Subject: [PANRG] Terminology usage in draft-jones-tsvwg-transport-for-satellite

From: Theresa Enghardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2021 13:11:11 -0500

Dear authors of draft-jones-tsvwg-transport-for-satellite,

As promised in today's PANRG session, here's a few questions and 
suggestions for draft-jones-tsvwg-transport-for-satellite-02 regarding 
the use of terminology defined in draft-irtf-panrg-path-properties:

Section 2 of draft-jones-tsvwg-transport-for-satellite-02 lists multiple 
"entities" that a SATCOM system could contain, but then refers to each 
of them as "host" or "node". According to 
draft-irtf-panrg-path-properties, nodes (and hosts) are always on-path, 
while entities can also be off-path. Are the entities A through G always 
on-path, or can any of them be off-path? If the former is true, the 
document should say so explicitly, e.g., call them "on-path entities" or 
"nodes". If the latter is true, then the ones who can be off-path should 
be called entities and not nodes.
In the definitions of entities A through G, I'm not entirely sure what 
is meant by "gathering network functions" and "gathering MAC and PHY 
functionalities" - could "gathering" be substituted by something like 
"processing packets using"?
As a help to the reader, I think it would also help to perhaps have a 
figure that illustrates typical path elements of a satellite path, and 
maybe even show off-path entities that you consider relevant (if any).

When Section 2 talks about "the paths interconnecting the entities (1) A 
to B, (2) B to C, (3) C to D and (4) F to G", I think it might be useful 
to refer to these as "subpaths" instead, as they appear to be discussed 
as subpaths of the path between hosts A and G.

As the same paragraph goes on to say "some properties need to be 
discussed", I was expecting these properties to be named and discussed 
later in the document, but I didn't see them. I'm curious what kind of 
discussion is meant here.

Similar question about the list of properties in the following 
paragraph, which "are in the scope of this document and deserve some 
description" - Does "deserve some description" mean that a 
SATCOM-specific definition is needed for this document, extending the 
generic definition in draft-irtf-panrg-path-properties?

Of course, the above comments are just me trying to understand how your 
document applies the terminology in draft-irtf-panrg-path-properties. If 
I misunderstood anything, please let me know.

I'm looking forward to reading an updated version of this document!

Best,
Reese