Re: Internal WG Review: Access Link Intermediaries Assisting Services (alias)

["James Kempf" <kempf@docomolabs-usa.com>]

One small comment.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>
To: <iesg@ietf.org>; <iab@iab.org>; "Hui-Lan Lu" <huilanlu@lucent.com>;
"Kevin Fall" <kfall@eecs.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 12:39 PM
Subject: Internal WG Review: Access Link Intermediaries Assisting Services
(alias)


> A new IETF working group is being considered in the Transport Area.
> The draft charter for this working group is provided below for your review
> and comment.
>
> The IETF Secretariat.
>
> Access Link Intermediaries Assisting Services (alias)
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> Last Modified: 2003-10-24
>
> Current Status: Proposed Working Group
>
> Chair(s):
> Hui-Lan Lu <huilanlu@lucent.com>
> Kevin Fall <kfall@eecs.berkeley.edu>
>
> Transport Area Director(s):
> Allison Mankin <mankin@psg.com>
> Jon Peterson <jon.peterson@neustar.biz>
>
> Transport Area Advisor:
> Jon Peterson <jon.peterson@neustar.biz>
>
> Mailing Lists:
> General Discussion: alias@mailman.berkeley.intel-research.net
> To Subscribe:
> http://mailman.berkeley.intel-research.net/mailman/listinfo/alias
> Archive: http://mailman.berkeley.intel-research.net/pipermail/alias/
>
> Description of Working Group:
> Several types of physical links increasingly used for Internet
> connectivity today possess undesirable characteristics, such as high
> loss, high delay, and low reliability. Dial-up telephone lines and radio
> links in wireless networks (e.g., 3G, GPRS, GSM, IS-95, IEEE 802.11 and
> satellite) are examples of such links, whose presence results in

I hate to sound nit-picky, but 3G is not a link type, GPRS includes both
last hop links and proprietary access network, and IEEE 802.11 doesn't have
a performance problem in general though there are some specific instances
where it can suffer from problems involving performance loss due to distance
from the access point. I'd suggest either making this list be link specific,
like wCDMA, GSM, IS-95, IS-2000, or general, like GRPS and cdma2000 RAN.

> degradation in performance of Internet protocols and services.
>
> Transport intermediaries have been used to mitigate performance
> degradation caused by problematic links (see RFC 3135). Such
> intermediaries typically reside in nodes (e.g., base stations, or access
> points) located at the ends of problematic links. Up to this point,
> however, there has been no systematic investigation of the security
> implications of the use of transport intermediaries, performance
> enhancing or not, and of a common framework for secure transport
> intermediary services. The ALIAS working group will fill this void by
> first investigating the requirements for standard means for:
>
> + Transport intermediaries to signal to endpoints their existence and
> information (e.g., knowledge of changing link conditions) pertaining to
> their services or to usefully influencing the endpoint operation
>
> + Intermediaries and endpoints to communicate in a secure manner and to
> establish security associations
>
> If this investigation yields useful requirements that point towards a
> feasible solution, the working group will then develop the common
> framework and the standard means.
>
> While conducting its work, the working group will take into
> consideration the related work in other active working groups, including
> pilc, ipsec, midcom, opes, nsis and send.
>
> Goals and Milestones:
>
> Jan 04    Survey of state-of-the-art to IESG as Informational
> Jan 04    Characteristics of services to IESG as Informational
> Mar 04    Requirements for intermediary services to IESG as Informational
> Mar 04    Analysis of signaling information to IESG as Informational
> Jun 04    Evaluate work; recharter or close WG
>
>
>
>

        jak