Subject: RE: Applicability of draft-ietf-ipv6-cellular-host-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 10:28:39 +0200

Hi Erik,

> I think part of the questions are around the applicability of 
> the document. The document doesn't seem to constrain this very 
> much:
> 
>  For the purposes of this document, a cellular host is considered to 
>  be a terminal that uses an air interface to connect to a cellular 
>  access network (i.e. GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000) in order to provide IPv6 
>  connectivity to an IP network.
>
> So unless "terminal" is a well-defined term in the IETF context this
> seems to apply to e.g. a full-powered laptop with a PCMCIA radio card,
> a cellular phone with a Java JVM that allows it to run downloaded
> applications, and perhaps even a router with such an air interface.

Parsing through your comment, are you suggesting that be better clarify
some instances, such as

	1) Closed 'phone' with no additional external interfaces, 
	   limited software & upgradability.
	2) PDA / phone, small device, small configuration ability,
	   some ability to run extra applications, additional
	   interfaces possible.
	3) PCMCIA radio card on a full-powered laptop, with
	   a commercial IP stack

If this is useful, then we could then clarify in more detail the
difference between a 'host' and a 'router' - I do think that if
we try to cover both cases in a single draft, we will run into
trouble.  

Again, the authors do see that some devices will have personal
area networks and may route packets, but we feel that this would
be best to specify in another document, because there are a lot
of different issues involved and this model (phone as personal
router) has less applicability than a more generic 'phone'
as an endpoint.

John

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From: Erik Nordmark <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 11:15:44 +0100 (CET)

> 	3) PCMCIA radio card on a full-powered laptop, with

I think making the above distinctions would help focus the discussion.
BTW: Does 1) include the ability to run e.g. Java applets or other downloadable
code?

> we try to cover both cases in a single draft, we will run into

The draft uses the term "terminal" which I think is defined in 3G.
But does that definition explicitly say something about IP level stuff
like host vs. router?
Or will there soon be "mobile terminals" that have IP router functionality?
I suspect it makes sense to very clearly restrict the document to only
be about terminals that have no router functionality.

  Erik