Subject: [Tsvwg] Re: Last Call: Robust ECN Signaling with Nonces to Experimental

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 23:06:48 -0500

Folks-

I asked a couple of questions about why this document is slated for
experimental earlier today.  After some useful discussion I was
asked to state my opinion on this matter in public (for the record
and for others to shoot at, I presume).

> The IESG has received a request from the Transport Area Working
> Group Working Group to consider Robust ECN Signaling with Nonces
> <draft-ietf-tsvwg-tcp-nonce-04.txt> as an Experimental Protocol.

I think this document should go forward as a proposed standard
rather than experimental.

I see the role of experimental as for things that we are just not
sure about.  The recent byte-counting I-D is a good example.  From
everything we know about it, consensus seems to be that it should be
OK.  But, it seems to me that the change is non-trivial enough and
the direction of the questions are in the behavior of TCP in shared
networks and what sorts of effects the change will have on traffic
patterns.  So, going through a period of experimental status seems
fine and prudent to me.

But, it seems to me that the ECN nonce is pretty straightforward.  I
have good confidence that it will not fail in ways that are unsafe
to the global network.  Of course, there is always the possibility
of unforeseen interactions, but my own opinion is that the nonce is
ready for proposed standard (which is not a full standard and we can
still tweak things later).

allman

--
Mark Allman -- BBN/NASA GRC -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/
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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 14:25:32 -0800

> still tweak things later).

I would like to see a reasonable wide-area deployment and statements 
about backward compatibility first.

In the absence of deployment experience, 'proposed standard' ends up 
asking us to conduct an experiment and not call it thus.

Sure, it's a 'chicken and egg' problem, but the onus is on the 
developers to deploy this solution and gain some operational experience 
before going to proposed standard, IMO.

The only reason to go to draft standard is if things CURRENTLY break 
worse without this mod than with. Otherwise, the track should be via 
Experimental first.

Joe