Subject: [Gen-art] Gen-ART review of draft-ietf-conex-concepts-uses-04.txt

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:09:19 +0100

I have been selected as the General Area Review Team (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>

Please resolve these comments along with any other comments you may receive.

Document: draft-ietf-conex-concepts-uses-04.txt
Reviewer: Alexey Melnikov
Review Date: 2012-04-04
IETF LC End Date: 2012-04-12
IESG Review: 2012-04-12

Summary: The document is nearly ready for publication as an 
Informational RFC (see one issue below)

Major issues: none

Minor issues:

This might be pedantic, but I think some of your Informational 
references are actually Normative, because they are needed to understand 
the document. See "IESG Statement: Normative and Informative References" 
for more details 
<http://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/normative-informative.html>.

This almost doesn't matter for an Informational document, however if any 
of 5 drafts becomes Normative, publication of this document as an RFC 
will be delayed. Still, this might be better than just getting it 
published with "work in progress" references.

But otherwise this is a well written document and I enjoyed reading it.

Nits/editorial comments: none

---

From: Bob Briscoe <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 18:45:06 +0100

Alexey,

Thanks for your review - we are all indebted to people like you who 
commit to review stuff that you don't necessarily have an interest in.

We're concerned if you think the doc isn't understandable without 
reading the I-D refs. This is meant to be the entry-point to the set 
of ConEx documentation, so we intended it to be understandable 
without knowing how ConEx works (beyond the high level description in 
the introduction). "Understandable" here means sufficient to satisfy 
the stated purpose of the doc, which is to motivate ConEx (not to 
understand how it works).

The refs are intended to be used the other way round - having read 
this, you should be motivated to go and read more, so it provides 
pointers to what's available.

Are you sure the need to read the refs is not a symptom of your 
(natural) curiosity to know how ConEx works? Is it really necessary 
to know the details of how ConEx works to understand the motivation 
for building it?

The second paragraph sets out the purpose of the doc:
"
    This document provides the entry point to the set of documentation
    about the Congestion Exposure (ConEx) protocol.  It focuses on the
    motivation for including a ConEx marking at the IP layer.  (A
    companion document, [I-D.ietf-conex-abstract-mech], focuses on the
    mechanics of the protocol.)
"

Bob

At 18:09 04/04/2012, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
>reviewer for this draft. For background on Gen-ART, please see the 
>FAQ at <http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/area/gen/trac/wiki/GenArtfaq>
>
>references are actually Normative, because they are needed to 
>understand the document. See "IESG Statement: Normative and 
>Informative References" for more details 
>This almost doesn't matter for an Informational document, however if 
>any of 5 drafts becomes Normative, publication of this document as 
>an RFC will be delayed. Still, this might be better than just 
>getting it published with "work in progress" references.
>

________________________________________________________________
Bob Briscoe,                                BT Innovate & Design

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:10:01 +0100

> Alexey,
Hi Bob,
> of ConEx documentation, so we intended it to be understandable without 
> knowing how ConEx works (beyond the high level description in the 
> introduction). "Understandable" here means sufficient to satisfy the 
> stated purpose of the doc, which is to motivate ConEx (not to 
Maybe I wasn't very clear: the document was understandable without 
checking out the references.
> (natural) curiosity to know how ConEx works? Is it really necessary to 
> know the details of how ConEx works to understand the motivation for 
> building it?
>
I've just rechecked references to drafts and I can see them being 
Informative. So thank you for your response and your document is getting 
"all clear" from me.

Thank you,
Alexey
>> any of 5 drafts becomes Normative, publication of this document as an 
>> RFC will be delayed. Still, this might be better than just getting it