Subject: [Dime] Comment on definition of throttling DOC draft

From: Steve Donovan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 16:01:00 -0800

All,

The following definition of throttling is in the current draft:

    Throttling:

       Throttling is the reduction of the number of requests sent to an
       entity.  Throttling can include a client dropping requests, or an
       agent rejecting requests with appropriate error responses.
       Clients and agents can also choose to redirect throttled requests
       to some other entity or entities capable of handling them.

I suggest a couple of changes.

First, an agent that is throttling a message should not "drop" the 
message but should rather send an error response indicating that the 
message was throttled.  I think this was the intent of the definition 
but it would be good to be explicit.

Second, the comment on redirecting doesn't belong as part of 
throttling.  Once a request is throttled it doesn't exist anymore. 
Redirecting and throttling are two actions that can be taken as part of 
overload abatement.  We should add a definition of overload abatement 
that includes both.  We should also add a definition of redirecting.

Regards,

Steve

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 16:28:12 -0800

On Nov 4, 2013, at 4:01 PM, Steve Donovan <[email-masked]> wrote:

> First, an agent that is throttling a message should not "drop" the message but should rather send an error response indicating that the message was throttled.  I think this was the intent of the definition but it would be good to be explicit.

Agreed. But we should probably say the same about clients. That is, if they throttle a request, they need to do whatever application layer thing they would need to do if they had received some certain error (probably from the set of errors that an agent might send if it needed to throttle.)

> 
> Second, the comment on redirecting doesn't belong as part of throttling.  Once a request is throttled it doesn't exist anymore.  Redirecting and throttling are two actions that can be taken as part of overload abatement.  We should add a definition of overload abatement that includes both.  We should also add a definition of redirecting.

I don't have strong feelings on this, but my instinct is that throttling means that a certain node doesn't have to process the request. That says nothing about whether a different node had to process it. Or more explicitly, a reporting node cannot (or should not) tell the difference between whether messages go away entirely vs go somewhere else.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
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