Subject: [MEDIACTRL] gen-art review of draft-ietf-mediactrl-requirements-03.txt

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:53:25 -0500

I have been selected as the General Area Review Team (Gen-ART)
reviewer for this draft (for background on Gen-ART, please see
http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/gen/art/gen-art-FAQ.html).

Please resolve these comments along with any other Last Call comments
you may receive.

Document: draft-ietf-mediactrl-requirements-03.txt
Reviewer: Scott Brim
Review Date:      21 Jan 2008
IETF LC End Date: 29 Jan 2008
IESG Telechat date: (if known)

Summary: This draft is basically ready for publication, but has nits
that should be fixed before publication.

Comments follow:

Some of these "nits" are bigger than others, but they are just a
matter of completeness, not necessarily a conceptual hole.

General comment: I know the WG is restricted to "sessions" based on
central servers, but that is not mentioned at all here.  The
introduction takes the time to provide some context.  It would be good
to have that scope restriction mentioned as well.  

1. Introduction

- "There is an interest to work on a protocol that will enable one
  physical entity, known as an Application Server (AS), that includes
  the conference/media policy server, the notification server and the
  focus to interact with one or more physical entities, called Media
  Server (MS), that serves as mixer or media server."

    Why the stress on "physical"?  Do they need to be in separate
    chassis? 

2.  Terminology

- "Media Resource Broker (MRB) - A logical entity that is responsible
  for both collection of appropriate published Media Server (MS)
  information and supplying of appropriate MS information to consuming
  entities."

    I gather from later text (particularly req 05) that the MRB can
    sit in the middle of the AS-MS protocol and act as a virtual
    all-inclusive MS.  That isn't explicitly said anywhere.  I would
    say it here.  Also below -- for example req 11 requires
    authentication of the AS talking to the MS.  Is this true of an AS
    talking to an MRB as well?  I assume so.  Same for 12 and 13.

3 Requirements

- "REQ-MCP-01 - The MS control protocol shall enable one or more
  Application Servers to request media services from one or more media
  servers."

    Capitalization consistency nit.

- "REQ-MCP-15 - The AS shall be able to define operations that the MS
  will perform on streams like mute and gain control."

    What does it mean to "define operations"?  Does this mean the AS
    will say what operations the MS is allowed to perform?  Or how
    they are performed?  Or what?  

- "REQ-MCP-24 - The MS shall be able to notify the AS who is the
  active speaker and who is being viewed in a conference.  The speaker
  and the video source may be different, for example a person
  describing a video stream from a remote camera managed by a
  different user."

    This feels like two independent requirements.

_______________________________________________
MEDIACTRL mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mediactrl
Supplemental Web Site:
http://www.standardstrack.com/ietf/mediactrl