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RE: Traffic Selectors (was SA fragments)



At 17:25 -0500 2/20/04, Paul Koning wrote:
>  >>>>> "Bora" == Bora Akyol <bora@cisco.com> writes:
>
>  Bora> I wrote several responses to this, but chose not to send them,
>  Bora> if there is no technical merit to my proposal on traffic
>  Bora> selectors, then be it.
>
>  >> -----Original Message----- From: Stephen Kent
>  >>
>  >> ... I think you are way
>  >> too late and have contributed far too little to be taken seriously
>  >> in this regard.
>
>Bora is right.
>
>If his suggestions have technical merit, they have that merit whether
>he has contributed for 20 years or 20 days.  Conversely, if they have
>no merit, they would still have no merit even if he had contributed
>far longer and far more.
>
>Can we please evaluate proposals on their technical merit and leave
>ad hominem comments out?
>
>Thanks,
>	paul

Paul,

OK, you opened the dialogue, so I'll respond.

We have been working on IPsec for a very long time.  We need not 
address every suggestion for a change that arises from anyone. If we 
did, we will never finish. Most WGs understand this and operate on 
that basis.

In this case, Bora made an absurd, and to me, offensive, assertion, 
i.e., "I think there is agreement that port based selectors do not 
make sense for tunnel mode." There is no rational basis for this 
assertion, based on the message exchanges on the list. In my opinion, 
anyone who sends a message of this sort is way off base.

So, I checked my files to see if this was a comment from someone who 
had a track record of contributing, since I am willing to give some 
credence to an individual who has been a contributor.  The result of 
my search is exactly what I stated.  It is an ad hominem argument 
only to the extent that it provides a factual characterization of why 
I believe his comments ought to be ignored.

While you are right that, in principle, anyone may be able to 
contribute a good idea to a discussion, we don't have the time to 
devote to work this way. Ask the ADs if they think we should 
reconsider every aspect of the WG's work based on comments from 
anyone who chooses to send a message, irrespective of his/her 
contributory status. If someone finds an objective, technical flaw in 
what we have proposed, then fine. But when someone suggests that, 
based on his personal view, an extant feature of an existing standard 
should be dropped and replaced with another, remotely analogous 
feature, that's a different matter.

As for the substance of his suggestion, I find that it has NO merit. It is:

	- half-baked (what if the offset goes beyond the next layer 
protocol headers into data?, how do we apply this to a fragment? how 
would it work with IPv6 headers with header extensions? how would it 
work with IPv4 packets that contain options? ...)

	- it would lead to interop problems because it's a "MAY" and 
because it imposes no constraints on what offsets, lengths and mask 
vales might be defined, thus leading to a new set of peer SPD 
coordination requirements.


any other questions?

Steve