <[e-mail]>
> > Cc: coinrg-chairs <[e-mail]>
> > Subject: Re: [Coin] Cancelling the COINRG meeting at IETF113
> >  
> > Hi J/E/M, all,
> >  
> > Now that’s a surprise, not just in content but also in style since the RG community lacks the transparency of this decision.
> >  
> > As a COIN RG member myself for now more than 3 years (spanning two organizations), I had looked forward to discussing at least three activities in which I am involved in, namely the (i) use case advances (trying to formulate and categorize the pertinent research questions in a number of COIN areas), (ii) the applicability of SDN for routing (i.e. the use of DP programmability for realizing novel routing solutions, which according to the chairs is in scope of COIN), and (iii) a discussion on how COIN could help improve on DLT realizations; all activities resulting from research on topics I see as relevant to and within COIN.
> >  
> > So this gives already three agenda items from where I’m coming from (depending on willingness for time allocation, between about 45 to 60mins on an agenda in my mind) but yet we are told at ‘we cannot put a good agenda together’. Is there nothing beyond these items, really, and/or is this a judgement of those items in quality (I would expect good discussions on them but maybe it is just me)?
> >  
> > So I’m disappointed but also shocked by this style of simply cancelling the RG meeting with that (too) thin ‘we cannot put a good agenda together for IETF113’ explanation. I cannot and do not see the reasoning behind it albeit I may speculate but I am not a friend of those second guesses.
> >  
> > Hence, I would ask the community here: what discussions were we looking forward to have? Are those good enough to discuss regardless of the RG meeting being cancelled? If there is no RG meeting for whatever reason, maybe we can simply come together among those interested in those discussions and have them regardless, such as in a side meeting of the ‘COIN community’ (not the RG)?
> >  
> > From my side, I would be highly interested in that since I have valued the COIN discussions over the past years and don’t want to let go of this for reasons that are just not well enough explained below.
> >  
> > Best,
> >  
> > Dirk
> >  
> > From: Coin [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Marie-Jose Montpetit
> > Sent: 11 March 2022 00:45
> > To: coin <[e-mail]>
> > Cc: coinrg-chairs <[e-mail]>
> > Subject: [Coin] Cancelling the COINRG meeting at IETF113
> >  
> > Dear all:
> >  
> > Because of many converging issues, delays and (non) availability of invited researchers and papers we cannot put a good agenda together for IETF113.  Hence we are cancelling the meeting.
> >  
> > We plan to re-group, consult the community and plan for 114.
> >  
> > Discussions on the use cases and other important COIN topics will have to continue or be initiated on the list for now. Of course as the co-author of a draft that was going to be presented I am disappointed.
> >  
> > The co-chairs are in full agreement that this is the right decision at this point and the IRTF leadership has been kept in the loop.
> >  
> > J/E/M
> >  
> > Marie-José Montpetit, Ph.D.
> > [e-mail]
> >  
> >  
> > -- 
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> > [e-mail]
> > https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/coin

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