Re: [netconf] Adoption poll for tcp-client-server and http-client-server draft

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 12:17:15PM +0100, Mahesh Jethanandani wrote:
> This is the start of a two week poll for WG adoption of the two drafts:
> 
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-kwatsen-netconf-tcp-client-server-00
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-kwatsen-netconf-http-client-server-00
> 
> Please indicate your support for or any objections you might have for  adopting the two drafts as WG items by April 9.
>

I am seeing several grouping definitions spread out over a growing set
of documents but there is a lack of explanation how all this fits
together. For example, why do we really need tcp-client-grouping and
ip-params-grouping and keepalives-grouping? Same question for
tcp-server-grouping and ip-params-grouping and keepalives-grouping.
Perhaps they can be collapsed into just one?

A similar question could be asked for http-client-grouping and the
helpers (?) http-client-identity-grouping and http-keepalives-grouping
and the same for the server groupings. Is it really useful to define a
grouping that only uses another grouping? It is also unclear to me
what HTTP level keep alive messages are that a server sends to a
client to check whether the client is still alive.

Does it make sense to support a long list of client auth schemes or
are we better supporting only basic ones and we add stuff later once
we have experience with these models? HTTP servers usually have tons
of other things you can configure that we do not cover and given the
complexity we already have reached, perhaps it is fine to limit
functionality in order to get something finished that can be used and
then there is a time for a -bis to add what is missing.

I support this work and the adoption of these drafts but we should set
a clear target to get this work finished. I do very much appreciate
Kent's continued work on this over the years in order to develop
models for the relatively complex infrastructure needed to configure
servers. But it may also be time to be pragmatic and to wrap this up,
leaving things that can be added in later for future revisions and/or
augmentations.

The original WG document, draft-ietf-netconf-server-model-00, was
posted in May 2014.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <https://www.jacobs-university.de/>