RE: 3gpp-analysis-04: necessity for protocol translators in sect 2.3

[Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi>]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Soliman Hesham wrote:
>  > modify the last paragraph to (for example):
>  >                                                              
>  >                                           
>  >     Translators may be needed in some cases when the 
>  > communicating nodes
>  >     do not share the same IP version. 
> 
> => I don't have a strong opinion on this but
> a reader might ask "what do you do in the other cases?"
> Because you use "some" above after assuming two
> nodes with different IP stacks.

If this is a worry, we could expand it a bit, maybe like:

    Translators may be needed in some cases when the communicating nodes
    do not share the same IP version; in others, it may be possible to 
    avoid such communication altogether. Translation can actually happen
    at Layer 3 (using NAT-like techniques), Layer 4 (using a TCP/UDP
    proxy) or Layer 7 (using application relays).
 
(or just remove "in some cases", it's not really a problem for me.)

> Actually, I think maybe we should not associate
> translation with ALGs, after all, they don't actually
> translate.

If we'd do this, the above would hold without modifications.  I'm not sure
whether having proxies and such under translators is too big a stretch or
not (when you consider it from the end-to-end point of view, they
certainly do something..).  Removing it from here would certainly require
some new text and shift balances around quite a bit.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings