Subject: Re: [lisp] comments on draft-ietf-lisp-06.txt (part 1)

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:43:21 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Yakov Rekhter <[email-masked]>

    > John Scudder, John Drake, and myself produced a list of comments on
    > draft-ietf-lisp-06.txt. The comments are split into two parts: (1)
    > comments that are not specific to a particular section

Thanks for that interesting list. By and large, each merits a thread in
itself, so I won't attempt to answer them all in detail in a single message -
such a message would be a paper, not an email message that normal list
participants could hope to peruse. (Perhaps the WG chairs or someone could
open an issue for each?)

Also, this message represents only my own person opinion: other people
working on LISP may have differing views, so please do not take this as
anything more than just my personal thoughts.

One general comment I will make is that many of these points have actually
previously been identified as issues (e.g. the 'connectivity between an ETR
and an end-host', Comment 4). The reasons why they remain open, even after
having been identified, vary from case to case.

In general, though, in part it's because this is an effort conducted with
limited personnel and resources, and with such limits, it's inevitable that
some less-critical issues have to have detailed resolutions deferred until
later, and many of these fall into that category. Since it is an
_experimental_ deployment, the focus of those limited resources (properly,
IMO) is on getting to a point where one can get an experimental deployment
that one can learn some useful lessons from.

If I may mention the context briefly, the RRG does seem to have a rough
consensus that the Internet does need to separate location and identity at an
architectural level. However, there is neither large-scale experience with
the costs and problems such a step is likely to bring, nor a plan that is
guaranteed to be a _feasible_ deployment plan for such a major architectural
upheaval to a massive operational system - and as we have learned from
experience, a new design _without_ a viable deployment plan is not of any use
at all. LISP promises to bring us valuable information on both counts, which
highlights the utility of the experiment, and therefore the desirability of
pressing forward with a deployment before every last engineering t is crossed.

In any event, no engineering solution is 'perfect' out of the box; inevitably
problems get resolved, and additional capabilities added, over the
operational lifetime, a process you will no doubt be familiar with from
experience with BGP.

Of course, the more things that can be done up front, the better. If you all
are able to add some additional resources to LISP, that would be really great
- it would allow us to look at some of these issues that have either been put
to one side as less important, or not really identified until now.

I'll try and respond in detail in a bit to some of the points you have
raised, in a separate message(s).

	Noel