Subject: [Last-Call] Genart last call review of draft-ietf-6lo-use-cases-12

From: Peter Yee via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 23:33:36 -0700

Reviewer: Peter Yee
Review result: Ready with Issues

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Review Team (Gen-ART) reviews all IETF documents being processed
by the IESG for the IETF Chair.  Please treat these comments just
like any other last call comments.

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Document: draft-ietf-6lo-use-cases-12
Reviewer: Peter Yee
Review Date: 2022-04-05
IETF LC End Date: 2022-04-06
IESG Telechat date: Not scheduled for a telechat

Summary: This informational document describes various networking technologies
that can be used in 6lo networks, their characteristics, and example use cases.
There some issues and nits that should be address prior to publication. [Ready
with issues]

Major issues: None

Minor issues:

Page 7, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: “Internet” is not an application. And use
of the Internet does not imply a requirement for high data rates either. I’d
drop that so-called “application”.

Page 7, 3rd paragraph, 3rd sentence: This is not a good reference. That is a
specification that makes the claim given in the sentence, but it is not
substantiated here or there. Furthermore, being based on the broken security in
IEEE 802.15.4 (ask Tero Kivinen) at the time of IEEE 1901.2’s publication is
probably not a selling point now. If IEEE 1902.2 supports layering over an IEEE
802.15.4-2020 network possibly with IEEE 802.15.4y (aka Security Next
Generation, which added stronger crypto), then it might be worth mentioning.

Page 7, 4th paragraph, last sentence: in regards to “frequencies”, I assume
that the 500 kHz is not in reference to the AC frequency but rather the
signaling frequency. It wasn’t completely clear in this context but may not be
worth addressing either.

Page 8, Table 2: for security requirement, how does “high” security differ from
other security? These terms are a bit nebulous.

Page 8, Table 2: for data rate, how does “small” compare to “infrequent”? I
don’t know how to rank these terms. I’m not sure “Data Rate” is the right row
header for the values given.

Page 11, 1st bullet item, 4th sentence: instead of “different levels of
security”, consider using “other security mechanisms”. I have troubles
comparing the levels of “hardware-level security” and “certificates for initial
booting process”.

Page 12, 12th bullet item: what does “energy friendliness” mean? Perhaps you
could use “low energy usage” if that’s what you are trying to convey?

Page 16, section 5.3, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: I will point out that in the
home environment, these cordless telephone base stations are almost never
connected to a data network. Thus, it seems that pre-existing Fixed Parts
aren’t particularly valuable to this scenario. Use of DECT-ULE for 6lo use
cases will almost certainly require a Fixed Part that has a data network
connection.

Page 18, section 5.5, 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence: I’m confused here. You just
mentioned wearable devices. Now you say that these devices are densely
installed at home. Which one is it? Or are these *other* devices that are
talking about in this sentence? If so, change “The” to “Other”.

Page 18, section 5.5, 3rd paragraph, last sentence: why do the hackers have to
be hidden? LTE traffic can be heard for quite a distance. A listening hacker
wouldn’t have to be hidden. Where a hidden listener would be required would be
near an NFC connection because of the very short distances involved and the
difficulty with placing a listening device near enough to pick up the
emanations.

Page 26, Appendix A: I don’t understand how these dimensions fit in with
section 3. Why aren’t they merged? These seem like additional considerations.
If they don’t belong in section 3, then how do they tie back to the rest of the
document?

Page 27, 4th bullet item, 2nd sentence: a buffering mechanism isn’t strictly
required. Another option would be to tell the application to throttle its
generation of data, if appropriate to the application. Or compression of the
data might suffice.

Page 27, 7th bullet item, 1st sentence: I would delete “6lo”. I would think
that time synchronization would be importance to the application making up the
use case, regardless of the use of 6lo. For the second sentence, I don’t
understand what “transferred with time synchronization” means. If it has been
recorded with “exact time”, then a timestamp presumably exists. Then it’s not
clear what time synchronization is required for.

Page 27, 9th bullet item, last sentence: How do continuous and periodic work
together? The latter would seem to imply a discontinuity. It’s not clear what
this sentence means.

Page 27, 10th bullet item: What are these “external operations”?

Page 28, 1st bullet item: Are you implying that PLC and MS/TP devices don’t
require firmware updates because they aren’t “over the air”?

