Subject: [Seamoby] My thoughts on Server approaches

From: Pat Calhoun <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 2003 12:23:57 -0800

Just caught up on the rather long e-mail thread, and wanted to
communicate my feelings about the discussions going on.

My initial reaction is that mandating a server is the wrong approach. I
am not claiming that discovery over the air, or some other approach, is
better, but *requiring* a server is problematic. I agree that service
providers will most likely not have much of an issue with requiring a
server for their network, but I doubt that enterprises that require
mobility, really want more infrastructure to manage.

One issue that I've heard in favor of a server approach is security.
I'll admit that I don't understand all of the issues, but there are
plenty of proof points where security can be provided without a backend
server. Whether it be peer-2-peer authentication via shared secrets,
certs, or what-have-you. In fact, maybe we should look at how OSPF
domains are created, and how routers communicate in a secure fashion? I
understand there are significant differences, but is there anything we
can learn from?

The next issue I have is what appears to be a requirement to build an
iron-clad protocol. I get very nervous when I hear that folks want to
create a protocol that cannot drop a single call (or packet!). Let's be
fair here folks, my cell phone drops calls all the time, regardless of
whether I'm doing a 911 call or not. That's just the nature of 1) really
complex systems, 2) unreliable code and 3) wireless is simply NOT
reliable. So in my opinion, we need to design a protocol that works
well, and can tolerate failures and recover from any problems.

I'm perfectly happy with a protocol that learns about it's neighbors.
It's all about trade-offs. Ethernet also has a cache, and has designed a
mechanism to re-validate the cache before it expires. Again, another
area that we should look into, and determine whether it can be applied
to this particular scenario.

The last one is rumblings about inter-domain. This subject has come up
before, and at that time the result was that it was out of scope (and it
still is).

Next is just a nit. When I hear "DT hat off", it provides the appearance
that DT members have more power than the rest of the WG, and I just
wanted to lay that one to rest... a DT serves the WG and does not have
more power (or say). We are all individual contributors working towards
a common goal.

Hope this help,

PatC

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