RE: QoS attributes

["Nelson, David" <dnelson@enterasys.com>]

Avi writes...

> Also I am very surprised about the resistance to do this.  If we
justify
> doing Credit Control over AAA why is this a problem?

You probably shouldn't be surprised.  The point that is being made is
that AAA is used to authorize users to access services.  Specifically,
services that are pretty much static, pre-defined, and well-understood.
There are other protocols for negotiating dynamic service parameters,
e.g. in this instance we are talking about QoS parameters.  There is no
good reason to duplicate the functionality of QoS negotiation protocols
within AAA, and there are probably a host of reasons to avoid doing so.

I have not participated in the Credit Control over AAA discussions, but
what I have learned of it from speaking with you, I suspect I would
categorize it as a Bad Idea (tm).  It sounds way more complicated than
is really necessary.  Yes, you can contrive a business model that
requires that much complexity.  However, not all business models make
sense or will be successful in the market.  Therefore, Credit Control
may not be the best precedent to cite.

If the partners in a roaming consortium can't agree on a few, simple
classes of service for QoS that will be comprehensible to the customer
as he/she roams, and will be amenable to straightforward billing and
reconciliation at the end of the month, then the business model is
profoundly broken, and no protocol in the world is going to fix it.  At
least that's my view of the situation.  Sometimes too much flexibility
is a severe impediment to scalability, especially across multiple
organizations.  I think maybe the KISS model applies here.

Authorizing a user to obtain or negotiate for a "class of service" seems
within the scope of AAA.  Provisioning the detailed parameters of those
"service classes", both at the NAS and on end-to-end basis, seems out of
scope for AAA.

-- Dave



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