At 12:51 PM 2/25/2003 -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
I gather that the IAB is frankly dictating the current wording of the
opening paragraph.
I don't know if something I said gave you that impression, but
it should not have. I contributed text during a previous round
of discussions on the charter (before the last Lemonade BoF);
among them was the text you cited. This was not an action
of the IAB; it was my personal suggestion. If that was confusing
to anyone, I'm sorry that they did not seek clarification at the time.
I am seriously dismayed to hear that.
If it were true, it would be a concern. I hope this puts that concern
to rest.
From an offline
exchange, Ned mentions a desire to have the paragraph include something
like "link characteristics of concern are those of high latency and low
bandwidth, the device characteristics are limited memory and processing
power, and the service environments are environments are MMS/WAP." I
very heartily concur. In fact it is exactly what I think is missing.
I think chartering the working group to look at the problem, rather
than over-specifying the details is the right way to go here. If
you think just about link characteristics for a moment, I think
you'll see that there are situations where non-congestive
loss might be more important than the available capacity of
the link. This doesn't mean we should change the charter
to include the language; it means we should let the working
group figure it out.
I used the term "gateway" very carefully. It is exactly what I get from
the current wording.
My world model of interconnection is very simple: either the upper-level
service is end-to-end and homogeneous, or the interface is between
independent, heterogeneous services. Multi-hop handling for the former
is relaying; for the latter is is gatewaying (ie, translating). Moving
the same content over different *underlying* environments is relaying.
I agree that gatewaying implies transformation. I think there
is a large rathole in trying to describe "Moving the same content
over different *underlying* environments" because there are
different ways of understanding what "same content" means.
I'd like to see us avoid that rathole entirely.
(Glad to thrash this privately with you, in an effort to come up with
alternate language. Again, I can't offer any yet, because I can't tell
what the specific issues and goals are.)
Of the cc list of your message, I'd suggest "um@snowshore.com"
as the appropriate place to discuss the matter.
regards,
Ted Hardie