Subject: Re: [manet] R2RI Framework and Requirements

From: "Henderson, Thomas R" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:15:19 -0700

Bow-Nan,
I see that your draft is on the MANET agenda for tomorrow, and since I can't attend, I wanted to provide some feedback via the list.  I previously voiced support for a draft like this and would be interested in working on it in the future.

I had a few high-level comments for starters.  I think it would be helpful to discuss some goals for this draft, in the context of the other specifications in development or already published.  Presently, the document seems to be requirements-oriented and states:

4.  Requirements

   To evaluate the R2RI framework, any proposed R2RI protocols MUST satisfy all requirements listed in the following subsections.

However, I do not think this is a practical goal, since some radio-to-router protocols are already published and implemented that do not satisfy all of the stated requirements, and the requirements may not be universally applicable.  I also did not understand what was meant by the phrase "To evaluate the R2RI framework,".   I'm wondering whether the terminology could be relaxed from "requirement" to "design criteria"?  

I think it would also help to have some more discussion of the scope of applicability (including expanding to satellite as Lloyd previously suggested, and including perhaps a taxonomy of radio types of interest), functional goals or use cases, and how the existing specifications map to the design criteria and functional goals.  It seems that future vendors will have a number of protocols to choose from, so some statement of applicability of each of these protocols might be useful.  Maybe future R2R protocol specifications could reference specific use cases in this draft.

I also think it would help to sketch out what is the plan for providing a complete specification for how to write a DLEP-enabled protocol, and how DLEP may evolve in the future.  The current DLEP draft is limited to the DLEP layer and doesn't get into details such as encapsulation and security, but a vendor would eventually need some kind of "DLEP over DTLS" or "DLEP over Ethernet" specification to build to.  Either this draft or the DLEP draft ought to describe how the modularity of DLEP will be handled by various specifications.

- Tom