Subject: [RRG] implementations, experiments, simulations, progress

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:32:01 +0200

I become somewhat concerned during the IETF week about how we deal with
experimentation and implementation efforts in this group. Implementation
is important. Experiments are important. Simulations are important. Some
of the reasons why we should be doing these include:

- proof of concept -- yes, it works
- indication of sufficient interest for someone to at least implement
the proposal
- convincing others to try my stuff out
- feedback on implementation issues

as well as

- understanding the trade-offs related to different design choices
- being able to measure the effects to the traffic passing through
- understanding the dynamic behaviour of the system
- comparing different approaches
- learning from all this to adjust the proposals

However, while there is a lot of interest in the group about
implementation, I sensed that it is currently focused mostly on the
items on the first list. Its great to know that some of the ideas
actually work in lab and that people have enough interest to do this
stuff. However, to make progress, we need to go further. I'd like to see
efforts that provide some useful information in terms of what design
choices to make, whether the new routing architecture goes unnoticed by
the end users or if it wrecks their day, what the characteristics of the
mapping system would be if we turned it on in the Internet, etc.

I realize its early and that we're not there yet. The effort is quite
rightly being spent on getting initial designs up and running. But lets
be clear: at some point we will need to understand what the implications
of our designs are and why making a particular design choice is a good
idea. How do we get there? Do we know what questions we need to answer?
Is there something that the RRG can help organize? Do we need stable
snapshots of some of the proposals as experimental RFCs as a base for
some of the work? Do we need expertise from people not currently part of
the RRG?

Jari

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