requirements draft comments.

[Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us>]

I took a look at the requirements draft; section 3.1.3 says in part:

   For example, suppose site E obtains transit from transit providers
   T1 and T2, and there is long-term congestion between T1 and T2.
   The multihoming architecture MUST allow E to ensure that in normal
   operation none of its traffic is carried over the congested
   interconnection T1-T2.  The process by which this is achieved MAY
   be a manual one.

This is very strong (lots of MUSTs, and "none") but is also vague --
what does "in normal operation" mean.. i.e., are transient failures a
"normal" part of internet operation?

"E" is just a customer and so most likely has no control over how T1
and T2 operate their networks; accordingly, "ensure" seems too strong
a word to use..

How quickly must the multihoming system respond to attempts to ensure
separation of traffic?  minutes? hours? days?  is it okay to require
manual intervention from folks at T1 and T2?

section 3.2.3 "impact on hosts":

   It would be compatible with this requirement for such a host to lose
   connectivity if a site lost connectivity to one transit provider,
   despite the fact that other transit provider connections were still
   operational.

I can read this either as allowing loss of connectivity to hosts at
external sites, or as allowing total loss of connectivity, including
to other hosts within the site.  Which was intended?

						- Bill