[Dime] [dime] #91 (drmp): Handling of requests without Priority indication

["dime issue tracker" <[e-mail]>]

#91: Handling of requests without Priority indication

 In the current version, we have the following text:

    When there is a mix of transactions specifying priority in request
    messages and transactions that do not have the priority specified,
    transactions that do not have a specified priority SHOULD be treated
    as having the PRIORITY_0 priority.

 With PRIORITY_0 being the highest priority (PRIORITY_4 being the lowest
 priority).

 If I'm correct, this implies that request with no priority info at all
 would be handled with the highest priority.

 I think this is not correct. Current Diameter implementations make no use
 of priority info and using this mechanism should be a way to explicitly
 prioritize requests with priority indication compared to request without
 priority info. Otherwise, the priority indication would be only used to
 somehow enable the de-prioritization of some requests whereas all the
 other ones with no priority indication will have de facto the highest
 priority.
 This is more relevant from an agent point of view, in an early phase of
 deployment of this new priority mechanism, with few clients setting
 explicitly the priority in the requests and the rest of the clients not
 supporting the new feature and therefore no adding the priority info in
 the requests.

 Keeping the idea of 5-value priority indication, the value PRIORITY_0
 should therefore be the lowest priority level or, if the current order is
 kept, request without priority indication should be handled as having
 PRIORITY_4.

 Another approach, which would enable explicit upgrade or downgrade of
 request priority handling, would be to define a range of e.g. 10 values
 for priority (e.g. 0 - 9) and to handle requests without priority
 indication as having the an intermediary value, e.g. value 4. It would
 mean that using the priority indication in the request, it will be
 possible to explicitly indicate if the current request should be handle
 with a higher or lower priority than existing requests without priority
 indication. It could be a way to indicate that a given request can be
 handled with a lower priority than all the other requests.

-- 
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Reporter:                           |      Owner:  draft-ietf-dime-
  [e-mail]           |  [e-mail]
     Type:  defect                   |     Status:  new
 Priority:  major                    |  Milestone:
Component:  drmp                     |    Version:
 Severity:  Active WG Document       |   Keywords:
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Ticket URL: <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/dime/trac/ticket/91>
dime <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/dime/>