Subject: ABR to the Internet collaboration (BOF?)

From: Michael Welzl <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:00:48 +0200

(If you personally received this mail, you have been hand picked because you
 seem to work in a related area or showed some interest in what I am doing.)

Hi all,

I am a Ph.D. student whose work is basically about bringing an ABR-like
mechanism to the Internet. I identified some data to be transmitted to end
nodes and designed a protocol to carry them (draft-welzl-ptp-03.txt).
Please take a look at http://www.tk.uni-linz.ac.at/~michael/ptp/ to
see the current state of my work; the specification encompasses the
definition of Content Types (the type of data to be transmitted).

However, I am convinced that a more generic approach (like IntServ / RSVP)
would be better:

- Various Content Types could be used, showing different properties - like
  "does the calculation infer per-flow state in routers?". This is not
  necessarily restricted to bandwidth calculations; for instance, a link's
  MTU could also be transmitted to provide more efficient Path MTU
Discovery.

- Partly depending on the data to be transmitted, it would make sense not
  only to define a new protocol but also to define extensions to other
  protocols such as RSVP and RTCP.

Actually, the name "ABR to the Internet" is not quite precise; in fact,
it's more like "ABR Explicit Rate Feedback related mechanisms carrying
certain data on the Internet".

In any case, it all needs IETF standardization because it will never
really work without router support. Therefore, I believe parties working
in related areas should request permission to hold a BOF session. I
would personally do so, but I might not be able to attend the next
two IETF meetings due to our departments current financial situation.

Be it for a BOF or not, I would really like to get some cooperation
and discussion going. If we cannot find an appropriate place (what
about AVT?), I can set up a bulletin board or mailing list.
I just set up the page at http://www.tk.uni-linz.ac.at/~michael/ptp/
in support of this mail, and I can add to it whatever you wish.

Hoping for feedback,
regards,
Michael Welzl

PS: Feel free to forward this to anybody you think might be interested.
Also, if you know the e-mail address of Tim Mangan
( http://www.frforum.com/3000/tim.html ), please forward this to him;
[email-masked] doesn't seem to work - he originally had the
idea of forming a Working Group. David Lapsley should also be interested,
but [email-masked] doesn't work either.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl.-Ing. Michael Welzl     Researcher
Telecooperation Group        Dpt. of Computer Science
University of Linz           Altenberger Str. 69, A-4040 Linz, Austria
Phone: +43/732/2468-9264     Fax: +43/732/2468-9829
ICQ # 38201212               http://www.tk.uni-linz.ac.at/~michael/

---

From: Colin Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 10:33:19 -0400

--> Michael Welzl writes:
...
>about AVT?), I can set up a bulletin board or mailing list.

This is very much outside the scope of the AVT working group's charter, so
I don't believe that the rem-conf list is appropriate. 

Colin Perkins
(AVT co-chair)

---

From: Dorgham Sisalem <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 11:25:23 +0200

before we discuss what needs to be specified, it would be worth considering 
the benefits and backdraws of such an approach. While I have always been
in favour of ABR-like mechanisms I am not sure that they really buy us much.
End-to-end approaches for measuring bottleneck bandwidth and MTU might be 
more complicated and less accurate than simply asking the routers for the 
information, but they are more secure and easier to use. I doubt that network 
providers would be willing to open their mibs just like that. Even if they 
did, I am still not convinced that the information collected by PTP improve the
adaptation process dramatically. The example you give in your paper is not
very convincing ( however, as it the test description is very unclear 
I might have missed the point there)

Regards
	Dorgham