Subject: Re: [midcom] Protocol Evaluation document template

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 15:26:05 -0600

Melinda,

I will be doing the RSIP evaluation work myself. Should anyone else at
3Com / CommWorks work with me on this, I will identify them as soon as
their participation begins.

If you need anymore information on this, don't hesitate to ask.

Jim Renkel
Director, Advanced Technology & System Engineering
The CommWorks Corp., a 3Com company
e-mail: [email-masked]

Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>@ietf.org on 03/27/2002 03:08:09 PM

Sent by:  [email-masked]

To:   James Renkel/MW/US/3Com, "Mary Barnes"<[email-masked]>
cc:   "'midcom @ietf.org'" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: [midcom] Protocol Evaluation document template

At 02:39 PM 3/27/02 -0600, [email-masked] wrote:
>As I indicated in the MIDCOM session last Thursday, 3Com / CommWorks
>will contribute to the evaluation of the RSIP protcol (RFCs 3102 ff.).
>We would like to lead that evaluation, and will welcome anyone that
>would like to work with us on it. If anyone else volunteers for this,
>please have them contact me.

By way of reminder, in the IETF the work is done by individual
contributors rather than by companies.  We'll need for the
individual who wants to work on the RSIP evaluation to identify
him/herself.

Many thanks,

Melinda

_______________________________________________
midcom mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/midcom

_______________________________________________
midcom mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/midcom

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 12:16:31 -0600

Perhaps, when the semantics document is complete, we can add one or
more requirements to the requirements document and evaluation template
that look for a match between the semantics of the semantics document
and the semantics of the existing protocols and then QUICKLY evaluate
the existing protocols against those new requirements and add the
results to their evaluation(s)?

In my experience, almost any attempt to write requirements and then
evaluate existing things against them is an iterative process: ya make
your best stab at initial requirements, during the evaluation ya
discover things ya forgot, or things ya thought were important but just
aren't anymore, etc., and so ya go back and amend the requirements and
incrementally re-evaluate the things against the new requirements. Yah,
the potential for infinite iteration exists but, again in my experience,
you usually only iterate two or three times, and the later iterations are
generally much faster than the first. And if anybody thinks they can get
the requirements for something this nebulous and complicated right the
first time, well, ....

I guess I'm weighing in here in favor of continuing the parallel existing
protocol evaluation and the development of "ideal" semantics, fully
expecting that, because of the ideal semantics development or something
else, we'll wind up amending the requirements and incrementally
re-evaluating protocols.

BTW, in beginning to evalute RSIP against the existing requirements, I'm
starting to see some potential new requirements. I should have some
comments on the e-mail list on this next week.

Comments expected and welcome.

Jim Renkel

Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>@ietf.org on 03/28/2002 05:27:24 PM

To:   Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>, Mary Barnes
      <[email-masked]>
cc:   "'midcom @ietf.org'" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: [midcom] Protocol Evaluation document template

At 06:09 PM 3/28/02 -0500, Jonathan Rosenberg wrote:
>The requirements documents are at a high enough level that I do not see
>how they would be used to rule out or support protocols. Just about any
>sensible protocol that supports a session oriented communication between
>two things, with messages in both directions, will meet the
>requirements.

Right.  I think there may be some confusion at work, though -
the protocol "evaluation" document is not a protocol recommendation
document - the decision about which protocol will ultimately be
used will take place after the evaluation document is complete.
By then the semantics document should be done or nearly done,
although I'm somewhat disappointed that there hasn't been one response
to the proposal that Tom has put out and there haven't been any other
proposals put forward.  And, frankly, I don't think that the semantics
we settle on are going to have that much discriminatory power.

I understand your concern but I think we're okay.  If you're familiar
with "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" you may recall the scene in
which he steps into the abyss only to find that there's actually an
invisible bridge there.  It's possible that there's no bridge here,
but I'm willing to try it anyway.  I really don't want to delay starting
the protocol evaluation until the semantics are put together - it would
end up taking us over a year to finish.

Melinda