[Int-dir] Intdir telechat review of draft-ietf-anima-asa-guidelines-05

[Benno Overeinder via Datatracker <[e-mail]>]

Reviewer: Benno Overeinder
Review result: Ready with Nits

Intdir Review draft-ietf-anima-asa-guidelines-05

I am an assigned INT directorate reviewer for
draft-ietf-anima-asa-guidelines-05.  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/.

The document is intended as a document with an "Informational" status
and proposes guidelines for the design of Autonomic Service Agents for
autonomous networks.  It is complementary to the documents describing
the Autonomous Network Infrastructure described in RFC 8993 (and other
related RFCs 8990 and 8994).  The guidelines assist in the design and
implementation of ASAs by describing the life cycle and behaviour
(methods) in the different phases required to work correctly in the ANI.

Overall, I find the document well written and understandable.  It seems
very thorough and well structured.  And while the document references
related RFCs and provides further information, it is perfectly legible
as a standalone document.

The document discusses functions to be implemented or be in place, but
sometimes also discusses detailed implementation suggestions such as
(increasing) multiple threads, queues, and locks.  In this perspective,
it is not only about guidelines in the design of ASA, but also about the
implementation.  These lower level implementation guidelines only appear
in some places and do not interfere with the focus or understanding of
the document.

Small nit, the following sentence is not entirely clear to me (Section
5, last paragraph): It is expected that the value field of many
objectives will be extended in service, to add additional information.

The robustness principle (Section 8) is important for building trust in
autonomous systems.  Together with Section 9, Security Considerations,
these are not afterthoughts, but essential sections on requirements and
considerations for the design of ASAs.  Perhaps the authors could also
mention (reference) this earlier in the document, e.g. in the
Introduction section.