Re: [IPFIX] draft-ietf-ipfix-ie-doctors-04.txt

[Brian Trammell <[e-mail]>]

Hi, Paul,

As the registry (to date) has been de facto expert review (and there have been no registrations), I don't see any problem with this.

However, can IE-DOCTORS update 5610? 5610 is Standards Track, and IE-DOCTORS targets BCP. If not, this would be a technical erratum on 5610.

Cheers,

Brian


On Sep 3, 2012, at 7:08 PM, Paul Aitken wrote:

> Brian,
> 
>> Hi, Paul,
>> 
>> Interesting.
>> 
>> I hadn't checked the registry, but I can say that the FCFS policy for Units was intentional: imagine a an enterprise-specific information element designed to do something very odd with unorthodox units, say, counting rats crawling around in the underfloor space in a data center (perhaps to attempt to correlate packet loss with rodent infestation). Now, the IEs for this would be ESIEs, but since this is a research study, we'd want to annotate the data (stored in files) with 5610 type information records.
> 
> ie, 5610 allows units to be expressed for enterprise-specific IEs.
> 
> 
>> However, on review, perhaps Units in the IANA registry should cover only those IEs in the IANA registry, and if you want to do something really odd, you should leave units blank and explain "expressed in rats per cubic meter as measured by the Yoyodyne Underfloor Rat Counter model 19" in the informationElementDescription field. But that was the intent.
> 
> This would prevent 5610 from working properly, since I couldn't created a "rats" unit for my ESIEs.
> 
> And if an IE is already in IANA's IPFIX registry, then it already has a type - so there'd be no need for it in 5610.
> 
> 
>> If we decide this, the proper thing to do is to go with the registry as is and change IE-DOCTORS to update RFC 5610.
> 
> I think the "IPFIX units" registry should be subject to expert review - which allows enterprises to request "rats" for their enterprise-specific IEs if they want to use 5610, provided they can convince the expert reviewer that they have an IPFIX-enabled rat counter.
> 
> However, it ensures that IANA won't assign a lot of stupid units which may be requested by miscreants.
> 
> If all agree, then I'd be happy for IE-docs to update 5610 (and leave the registry unchanged).
> 
> P.