Subject: [babel] Babel@IETF todo list

From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 12:44:05 +0100

As many of you may know, the Homenet WG has chosen source-specific Babel
as the Homenet mandatory-to-implement routing protocol.  This choice is
experimental, and may be reviewed in the future if Babel doesn't work out.
At the same time, WLAN-SI is currently working on deploying Babel at
a significant scale throughout Slovenia (a smallish European country where
I happen to like the food -- any excuse to go to Slovenia is welcome).

In the light of the above, here's what I think needs to be done urgently
in order to make the Homenet and the WLAN-SI people happy.  I've marked
with (X) the points with which I'd appreciate help, with (*) the ones I'll
do on my own.

  (X) push draft-boutier-babel-source-specific as an experimental RFC.
      This has been ready for years now, I guess the ISE is busy.

  (*) fix draft-chroboczek-babel-diversity-routing.  This has two
      problems -- the protocol description is slightly inaccurate (the
      treatment of octets with value 0 are described incorrectly, and
      doesn't correspond to the implementation), and the IANA
      considerations are not in synch with the IANA registry.

  (X) implement the MTI subset of RFC 7298 (HMAC authentication) within
      the reference implementation of Babel (it's currently implemented in
      the Quagga branch only).

  (X) write an experimental draft that describes precisely the minimum
      Homenet profile of Babel.  I'll write my thoughts on the Homenet
      mailing list.

  (*) merge Boutier's patches for policy routing (needed by WLAN-SI, who
      have multiple default routes but don't need source-specific routing).

Plenty of work.  Exam session is almost over for me, so I have good hope
that I'll have the energy to do some fun stuff soon.

-- Juliusz

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From: "Russ White" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 12:22:08 -0400

> As many of you may know, the Homenet WG has chosen source-specific
> Babel as the Homenet mandatory-to-implement routing protocol.  This
> choice is experimental, and may be reviewed in the future if Babel doesn't
> work out.

Good... This means we need to bring BABEL completely into the IETF
standardization process. Which means we need to be serious about building
alternate use cases, formal requirements, and moving from the "BABEL Towers"
process to a real IETF process. If this is going to be a protocol required
by an IETF standard, then BABEL needs to be brought completely into the IETF
process, rather than playing along as a side project. 

:-)

Russ

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From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 20:07:01 +0100

> standardization process. 

I'm thrilled to hear you say that.  Let's see if we organise a BoF in
Buenos Aires, or whether we can manage to build enough consensus and write
a charter in time to create a WG straight away.

> moving from the "BABEL Towers" process to a real IETF process.

I'll stop saying "We at Babel Towers" and try my hand at "We at the IETF" ;-)

-- Juliusz

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From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 17:04:55 -0400

If the ADs are willing and there are people who are willing to do the work, there’s no reason to wait until Buenos Aires.   If you won’t have time until then, that’s fine, but it sounds like you are going to have a bunch of time soon, so we should consider taking advantage of that.   If it comes to a BoF in BA, that’s fine, but if it’s already a working group then, that’s even better.

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From: Tim Wicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:43:35 +0900

Ted is correct - I was pleasantly surprised how lightweight and easy it 
was to get dprive charted.

tim

On 10/29/15 6:04 AM, Ted Lemon wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> babel mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/babel
>

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 09:12:25 +0000

Related, RFC5434 is a good read with good advice, and includes tips on what signifies that an ‘interest group’ is ready to become a WG.

Tim

> On 29 Oct 2015, at 08:43, Tim Wicinski <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Ted is correct - I was pleasantly surprised how lightweight and easy it was to get dprive charted.
> 
> tim
>

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From: Denis Ovsienko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 16:50:45 +0000

Hello.

I am glad to see this progress.

[...]
> the reference implementation of Babel (it's currently implemented in 

Hopefully some mapping can help to begin here. The Quagga implementation of RFC7298 roughly consists of:

* lib/cryptohash.[ch]: a generic cryptographic hash interface, which uses libgcrypt as its backend (this could also be OpenSSL or a similar library)
* babeld/babel_auth.[ch]: the RFC-specific set of functions that do work based on the authentication parameters and CSAs; babel_auth_check_packet() and babel_auth_make_packet() provide an interface to it
* ibid: the CLI-specific helper functions (configuration, status, statistics)
* ibid: a timer function to expire ANM records
* elsewhere: Quagga library functions for memory accounting and linked list management, maybe something else

As a starting point it would be reasonable to estimate about 50% of that code can be ported with no or minimal changes and the rest will need to be worked on more closely.

-- 
    Denis Ovsienko

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From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 18:00:06 +0100

> I am glad to see this progress.

Sorry for the delay, Denis.  I really need to get me funding for an engineer.

> Hopefully some mapping can help to begin here.

Thanks, that's helpful.

-- Juliusz

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From: Gabriel Kerneis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 19:54:20 +0100

On 30 Oct 2015 5:52 p.m., "Denis Ovsienko" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> As a starting point it would be reasonable to estimate about 50% of that
code can be ported with no or minimal changes and the rest will need to be
worked on more closely.

Juliusz, do you still want an independent implementation, or is porting
Denis' code acceptable?

Best,
Gabriel

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From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 20:11:42 +0100

> Juliusz, do you still want an independent implementation, or is porting

I have no idea.  Give me a few days.

-- Juliusz

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From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 21:47:02 +0100

> Juliusz, do you still want an independent implementation, or is porting

I've thought it over -- porting Denis' code is okay.  If an independent
implementation is desired, it makes more sense to do it within either the
Bird or the pybabel code, which are independent implementations of Babel.

-- Juliusz

---

From: Denis Ovsienko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 10:06:40 +0000

---- On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 20:47:02 +0000 Juliusz Chroboczek  wrote ---- 
>Bird or the pybabel code, which are independent implementations of Babel. 

BTW, should there be a capable volunteer I would welcome an independent port/implementation so that I would proofread the new code and the volunteer would proofread the specification.

Meanwhile I can do another round of code mapping in the standalone babeld as it has to be done anyway.

-- 
    Denis Ovsienko