Subject: [TLS] Genart last call review of draft-ietf-tls-ticketrequests-06

From: Dale Worley via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 19:54:04 -0800

Reviewer: Dale Worley
Review result: Ready

I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. The General Area
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.

For more information, please see the FAQ at

<https://trac.ietf.org/trac/gen/wiki/GenArtfaq>.

Document:  draft-ietf-tls-ticketrequests-06
Reviewer:  Dale R. Worley
Review Date:  2020-11-27
IETF LC End Date:  2020-12-03
IESG Telechat date:  Not known

Summary:

    This draft is ready for publication as a Standards Track RFC.

Editorial comments:

2.  Use Cases

   *  Parallel HTTP connections: To minimize ticket reuse while still
      improving performance, it may be useful to use multiple, distinct
      tickets when opening parallel connections.

To the naive reader, the ordering of the phrases doesn't seem to match
the logical ordering of the concepts.  Perhaps

   *  Parallel HTTP connections: To improve performance, a client
      may open parallel connections.  To avoid ticket reuse, the client
      may use multiple, distinct tickets on each connection.

--

   *  Decline resumption: Clients can indicate they have no intention of
      resuming connections by sending a ticket request with count of
      zero.

"have no intention" seems to me to suggest a decision that will not
change.  Since the future cannot be guaranteed, perhaps better wording
is "do not intend to resume", suggesting a current state that might
possibly change in the future.

   new_session_count  The number of tickets desired by the client when
      the server chooses to negotiate a new connection.

   resumption_count  The number of tickets desired by the client when
      the server is willing to resume using a ticket presented in this
      ClientHello.

If I understand the processing which is suggested correctly, when the
client sends a ClientHello, the server can choose to either negotiate
a new connection, or (if a ticket is present in the ClientHello) the
server can choose to resume the previous connection represented by the
ticket.  These two parameters provide the requested ticket count for
the two situations.

Assuming the above is correct, I would recommend changing the wording
slightly, as "when" suggests a fact which is true over an extended
period of time, whereas the provided counts are applicable in just this
one instance:

   new_session_count  The number of tickets desired by the client if
      the server chooses to negotiate a new connection.

   resumption_count  The number of tickets desired by the client if
      the server chooses to resume (using the ticket presented in this
      ClientHello).

(Change "the" to "a" in the last sentence if the ClientHello can
present more than one ticket among which the server can choose.)

[END]