Re: [mpls] "Traffic Management" (was Re: Poll on renaming of EXP field)

Francois,

	If I didn't care about the potential for extra work (and
possibly confusion as well), I would think "Traffic Management"
a better (because more generic) field name than "CoS" - but it
is still a change that may have far reaching consequences, and
which is better handled by a better explanation of the meaning 
of the field than by any effort to come up with a better name 
for it.

	However, even the field-name "Traffic Management" may
not be generic enough.  

	At present, we seem to be agreed that currently defined 
legitimate uses for the field are all related (at least in a 
stretch) to something to do with how frames are expected to be 
handled in forwarding.  But - given a precedent established in 
RFC 3270 (which, among other things, emphasizes that meaning or
semantics of the field depends on a common understanding of why 
an LSP was established) - it is actually clear that the field 
might mean other things as well.  For example, the field might 
- in some future context - be used to indicate error handling 
for packets that will be dropped, or macro statistics buckets 
that individual packets belong to (unrelated to other handling 
of a packet so marked).

	In fact, we're re-hashing many of the same arguments that
led to the field's being named as it was.

	So, the issue is all about what constitutes a "legitimate 
use" - which I would argue is defined by IETF consensus, and is
an issue better handled by good explanation than by renaming.

--
Eric Gray
Principal Engineer
Ericsson  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mpls-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:mpls-bounces@ietf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Francois Le Faucheur IMAP
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 12:42 PM
> To: George Swallow
> Cc: mpls@ietf.org; Francois Le Faucheur IMAP
> Subject: [mpls] "Traffic Management" (was Re: Poll on 
> renaming of EXP field)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Someone earlier suggested "Traffic Management". While it can most  
> certainly be argued this would not be a perfect name either 
> (or other  
> names would be closer to "perfection"), is there a good 
> argument I am  
> missing for why "COS" is obviously better (or more "good enough")  
> than "Traffic Management"? (considering we want to capture both  
> Diffserv and ECN/PCN use of EXP field)
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Francois
> 
> 
> On 18 Aug 2008, at 22:23, George Swallow wrote:
> 
> > During the last call on "EXP field" renamed to  "CoS Field"
> > draft-ietf-mpls-cosfield-def-04.txt, there were comments on
> > alternatives to the name COS.
> >
> > This message initiates a two week poll on whether the name COS
> > is good enough, or if some other name is needed.  The poll closes
> > 23:59 Sept 1 GMT.
> >
> > Please answer with a simple yes or no.  You may send any 
> additional  
> > comment
> > in a separate message (with a different subject line).
> >
> > ...George
> >
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