Subject: RE: [eap] network selection

From: "Lortz, Victor" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 07:25:00 -0800

Jari, I agree that the user's device needs to take care of the selection
of AAA routing.  There may be some setup procedure to configure user
preferences, but once that is done, the device should automatically
determine when and how to specify the routing.  I also agree that a
default route should be provided.  That is why I mentioned that one can
establish a default long distance provider for a phone line.  In
retrospect, I should have made this point more clear:  I think there
should both be a default route and a mechanism for the user's machine to
specify a desired route.  Based on your comments below, I think we are
in agreement.

-Vic

-----Original Message-----
From: Jari Arkko [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 1:01 AM
To: Lortz, Victor
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [eap] network selection

Lortz, Victor wrote:

> Generally a user doesn't care how IP datagrams are routed because
there
> is no cost premium paid by the user for one path vs. another.  A
> different analogy that might be helpful is as follows:  suppose we
> consider the phone network.  It is possible to establish a default
long
> distance provider for a given phone line.  However, even if such a
> default exists, it remains possible to dial a number such as 10 10 123
> or an 800 number for alternative long distance service.  This imposes
> more inconvenience on the user, but the savings may be significant.

Requirements for user control have been expressed. Requirements
for automatic operation have also been expressed. And there
are clear tradeoffs in the user control case, ease of use vs.
freedom of selection. I don't think we can make the user control
requirement go away, but it may be helpful to think about the
analogy from the long distance dialing above. Are we *requiring*
the user to do something, or just *allowing* it? This is also
related to the use of the mediating network selection, do we
have it because of *missing* or just *ambiquous* routes?
Finally, there is the question of whether the user or his
device are doing this.

I think we can agree that the user should not be required
to do anything. This would imply either

   (a) There has to be a working default route, or
   (b) The user's device needs to take care of the
       selection

Given that existing user devices might not be able to do (b),
my preference is (a). Of course, its hard for any standards
to dictate that the service providers must keep the AAA routing
tables perfectly completely all the time, so it may be necessary
to allow (b) as well, as long as we understand its not going to
work for everyone.

--Jari

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