RE: Charter questions

["Durham, David" <david.durham@intel.com>]

David H,

 

I must take offense at one of your comments. I'm one COPS person who has devoted a great deal of my personal time to help the SNMP community. My record is Chair of SMIng (wanna guess how much time this requires?), NIM, as well as contributing at several of the SNMPConf Interims. I've also helped with the DiffServ MIB among others from time to time.

 

What more does a guy have to do?

-Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Kwok Ho Chan [mailto:khchan@NortelNetworks.com]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 5:14 PM
To: Harrington, David
Cc: 'Wijnen, Bert (Bert)'; Durham, David; 'rap@ops.ietf.org'; 'Randy Bush'; Bernard Aboba; 'David Mitton'
Subject: RE: Charter questions

Dave and all:
Please see comments inline.
I hope to help clarify the situation.
How about put the differences and politics aside and do our best
building a better Internet.  IMHO, use some of the goals and spirit
of what created the IETF many years ago.
-- Kwok Ho Chan --


At 12:20 PM 1/20/02 -0500, Harrington, David wrote:

Hi,

I was going to just sit on the sidelines on this issue, but one of buttons has just been pushed.

I am an SNMP bigot, and I strongly resent that COPS has repeatedly encroached on the functionality that is the purpose of SNMP, while the IESG repeatedly prevented the SNMP community from doing anything other than security, which COPS wasn't required to address. I have felt that COPS has been trying to sell itself as the solution for everything, and that the WG has continually expanded into new areas that really required a stretch of the charter. As part of their sales strategy they have repeatedly attacked SNMP. Obviously, I am not a great lover of how many members of the RAP WG have behaved.

I and other members of the RAP Community have tried to complement SNMP/MIB.
For example, the DiffServ MIB was developed with SNMPConf in mind.
The DiffServ MIB can be used at the part of the network where more static configuration
make sense, and DIffServ PIB can be used where Policy Control is required.
Having the 2 data object definitions evolve closely so we really is giving the
different implementations a choice depending on technology applicability at the different
parts of the network.  Notice the similar data object definitions allow for common
APIs when implementing the MIB and PIB so common coding can be done.
I am not sure how much more corporation is required before we can be viewed as
a friend and not an enemy.

I still remember that we had the 8+ hour meeting back at the previous Washington DC
IETF Meeting where we discussed what are some of the values and good features we
see in COPS/PIB and provided what we think the industry wants in terms of Policy
Control and how it may be valuable at the edge of the network.
The RAP Community have been very open in terms of the technical design of
COPS/PIB and don't mind if there is technology transfer into the SNMP/MIB
designs.  Working toward a better Internet.

The RAP Community never set out to compete with any other technology.   We are just
trying to provide solution for the need of Policy Control of Resource Allocation.
The exact goal of the RAP WG.
We never try to overlap any of the work in RAP with any other WG.
We are just trying to provide solution for Policy Control.

The Usage Feedback Framework PIB is used to indicate how the Policy Control have affected
the resource used and provide a direct feedback in relation to the Policy.
COPS is used to control valuable resources, a feedback is required in all control systems
I know of.  And the Report Message Type in COPS has been there from the very beginning.
COPS is a transactional protocol with deterministic results.   Usage Feedback Framework PIB
simply supports this feature of COPS to solve real world problem in relation to Policy
Control Resource Allocation.
I don't see any overlap of Usage Feedback Framework PIB with AAA at the COPS and PIB level.

However, I find it interesting to have the AAA WG raise issues about COPS moving into areas that might overlap with the charter of other WGs. I find it particularly galling to have it suggested that RAP has not worked to integrate with other WGs, and implicitly indicating that AAA has been so willing.

I used to attend and contribute to the AAA WG effort until it became extremely clear that AAA had absolutely no interest (see the footnote) in developing an architecture that could allow for the integration of AAA and COPS and SNMP. Both the COPS community and the SNMP communities presented possible alternatives for accounting, pointed out the importance of trying to better integrate the data models of the various protocols, and requested that the architecture allow for the use of other protocols to provide certain types of functionality. The AAA WG decided to develop an architecture that explicitly excluded the possibility of using any other protocol to provide accounting capability, did little to integrate the data models, and does not allow users to determine which protocol or protocols to use to gather accounting information. AAA insisted on reinventing the wheel, overlapping the work already being done by other WGs.

So while I agree that the RAP WG seems to continually push the limits of the charter rather than concentrating on their core deliverables, I feel it is unfair to ignore their efforts to integrate with the work of other WGs, especially the AAA WG.

dbh

footnote: The AAA WG actually was a bit more open-minded than this appears. A significant minority believed that work should be done to integrate with other protocols, or at least the scope of possible integration should be studied further. However, they were boxed in by the actions of their area director, Randy Bush, when he took over the control of a meeting from the chairs, and forced a vote on a question that was phrased in a highly prejudicial way, to adopt an approach that precluded such integration.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wijnen, Bert (Bert) [mailto:bwijnen@lucent.com]
> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 6:56 AM
> To: Durham, David; 'rap@ops.ietf.org'
> Cc: 'Randy Bush'; Bernard Aboba; 'David Mitton'
> Subject: RE: Charter questions
>
>
> I have added the two AAA WG chairs.
> Bernard/David, do you want the type of discussion on the
> AAA mailing list as I suggest below, or would you rather
> direct some of the AAA paritipants to the RAP WG mailing
> list?
>
> Dave Durham writes:
> > Hi Bert,
> >
> > I took another look at the access-bind PIB and I disagree with your
> > assertion.
> >
> Pls.. read my posting again. I did not make any assertion yet.
> I reported what type of questions were/are coming my way.
> and I do notice that we have an explicit statement in teh charter
> that tells us to interact with AAA WG about these types of matters.
>
> So I was asking:
>
>  So what kind of action has the WG taken or WILL the WG take
>  in order to make sure that we do not overlap or compete
>  in this space?
>
> And so it seems that you do not agree with the allegations that
> seem implicit in the questions that are getting to me. And so
> it seems that there is a NEED to interact with the AAA WG to
> see where both WGs stand and how they understand each others
> work.
>
> So a way to start a discussion with the AAA WG chairs, or    
> on the AAA WG list and use the following text as a way to start
> discussion as to the matter of overlap/conflict of work.
>
> > The whole point of that work is about binding all those
> > diverse signaling protocols so they may work together AND
> > the required device resources may be properly allocated in
> > a coordinated fashion. That certainly seems a good thing to
> > do and within the charter of a resource allocation protocol.
> >
> > I hardly see how a network can work without giving some
> > semblance as to how these many diverse signaling mechanisms
> > (RSVP, RSVP-TE, SIP, etc.) can work together given limited
> > and already partially provisioned network resources.
> > Their approach in the Access-Bind PIB seems to me to be an
> > elegant way to deal with this complex problem.
> >
> > -Dave
> >
> Bert
>