Subject: Re: [Nea] NEA WG Next Steps: Call for Comments on PT-EAP I-D

From: Nancy Cam-Winget <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:29:37 -0800

Hi Carolin,

For some reason I can not respond to your review directly so am sending to
the NEA
Reflector...Thanks for taking the time to review the PT-EAP draft and
provide comments.
I¹ve incorporated all your suggested updates in the latest
draft-ietf-nea-pt-eap-01
Draft.

To your question:
Section 3.2

- "The NEA Client SHOULD choose the value sent by
   the NEA Server if the NEA Client supports it. However, the NEA Client
   MAY set the Version field to a value less than the value sent by the
   NEA Server"

-> does this mean, the client is allowed to choose an older version even he
supports the same version like the server. Wouldn't it be better to require
the client to use the version the server requested if he supports it and
only allow to use older versions if the client does not support the server's
version?

[NCW] Yes, the intent is to have the client negotiate the newest version it
has, but it is difficult to discern this
 and thus the server can only presume the client is negotiating a lower
version because it can not support a
 newer (higher) one.  This is why it is left to the NEA server¹s policy to
determine if it is willing to accept a lower
 version or not. 

Thanks again,
    Nancy.