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Network Working GroupA. Morton
Internet-DraftAT&T Labs
Intended status: Standards TrackOctober 25, 2010
Expires: April 28, 2011 


RFC 4148 and the IPPM Metrics Registry are Obsolete
draft-morton-ippm-rfc4148-obsolete-02

Abstract

This memo recommends that RFC 4148, the IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) Registry be reclassified as Historic, and the IANA IPPM Metrics Registry itself be withdrawn from use. The current registry structure has been found to be insufficiently detailed to uniquely identify IPPM metrics. Despite apparent efforts to find current or even future users, no one has responded to the third quarter of 2010 call for interest in the RFC 4148 registry.

Requirements Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.) [RFC2119].

Status of this Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as “work in progress.”

This Internet-Draft will expire on April 28, 2011.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.



Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Recommendation to Reclassify RFC 4148 and Withdraw the corresponding IANA registry
3.  Security Considerations
4.  IANA Considerations
5.  Acknowledgements
6.  References
    6.1.  Normative References
    6.2.  Informative References
§  Author's Address




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1.  Introduction

The IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) framework [RFC2330] (Paxson, V., Almes, G., Mahdavi, J., and M. Mathis, “Framework for IP Performance Metrics,” May 1998.) describes several ways to record options and metric parameter settings, in order to account for sources of measurement variability. For example, Section 13 of[RFC2330] (Paxson, V., Almes, G., Mahdavi, J., and M. Mathis, “Framework for IP Performance Metrics,” May 1998.) describes the notion of "Type P" so that metrics can be specified in general, but the specifics (such as payload length in octets and protocol type) can replace P to disambiguate the results.

When the IPPM Metric Registry [RFC4148] (Stephan, E., “IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) Metrics Registry,” August 2005.) was designed, the variability of the Type P notion, and the variability possible with the many metric parameters (see Section 4.1 of [RFC2679] (Almes, G., Kalidindi, S., and M. Zekauskas, “A One-way Delay Metric for IPPM,” September 1999.) ) was not fully appreciated. Further, some of the early metric definitions only indicate Poisson streams [RFC2330] (Paxson, V., Almes, G., Mahdavi, J., and M. Mathis, “Framework for IP Performance Metrics,” May 1998.) (see the metrics in [RFC2679] (Almes, G., Kalidindi, S., and M. Zekauskas, “A One-way Delay Metric for IPPM,” September 1999.), [RFC2680] (Almes, G., Kalidindi, S., and M. Zekauskas, “A One-way Packet Loss Metric for IPPM,” September 1999.), and [RFC3393] (Demichelis, C. and P. Chimento, “IP Packet Delay Variation Metric for IP Performance Metrics (IPPM),” November 2002.)), but later work standardized the methods for Periodic Stream measurements [RFC3432] (Raisanen, V., Grotefeld, G., and A. Morton, “Network performance measurement with periodic streams,” November 2002.), adding to the variability possible when characterizing a metric exactly.

It is not believed to be feasible or even useful to register every possible combination of Type P, metric parameters, and Stream parameters using the current structure of the IPPM Metric Registry.

The IPPM Metrics Registry is believed to have very few, if any users. Evidence of this provided by the fact that one registry entry was syntactically incorrect for months after [RFC5644] (Stephan, E., Liang, L., and A. Morton, “IP Performance Metrics (IPPM): Spatial and Multicast,” October 2009.) was published. The text ":=" was used for the metrics in that document instead of "::=". It took eight months before someone complained that a parser found the error. Even the original registry author agrees that the current registry is not efficient, and has submitted a proposal to effectively create a new registry [draft-stephan-ippm-registry-ext-00, work in progress].

Despite apparent efforts to find current or even future users, no one has responded to the third quarter of 2010 call for interest in the RFC 4148 registry. Therefore, the IETF could now declare the registry Historic without any further reservations.

When a registry is declared Historic, it simply prevents IANA from registering new objects, in this case new metrics. So, even if a registry user was eventually found, they could continue to use the current registry and its contents will continue to be available.



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2.  Recommendation to Reclassify RFC 4148 and Withdraw the corresponding IANA registry

Due to the ambiguities between the current metrics registrations and the metrics used, and the apparent minimal adoption of the registry in practice, this memo RECOMMENDS that:

It is assumed that parties who wish to establish a replacement registry function will work to specify such a registry.



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3.  Security Considerations

This memo and its recommendations have no known impact on the security of the Internet (especially if there is a zombie apocalypse on the day it is published; humans will have many more security issues to worry about stemming from the rise of the un-dead).



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4.  IANA Considerations

Metrics defined in IETF are typically registered in the IANA IPPM METRICS REGISTRY as described in initial version of the registry [RFC4148] (Stephan, E., “IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) Metrics Registry,” August 2005.). However, areas for improvement of this registry have been identified, and the registry structure has to be revisited when there is consensus to do so.

The current consensus is to withdraw the IPPM Metrics Registry, as originally described in [RFC4148] (Stephan, E., “IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) Metrics Registry,” August 2005.).



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5.  Acknowledgements

Henk Uijterwaal suggested additional rationale for the recommendation in this memo.



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6.  References



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6.1. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 (TXT, HTML, XML).
[RFC2330] Paxson, V., Almes, G., Mahdavi, J., and M. Mathis, “Framework for IP Performance Metrics,” RFC 2330, May 1998 (TXT, HTML, XML).
[RFC2679] Almes, G., Kalidindi, S., and M. Zekauskas, “A One-way Delay Metric for IPPM,” RFC 2679, September 1999 (TXT).
[RFC2680] Almes, G., Kalidindi, S., and M. Zekauskas, “A One-way Packet Loss Metric for IPPM,” RFC 2680, September 1999 (TXT).
[RFC3393] Demichelis, C. and P. Chimento, “IP Packet Delay Variation Metric for IP Performance Metrics (IPPM),” RFC 3393, November 2002 (TXT).
[RFC3432] Raisanen, V., Grotefeld, G., and A. Morton, “Network performance measurement with periodic streams,” RFC 3432, November 2002 (TXT).
[RFC4148] Stephan, E., “IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) Metrics Registry,” BCP 108, RFC 4148, August 2005 (TXT).
[RFC5644] Stephan, E., Liang, L., and A. Morton, “IP Performance Metrics (IPPM): Spatial and Multicast,” RFC 5644, October 2009 (TXT).


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6.2. Informative References

[....] “None,”  .


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Author's Address

  Al Morton
  AT&T Labs
  200 Laurel Avenue South
  Middletown,, NJ 07748
  USA
Phone:  +1 732 420 1571
Fax:  +1 732 368 1192
Email:  acmorton@att.com
URI:  http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/