Page 28, 2nd bullet item, last sentence: These aren’t necessarily
contradictory. You’ve already pointed out the PLC networks are easy to deploy
because of the existing power wires. And these devices are mains powered. Smart
grid meters, on the other hand, are mains powered but use a wireless connection
for easy and quick deployment. I’d probably delete this sentence or consider
rethinking it.

Nits/editorial comments:

General:

For each use of “e.g.” (particularly) and “i.e.”, ensure that a comma follows.

Drop all uses of “etc.”. In almost every case, it appears after something else
in the sentence that already was indicative of the incomplete nature of the
preceding list.

Specific:

Page 3, first (partial?) paragraph, 2nd sentence: Change “2016” to “2021” in
“IEEE Std 802.15.9-2016”. The 2016 specification was a Recommended Practice and
has been replaced by the 2021 version, which is a Standard. Insert “a” before
“multiplexing”.

Page 3, first (partial?) paragraph, 5th sentence: append an “s” to
“specification”.

Page 3, last bullet item: change “of” to “about”.

Page 4, section 2.1, last sentence: delete “The”.

Page 4, section 2.2, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: insert “The” before
“Bluetooth SIG”.

Page 4, section 2.2, 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence: append an “s” after
“connection”.

Page 4, section 2.2, 2nd paragraph, last sentence: change “is being” to “has
been”, considering that RFC 9159 has been published.

Page 5, section 2.3, 1st paragraph: change “low power” to “low-power”. Change
“circuit switched” to “circuit-switched”. Change “packet mode” to “packet-mode”.

Page 5, section 2.3, 3rd paragraph, 3rd sentence: insert “and” before security.

Page 5, section 2.3, 5th paragraph, 2nd sentence: append a comma to “However”.

Page 6, section 2.5, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: insert a hyphen between
“consumer” and “level”.

Page 6, section 2.6, 2nd paragraph: move “below” after “table”.

Page 7, Table 1: insert a space into the IEEE specification names (e.g.,
IEEE1901 -> IEEE 1901).

Page 7, 1st paragraph, 1st sentence: insert “it” before “is”. Before the word
“effective”, considering inserting “only” or “also” depending on what makes
sense in the context of the “but”.

Page 7, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: append an “s” after “rate”. Delete the
colon. Make “Audio” and “Gaming” lower case.

Page 7, 2nd paragraph, 3rd sentence: insert “IEEE 1901” at the beginning of the
sentence unless all broadband networks operate on OFDM. If that’s the case,
then delete the sentence entirely.

Page 7, 3rd paragraph, 1st sentence: change “less” to “a lower”.

Page 7, 3rd paragraph, 2nd sentence: delete the colon. Rewrite the applications
in lower case. Insert “and” before “smart grid”.

Page 7, 3rd paragraph, 3rd sentence: delete “standard”.

Page 8, section 2.7, 1st sentence: insert “the” before “above”. Change
“clauses” to “subsections”. IETF doesn’t use the term clause like IEEE does.

Page 8, section 2.7, 2nd sentence: insert “the” before “dominant”.

Page 9, section 3, title: insert “an” before “IPv6”.

Page 9, section 3, 1st paragraph, last sentence: insert “the” before “6LoWPAN”.

Page 9, 1st bullet item, 1st sentence: insert “the” before “Addressing” and
make “Addressing” lower case. Append a comma after “addresses”.

Page 9, 1st bullet item, last sentence: insert “for” before “when”. Append a
comma to “broadcast”. Delete “and”. Change “try” to “trying”.

Page 9, 2nd bullet item, 3rd sentence: change “most” to “greatest”. Change
“optimum” to “optimal”.

Page 9, 2nd bullet item, 4th sentence: insert “and” between “[RFC8163]” and
“[RFC8105]”.

Page 10, 3rd bullet item, last sentence: append “RFC” after “latter” to make it
clear what is the latter.

Page 11, 1st partial paragraph, 1st partial sentence: insert “and” between
“[RFC8163],” and “[RFC8105]”.

Page 11, 1st partial paragraph, 1st full sentence: change “to” to “also”.
Change “compress” to “compressing”. Delete the “also” following that. Put a
period at the end of the sentence.

Page 11, 1st bullet item, 4th sentence: insert “The” before “6lo”. Change “is
working” to “has worked”. Change “at” to “in the”.

Page 11, 1st bullet item, 4th sentence: insert “the” before “initial”.

