Re: [pcp] Revising PANA side-by-side approach

[Margaret Wasserman <[e-mail]>]

Hi Yoshi,

>> 1) Provide a clear explanation of what parts of PANA will be used with PCP.   For example, the notion of a network access enforcement point doesn't really make sense in a PCP context.
> 
> I agree that EP is not needed in the context of PCP authentication. We probably do not need
> to use 'I' (IP Reconfiguration) and 'P' (Ping) flags either.

I doubt we have any major disconnect regarding what parts of PANA would/wouldn't be used with PCP.  However, we need to capture that understanding and document it, for people who are attempting to implement PANA for use with PCP.  I believe we will find that we are only using a fairly small subset of PANA for this purpose.

>>  2) Describe a clean mechanism that allows PANA to be used for authentication of other protocols.
>> 
>> Overloading a single bit in the PCP version field, because it happens to coincide with a flag bit in PANA doesn't seem like a method that will work for other protocols, and I am concerned that it doesn't provide a clean basis for moving forward.

The cleanest mechanism, IMO, would be to define a demultiplexing header that is used to determine whether the contents beyond that header are a PCP packet or a PANA packet.  If we want to send that header over the PCP port, though, it needs to look like a PCP header, which quickly devolves to the encapsulation approach.

Margaret