On Tuesday, June 2, 2015, Hans Seidel <[email protected]> wrote:

>  Richard
>
> On 29.05.2015 20:24, Y. Richard Yang wrote:
>
>
> On Saturday, May 30, 2015, Wendy Roome <[email protected]
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote:
>
>>  I thought RFC 7285 required order-consistency between numerical &
>> ordinal modes for the same metric. But I cannot find that requirement. Too
>> bad! I would have added that if I realized it wasn't there.
>>
>
>  I remembered that the removal of the consistency requirement was a
> conscious decision, not an omission, to reduce the load of consistency
> checking. I buy your point below of a server supporting only one, in the
> sense of providing the maximum allowed by the privacy concern.
>
>  Regarding supporting both in the interop, I will be happy to wait a bit
> to hear others' opinions.
>
>
> I agree that providing both numerical and ordinal mode for the same cost
> metric makes little sense from a real world perspective. For the interop, I
> think both should be covered. Since Wendy already proposed cost maps for
> routingcost and hopcount in her initial mail, I suggest providing a
> numerical cost map for one metric and an ordinal for the other.
>

 This proposal makes sense to me. I support it.

Richard

>
>
> Hans
>
>
>  Richard
>
>>
>>  But if we take off our lawyer hats, and look at RFC 7285 as an
>> agreement between friends, rather than a formal contract between
>> adversaries, then I think it is reasonable to say that if the ordinal mode
>> costs do not preserve the order of the numerical costs, then that server is
>> wrong.
>>
>>  Similarly, a router is allowed to drop packets, and I do not think
>> there is any formal requirement that it cannot drop *every* packet. So
>> theoretically you could glue eight jacks to a block of hardwood and market
>> it as a router. Maybe you could avoid getting charged for fraud. Just don't
>> expect anyone to buy more than one! :-)
>>
>>  And looking at it from a real-world perspective, the whole concept is
>> irrelevant. The only reason for defining ordinal mode is to allow a server
>> to hide the numerical costs. For example, if the numerical costs to three
>> PIDs are 10, 11 and 100, a client can deduce that the middle pid is close.
>> If the costs are 10, 99 and 100, a client can deduce that the middle pid is
>> distant. If the ordinal costs are 1,2,3, a client cannot deduce anything
>> other than 1 is better than 2 is better than 3.
>>
>>  So if a server offers numerical costs, there is no advantage for it to
>> also offer ordinal mode costs.
>>
>>  And if numerical costs are available, there is no advantage to a client
>> to use ordinal costs. Maybe if the client could assume the ordinal costs
>> are 1,2,3,… -- but the client cannot.
>>
>>  So in practice, no server will offer both numerical & ordinal mode for
>> the same metric.
>>
>>  That means a formal compliance test should only require one mode or the
>> other, but not both. However, keep the interop simple, unless someone
>> objects, I suggest we require both modes.
>>
>>  - Wendy
>>
>>  From: "Y. Richard Yang" <[email protected]>
>> Date: Fri, May 29, 2015 at 12:24
>> To: Wendy Roome <[email protected]>
>> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>, "Bertz, Lyle T [CTO]" <
>> [email protected]>, Hans Seidel <[email protected]>, "
>> [email protected]" <[email protected]>
>> Subject: Re: [alto] Interop test
>>
>>
>>
>>>  and it can verify that ordinal cost values are consistent with the
>>> order of the known numerical values.
>>>
>>
>>  This is a reasonable validation. An issue is that RFC7285 specifies
>> only that "An ALTO server MUST support at least one of the following modes:
>>  numerical and ordinal." I believe that RFC7285 chose to not specify the
>> consistency between the two modes. Hence, this is beyond compliance, right?
>> Hence, I feel that separating RFC7285-conforming and beyond can be helpful.
>>
>
>
> --
> Richard
>
>
>



-- 
Richard
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