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comments on draft-adrangi-radius-bandwidth-capability-00.txt




Hi Farid,


Overall, I think the basic functionality suggested
in this draft is valid and useful. Some work remains,
however. The attributes need to work with Diameter,
too, so when you mention a Radius message you should
also list the equivalent Diameter message. There's
a bunch of editorial issues and some suggested
simplifications below too. I'm not sure if the
pull model is useful, and the 12 attributes defined
should be compressed to 8. Finally, I would use
a different format in the attribute.

In more detail:

Substantial:
============

The attribute is described for RADIUS [1].

As I have stated before, I'd like attributes to be defined generally. Suggested rewrite: The attribute is described for RADIUS, but works as is also in Diameter [RFC 3588], and through the translation rules defined in [Diameter NASREQ]."

However, this probably means that the attribute format
corresponds to some known Diameter type. More on this
later.

The ingress minimum bandwidth parameter indicates the average minimum ingress data rate that an AN will try to provide to an authorized user. This value is a target, rather than a guarantee.

I have a feeling that "average minimum" is not well defined. What does that mean? I guess it does not mean guaranteed minimum peak rate. If not, what does it mean?

How about "... indicates the minimum peak rate that the
authorized user should get. However, this value is a target
and not a guarantee."

Both protocols exchange bandwidth parameters using the various RADIUS messages, and they are comprised of three phases: bandwidth Advertisement, Selection, and Confirmation. Bandwidth Advertisement: MAY be sent in Access-Request packet from the AN to the HSN and conveys possible/available bandwidth parameters that can be allocated for an the AN client connection to the HSN by the AN. Advertisements are optional. Bandwidth Selection: MAY be sent in Access-Accept packet and Change of Authorization (COA) messages. Selection conveys the desired bandwidth for the AN Client connection to the AN by the HSN. Bandwidth Confirmation: If Bandwidth Selection is received and enforced, It MUST be sent in Accounting-Request packets. Confirmation indicates that the desired bandwidth parameters specified by a HSN are being enforced by the AN. Bandwidth Attribute (BA), defined in section 3, is used to carry the Bandwidth Advertisement, Selection, Confirmation in various RADIUS packets.

RADIUS specific. Suggested rewrite:


      Both protocols exchange bandwidth parameters using the various
      AAA messages, and they are comprised of three phases:
      bandwidth Advertisement, Selection, and Confirmation.

Bandwidth Advertisement:

         MAY be sent in Access-Request packet in RADIUS, and  the AAR
         and DER commands in Diameter [Diameter NASREQ, Diameter EAP],
         from the AN to the HSN. The attributes convey possible/available
         bandwidth parameters that can be allocated for an the AN client
         connection to the HSN by the AN.  Advertisements are optional.

Bandwidth Selection:

         MAY be sent in Access-Accept packet and Change of
         Authorization (COA) messages in RADIUS. MAY be sent in RAR
         command in Diameter [RFC 3588]. Selection conveys the desired
         bandwidth for the AN Client connection to the AN by the HSN.

Bandwidth Confirmation:

         If Bandwidth Selection is received and enforced, It MUST be
         sent in Accounting-Request packets in RADIUS and in ACR command
         in Diameter. Confirmation indicates that the desired
         bandwidth parameters specified by a HSN are being enforced
         by the AN.

      Bandwidth Attribute (BA), defined in section 3, is used to carry
      the Bandwidth Advertisement, Selection, Confirmation in various
      RADIUS packets and Diameter commands.

The AN MAY send an Advertisement in an Access-Request message. If the HSN receives an invalid Advertisement, then the HSN MUST silently discard the Access-Request.

I believe this text from 2.2.1 is unnecessary, as the MAY already appeared in 2.2. The MUST part might be useful, except that it would perhaps be better to move it too to 2.2.

A HSN MAY send the Selection after receiving a valid Advertisement. It MAY also send the Selection in the absence of an Advertisement, based on local policies such as the AN client�s subscription profile.

So the bottom line is that the HSN MAY send the advertisement, which was already stated in 2.2... suggested rewrite:

   A selection is sent after receiving a valid Advertisement,
   or based on a local policy such the user's subscription
   parameters.

(The style is explanation rather than normative language, I
think 2.2 already covered this pretty well.)

