Subject: [babel] Proposed Babel BoF description

From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 17:34:06 +0100

Thanks to all who participated in the previous discussion.  Thanks in
particular to Russ, whose pointed questions helped a lot with clarifying
things.

Here's a very first draft, berely proof-read, of a BoF description.
I haven't discussed it with anyone yet, so everything is negotiable at
this stage -- please let me know if you think I'm completely off.

Pro memoria, we'll need to be sending a formal proposal before Friday 19th
February.

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Babel is a loop-avoiding distance vector protocol that has good provisions
for dynamically computed metrics and remains robust even in the presence
of metric oscillations and failure of transitivity.  Babel has seen some
production deployment, notably in hybrid networks (networks that combine
classical, wired parts with meshy bits) and in global overlay networks
(networks built out of large numbers of tunnels spanning continents).
Babel is also a required part of the IETF Homenet protocol stack.  There
exist three independent implementations of Babel, all of which are open
source.

The core of the Babel protocol is described in detail in RFCs 6126 and
7557, which are both Experimental.  While these RFCs have served us well
(as indicated by the independent reimplementations of Babel), a number of
parties have expressed a desire to have a "RFC 6126-bis", which would
clarify RFC 6126 and integrate the contents of RFC 7557 without expanding
the scope of Babel.  Hopefully, this RFC 6126-bis can be a Standards Track
document.

The goal of this BoF is to establish a working group that will write the
successor to RFC 6126 and 7557.  The working group will have to decide
whether the new protocol is backwards compatible with RFC 6126, or whether
it is merely compatible with the spirit of Babel.  It should then proceed
to write a new specification based on RFC 6126 as well as an applicability
statement.  Security issues must be considered, perhaps based on RFC 7298.
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