Re: [rrg] Ivip map-encap & MHF in draft-irtf-rrg-recommendation-00

"Tony Li" <tony.li@tony.li> Tue, 24 February 2009 23:02 UTC

From: Tony Li <tony.li@tony.li>
To: 'Robin Whittle' <rw@firstpr.com.au>, 'RRG' <rrg@irtf.org>
References: <49A3CF70.2020602@firstpr.com.au>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:02:38 -0800
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Subject: Re: [rrg] Ivip map-encap & MHF in draft-irtf-rrg-recommendation-00
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Reply-To: tony.li@tony.li

Hi Robin,


Thank you for your note.  I'd like to respond to the meta-issues you raise.


|The descriptions of these approaches in 3.3.1.x are exceedingly
|minimal.  I don't know why everything has to be so terse.  Internet
|drafts are printed on 100% recycled electrons, and I think it is
|important to help people - including those outside the RRG - identify
|and understand the various possible architectures as clearly as
|possible.


Unfortunately, length and detail do not create clarity.  Instead, they
frequently obscure it.  The point of having broad, overall descriptions is
to first describe the key aspects of the particular segment of the solution
space.  These create abstractions that we can actually discuss and
manipulate in some pragmatic fashion without drowning in implementation
detail.

Yes, once we have made the key architectural decisions at the uppermost
layers of the solution space, then we can and should recurse downwards into
more detail, but until then, the details simply serve as noise in conflict
with any insights and generalizations that we might have.


|The taxonomy should clearly cover every seriously proposed
|architecture - and should probably not cover anything else without
|noting that such an architecture may be possible, but has not yet
|been proposed.


I strongly disagree.  The point of the taxonomy is to cover as much of the
solution space as we can possibly see.  Specific proposals are only points
in this space and our top-down decision making should have us first try for
consensus at the broadest possible levels of abstraction.


Regards,
Tony

[rrg] Ivip map-encap & MHF in draft-irtf-rrg-reco… Robin Whittle
Re: [rrg] Ivip map-encap & MHF in draft-irtf-rrg-… Tony Li
[rrg] Brevity, abstraction & detail; Consensus on… Robin Whittle