Re: Splitting QUIC-LB into two docs

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

Hi Martin,

For what it's worth, I thought the value of keeping them together before
was basically that middlebox coordination as a topic would be useful to
consider generally and that having two different examples together helped
that.

I agree with you, though, that it makes it harder for each individual
coordination method to get a clean spec. I took a look at this and the
split looks generally reasonable to me.

I think that we might eventually need a third document, which describes the
middlebox considerations which are invariant for QUIC.

regards,

Ted

On Wed, Mar 2, 2022 at 11:55 PM Martin Duke <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hello QUIC enthusiasts,
>
> *TL;DR*
> At IETF 112 I proposed splitting the QUIC-LB draft into two documents, to
> broad indifference. You can see the result in this branch:
> https://github.com/quicwg/load-balancers/tree/split-docs
>
> If people are generally OK with splitting the load balancing bit and the
> retry offload bit into separate adopted documents, I would like to merge
> this change and do the associated datatracker actions.
>
> *Longer Explanation:*
> When Nick Banks came up with the idea of Retry offload, it fit with the
> general theme of middlebox coordination, so we just tacked it on to our
> QUIC-LB draft. This has become increasingly ill-advised for several reasons:
>
> - These systems have nothing to do with each other, except for the very
> high-level idea of middlebox coordination
> - It balloons the draft from 35 to 53 pages, which reduces the likelihood
> of quality reviews
> - If the RFC requires an update in the future, more text will increase the
> workload, and it is unlikely both designs will simultaneously need an update
> - There is no reason to think that implementation maturity for the two
> halves will stay in sync, meaning that one part could hold back WGLC for
> the other
> - The load balancer part is largely version-independent, and retry offload
> is not.
> - QUIC-LB isn't even a good name for the doc if a bunch of it has nothing
> to do with load balancers
> - There are other middlebox-themed proposals out there, like Reset offload
> <https://github.com/quicwg/load-balancers/issues/119> and Proxy Protocol
> for QUIC <https://github.com/quicwg/load-balancers/issues/51>. Without
> launching a discussion about the merits of these here, if our draft is
> going to be the receptacle for all middlebox stuff, there will be further
> bloat. IMO these should be separate drafts.
>
> Anyhow, please take a look at the branch, collect some thoughts, and you
> can yell at me in Vienna if you find it to be disagreeable.
>
> Martin
>