Subject: [p2p-sip] Questions for the BOF

From: dbarrett at quinthar.com (David Barrett)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 01:19:09 -0800

Unfortunately I can't be at the meeting today.  But some issues I think
would be good to decide:

1) Will we extend SIP with overlay functionality, or develop an overlay with
SIP bindings?

Both seem very compelling, and have the hallmarks of the classic build/buy
or rewrite/refactor decision:

The idea of refactoring SIP to naturally support P2P sounds great in theory
-- and I'd wager the total changes at the end would be very small and neat
-- but requires detailed stitching into hundreds of pages of RFCs, and
careful analysis of the consequences.

The idea of just building a new P2P overlay layer and specifying bindings
sounds like more work in theory, but that work in practice will probably be
much easier as the problem scope is more easily defined with a much cleaner
interface.

At the end of the day, my idealistic side says the former, but my pragmatic
side leans toward the latter.

2) Will we commit to a single type of overlay network today, or generalize
on the assumption we'll 'swap in' different overlays over time?

Personally, I think it'll be hard enough to just pick one and be done with
it.  Trying to generalize the problem seems unnecessarily hard.  We have a
round peg, and we're debating whether to make a round hole, or some more
general hole that can fit different shapes of pegs that haven't yet been
designed.  It can be done, but the result is you have a hole that doesn't
neatly fit any peg, and certainly not the one we have today.

3) To what degree will we tackle security considerations in the first rev?

One challenge is that security in a DHT setting is still an open topic for
research.  The IETF typically doesn't do research.  Thus I lean toward not
standardizing a secure solution, because (so far as I know) that secure
solution doesn't yet exist (though I'd be happy to be wrong).  Regardless,
at the very least we should detail precisely what the security weaknesses
are, so we can best focus the research community on how to solve them.  Not
great, but there you have it.

Those are the top issues in my mind.  Have fun without me, and I'm eager to
read the results!

-david

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From: eunsoo at research.panasonic.com (Eunsoo Shim)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:02:13 -0500

>side leans toward the latter.
This is a good and important question.
But I think we can deal with this after the BOF.
BOF should be focused on the charter and deeper design decisions should
be discussed later.
The ad-hoc meeting on Friday will be a good chance to discuss about this
together.

>neatly fit any peg, and certainly not the one we have today.
As I wrote in another email, I think we should pick one as the starting
point and be open to change into or add different overlay algorithms
over time.
I hope the discussion in the BOF on this topic should be limited to the
extent affecting the charter and deeper discussions on the implication
to the architecture and so on are left for the ad-hoc meeting.

>great, but there you have it.
I think at least we need to take a look at what the research community
has done.
Even though I understand your point but I am not so sure whether we
should preclude security measures as a whole from the first rev.
Couldn't we take a middle ground, i.e., adopting known measures while
explicitly stating known and unrsolved security issues?

>Those are the top issues in my mind.  Have fun without me, and I'm eager to
Could you come to the ad-hoc meeting?

Thanks.

Eunsoo

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