Re: [Idr] Benoit Claise's Discuss on draft-ietf-idr-large-community-11: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

["John G. Scudder" <[e-mail]>]

Benoit,

I think the wording is accurate as written, but I see your point. I think your suggested wording is terse to a fault since it abandons the important "this will work with your four-byte ASN" information. IMO a change is not strictly needed, but if one is desired how about something like this?

OLD:
   The attribute is suitable for use with four-octet
   Autonomous System Numbers

NEW:
   The attribute is suitable for use with all Autonomous System Numbers including four-octet
   Autonomous System Numbers

Or a lawyer would probably say :-)
   The attribute is suitable for use with, inter alia, four-octet
   Autonomous System Numbers

Regards,

—John

> On Jan 4, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Benoit Claise <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Job,
> 
> So basically, you're telling me: "The attribute is suitable for use with ASNs.", right?
> Is this what needs to be in the abstract?
> 
> Regards, B.
>> Hi Benoit,
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 04:39:25PM +0100, Benoit Claise wrote:
>>>> Global Administrator field is a 4 octet integer that is used to carry AS
>>>> number but it is not mandatory to interpret it as an AS number only
>>>> (while a typical use case is for carrying AS number) - two peers can
>>>> agree on any value that has meaning between those peers. Representation
>>>> on the wire is in network byte order, and 2 byte AS number will get
>>>> naturally padded with two zero bytes in front. Virtually all deployments
>>>> today are AS4 capable and use AS4 encoding even for AS number values
>>>> that fit into 16 bit value range therefore AS number is a 4 octet entity
>>>> already.
>>> Then this sentence in the abstract "The attribute is suitable for use
>>> with four-octet ASNs." is misleading, right? At least to me. The
>>> attribute is suitable for four-octets ASNs and two-octets ASNs encoded
>>> in four-octets. This would be more in line with "This field SHOULD be
>>> an Autonomous System Number (ASN)" later on.
>> I am under the impression that nowadays the IETF community considers all
>> ASNs to be four-octet ASNs, however, some of those ASNs can be encoded
>> as a two octet value. The Large Communities specification is suitable
>> for usage in Autonomous Systems from all walks of life, where as rfc1997
>> communities are unsuitable for all ASNs, specifically those ASNs which
>> cannot be encoded as two-octet values.
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> Job
>> .
>> 
>