Subject: RE: [midcom] draft-ietf-midcom-requirements-01.txt

From: "Fleischman, Eric W" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 16:26:47 -0700

>From: Bob Penfield [mailto:[email-masked]]
>Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 2:34 PM
>I do not see a need to make an explicit distinction in the protocol between
>control flows and content flows. The pin-hole request to allow the control
>flow thru to an in-path agent is basically the same as a pin-hole request to
>allow the content flow thru for a given session. Why does the middlebox need
>to know that one pin-hole is for control flow and the other is for content
>flow?

Bob's interpretation of the text differs from mine, suggesting that the text
should be clarified so that we can understand exactly what is being proposed.

I understood the text to say that the Application Control Flow, mentioned in 
Section 7, would provide a mechanism for the Middlebox to ensure that the
Midcom agent receive control information, I assume for the case of the OOP
Agent (e.g., Section 7.1.1). I thus viewed it to be primarily a mechanism to
support out-of-path Agents. Question: if we would restrict the protocol to 
solely in-path agents, will Section 7 and the Application Control Flow 
"go away"? If not, please identify what else this flow is accomplishing.

The Application content flow, by contrast, is not actually discussed, 
despite it forming the header to Section 8. I presumed that the 
authors' intention for the content flow is that that it would occur 
in an unmodified state between the hosts and the middlebox, without 
any intermediate agency of the Midcom Agent. Would the authors please 
verify that this is correct? If it isn't, then please answer Bob's 
question above.

I previously mentioned that our firewalls want to authenticate the 
hosts, in addition to the MidCom Agent. Towards that end I understand 
that the Source and Destination address of the Pinhole Descriptor, 
mentioned in Section 5.2.1, is the source/destination address of 
the communicating hosts, and not the source/destination address of 
the Midcom Agent and Middlebox. Since this point is very important, 
I would appreciate the authors explicitly verifying that this is 
their intention. Thanks!

--Eric

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