Subject: Policy vs. service?

From: Atul Jain <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 17:40:35 +0530

Hi,

I have confusion about "Policy vs Service" as defined in section 4.7 of
"draft-strassner-policy-terms-01.txt".
It says
"A service is the expression of a relationship between a set of objects.

A policy is a statement about a set of relationships between objects
that provide a particular service.  "

But this definition is not very clear. To me even a "PolicyAction" (as
defined in draft-rajan-policy-qosschema-01.txt) looks like a "service"
definition.
Can somebody elaborate on it with the help of some examples (or give
pointers to documents/resource) as to how a service can be defined and
how does it relate to the policies.

Thanks
Atul

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From: "Raju Rajan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 17:20:11 -0400

Hi Atul,

 The word "service" has been used somewhat differently at the two companies
that I have worked for; at IBM I have heard people refer to IPSec and QoS as
services, while at AT&T nothing short of VPN seems to be a service. So I
guess a service is whatever your company is selling :) But let me make some
observations on usage:

1) Service is an abstraction that is closer to "what the customer pays for".
So it is cobbled together from a variety of different protocols and
mechanisms; for instance, I can sell a QoS service that is assembled from
DiffServ, Frame Relay, RSVP etc. in different parts of the network.

2) Policy is a lower layer of abstraction, and is interior to your network.
I cannot have the same policy or policy rule for FR and RSVP. It is aimed at
a particular PEP or set of PEPs playing a particular role.

My 2 bits,

raju

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From: Shai Herzog <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 15:12:48 -0400

Raju,

I tend to agree with your definition, and I think it is well put.
I wish the terminology ducument would replace the stuff that is there
with a clearer definition (following your explanation).

Shai

>> how does it relate to the policies.

__________________________________________________________
Shai Herzog                  Founder & CTO, IPHighway Inc.         
Cell: (408) 390-3045       http://www.iphighway.com/herzog           
Tel : (201) 585-0800                  Fax : (212) 656-1006