[Mip4] Comments on draft-bharatia-mip4-gen-ext-00

["T.J. Kniveton" <tj at kniveton.com>]

Hi, now some comments on this draft.

General:

The document seems to address an important point; that is, how to  
exchange configuration information for MIPv4. However, as an  
implementor, I would have a hard time figuring out exactly how this  
is supposed to work at all. While the message format is well-defined,  
I would really struggle to figure out what values to put in each  
field of the message, and heaven help me for getting it to  
interoperate with other vendors.

I would suggest doing a bit of rework aimed at making the definition  
of what we're doing here a bit more clear. To that end, I will make  
some specific statements. I hope they are useful to improve the  
document.


Specific:

When I read the abstract, it is not clear what this configuration  
information is to be used for. It says that it should be used "to  
exchange information of the network entities . . etc." This is quite  
vague and I would suggest revamping it slightly to make it more  
obvious what the information is exactly, what it's to be used for,  
and by whom.

Again in the Introduction, you have the same issue. Instead of giving  
two examples of what the information is "like", I would suggest being  
a bit more descriptive in defining what it is.

The whole use of "entities" in this document confuses me. For  
example, in Section 2's "Sub-Type" definition, I am drowning in the  
first sentence trying to figure out which entity is requesting  
information about which. I have a hard time parsing this whole  
subsection; maybe you could re-word it a bit. The "Entity-Type"  
definition is slightly better, but could still use some polish. In  
the "Data" definition, you say "This field represents the data of the  
network entity mentioned in the Sub-Type." Which one?

In general I would recommend removing all the occurrences of "the xxx  
mentioned in the yyy". These are like symbolic links and make reading  
the document difficult, because one is forced to jump all over the  
place. To enhance readability, either be specific, or remove the  
reference entirely.

This is especially true in Security Considerations. The sentence  
doesn't really make sense, in that it says there are no *new*  
considerations.. other than the *old* one already defined in RFC 3344  
(and which one would that be...?) It's especially important to be  
explicit in the security section, to avoid delays in processing the  
draft.


Editorial/Technical:

On the banner, please remove the period after each author's first name.

In the abstract and intro, remove "etc.", and replace it with  
whatever the etc. is supposed to mean.

Section 1,
add a pronoun before "DNS server", "address of previous FA".

Section 2,
add a pronoun before "IPv4 address", "Mobile IP Registration  
Request", "requested information"
Shouldn't the length be set to 4 plus the total length of the Data  
field? Right now it seems short by 2 bytes.
Under Sub-Type, "entity, whose" -> "entity whose" (twice).
"Data field" -> "the Data field"
"Registration Reply" -> "the Registration Reply"

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