Hi, Rich, all,

On Jun 13, 2012, at 2:21 PM, Richard Alimi wrote:

> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Brian Trammell
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hi, Rich, all,
>> 
>> The additions you're talking about seem on a first pass like they'd fit in 
>> the IPFIX information model. With respect to the definition of description 
>> of an Information Element, the emphasis on "flow" is really a historical 
>> thing. Basically, description should be specified to be human-readable and 
>> detailed enough that a reasonably expert person would know how to generate 
>> and/or interpret it. We'll remove references to flow from the definition of 
>> description in RFC 5102-bis.
>> 
> 
> The text regarding it being information being available to the
> observer would be too limiting for the ALTO case too.

Hm... how can a device export information about something it can't observe / 
doesn't know?

> If both of those requirements were removed, what are the guidelines on
> new information elements that would be accepted into the information
> element registry?

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ipfix-ie-doctors-03 mostly covers this, 
though it handles the case of applying the entire IPFIX protocol (see section 
3) as opposed to just using the information model for a new 
application/protocol. Section 4 contains detailed guidelines for defining new 
Information Elements (summarized in Section 7 in checklist form), though again 
this is geared toward IEs for usage with the IPFIX protocol.

>> There's a more subtle issue with potentially applying the IPFIX information 
>> model to ALTO: the possible need to specify an alternate encoding for IPFIX 
>> IEs represented in ALTO. Briefly: each IPFIX Information Element has a type 
>> (these cover address and time types as well as the basic primitives, 
>> strings, and raw octet arrays), and these specify encodings appropriate for 
>> using these types in IPFIX, as well: integers in big-endian binary, times as 
>> big-endian binary integers since the epoch or in NTP (era 0) format, and so 
>> on. As ALTO is JSON-based, these representations are somewhat less than 
>> appropriate.
>> 
>> Indeed, this could probably be addressed with a single specification of 
>> representations of IPFIX data types in ALTO (or indeed, for textual 
>> protocols in general). This would probably not have any surprises (v4 
>> addresses in dotted-quad, v6 addresses as per RFC 4291, timestamps as per 
>> RFC 3339, and so on); it would just need to be written.
>> 
> 
> Thank you very much for the proposal for using this registry in ALTO.
> My personal opinion is that using IPFIX information element registry
> doesn't seem to be a great match to replace ALTO's endpoint property
> registry.  The win doesn't seem to be that great to me, and it also
> requires writing a new spec to map the datatypes.

Indeed; do let me know if I can be of any further assistance. For what it's 
worth, I suspect we'll define text-friendly representations for the IPFIX 
datatypes sooner or later anyway.

Cheers,

Brian

> If others in the ALTO WG feel differently, then please speak up.
> 
> Thanks,
> Rich
> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Brian
>> 
>> On May 14, 2012, at 12:36 PM, Richard Alimi wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:34 AM, Benoit Claise <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> Hi Richard,
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Benoit Claise <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Dear all,
>>>> 
>>>> I've been reviewing draft-ietf-alto-reqs-14 and the following requirement
>>>> got me thinking:
>>>> 
>>>>  REQ.  ARv14-5: An ALTO client protocol MUST be extensible to enable
>>>>   support of other host group descriptor types in future.  An ALTO
>>>>   client protocol specification MUST define an appropriate procedure
>>>>   for adding new host group descriptor types, e.g., by establishing an
>>>>   IANA registry.
>>>> 
>>>> Why don't you reuse an existing registry, in which you will have all the
>>>> Information Elements already defined instead of defining a new one?
>>>> WhatI have in mind: the IPFIX I.E. IANA registry.
>>>> The piece of information I see in draft-ietf-alto-reqs-14 are IP address,
>>>> prefix, BGP AS: they're in IANA.
>>>> And many other IEs are already present, for future ALTO extensions, if
>>>> required.
>>>> 
>>>> This would not only save one registry (ALTO Endpoint Property in
>>>> draft-ietf-alto-protocol-10), but offers a bigger advantage.
>>>> Let me explain.... When you will control your applications with ALTO, you
>>>> will anyway want to apply a flow measurement to monitor your changes, and 
>>>> to
>>>> serve as a feedback loop for more optimizations.
>>>> And the chances are high that you will using a NetFlow/IPFIX based
>>>> mechanism. Both NetFlow and IPFIX use the IPFIX I.E. IANA registry.
>>>> 
>>>> Therefore, it would make sense to have consistent data models between ALTO
>>>> and IPFIX, and avoid a data model proxy if we want to compare the data.
>>>> Proposal: reuse the ElementIDs found in the IPFIX I.E. IANA registry
>>>> somewhere in your protocol.
>>>> 
>>>> The suggested use case is in place of the Endpoint Property registry?
>>>> 
>>>> I'm referring to the examples in
>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-alto-protocol-11#section-7.5.3
>>>> So I guess it's
>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-alto-protocol-11#section-10.3.
>>>> However, 
>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-alto-protocol-11#section-10.3
>>>> doesn't contain the initial series of values.
>>> 
>>> Those are two different things in the protocol.  The former is for
>>> identifying endpoints themselves, the latter is for properties
>>> associated with those endpoints.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Just to be sure I understand what would happen if we went that route,
>>>> what are the restrictions for adding new information elements?
>>>> Specifically, what kinds of elements are allowed or disallowed?
>>>> 
>>>> Things that have been informally discussed in the ALTO WG so far have
>>>> been things like load information and available network capacity.  Do
>>>> those fit within the ipfix model?
>>>> 
>>>> The IANA considerations for new IPFIX IEs is in RFC5102,
>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5102#section-7.1.
>>>> It mentions: IANA through Expert Review [RFC2434]
>>>> The most up to date document regarding IE allocation is
>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ipfix-ie-doctors-02.
>>>> I don't believe there are any limitations on for new IEs such as load
>>>> information and available network capacity.
>>>> Copying the IPFIX chairs and Brian Trammell.
>>> 
>>> I think the main consideration here is whether IPFIX really is the
>>> canonical source (and is planned to be in the future) for data
>>> that an application (note: not only network operator) would want to
>>> know about an endpoint.  In particular, in the CDN use cases, an ALTO
>>> map may be provided by a CDN to advertise costs to/from and properties
>>> of various cache nodes.
>>> 
>>>> From RFC5102, Section 2.1 I see that a registration seems to enforce
>>> that the Information Element is derived from a flow or someone
>>> observing the flow on the network:
>>> 
>>>   description - The semantics of this Information Element.  Describes
>>>      how this Information Element is derived from the Flow or other
>>>      information available to the observer.
>>> 
>>> To me, that seems too restrictive for the ALTO model which is
>>> providing information to the application layer.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Rich
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Regards, Benoit.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Rich
>>>> 
>>>> Disclaimer: I have not read the protocol details
>>>> 
>>>> Regards, Benoit.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> alto mailing list
>>>> [email protected]
>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/alto
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 

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