Re: [XCON] draft on MSRP conferencing

[Adam Roach <adam at nostrum.com>]

Aki Niemi wrote:

> I think that unfortunately this discussion is heading towards the same
> deadlock we reached around IETF-61. I would suggest that when we
> actually have a proposal for the XCON sidebar mechanism, we return to
> this issue, and investigate whether all requirements are fulfilled with
> this XCON sidebar mechanism alone, or whether both sidebars and private
> MSRP messages are required.
>  

Okay, so put the conversation about private MSRP messages on hold until 
we get further down that path, then.

> Consider a chat room, in which N tv-stations are negotiating with the
> Olympic committee for purchasing the broadcast rights to the different
> sports in the next olympic games. Each station's delegation consists of
> one member.
>
> As often happens with these fictional negotiations, at any point during
> the negotiations, tv-stations may start to swap and trade amongst each
> other with the broadcast rights of sports they've already secured. These
> unofficial negotiations happen in private, randomly and un-structured.
>
> To accomplish this using only a sidebar mechanism, in addition to the
> main conference (N+1 participants), we would need a full mesh of N x N
> sidebars at least (for each pair of tv-stations) so that the delegates
> could each send a private communication to each other whenever they feel
> the urge. 
>
> With our mechanism, you don't have to have any sidebars to enable one
> delegate to send a private communication to another delegate. 
>  

To make sure we're all on the same page here: the fact that the protocol 
mechanism for accomplishing these tasks is a sidebar does *not* mean 
that it needs to be presented to the user in that way. So, for example, 
to satisfy the use case you propose, the user may well type in something 
like "/tell aki Can you understand what he's talking about?" and, in 
response, their client would set up a sidebar, send a single MSRP 
message down it, and (optionally) shut down the sidebar. The protocol 
may end up sending a handful of messages, but the user doesn't know or care.

This may imply certain things about the mechanisms used to set up and 
manipulate sidebars, and I think that taking IM-motivated requirements 
into a conversation about sidebars is fully appropriate. On the other 
hand, I think that coming up with a mechanism that does the same thing 
as can be accomplished with sidebars -- but for only one media type -- 
is doing more harm than good in the long run.

/a

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