Re: 6MAN WG Last Call: <draft-ietf-6man-flow-3697bis-02.txt>

[Scott Brim <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 14:49, Thomas Narten <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Scott Brim <[e-mail]> writes:
>
> > >    A Flow is a sequence of packets originating from a particular
> > >    application that should be treated "the same" by the network as
> > >    they are forwarded along to their ultimate destination. Packets
> > >    within a flow should not be reordered, should not be given
> > >    dissimilar QOS treatment, etc. What constitutes a Flow can only be
> > >    defined by the application itself.
> > >
>
> > Sorry, Thomas, I don't think this will work.  First, I don't think we can
> > define a "flow" by what the network should do with it, whatever it
> > is.
>
> Well, we are defining a flow by what the network SHOULD NOT do with
> packets belonging to the same flow. I.e., packets within a Flow should
> not be reordered. That seems to be the key requirement/principle. (Are
> there other attributes?)
>

Last sentence first: Yes and the text that was there was

  "A flow is a sequence of packets sent from a particular source to a
  particular unicast, anycast, or multicast destination that a node
  desires to label as a flow."

... but what the network should/should not do SHOULD be farther down in the
draft where such things are already discussed, not in the (very small,
simple) definition of a flow at the beginning, no?

But let's not spend a lot of time on it.

Completely agree on the rest.


> What I think is worth highlighting is that what constitutes a flow can
> only be defined by the source of the traffic (i.e., the application(s)
> or whatever is at the higher layer). The source node may be using
> heuristics to label flows that don't completely match up with what the
> application thinks.  That is not necessarily a problem (it's reality),
> but I think its useful to make that distinction.
>
> I.e., ideally, the higher layers are what label individual flows. But
> if that doesn't happen, the sending node can use heuristics (like
> looking at port numbers to fill in the Flow Label) and do pretty well.
>