Subject: [tae] TAE bar-BOF summary

From: Bryan Ford <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:43:55 +0200

For those interested in transport architecture evolution topics but  
unable to attend our lunch discussion yesterday, here's a brief  
summary.  I believe approx. 15 people attended.  We didn't do any  
"official" note-taking/minutes during the meeting; this is just my  
perspective based on my memory of the discussion, so please correct me  
if I forgot something or got something wrong.

We essentially discussed two meta-topics and one topic, not in any  
strict sequence:

Meta-topic 1: what transport architecture evolution topics are most  
interesting to the most people?  In particular, which ones might have  
enough critical mass surrounding them to be potentially actionable by  
the IETF in the near term?  Topics we brought up included layering  
model, naming-neutral transport, and negotiation.  On the last -  
negotiation - there was a clear consensus among those present that  
this is not only an interesting topic but might have enough definition  
and criticial mass to be worth exploring IETF work on it.

Meta-topic 2: where to go with these transport architecture evolution  
discussions in the future?  In particular, should we keep them  
informal - on the TAE mailing list and in unofficial bar-BOFs whenever  
people are getting together - or whether we should try to make it more  
"official" in some way.  One possibility we discussed briefly was  
trying to build a new (or revive an old) IRTF working group; it seemed  
that might be a possibility, but such a group's objective would have  
to be nailed down more specifically in order to form a viable  
charter.  Overall, I think the consensus was that we should keep  
looking at this possibility, but that it's not necessarily very  
urgent, so we'll stick to mailing lists and informal bar-BOFs for now.

Topic:  Negotiation.  As mentioned above, we concluded that there  
seems to be a lot of interest in concrete near-term work in this  
direction, and we spent quite a bit of time discussing approaches,  
both technical (i.e., what the protocol(s) might look like) and  
procedural (how to move forward and propose a concrete BOF on this  
topic).  On the technical side, it seems that what we need is (a) a  
short-term solution along the lines of the "Happy Eyeballs" draft that  
will help us get to a longer-term solution, and (b) a long-term  
solution that will scale as the number of potential alternative  
protocols or protocol versions increases, across all relevant layers:  
e.g., Network Layer (IPv4 vs IPv6), Transport (TCP vs SCTP etc.), and  
potentially Application layer (negotiation among different application  
protocols).  Some open issues are the precise scope for a negotiation  
BOF/WG, and whether negotiation should operate out-of-band (e.g., via  
DNS) or in-band with the negotiated traffic.  The main procedural  
action-item we concluded on in the end was that Jana and I will come  
up with a draft charter for a negotiation BOF, then we'll iterate on  
it on it a few times on this (TAE) list, and seek approval for an  
official negotiation BOF in Hiroshima.

Thanks,
Bryan

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From: Michael Menth <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:44:50 +0200

Hi Bryan,

I have missed the discussion since I arrived only on Wednesday night. 
What do you exactly understand by "negotiation"? Could you give an example?

Regards,

    Michael

Bryan Ford schrieb:
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-- 
Dr. Michael Menth, Assistant Professor
University of Wuerzburg, Institute of Computer Science
Am Hubland, D-97074 Wuerzburg, Germany, room B206
phone: (+49)-931/31-86644 (new), fax: (+49)-931/888-6632
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www3.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/research/ngn

---

From: Roland Bless <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:18:11 +0200

Hi Michael,

> What do you exactly understand by "negotiation"? Could you give an example?

As far as I understood, you will negotiate available transport
protocols, ports, etc. For instance for SIP transport this is done
via DNS, using NAPTR and SRV records, but that's probably not the best
or most efficient way to do it. Furthermore, there are more and more
applications that could use the different available transports.
So how do you find out whether a web server supports http over sctp or
http over tls/tcp etc.? Probing may cause long timeouts and thus setup
delays.

See:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tsv-area/current/msg00345.html

>> official negotiation BOF in Hiroshima.

Regards,
 Roland