[Gen-art] Genart last call review of draft-ietf-rtgwg-multihomed-prefix-lfa-07

[Elwyn Davies <[e-mail]>]

Reviewer: Elwyn Davies
Review result: Ready with Issues

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Document: draft-ietf-rtgwg-multihomed-prefix-lfa-07
Reviewer: Elwyn Davies
Review Date: 2018-10-10
IETF LC End Date: 2018-10-09
IESG Telechat date: Not scheduled for a telechat

Summary:
Ready except for one major issue which I see (although this might be due to
lack of understanding).  The inequalities mostly compare sums of the Distance
and Cost function values.   Since the unts of (administrative) cost are not
specifically defined in the routing protocols, I am unclear how summing these
two values without some scaling produces a value that is a useful combination. 
Adding more specific definitions would probably help. Please note that I am not
skilled in the LFA art so I have not checked the technical value of the
inequalities.

Major:
Compatibility of Cost and Distance  metrics: The inequalities in RFC 5286 use
only distance values and hence no compatibility issues arise.  The inequalities
proposed in this draft combine Cost and Distance metrics additively in most
(all?) cases and compare them against another combination.  How should the
metrics be scaled to ensure that the combination and comparison makes sense? 
If the scales are not appropriate, one or other term is likely to dominate
making nonsense of the proposal (IMO).  I don't see any suggestion of how this
should be achieved (or if it is irrelevant, explanation of why an aribtrary
administrative cost metric would work.)

Minor:
Lack of definitions of cost and distance terms: The key terms distance and cost
are not defined.  Clearly they are well-known terms of art in routing  but
exactly what is meant is relevant because of the above major issue.

Nature of the inequalities: The nature, value of the compared terms and
function of the inequaities is not explained in the abstract or intro. 
Mentioning that they use a combination of the key determnants of routing path
selection ((Administrative) Cost, (Hop) Distance) would probably do the
business.

Downref: Idnits notes RFC 5714  is a downref and there is no associated note
(see RFC 4897).

Nits/Editorial:
General: The Cost() function used in the inequalities is defined using a
capital letter C but is used generally with a lower case c.  Should use Cost(
rather than cost( throughout. Note the definitions in ss4.2.2.1/.2 use cost(
also... suggest changing it for consistency.

Abstract: Introduce LFA acronym (used in title): s/Loop-Free
Alternates/Loop-Free Alternates (LFAs)/  (Probably worth adding it to s1.1).

Requirements Language: Not in the rquired form:
      The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
      NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED",
      "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as
      described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they
      appear in all capitals, as shown here.

s1, para 1: s/IP fast- reroute/IP fast-reroute/(remove space)

s3.1, para 2: s/the below example network/the example network presented in
Figure 3/

s3.1, para 3: s/prefix p/prefix P/ (lower->upper case)

s3.1, para 4: s/the below example network/the example network presented in
Figure 4/

s4.2.1, bullet 1a: s/intra area/intra-area/

s4.2.1, items 2a, 4c, 4d and 5a (line 3): idnits reports these lines as being
too long (more than 72 chars).

s4.2.1.1, para 1: s/cause loop/cause looping/