Subject: [Pana] pana-pana Issue224: Concern on complexity in initial handshake phase

From: Yoshihiro Ohba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 11:56:59 -0500

>   The initial EAP Request message MAY be optionally carried by the
>   PANA-Start-Request (as opposed to by a later PANA-Auth-Request)
>   message in order to reduce the number of round-trips.  This
>   optimization SHOULD NOT be used if the PAA discovery is desired to
be
>   stateless since transmission of an EAP Request message creates a
>   state at EAP layer.  See [I-D.ietf-eap-statemachine] for more
>   information on the EAP state machine and the allocation of state
>   information in the respective protocol steps.
>  
>
I am worried about this kind of complexity (here and elsewhere within
PANA).

Since the stateless mechanism is not the MUST to implement, could you 
not strike it completely and collapse EAP support only the case with 
fewer messages?

It's not that I prefer the case of fewer messages or more messages, just

that I worry about the added complexity of handling both.

I also understand that what I am suggesting is a fundamental change to 
something that has been worked on for a long time, so I won't force the 
issue, nor pretend to understand all of the ramifications against 
whatever deployment requirements you have. Consider this friendly advice

that I can see PANA might be suffering from too many options and the 
complexity associated with that. If you can chop out a few alternatives,

the end result might have less functionality but still be better overall

(less is more!).

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