Similar comments apply to the rest of 2.2.1-2

Dynamic bandwidth allocation uses the Change of Authorization (COA) message as defined in [3].

Suggested rewrite: "Dynamic bandwidth allocation uses the Change of Authorization (COA) RADIUS message as defined in [3], and the Diameter RAR message as defined in [RFC 3588]. These messages are referred to as the re-authorization messages in this specification."

In the rest of the section, change "COA message" to "re-authorization
message".

or it may instruct the AN to generate an Authorize-Only Access-Request (Access-Request with Service-Type set to �Authorize-Only�) in which case it is instructing the AN to pull the BAs.

How about "or it may instruct the AN to generate an authorize-only AAA exchange. In RADIUS this exchange is an Access-Request with Service-Type set to "Authorize-Only". In Diameter it is the AAR command with the Auth-Request-Type AVP set to AUTHORIZE_ONLY. In either case, the HSN instructs the AN to pull the bandwidth attributes."

2.2.2.2 Pull Method

I'm not sure why the pull method is needed. Seems like in both pull and push the HSN needs to take the initiative. Simplify by removing the pull method from the spec?

In the former case, the AN must generate an Accounting Stop message containing the old bandwidth attributes followed by an Accounting-Start message containing the current bandwidth attributes.

Does this cause the real session to appear as a set of sessions in the accounting records?

The attribute MAY be present in Access-Request, Access-Accept, Accounting-Request.

Duplicate text, but if you want to say something about the attributes here, then an occurrence table per message would be appropriate here. Alternatively, delete the text.

1 � Average Minimum Bandwidth Rate for Ingress Traffic in bits per second 2 � Average Minimum Bandwidth Rate for Ingress Traffic in Kilo bits per second 3 � Average Minimum Bandwidth Rate for Ingress Traffic in Giga bits per second

Three attributes for the same thing appear a bit unnecessary, imho. Also, it is not in line with the byte - gigaword approach defined in RFC 2869. My suggestion is to provide the rates as bytes/s and gigawords/s. This will compress your set of attributes down to 8 instead of 12.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Type | Length | Params | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Value | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

I'm not sure I want to open the subtype can-of-worms here. Are these attributes deployed somewhere by some SDO and vendor, and we can't change the format? If yes, we can think about it, but then there may be issues for Diameter translation. If not, my preference would be to use plain old standards space RADIUS attributes. We don't need that many. See also above. If that fails, VSA with vendor=IETF would also work better for me.

Editorial:
==========

�Authorize-Only�)

Non-ASCII char.


preformed

performed


1 � Average

Non-ASCII char.


This document describes network bandwidth parameters and a

Additional spacing between words. I think the I-D guidelines say that left justification is preferred.

protocol framework within which the parameters can be exchanged between an Access Network (AN) and a Home Service Network (HSN) in order to determine the average minimum and maximum bandwidth for both ingress and egress traffic that should be allocated by the AN for the duration of an authorized client session.

This is a pretty long sentence. Suggested rewrite:


    This document describes network bandwidth parameters and a
    protocol mechanism within which the parameters can be exchanged
    between an access network and a home network. The parameters
    can be used to allocate and police the minimum and maximum
    bandwidth for the user's session, for both ingress and egress
    traffic.

�This is a server which provides for

Non-ASCII char.


�Dynamic Authorization Extensions to Remote Authentication

Non-ASCII char.


pushing the BAs

pushing the bandwidth attributes?


3. Operations Operation is identical to that defined in RADIUS AAA specifications [1][2] and Dynamic Authorization Extensions to Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)[3].

This seems like an unnecessary section, imho. Refer to the specs the first time you mention RADIUS, that should do it.

Authors� Addresses

Non-ASCII char.


Farid Adrangi, Intel Corporatation farid.adrangi@intel.com Chuck Black, Hewlett Packard Company chuck.black@hp.com Paul Congdon, Hewlett Packard Company paul.congdon@hp.com Farooq Bari, AT&T Wireless farooq.bari@attws.com Avi Lior, Bridgwater Systems Corporation avi@bridgewatersystems.com

This is not the usual style of author address lists. Here's an example format from RFC 2865:

   William Allen Simpson
   Daydreamer
   Computer Systems Consulting Services
   1384 Fontaine
   Madison Heights, Michigan  48071

EMail: wsimpson@greendragon.com

--Jari


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