Re: [Int-dir] Intdir early review of draft-ietf-bier-ping-08

[Greg Mirsky <[e-mail]>]

Hi Brian,
thank you for the review and your thoughtful comments. Will work on
addressing the comments and get back to you.

Regards,
Greg

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 6:36 AM Brian Haberman via Datatracker <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> Reviewer: Brian Haberman
> Review result: Almost Ready
>
> I am an assigned INT directorate reviewer for draft-ietf-bier-ping-08.txt.
> These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the Internet Area
> Directors. Document editors and shepherd(s) should treat these comments
> just
> like they would treat comments from any other IETF contributors and resolve
> them along with any other Last Call comments that have been received. For
> more
> details on the INT Directorate, see
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/intdir/about/
> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/intdir/about/>.
>
> Based on my review, the document IS NOT ready to go to IETF Last Call and
> therefore CANNOT be forwarded to the IESG
>
> There are a number of issues that I think should be addressed before
> advancing
> this document...
>
> 1. IANA Considerations - The draft calls out in section 5 the creation of a
> registry and three sub-registries without giving any guidance on how those
> registries should be managed, per RFC 8126. It is also unclear is section
> 5.3
> is calling for the creation of an IANA registry or not.
>
> 2. Section 3.1
>
>     * It is unclear if the two header formats described here both occur in
> a
>     transmitted frame or if the second header format is a modified version
> of
>     the first header. If it is the former, it seems odd to have to
> duplicate
>     versions, message type, protocol, and reserved fields.
>
>      * Is there a requirement that the timestamp formats be the same in
> both
>      the Echo Request and the Echo Reply? If not, is there a requirement
> that
>      BFRs MUST support both formats?
>
>      * The description of the Reserved fields seems incomplete. What
> should a
>      BFR do if the Reserved field is not set to 0?
>
>      * The Echo Request/Reply frame format includes multiple Timestamp
> Sent and
>      Timestamp Received fields. How are they initialized? Which fields get
> set
>      by the BFIR and which ones get set by the BFERs?
>
>      * The BFR acronym is used in this section, but not defined in Section
> 2.1.
>
> 3. Section 3.2 - If a BFR does not recognize a TLV, it can send a response
> with
> Return Code 2. Does it also drop that frame? What are the frame handling
> rules
> for other error-related Return Codes?
>
> 4. Section 3.3 - Some of the defined TLVs/Sub-TLVs indicate that they MAY
> be
> included. Are there specific conditions in which they are, or are not,
> included?
>
> 5. Section 4
>
>      * The whole description of the protocol flows would be much better
> with
>      illustrative sequence diagrams.
>
>      * The bulleted lists contain entries with narrative comments
> delineated by
>      '/*' and '*/'. These were hard to parse given the use of '*' bullets.
> I
>      would suggest converting these narratives to 'Notes:'.
>
> 6. Security Considerations - While I see the relationship to traditional
> ICMP
> Ping and LSP Ping, the use of multicast-based ping opens up other types of
> threats. I believe it would be quite useful to articulate how the threats
> described in RFC 6450 do, or don't, relate to this functionality.
>
>
>
>