Subject: [babel] Erik Kline's No Objection on draft-ietf-babel-rfc6126bis-19: (with COMMENT)

From: Erik Kline via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:36:33 -0700

Erik Kline has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-babel-rfc6126bis-19: No Objection

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COMMENT:
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[ general ]

* I couldn't find where any of the multi-byte numeric fields have their
  endianness specified.  Consider a blanket "everything's network byte
  order" somewhere appropriate, or maybe spell it out explicitly in:

    * section 4.2:    Body length
    * section 4.6.3:  Interval
    * section 4.6.5:  Seqno
    * section 4.6.5:  Interval
    * section 4.6.6:  Rxcost
    * section 4.6.6:  Interval
    * section 4.6.9:  Interval
    * section 4.6.9:  Seqno
    * section 4.6.9:  Metric
    * section 4.6.11: Seqno

[ section 3.6 ]

* s/this kind of instabilities/these kind of instabilities/, I think

[ section 3.8.1.2 ]

* Perhaps s/it has finite metric/it has a finite metric/

[ section 4.4 ]

* Can a sub-TLV have sub-TLVs of its own?

[ section 4.5 ]

* s/derived derived/derived/

[ Appendix A.3 ]

* s/results ;/results;/ maybe

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From: David Schinazi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 14:17:57 -0700

Thanks for the review Erik!

Your comments make sense to me. We'll discuss
them amongst the authors and will most likely
include them in the next revision of the draft.

David

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From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 18:42:05 +0200

>   endianness specified.

Good catch, I'll fix that.

> * s/this kind of instabilities/these kind of instabilities/, I think

By my ken, it can be either « this kind » or « these kinds ».  I am not
a native speaker, but I simply don't see how « these kind » can possibly
be correct.  Would you care to explain?

> * Perhaps s/it has finite metric/it has a finite metric/

I am fairly positive that this formulation is standard in mathematics.
A quick Google search gives the following:

  A ring R is said to have finite length as a ring if it has finite length
  as left R module.

  any system which has finite size in at least one space dimension.

  one shows that X∩Γ has finite cardinal

> * Can a sub-TLV have sub-TLVs of its own?

The document does not explicitly disallow sub-sub-TLVs, but it does not
define their format.  If, in the future, an extension is designed that
needs sub-sub-TLVs, it will need to define their format itself.

As a matter of fact, there exists one proposed extension that uses
sub-sub-TLVs (draft-zhang-bier-babel-extensions).  It uses sub-sub-TLVs
that have the exact same format as OSPF sub-TLVs, so it uses sub-sub-TLVs
in a format that is not culturally compatible with the rest of Babel.
This is fine, and does not need to be regulated by 6126bis.

> * s/derived derived/derived/

Done, thanks.

> * s/results ;/results;/ maybe

Done, thanks.

— Juliusz

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From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 12:49:45 -0700

> I am fairly positive that this formulation is standard in mathematics.

The formulation regarding "finite" is, yes.  "Metric" in mathematics tends
to be used with a different meaning, though (roughly, a function that takes
two points as inputs and returns the distance between them, but
specifically the function and not the value it evaluates to).  So, while I
do not object to using the construction in this document, saying that it is
"standard in mathematics" seems like not quite the right justification.

-Ben

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From: Erik Kline <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:06:26 -0700

> be correct.  Would you care to explain?

You're quite right; I think "these kinds of <plural thing>" is what I
should have suggested.

>   one shows that X∩Γ has finite cardinal

Sounding more mathy is good by me!  I suspect there's no loss of clarity
for the implementer one way or the other.

> This is fine, and does not need to be regulated by 6126bis.

Sounds good.

Not expressly forbidden meant to me that someone might propose it later.
But it sounds like that's "Working As Intended".  =)

Thanks.