You are correct, the section is a bit stale. And although the authors of 6789 would like to claim the topic is closed, newer documents (e.g. draft-ietf-tcpm-accecn-reqs-07.txt,) have found it necessary to hedge on this very issue for pragmatic reasons. (Note the overlapping authors between -abstract-mech-, 6789 and -accecn-).
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The core advice in section 4.6 still stands:
"This document does not take a strong position on this issue. However, a ConEx encoding will need to explicitly specify whether it assumes units of bytes or packets consistently for both congestion indications and ConEx markings. (see network layer requirement E in Section 3.3)."
Some of the surrounding editorializing reflects not completely resolved tension between the authors on this point. I for one would prefer to remove the presumption that 6789 and 7141 are the final answer, and make this draft purely bytes/packets agnostic. I partially ceded the point on the grounds that the impracticality 6789 would doom it over the long haul, as we have already seen in -accecn-.
It would be bad form for this document to explicitly conflict with 6789, but I for one would object to it unequivocally endorsing 6789, and although leaving it waffle, isn't pretty, it does accurately reflect the views of the authors.
Thanks,
--MM--The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Alan Kay
Privacy matters! We know from recent events that people are using our services to speak in defiance of unjust governments. We treat privacy and security as matters of life and death, because for some users, they are.
On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Robert Sparks <rjsparks@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. For background on
Gen-ART, please see the FAQ at
<http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/area/gen/trac/wiki/GenArtfaq>.
Please resolve these comments along with any other Last Call comments
you may receive.
Document: draft-ietf-conex-abstract-mech-12
Reviewer: Robert Sparks
Review Date: 5-Aug-2014
IETF LC End Date: 8-Aug-2014
IESG Telechat date: Not on an upcoming telechat agenda
Summary: Ready for publication as Informational
This document handles a complex description problem in a very accessible way.
Thank you for the effort that has gone into creating it.
One minor point to double-check:
This document goes out of its way to push decisions about measuring in packets,
bytes, or other units to the concrete encoding proposals. RFC6789 was explicit
about conex exposing a metric of congestion-volume measured in bytes.
RFC6789 was published a couple of years ago - has that part of it become stale?
If so, it would be good for this document to explicitly call that out.
If not, (most of section 4.6 goes back to -04 which predates RFC6789),
does this document need to retain the this flexibility in its description?