Subject: Re: [armd] thoughts on the continuation of the ARMD work

From: T Sridhar <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:57:31 -0800

I like Himanshu's description calling it a "go-fetch-more-rocks cycle" :-)

I am also in favor of chartering the WG.

Thanks,
Sridhar

From: "Shah, Himanshu" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:57:37 -0500
Subject: Re: [armd] thoughts on the continuation of the ARMD work

It appears that we are unnecessarily setting the bar

higher for this work to continue.

I believe there was adequate problem scope and data presented

during the last BoFs. We seem to put more emphasis on peripheral,

off-the-cuff opinions and warrant more research, more data..

We need to get out of this BoF-forever-mode (or go-fetch-more-rocks cycle),

and start a WG to address the problem. To that extent, I agree with

your suggestion about continuing the work in a WG, even if that meant

to be in a problem-study mode initially.

/himanshu

-----Original Message-----

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Jari
Arkko

Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 4:53 PM

To: [email-masked]

Subject: [armd] thoughts on the continuation of the ARMD work

It is time to decide what to do with another BOF or some other continuation
of this work.

I'm not the AD responsible for this work (Ralph is) but I thought it might
be useful to provide some possible ideas that might work.

One approach is to run a second BOF, and attempt to come to a conclusion
that we have or do not have a scaling problem in ARP. If we do have a
scaling problem then we can charter a working group that works on a
solution. Linda and Sue tell me that they are working on experiments that
may help us understand the scaling problems better, so there may be some
material ready from this to the BOF.

Another approach is to just charter a working group that documents scaling
characteristics of ARP and ND, and perhaps also provides some operational
advice on how to best run your networks without running into issues. This
working group would run, say, for six months and would come up with a couple
of RFCs. At that point it would we could perhaps recharter the group for
some protocol work, if the RFCs showed that there are severe issues.

In either case we need to work on what the scaling characteristics of ARP
and ND are. The difference is that in the BOF approach we need to focus on
finding the "smoking gun" and have a yes-no type discussion. In the WG
approach we can take a bit more time, do an in-depth analysis, can document
the results neutrally without pressure to find the gun, and may even provide
some useful advice to network managers in the process.

Jari