Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-tsvwg-byte-pkt-congest-09.txt> (Byte and Packet Congestion Notification) to Best Current Practice

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The IESG <iesg-secretary@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> The IESG has received a request from the Transport Area Working Group WG
> (tsvwg) to consider the following document:
> - 'Byte and Packet Congestion Notification'
>   <draft-ietf-tsvwg-byte-pkt-congest-09.txt> as Best Current Practice
> 
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
> ietf@xxxxxxxx mailing lists by 2013-03-07. Exceptionally, comments may be
> sent to iesg@xxxxxxxx instead. In either case, please retain the
> beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

   This document has a rather long history in TSVWG, and IMHO deserves
to be published as is, but not as a Best Current Practice.

   Fundamentally, it updates RFC 2309 (an Informational document) to
deprecate a practice which seems essentially unused, and goes into detail
appropriate to an academic paper about the theoretical basis for doing
this.

   According to the document writeup I find in the datatracker:
] 
] This document is intended as BCP. (This was discussed at IETF-81 and that
] the status changed from Informational to BCP, because the draft provides
] guidance to implementors and people configuring routers and hosts).

   I cannot find any minutes for that WG meeting. I am willing to believe
Gorry that such a recommendation happened at that meeting (where I was not
present), but I do not find it to have been discussed on-list at all.

   I do not agree that its major purpose is to provide such advice, nor
do I see how "implementors and people configuring" would be likely to
get clear advice from a 43-page document that reads like an academic
paper. For one example:

> Abstract
>    This document provides recommendations of best current practice for
>    dropping or marking packets using active queue management (AQM) such
>    as random early detection (RED) or pre-congestion notification (PCN).
>    We give three strong recommendations: (1) packet size should be taken
>    into account when transports read and respond to congestion
>    indications...

   "Packet size should be taken into account when transports read and
respond to congestion indications" is simply too vague. There has been
on-list discussion of what this might mean; but it has not resulted in
clear, concise advice to implementors.

   In no sense do I believe it worth holding up this document any longer
to add "clear advice" -- I believe that would only add years to the delay.
The document deserves to be published, but with Informational status so
folks don't spend their time trying to interpret its "advice".

--
John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx>


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