Re: WGLC for BFD Multipoint documents (ending July 14, 2017)

[Greg Mirsky <[e-mail]>]

Dear Authors, WG chairs, et. al,
please kindly consider my comments to the latest version of the draft as
part of WGLC:

   - Very general
      - I suggest to add note clarifying that all terms that include
      "connectivity" in the document are being used as alternative to
      "continuity", i.e. existence of a path between the sender and
the receiver,
      and should not be interpreted as "connectivity verification in terms of
      transport network".
   - Introduction
      - I find that characterization of BFD and unidirectional continuity
      verification as "natural fit" bit of stretching. Perhaps "capable of
      supporting this use case" is acceptable;
   - Goals
      - the last statement of non-goal seems little unclear. In fact, if
      there's only one tail, the BFD for multipoint network does verify
      connectivity, though unidirectional, between the head and the
tail. I think
      that the intention is to stress that p2p bi-directional connectivity
      verification is not supported by this document.
   - Section 4.7
      - the last paragraph notes that the discriminator value MUST NOT be
      changed. Since Your Discriminator MUST be set to 0 this refers to My
      Discriminator only. I think that explicit reference will make
the statement
      more clear. Thus suggest s/the discriminator values/the My Discriminator
      value/
   - Section 4.8
      - I believe that requiring use of IP/UDP encapsulation for BFD in
      multipoint networks over MPSL LSP is too restrictive. I suggest changing
      text as following:

OLD:

For multipoint LSP, MultipointTail MUST use destination UDP port
"3784" and IP "127.0.0.0/8" range.


NEW

If IP/UDP encapsulation used by MultipointHead for multipoint LSP,
MultipointTail MUST use IP/UDP encapsulation of BFD destination UDP
port "3784" and IP "127.0.0.0/8" range.

Use of other types of encapsulation for multipoint LSP is outside the
scope of this document.


   - Section 4.10
      - I cannot say what bfd.DetectMult packet is. It has not been
defined in RFC 5880, nor in this document. What is the scenario
described in the second paragraph? Is it when MultipointHead reduces
Desired Min TX  Interval thus making defect detection more aggressive?
   - Section 7
      - I think it should be plural in the first paragraph, i.e.
s/MultipointTail session/MultipointTail sessions/
      - I think that we can add another consideration to improve,
strengthen security of BFD for multipoint network by suggesting that
MultipointTail sessions created only for known combination of
MultipointHead and My Discriminator. Such information MAY be learned
from out-of-band and mechanisms are outside the scope of this
document.


Regards,

Greg



On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:39 PM, Jeffrey Haas <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Working Group,
>
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-bfd-multipoint-10
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-bfd-multipoint-active-tail-04
>
>
> The BFD Multipoint documents have been stable for some time.  Prior
> discussion at meetings has suggested we have an implementation for the main
> protocol component.  Also per prior discussions, we split the active-tail
> component of the original multipoint document to permit implementors to not
> have to worry about implementing active-tail procedures if they weren't
> interested in that feature.
>
> We are starting an extended last call on these documents.  The WGLC will
> conclude on July 14.  This provides ample time for list discussion.  If
> necessary, the IETF-99 meeting may provide for opportunities to close any
> contentious technical points.  (BFD is not currently scheduled to meet.)
>
> One item I would like to kick off is the document status of the active-tail
> mechanism.  At this time, no one has implemented it that I am aware of.
> Discussion with our AD suggests that publishing the document with
> Experimental status may be reasonable to preserve the work that went into
> the proposal.
>
> -- Jeff
>
>