Subject: [Suit] Comments on draft-moran-suit-architecture-03

From: Dave Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2018 20:23:06 +0000

A marked up copy with my comments (as an individual) is at
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2017/05/draft-moran-suit-architecture-03.pdf

None of them would hold up adoption as a WG draft, everything could be handled as part of normal WG work.

High level comments (see marked up copy for more detailed comments and nits):

1)     Currently the draft covers both architecture and manifest information model. We have separate WG milestones for those two items, and maybe it should be split into two separate drafts.  E.g. maybe all of Appendix A moves to a second document.

2)      Currently the document assumes public key crypto, and says "Future versions may also describe a
symmetric key approach".  The WG should decide whether symmetric key support is also required.

3)      The architecture document does not discuss the four roles we discussed in the interim meeting during the liaison statement discussion.  It should (modulo any changes we make to the roles).

4)      The discussion of broadcast discovery is confusing, and the WG probably needs to discuss this.

5)      The discussion of quantum resistant signatures needs elaboration.

6)      The coverage of counter-signing by the owner/operator is incomplete.  Some sections are now good, but some are still wrong because they don't take that into account.  Also, one should not assume that the device owner/operator is necessarily the same entity as the network owner/operator.  They may or may not be the same.

7)      A number of places in the doc use wording that assumes a push model or assumes a pull model for update distribution.  The document needs to be more agnostic or cover both models.

8)      The information model in A.6 needs to be more clear about what information is mandatory and what is optional, also what items might occur more than once.

Dave