[mif] MIF Problem Statement

[Dominik Kaspar <dokaspar.ietf at gmail.com>]

Hi,

I have been working on MIF-related topics for a while now, but only
recently discovered the existence of the MIF working group. Excuse me
if I ask questions that might have already been sorted out in the
meeting or on the list.

The MIF charter specifies (among other things) the following restrictions:

- The group shall not develop new protocol or policy mechanisms.
- No work will be done to enable traffic flows to move from one
interface to another.

To my knowledge, all major operating systems can cope with multiple
interfaces and make a decision about using one of them for all new
traffic flows. I am therefore curious if the group will work on
assigning new traffic flows to the available network interfaces (based
on known or measured link characteristics) or if that contradicts with
the goal of not developing new policy mechanisms?

One solution that already seems to work pretty well is Equal-Cost
Multipath Routing, which (after some non-standardized configuration
difficulties) can also be set up on MIF end-hosts. At least with
Linux, a small ECMP routing table entry can have great flow
aggregation effects when many transport connections are opened.

Best regards,
Dominik