Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-shim6-applicability-01.txt

[Joe Abley <jabley@ca.afilias.info>]

Hi Deguang,

On 16-Jun-2006, at 12:18, Deguang Le wrote:

> To my understanding, in Shim6 protocol sepcifications, it specifies  
> that the host is within a multihomed site, so it is regarded as a  
> site multihoming solution.
>
> However, no matter the host is within a multihomed site or not, if  
> only the host is multihomed and the given solution for solving the  
> multihoming is a host-based solution. I think it belongs to a host  
> multihoming solution.
>
> Besides, there is no fundamental reason why the shim6 solution  
> could not support the host multihoming.

"Host multihoming" usually refers to a host which has multiple  
network interfaces. Since this is an issue of lexical convention and  
not technology, I did a quick google to try and survey common usage  
of the phrase. I found many references which support this definition,  
e.g.

  http://foldoc.org/?multihomed+host
  http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/policy/multi-homed.html
  http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-0916/6ja853998?a=view
  RFC 1123 section 6.1.3.4
  RFC 2205 section 3.9

Clearly this is not an exhaustive review, but I will run with it for  
now :-)

There are aspects of host multihoming which are not part of the shim6  
specification (e.g. the choice of egress interface and next-hop  
router that the host uses for a particular outbound datagram). In  
this sense, shim6 as it stands provides an inadequate specification  
for host multihoming.

It seems to me that, for this reason, "site multihoming" is a better  
phrase than "host multihoming". However, given the host-centric  
approach that shim6 takes to site multihoming, additional text to  
this effect would quite possibly lend clarity to the document in  
question.

Thoughts?


Joe