Page 11, 2nd bullet item, 2nd sentence: insert “the” before “ESC”.

Page 11, section 4.1, 1st paragraph, 1st sentence: delete “the”. Delete
“standard”.

Page 11, section 4.1, 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence: insert “mains-“ before
“powered”. Both types of devices are powered. You could also use “grid-“, I
guess, since “mains” is more of a British usage.

Page 11, section 4.1, bullet list: don’t capitalize the items in the bullet
list beyond the first word except where those are well-known terms that require
the capitalization. Even AMI doesn’t appear to be consistently used with
capitalization.

Page 12, 6th bullet item: append a comma after “Conditioning”.

Page 12, 8th bullet item: change “IEEE802” to “IEEE P802” or “IEEE 802”. The
“P” standards for project. Insert “and” before “ETSI”.

Page 12, 14th bullet item: change “long term” to “long-term”.

Page 12, last paragraph: expand the use of “FAN”. I presume it is “Field Area
Networks”.

Page 13, section 4.3, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: change the hyphen in
“highly-reliable” to a space.

Page 13, section 4.3, 1st paragraph, 4th sentence: delete an extraneous space
after appending the previously noted comma after “e.g.”.

Page 13, section 4.3, bullet list: Use lower case after the first word in each
item.

Page 14, section 4.4, 1st paragraph, 1st sentence: insert “the” before
“HomePlug”. Change “long distance” to “long-distance”.

Page 15, 1st paragraph: insert “The” before “Netricity”. Delete “PLC standard”.

Page 15, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: insert “an” before “IPv6”.

Page 15, 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence: expand the acronym “MRHOF”. Change “the
own” to “their own”.

Page 15, section 5.1, 2nd paragraph: change “Variety” to “A variety”. Append a
comma after “curtains”.

Page 16, 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence: change “specially” to “especially”.

Page 16, section 5.2, 1st paragraph, last sentence: append a comma following
“wellness”.

Page 16, last paragraph, last sentence: change “the” to “this”.

Page 17, section 5.3, 3rd sentence: change “specially” to “especially”. Insert
“and” before “healthcare”.

Page 17, section 5.4, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: append a comma after “open”.

Page 17, section 5.4, 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence: insert a hyphen between
“low” and “cost”. Then append a comma after “low-cost”. Delete the hyphen in
“inter-connect”.

Page 17, section 5.4, 1st paragraph, last sentence: change “high speed” to
“high-speed”.

Page 18, 1st paragraph, last sentence: append a comma after “home-run”. Change
“Cat-5 style” to “Cat 5-style”

Page 18, 3rd paragraph, last sentence: change “low cost” to “low-cost”.

Page 18, section 5.5, 2nd paragraph, 4th sentence: change “LCDs” to “displays”
so that there isn’t an unnecessary constraint on the display technology in the
example.

Page 19, section 5.6, 2nd paragraph, last sentence: make the list of items
following “area of” lower case. Append a comma after “management”.

Page 19, section 5.6, 3rd paragraph, 2nd sentence: insert “a” before “WAN”.
Append a comma following “Ethernet”.

Page 19, section 5.6, 4th paragraph, 1st sentence: insert “and” between “labor”
and “operational”.

Page 19, section 5.6, 4th paragraph, 2nd sentence: change “charge” to
“charging”. Append a comma after “theft”.

Page 19, section 5.6, last paragraph, 1st sentence: append an “s” to “rate”.
Then append a comma to “rates”.

Page 20, 1st paragraph, 1st sentence: insert “A” before “WASA”. Append an “s”
to “amount”. Insert “a” before “wide”.

Page 20, 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence: append a comma after “controlling”.

Page 26, Appendix A, 1st paragraph, 1st sentence: Delete “The”.

Page 27, 4th bullet item, 1st sentence: change “more” to “a higher”.

Page 27, 6th bullet item, 2nd sentence: insert “be” before “moved.

Page 27, 8th bullet item: append a comma after “example”. Delete “service”.

Page 27, 9th bullet item, 2nd sentence: append an “s” to “case”. Append an “s”
to “length”.

Page 27, 10th bullet item: change the second “the” to “a”.

Page 28, 1st bullet item, 2nd sentence: append a comma after “cases”. Change
“are” to “is”.

Page 28, 2nd bullet item, 2nd sentence: append an “s” after “requirement”.
Insert “the” before “6lo”.