[Rats] Re: I-D Action: draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02.txt

[Ionut Mihalcea <[e-mail]>]

Hello authors,

I’ve read draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markets, and this is my brief review of the draft.

I think the document is well-written and covers an important area. The various deployment options are neatly described, and usage directives are easy to follow.

The -02 version already addresses most of my feedback. The PRs I submitted are here [1] [2], they cover a few editorial nits and some minor additions to the terminology section.

One thing I did notice on reread: for strictly monotonically increasing counters [3], is there a need to specify a requirement for state on the receiver end, like for Epoch Tick lists? The requirement for “new Tick value each time” seems quite similar between them, so I’d assume the need for the receiver to tell apart fresh and stale values should also match.

I’m looking forward to the Security Considerations section, though, and I’d be more than happy to re-review once that is available!

Thanks for putting this together and maintaining it :)
Ionut

[1] https://github.com/ietf-rats/draft-birkholz-rats-epoch-marker/pull/44
[2] https://github.com/ietf-rats/draft-birkholz-rats-epoch-marker/pull/45
[3] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02#name-strictly-monotonically-incr

From: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Date: Thursday, 9 October 2025 at 15:22
To: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Cc: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Subject: [Rats] I-D Action: draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02.txt
Internet-Draft draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02.txt is now available. It is a
work item of the Remote ATtestation ProcedureS (RATS) WG of the IETF.

   Title:   Epoch Markers
   Authors: Henk Birkholz
            Thomas Fossati
            Wei Pan
            Carsten Bormann
   Name:    draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02.txt
   Pages:   20
   Dates:   2025-10-09

Abstract:

   This document defines Epoch Markers as a means to establish a notion
   of freshness among actors in a distributed system.  Epoch Markers are
   similar to "time ticks" and are produced and distributed by a
   dedicated system known as the Epoch Bell.  Systems receiving Epoch
   Markers do not need to track freshness using their own understanding
   of time (e.g., via a local real-time clock).  Instead, the reception
   of a specific Epoch Marker establishes a new epoch that is shared
   among all recipients.  This document defines Epoch Marker types,
   including CBOR time tags, RFC 3161 TimeStampToken, and nonce-like
   structures.  It also defines a CWT Claim to embed Epoch Markers in
   RFC 8392 CBOR Web Tokens, which serve as vehicles for signed protocol
   messages.

The IETF datatracker status page for this Internet-Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers/

There is also an HTML version available at:
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02.html

A diff from the previous version is available at:
https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url2=draft-ietf-rats-epoch-markers-02

Internet-Drafts are also available by rsync at:
rsync.ietf.org::internet-drafts


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