Subject: 1:1 relationship of PConsumer to PTarget

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:26:00 +0300

Hi,

I have a question about the following limitation:

      Each  Policy  Target has one Policy Consumer.  To have more
      than one Policy Consumer responsible  for  configuring  the
      Policy  Target  would  invite contention between the Policy
      Consumers.  There may be one or more  Policy  Consumers  to
      enable  continued operation in a failure mode, but only one |
      at a time is to be the 'active' Policy Consumer.  A  Policy |
      Consumer,  though, can work with multiple Policy Targets at |
      the same time.
      	draft-ietf-policy-req-01-diffs.txt; p10

The reason I ask is that on occasion the processing involved in 
being a Policy Consumer may be such that load sharing would be 
desired.  This could be the case when a Policy Target would have a great
number of capabilities for which it is requesting a PC act 
as a outsourcing PDP.  
If this limitation remains then we could end up with a single
system having a number of PTs in order to handle a large number of
capabilities. This too could become cumbersome.
 
Or can a requirement be imposed on PCs such that they are required to
coordinate between themselves and the PT(s)?

a.
-----------------------------------
avri doria
+1 617 678 9402

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From: "Jon Sjoberg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:51:11 -0400

It seems to me that one Policy Target should be associated with one LOGICAL
Policy Consumer.  Then it can be explained that a logical PC is one or more
PC's that appear consitent between each other.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked]
> [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of [email-masked]
> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 5:26 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: 1:1 relationship of PConsumer to PTarget
>
>
> Hi,
>

---

From: Hugh Mahon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:51:13 -0600 (MDT)

Hi Jon and Avri,

> PC's that appear consitent between each other.

I like this answer.  Having the Policy Consumer implemented in a 
distributed manner makes sense if that is what is necessary, and it is 
the Policy Consumer design that handles coordination between PC pieces 
to ensure consistent behavior and interactions with the Policy 
Target(s).  In this way the Policy Management Application (PMA) has a 
single interface to the logical PC.  

The concern I was trying to address in the document was one of 
allowing management of the target, while minimizing administration of 
components as much as possible.  If the PMA must coordinate between 
multiple PCs working with the same target it could get messy on the 
PMA.  A distributed PC addresses your (Avri's) concerns yet allows a 
relatively simple mapping between a Policy Target and (logical) PC. 

Thanks,

Hugh