Subject: Re: [BEHAVE] Review of draft-ietf-behave-nat-mib-03

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:24:00 +0100

Hi Julia,

Sorry for taking so long to reply. I hope you can understand...

Le 2013-01-03 02:03, Julia Renouard a écrit :
> Hi Simon –  I’m finally getting back to your request for review.
>
> Overall I think this is a good update to 4008.   High level feedback
> here (and part of what's taken so long to try and get feedback) - it
> would be helpful if this were reformatted to be clearer.  It is really
> hard to clearly identify which objects have been deprecated and which
> are current or new.  I was spending so much time with my red pen and
> highlighter, that I was unable to give it the concentrated time it
> needs.  So I thought I'd just give you this feedback to start.

Yes, you're not the first to make that remark. We'll do something about 
that. All that needs to be done, and correct me if I'm wrong, is to make 
it *visually* clearer, not actually changing the contents.

It's easy to forget about such things when working in a text editor with 
a search function...

> First - kudos:  I very much appreciate the drive to move away from
> writable elements and away from elements that imply internal designs.
> As you correctly observe, implementations vary widely.  The MIB should
> not make assumptions about internal designs and should only expose
> elements in an abstracted view and are commonly understood and
> implemented by all NATs.  This is great.

I'm glad you like it! :)

> Some suggestions:
>
> In Section 3 you briefly summarize the deprecated and new features, but
> I'd love to see this extended to discuss the tables and top level new,
> changed and deprecated objects along with justifications.  I also wonder
> if it’s possible to discuss the current and new elements alone in their
> own sections.  It is also quite unclear without doing a diff of 4008
> which elements have simply changed –e.g. removed writeability.  You can
> still present a coherent MIB including the deprecated elements, in a
> later section.  But this would make it much easier to read, review and
> implement.   If syntactically legal, it might be nice to also publish
> the reduced MIB of just the current elements (w/o the deprecated ones).

Hmmm... I think a lot of this is solved by grouping together the 
deprecated vs current objects (which we will do). Another insight is 
that *all* of 4008 is now deprecated, and that *all* current objects are 
part of the new features.

If we need more high-level text, this would go in sections 3.2 and 3.3. 
Per-object discussion is intended to be in the MIB itself, as part of 
the DESCRIPTION text.

> Please also call out specific categories of objects as in 4008 section
> 4.  This makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

Will do.

> I'm still wanting to review it for content.   I will continue to do so
> but I wanted to get you something in the meantime.

Thanks. With the new revision out (before Monday's deadline), you'll 
have an easier time reading it.

Simon
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