Subject: Re: IETF technical plenary: the end of application protocols

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:35:34 +0200

Thank you for reading the draft.

Only a few minor notes below:

On Mar 23, 2011, at 9:01 AM, SM wrote:

The technical plenary could be moved to Friday. :-)

.... because many people leave early and so they wouldn't see the plenary
:-)

Instead of an emergency course-correction, I suggest that the IAB publishes
its minutes.

We actually try our best...

In Section 2:

"This attitude is not particularly surprising given that many
standardization participants in the real-time communication area look
back to a regime that exactly follows a highly standardised eco-
system, namely the telecommunication business."

Does the IAB have an opinion about adopting such a model?

You need to quote the entire paragraph:

While many standardization efforts in the IETF have considered the
possibility for using proprietary protocols along the end host to
application service provider leg, this has usually been considered as
exception or a transition case.  With few exceptions it was assumed
that the desired end state is to move from a proprietary protocol to
the standardized alternative in the long run, which allows client
software vendors to interact with all forms of application service
providers.  Such an approach increases the need for standardization
considerably and requires far more interoperable network elements to
exist.  This attitude is not particularly surprising given that many
standardization participants in the real-time communication area look
back to a regime that exactly follows a highly standardised eco-
system, namely the telecommunication business.

Two answers:

1) Architecture

I don't know if you have been working in the RAI area but let me summarize
the work there very briefly.

With the work on SIP participants  very early on realized that there are
other organizations interested in real-time communication. These
organizations, such as 3GPP and OMA, decided to also use SIP but their
architecture was different to what most IETF people had in mind. This was
not really seen as a problem given that a number of IETF participants
believe anyway that the purpose of the standards development in the IETF is
on "building blocks" that can be used in many different architectures. While
that's a great idea it does not always work. There are cases where certain
architectural choices demand specific protocols to be defined that are
pretty useless in other architectures. We regularly ran into this issue when
it came to security. The 3GPP IMS security architecture, for example, is
very different to the security architecture that many IETF RAI participants
would like to see. 

If we now look at the architecture that is being brought forward in the
RTCWeb debate then you will notice that many of the protocol building blocks
that have been standardized are not really necessary. They may be used but
it is more likely that they will not.

So, you have to understand the background of where folks come from to
understand why a certain approach has been chosen.

Btw, even if my description is focused on the RTCWeb and the RAI area the
situation is not so different in other areas either. See the work on QoS in
the transport area.

What do we as draft authors want? In Section 4 of
draft-tschofenig-post-standardization-00 I collected a few questions I
thought would be useful to ask.
It is not about saying what other people in the IETF must do but rather to
initiate a thought process.
If you design a new protocol today you have a couple of design choices to
make. "Should my protocol run on top of HTTP/HTTPS?" may be one of the
questions you run into.

If you come to the conclusion that this Web stuff is not relevant to your
effort then that's perfectly fine. You have thought about it and you have
reasons why your own approach is more appropriate.

2) IAB's opinion

At the moment the IAB does not have a consensus on this topic. The document
you are referencing, draft-tschofenig-post-standardization-00, is an
individual submission (as the filename indicates).
We had discussions about these Web architectural topics in the IAB but since
this document has not been accepted as an IAB document (which would only
mean that the IAB indicates interest to work on the topic) it is a bit
premature to say what the opinion of the entire IAB could be. On top of that
the Nomcom selects IAB members in a way that they cover a wide range of
expertise - not everyone in the IAB is looking at the application or the
real-time area. Hence, it is fair to say that some IAB members do not yet
have a (strong) opinion about these Web related topics. There was, however,
enough consensus to schedule a plenary discussion about it.

I hope my response helps to clarify.

Ciao
Hannes

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:48:16 -0700

Hi Hannes,
At 03:35 23-03-2011, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
>.... because many people leave early and so they wouldn't see the plenary :-)

No, it is because it would be the 1st of April. :-)

>We actually try our best...

I understand that.

>You need to quote the entire paragraph:

Or I could address a very specific question to the IAB. :-)

>1) Architecture

[snip]

>If we now look at the architecture that is being brought forward in 
>the RTCWeb debate then you will notice that many of the protocol 
>building blocks that have been standardized are not really 
>necessary. They may be used but it is more likely that they will not.

I noticed the "Proprietary over HTTP/Websockets" in 
draft-rosenberg-rtcweb-framework-00.

>draft-tschofenig-post-standardization-00 I collected a few questions 
>I thought would be useful to ask.

My opinion is that the questions favor a particular approach.

>It is not about saying what other people in the IETF must do but 
>rather to initiate a thought process.

Ok.

>If you design a new protocol today you have a couple of design 
>choices to make. "Should my protocol run on top of HTTP/HTTPS?" may 
>be one of the questions you run into.

I am not keen about the "one port to serve them all".  If we look at 
design choices in other areas, such as the equivalent of MX records 
for DNS (draft-ietf-mif-dns-server-selection), we might wonder 
whether there is even an architecture to work from.

>If you come to the conclusion that this Web stuff is not relevant to 
>your effort then that's perfectly fine. You have thought about it 
>and you have reasons why your own approach is more appropriate.

My approach would be overruled by business constraints.  We have 
reached the point where "this is going to happen whether you like it or not".

>2) IAB's opinion
>
>At the moment the IAB does not have a consensus on this topic. The 
>document you are referencing, 
>draft-tschofenig-post-standardization-00, is an individual 
>submission (as the filename indicates).
>We had discussions about these Web architectural topics in the IAB 
>but since this document has not been accepted as an IAB document 
>(which would only mean that the IAB indicates interest to work on 
>the topic) it is a bit premature to say what the opinion of the 
>entire IAB could be. On top of that the Nomcom selects IAB members 
>in a way that they cover a wide range of expertise - not everyone in 
>the IAB is looking at the application or the real-time area. Hence, 
>it is fair to say that some IAB members do not yet have a (strong) 
>opinion about these Web related topics. There was, however, enough 
>consensus to schedule a plenary discussion about it.

I expected that answer. :-)

Regards,
-sm