Subject: [Autoconf] Current issue about proposed Charter

From: Alexandru Petrescu <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:53:32 +0200

Could we clarify the Charter, such that (1) it does talk Hosts not only
Routers, end-systems, and (2) work does follow a requirement where the
failure of the future AUTOCONF mechanisms would _not_ imply failure of
the Internet.

AUTOCONF Charter is being discussed - deadline August 30th, 2010.

Charter.  This is more important.  It explicitely says that the two
mechanisms to be designed in AUTOCONF are for Routers, doesn't say Hosts
at all.

There is one important issue with it: Hosts are the ones needing most to
be autoconfigured, and less Routers.

The issue is hard to understand knowing the difficulty to distinguish
Hosts from Routers by simply listing their functionalities (routing
table, number of interfaces, forwarding, send rt protocol messages).
By many RFCs Most Routers often act as Hosts, and vice-versa!

However, there is one simple picture to understand easily: that of
End-systems facing the core network Internet plumbing Routers (private
discussion).  It is a very good design principle to keep the core
network running despite the failure of the end-systems.  Failure of
AUTOCONF to correctly configure the end-system must not imply  a failure
of the core network.  That's a good requirement to set on end-systems
AUTOCONF.  But it should mean that we configure the end-systems, not
only the core routers.

If we say that AUTOCONF does only Routers (core network) then we have no
requirement on the behaviour of end-systems, thus no design principle to
respect - it is bad.

Finally, the distinction Router - Core Router is further blurred in
MANET: MANET Routers are little devices moving around, whose
failure has no influence on the Internet - actually disconnected from
it.  A NEMO Mobile Router is the same little device, connected to
Internet but doing tunnelling and, although I'd like it AUTOCONF'ed, its
failure would surely not imply route churn in the Internet thanks to 
that tunnelling.

At this point one would like to idenfity what is the word "router" in
the current Charter: is it an entity that _could_ break the Internet?
Is it an "end system"?

Mobile IP and ND talk "Nodes" ("a Host or a Router").

DHCP uses "DHCP Client" vs "DHCP Server".  Do we mean more of "DHCP
Client" rather than "DHCP Server"?

IPsec uses Host, Router and Firewall.

RFC0995 (authored by ISO) and SIP talk "End System", "Network" and
"Intermediate System".

If we clarify the Charter proposal, then the rfc5889 title (uses
"Router") could be clarify accordingly, I believe.

Alex