Subject: [Gen-art] GENART IETF LC review of draft-ietf-mpls-ecmp-bcp-01.txt:

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:39:01 +0300

GenART is the Area Review Team for the General Area of the IETF.
We advise the General Area Director (i.e. the IETF/IESG chair) by
providing more in depth reviews than he could do himself of documents
that come up for final decision in IESG telechat.  I was selected as the
GenART member to review this document.  Below is my review, which was
written specifically with an eye to the GenART process, but since I
believe that it will be useful to have these comments more widely
distributed, others outside the GenART group are included.

Review criteria for WG submissions: "Is this document a reasonable
contribution to the area of Internet engineering which it covers? If
not, what changes would make it so?"

Overall: I think that this document needs a revision, I think
clarifications on my open issues would be a good thing, and probably
would only require a few extra lines of text.

Open issues:

1) Abstract says that the document "... makes best practice
recommendations ..." but is listed as a Standards Track document in the
draft header.  This is confusing - is it a standards track document or
BCP?

2) Section 3 Recommendations for Avoiding ECMP Treatment, seems to
define a new attribute.  I'm not an MPLS expert, so I don't know if this
is a new attribute or if it is defined elsewhere.  If it is defined
elsewhere, I think a pointer to the specification is needed.

3) Security consideration section should have some text about security.
Do current EMCP practices have any security issues?  If not, then say
that.

4) Lots of ID nit problems, here is the report.

John

idnits 1.78 

tmp/draft-ietf-mpls-ecmp-bcp-01.txt:

tmp/draft-ietf-mpls-ecmp-bcp-01.txt(270): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'S'
tmp/draft-ietf-mpls-ecmp-bcp-01.txt(275): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'el'
tmp/draft-ietf-mpls-ecmp-bcp-01.txt(277): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'ck'
tmp/draft-ietf-mpls-ecmp-bcp-01.txt(279): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'load'

  Checking nits according to http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html:
  * The document seems to lack an IANA Considerations section.
    
    Checking conformance with RFC 3978/3979 boilerplate...

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3978 Section 5.5 Disclaimer --
    however, there's a paragraph with a matching beginning. Boilerplate
error?

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "This document and the information contained herein are provided on
    an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE
    REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE
    INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
    IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF
    THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
    WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE."
  
   ... but found this:
    "This document and the information contained herein are provided on
    an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE
    REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE
    INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
    IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF
    THE INFOR-MATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
.............^
    WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.")

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3979 Section 5, para 1 IPR
Disclosure
    Acknowledgement. 

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
    Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed
to
    pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
    this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
    might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
    made any independent effort to identify any such rights.
Information
    on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
    found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.")

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3979 Section 5, para 2 IPR
Disclosure
    Acknowledgement. 

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
    assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
    attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use
of
    such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
    specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository
at
    http://www.ietf.org/ipr.")

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3979 Section 5, para 3 IPR
Disclosure
    Invitation. 

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
    copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
    rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
    this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at
    [email-masked].")

  Checking nits according to
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt:
  * The document seems to lack a 1id_guidelines paragraph about
    Internet-Drafts being working documents. 

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
    Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
    other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.")

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ext Brian E Carpenter [mailto:[email-masked]] 
>Sent: 14 September, 2005 14:11
>To: Mary Barnes; Loughney John (Nokia-NRC/Helsinki)
>Subject: Re: [Gen-art] Updated spreadsheet for 15 Sept. 2005
>
>draft-zeilenga-ldap-uuid-06.txt is off the agenda - it already 
>had enough votes to pass. Anyway, John gave it a clean bill of 
>health last year.
>
>   Brian
>
>Mary Barnes wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I've uploaded the reviews received to date with the updated 
>> spreadsheets available:
>> http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/gen/art/gen-art.html
>> http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/gen/art/gen-art-by-reviewer.html
>> 
>> Please double-check that your review has been uploaded; we had one 
>> that didn't seem to make it to the mailing list, so there 
>may be others.
>> 
>> Let me know if there are any issues. 
>> 
>> Mary. 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gen-art mailing list
>> [email-masked]
>> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gen-art
>> 
>
>

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---

From: George Swallow <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:09:07 -0400

John -

Thanks for your review.  The issues you raise seems straightforward

> elsewhere, I think a pointer to the specification is needed.

What "attribute" are you referring to?  I define and use a term
"Application Label" as a generic term for a label assigned to a FEC
defined by an applications using MPLS.  As I read it, it seems self
contained.

> Do current EMCP practices have any security issues?  If not, then say

The guidelines for the security section say that one should explore the
security issues raised by the proposal.  I don't think this means I need
to address any security issues associated with current ECMP practices.
They are what they are and this document doesn't change them one way or
the other.  I honestly don't believe that there are any security issues
with current ECMP practices.  But those practices are vendor
proprietary, so I am certainly in no position to say for sure.  Nor do I
think the IETF would want to take on the liability associated with
publishing such an assertion.

...George

========================================================================
George Swallow             Cisco Systems                  (978) 936-1398
                           1414 Massachusetts Avenue
                           Boxborough, MA 01719