Hi, Brian,

On Tue, May 9, 2017 at 9:49 PM, Brian E Carpenter <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Spencer,
> On 10/05/2017 05:13, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote:
>
> <snip> The bits where we can simply do what you suggest </snip>
>
> > Grrr, but please see below.
> >
> >>
> >>>
> >>> I'm really confused by this text.
> >>>
> >>>    Nevertheless, when running within a secure ACP on reliable
> >>>    infrastructure, UDP MAY be used for unicast messages not exceeding
> >>>    the minimum IPv6 path MTU; however, TCP MUST be used for longer
> >>>    messages.  In other words, IPv6 fragmentation is avoided.  If a node
> >>>    receives a UDP message but the reply is too long, it MUST open a TCP
> >>>    connection to the peer for the reply.  Note that when the network is
> >>>    under heavy load or in a fault condition, UDP might become
> >>>    unreliable.  Since this is when autonomic functions are most
> >>>    necessary, automatic fallback to TCP MUST be implemented.  The
> >>>    simplest implementation is therefore to use only TCP.
>
> Editor hat off.
>
> I agree. I think it's very naive to think that for this application,
> intended to be used internally within an enterprise network, in
> a NAT-free and proxy-free addressing realm, UDP has any value.
> In fact, it's just a nuisance, since the programmer has to do a lot
> of the work that TCP does. The performance gain, even if it's real,
> is unimportant - autonomic traffic will be a tiny fraction of total
> traffic. There will be no gain in footprint, since autonomic nodes
> will carry full TCP stacks anyway. [If we wanted to put GRASP in
> constrained nodes, we'd probably be talking about GRASP-over-COAP
> anyway.] So here's what I would do:
>
> OLD
>    All other GRASP messages are unicast and could in principle run over
>    any transport protocol.  An implementation MUST support use of TCP.
>    It MAY support use of another transport protocol.  However, GRASP
>    itself does not provide for error detection or retransmission.  Use
>    of an unreliable transport protocol is therefore NOT RECOMMENDED.
>
>    Nevertheless, when running within a secure ACP on reliable
>    infrastructure, UDP MAY be used for unicast messages not exceeding
>    the minimum IPv6 path MTU; however, TCP MUST be used for longer
>    messages.  In other words, IPv6 fragmentation is avoided.  If a node
>    receives a UDP message but the reply is too long, it MUST open a TCP
>    connection to the peer for the reply.  Note that when the network is
>    under heavy load or in a fault condition, UDP might become
>    unreliable.  Since this is when autonomic functions are most
>    necessary, automatic fallback to TCP MUST be implemented.  The
>    simplest implementation is therefore to use only TCP.
>
> NEW
>    All other GRASP messages are unicast and could in principle run over
>    any transport protocol.  An implementation MUST support use of TCP.
>    It MAY support use of another transport protocol, but the details
>    are out of scope for this specification. However, GRASP itself does
>    not provide for error detection or retransmission.  Use of an
>    unreliable transport protocol is therefore NOT RECOMMENDED.
> END NEW
>
> That doesn't slam the door, but it removes what I now feel is
> a very misleading paragraph. Of course, anybody is at liberty to
> draft a full description of GRASP-over-UDP as a separate
> document.
>
> Again, that was personal opinion. I won't edit that part of
> the draft without community input.
>

Thanks, and I agree with not making changes unless there's community
agreement.

I do suspect that if UDP is not at least NOT RECOMMENDED, some developers
may not use TCP at all. A quick Google search turned up e-mail from 2015
asking "if we REALLY have to support TCP in our (micro-)DNS server", and
TCP to accommodate response TrunCation has been a requirement for DNS since
at least RFC 1035 in 1987.

But I don't know the future, of course. :D

Spencer


>     Brian
>
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