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

[Jeffrey Haas <[e-mail]>]

Greg,

Thanks for your detailed feedback.

A portion of your feedback seems to be mostly minor editorial changes.  A
few of these items are discussion points that probably need to be resolved
with some amount of WG discussion.

What's your opinion about the ability to advance these documents once these
issues have been addressed?

-- Jeff

On Mon, Jul 03, 2017 at 12:32:44PM -0700, Greg Mirsky wrote:
> 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
> >
> >