[grobj] Referrals problem statement at IETF 79

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

I presented the draft Problem Statement for Referral
<draft-carpenter-referral-ps-01.txt> by myself, Sheng Jiang, and
Bo Zhou (departing author) and Zhen Cao (new author, ChinaMobile),
three times: in the two open meetings for the Applications and
Transport Areas, and in the Name Based Sockets (NBS) BOF.

There was significant interest and feedback in the APPAREA meeting,
with comments that we had identified an important problem but perhaps
not the correct direction for a solution. There was feedback that
applications people also want a solution to the path selection problem
(in other words, the network layer should fix the mess it's made over
the last 15 years with NATs and two versions of IP).

In the TSVAREA meeting, there was some positive discussion and agreement
that the problem statement should be further developed.

There was less feedback in the NBS BOF. It seems to me that the NBS
proposers are understimating the issues that they face once referral
and separate addressing scopes are present. But there is a similar
message that connectivity should be provided by some code under the
application layer, not by heuristics in every separate application.

I hope that some people from those three audiences will join
the discussion of the problem statement here.

-- 
Regards
   Brian Carpenter