Subject: RE: [Hipsec] Base draft & ESP draft: snapshots

From: "Henderson, Thomas R" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 08:38:37 -0700

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pekka Nikander [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 8:05 AM
> To: Petri Jokela
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Hipsec] Base draft & ESP draft: snapshots
> 
> Petri,
> 
> Late comments on the drafts; I am really sorry for being this late.
> 
> In general, I'm afraid that the document is *NOT* ready for 
> the IESG.  That is, as we are now proceeding to publication, 
> I'd like us to apply a little bit of extra scrutiny to see 
> that everything really  
> is as we would like to see them during the next 2-5 years, at 
> least.   
> We have to remember that *if* HIP takes its potential place 
> in the Internet architecture, the document that we are about 
> to launch may become as seminal as RFC 791 is today.  I also 
> feel that my review, resulting in these comments, is *NOT* 
> sufficient.  We also need to get some serious cross-area reviews.

Pekka, I happen to agree with you that the drafts could be improved.
However, when I have suggested this in the past, the feedback that I
received was that the WG wanted to err on the side of publishing sooner
(perhaps with less polish), so as to get stable interoperability.  So I
had to reorient my thinking towards viewing the drafts mainly from an
interoperability standpoint.  From that standpoint, although you have
revealed some inconsistencies below, they seem to be minor and easily
fixable.  The main substantial open issue seems to be the HIT format.

Cross-area reviews will take some time especially if there are
objections or discussions as to how we are doing things.  I personally
do not mind to wait to improve the drafts, because I think they are
stable enough now that interoperable (experimental) implementations can
be produced and easily tweaked, and I also think that we are just
pushing the review problem onto the IESG reviewers (i.e., it would be
nice to say to the IESG that there has been cross-area review), but I am
eager to hear the priorities of the rest of the WG.

Tom

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---

From: Pekka Nikander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 08:45:10 +0200

Tom,

>> In general, I'm afraid that the document is *NOT* ready for the  
>> IESG.  That is, as we are now proceeding to publication, I'd like  
>> us to apply a little bit of extra scrutiny ...
>

Maybe I used too strong language.  I was just disappointed since we  
are now past the WG last call, and received very few comments...  [I  
know, I didn't have time during the WG LC but I told this to the  
chairs, telling them that I'll do my review ASAP after Paris.]

What I am concerned about is the *document* quality, not technical  
quality.  As far as I can see,  technical quality seems to be fine.

Maybe we should state that from a technical point of view the draft  
is now frozen, unless we detect something alarming that warrants it  
to be changed?  [Consensus call on this, chairs?]

My worry is that we might get stuck at the IESG just because the  
introduction or some other part of the document is not sufficiently  
clear, making it hard for an outsider (such as the ADs) to understand  
what we want to say.  Hence, I think that we still need a few  
outsiders to review the document in order to make it readable in one  
pass.  I don't want us to get stuck because we don't have sufficient  
meta-discussion about what we want to say and why.

> objections or discussions as to how we are doing things.

We can minimise the potentiality for objections by stating that this  
is chartered for experimental.  Discussion is more likely to indicate  
parts of the document that are not clear enough.

Now, I was thinking mostly that we should get reviews from the OPS  
area and also from the SEC area.  From SEC area mostly as a  
presentation matter; we have Tuomas Aura's paper to lean on about the  
security aspects.

Hmm.  Maybe we should point to it more strongly in the introduction,  
stating that the protocol has been analysed by crypto protocol  
experts and no serious problems were found?
(And that we know that one analysis is no guarantee of security yada  
yada yada...)

APS area may be another potential source of DISCUSSes.  We may need  
some more introductory text saying that while we have considered API  
issues, they are outside of the scope of the protocol spec?  This is  
a little bit murky still due to the problems with 6.1 and 6.2.

So, ask for a review of -04 by e.g. Pekka Savola (OPS), Nico Williams  
(SEC), and Ned Freed (APS)?  I can't see anything alarming from RTG  
or TSV point of view.

> I am eager to hear the priorities of the rest of the WG.

Me too.

--Pekka

---

From: Julien Laganier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:19:35 +0200

On Tuesday 16 August 2005 17:38, Henderson, Thomas R wrote:
>
> Pekka, I happen to agree with you that the drafts could be
> improved. However, when I have suggested this in the past, the
> feedback that I received was that the WG wanted to err on the side
> of publishing sooner (perhaps with less polish), so as to get
> stable interoperability.  So I had to reorient my thinking towards
> viewing the drafts mainly from an interoperability standpoint. 
> From that standpoint, although you have revealed some
> inconsistencies below, they seem to be minor and easily fixable. 
> The main substantial open issue seems to be the HIT format.
>
> objections or discussions as to how we are doing things.  I
> personally do not mind to wait to improve the drafts, because I
> think they are stable enough now that interoperable (experimental)
> implementations can be produced and easily tweaked, and I also
> think that we are just pushing the review problem onto the IESG
> reviewers (i.e., it would be nice to say to the IESG that there has
> been cross-area review), but I am eager to hear the priorities of
> the rest of the WG.

Hi Tom, some thoughts on that matter:

As you noted above, if there are any technical inconsistencies they 
don't prevent people from producing inter-operable implementations. I 
don't believe that anybody in the WG will now want to change a major 
aspect in the protocol specification, so the current (-03) draft 
seems to be a quite stable reference for implementors. 

I agree that cross area review will take time, but I also think that 
for the sake of publishing the RFC faster, the cross-area path is 
most probably the fastest: We won't only tell the IESG that there was 
cross area review, we will also give them a document more readable by 
non-HIPpies. I, at least, have trouble finding unclear/confusing/etc 
statements in a document I've read so much.

--julien

---

From: Julien Laganier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:19:35 +0200

--julien

---

From: Gonzalo Camarillo <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:34:15 +0300

Hi,

Thomas wrote:
> interoperability standpoint.

yes, your understanding of our charter is correct.

Pekka wrote:

 > Maybe we should state that from a technical point of view the draft  is
 > now frozen, unless we detect something alarming that warrants it  to be
 > changed?  [Consensus call on this, chairs?]
 >

yes, as Thomas pointed out, that is the idea. Let's proceed as follows:

Petri incorporates your comments and releases a new revision of the 
drafts within a week. I will then request the people you suggested to 
perform a review of the document within one month. After that, Petri 
incorporates the comments, we run the new revision briefly thru the WG, 
and send it to the IESG.

Pekka, what is the status of the HIT draft you are working on with Julien?

Thanks,

Gonzalo

---

From: Pekka Nikander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:14:29 +0200

> Pekka, what is the status of the HIT draft you are working on with  

The draft exists and is basically ready (has been for two weeks), but  
we are trying to get Francis Dupont as a third author, and have some  
internal controversies in some details.  Once we manage to decide how  
to deal with them, we'll submit it.  Hopefully this week.

--Pekka