Re: [manet] Reactive Protocol Situation

[Ulrich Herberg <[e-mail]>]

Hello Joe,

thank you for this summary of what happened. I will not comment on the
process or the discussions that we had the last few months, but rather on
the drafts. I speak for myself here, not for any other author of the LOADng
draft.

- There has been an enormous amount of effort in the LOADng draft
development, which is reflected by multiple large corporations working on
the specification, having deployments and planning products of LOADng by
2013.
- There is an active author team of 10 authors, willing to close remaining
issues as quickly as possible. Before the discussions that Joe mentioned
started, progress was very efficient, and we plan to go back to that speed
as soon as we know how to proceed.
- There are at least four interoperable implementations of the most recent
revision, documented in an interop draft. I am not aware of any recent DYMO
implementations, deployments or products.
- There is a MIB document that we actively work on.
- I believe the draft is very mature, easy to read and to implement. I have
implemented it myself in one day based on the specification.
- It is 100% RFC5444 compliant. I know RFC5444 very well, and am sure that
we did not break anything.
- The latest revision of LOADng makes clear that it is a MANET protocol, so
there will be no overlap with other working groups.

Fujitsu, which I represent in this draft, has a strong interest in having
this standard be completed soon. While we have our own proactive routing
solution, we believe that for certain customers, a reactive protocol is
needed.
I believe that if the WG adopts the draft, we are far closer to having a
standard, and more importantly, a standard that is actually used, deployed
and (soon) sold in products. I therefore opt for 2).

Best regards
Ulrich



On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 4:13 PM, Joseph Macker <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hello MANET working group (form Stan and Joe),
>
> As you are all probably aware, there has been WG activity lately on
> competing drafts for a MANET reactive protocol - DYMO (reviving the current
> working group document that was parked due to inactivity), and LOADng. Many
> months ago there was a somewhat authorship led movement towards a common
> document effort and given positive feedback at the time we the chairs
> thought this was the best approach given the authors potential to come
> together and gain the best of both efforts.  Since that period, there has
> been some fairly strident and rancorous "at times" debate between the
> authors of the two documents.
>
> During IETF 84 in Vancouver, the co-chairs held a discussion with some of
> the co-authors of the two documents. Our guidance to the co-authors was to
> find a way to merge the two documents into one, as it was perceived that
> are not technically far apart and they both derive roughly from AODV
> concepts and LOADng had fairly active authorship and implementation
> efforts. We provided a co-editing proposal to the authors and gave them the
> timeframe of the Atlanta to come up with an answer back to us regarding
> this.  As of this writing, those discussions of a potential commonn
> document and authorship merger have failed.
>
> Therefore, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The authors of the two
> documents are divided, and it is unlikely that progress on a merged
> document can be reached based upon recent author feedback. I have also
> polled the earlier WG editor of DYMO, Ian Chakeres, and he is somewhat
> disengaged on the issue at the present time.  We see only 3 possible paths
> forward:
>
> 1. Continue the work on the DYMO document, starting with whether there is
> consensus on its continued approach and also the desire to rename it to
> AODVv2.
> 2. Replace the existing DYMO document effort with the LOADng related
> document effort, defusing ealier references to LLNs as recommended in the
> last meeting minutes, and to focus more motivationally on general MANET
> problem spaces (the authors seem to have agreed to this issue if its a WG
> document).
> 3. Remove the working group charter for a reactive protocol, effectively
> killing both documents, at least from a working group (WG) standpoint. This
> would not be a reflection on the technology in either case, just an
> admission that we are not working together and reaching consensus.
>
> The co-chairs request and need your opinions on the options.  We have been
> some silent collecting initial feedback and waiting for author feedback at
> this point.  Stan and I are both on travel prior to Atlanta so our
> responses may be sparse and we will also likely be in a "receive mode" for
> a few days.  So send your opinions.
>
> -Joe
>
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