Subject: [Gen-art] Gen-ART Telechat Review of draft-ietf-hokey-arch-design-03

From: "Richard L. Barnes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:56:41 -0500

I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. For background on
Gen-ART, please see the FAQ at
< http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/area/gen/trac/wiki/GenArtfaq>.

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Document:  draft-ietf-hokey-arch-design-03
Reviewer:  Richard Barnes
Review Date: 2011-11-23
IETF LC End Date:
IESG Telechat date: 2011-12-01

Summary:  Largely complete, but hard to use

Major issues: 

The document seems to make several architectural assumptions that are not clearly stated.  For example, both this document and the HOKEY problem statement [RFC5169] make reference to "home" and "visited" networks, terms which are defined in neither document.  It would be helpful if this document could clarify some of these issues that are left vague by the problem statement.

Likewise, the document states the architecture in terms of several "functions" that are performed by "components".  For a reader unfamiliar with the history of this document, it is not clear how these functions work together to solve the problems laid out in RFC 5169.  

The components are also given suggestive names, but not defined.  For example, there are components named "serving authenticator" and "candidate authenticator", whose names seem to imply that they play particular roles in the protocol or occupy particular places in the network.  But the document never explains this beyond the names.

Minor issues:

Editorial nits:

Version -10 appears to have introduced the term "DSrRK", which appears nowhere else in the document.