Hello Ralph,
Here are some answers to your questions.
ext Ralph Droms wrote:
Unless we have a common, well-defined, clear and written description of
the model of MANET operation, we can't have a constructive conversation
about any aspects of MANET, such as address assignment.
You should tune in to [manet] (== the MANET working group).
It would help understand a lot. I really don't think it is likely that
one could really understand the point of [autoconf] (== the proposed
address autoconfiguration working group) unless that person could
understand the point of [manet].
You could try looking at the working group page, RFC 2501, and
some of the proposed routing protocols.
I never saw "a common, well-defined, clear and written description of
the model of INTERNET operation" so I think you are setting the bar
way too high. But you should at least understand that people that have
been working on ad hoc networks for many years are not totally misguided,
even if you are not familiar with the work.
We can have, if you'll excuse the pun, an ad hoc discussion about the
MANET experiments that have been conducted to date. The purpose of
research is to develop understanding, concepts and abstractions.
Without a written description of those results, we can't make any
forward progress.
Again, I think you are setting the bar way too high.
It might be interesting to put such a document on the charter
of the [manet] working group. Then it could be referenced and
used by the (proposed) new working group.
Often, there is no subnet model. If there is one, then it's a matter of
debate
how to best impose it. For the purposes of my initial interest, you could
consider the whole ad hoc network as having no hierarchical addressing.
You could also say that the extent of the subnet is the same as the extent
of the ad hoc network, but this is only one possible model.
It appears we may not even have a common vocabulary or understanding to
start from.
That could well be.
Perhaps Thomas asked an irrelevant or nonsensical (in the
sense of "not making sense in the context of MANET") question. Without
a common set of abstractions, we have no way to talk about the
particular problem of address assignment...
Well, the people proposing the working group have a way to talk about it.
A lot of the ideas have been documented in papers. There are many
papers you could look at.
How is address
resolution done?
Not germane to address allocation.
Sorry, you've lost me here. How can address resolution not be germane
to address assignment?
Quite easily. I can have one method for address assignment, and
a _totally_ unrelated method for address resolution.
For instance, one could design entirely new packets to replace
the current ARP packets.
I stand by my statement, to the point of considering it
almost intuitively obvious.
From the IP layer perspective, ad hoc networks present severa
challenges. Unlike in the traditional IP networks, each ad hoc node,
besides being a traffic end-point,
should be capable of forwarding traffic destined for other hosts.
This would seem to be making assumptions about what the subnet model
is. I.e., how one delivers packets to other destinations on the same
"ad hoc" subnet. How is that done? Is that what this WG needs to
decide, or has this already been decided? If the latter, where is that
documented?
The assumption is that nobody is going to impose an assumption.
But as you point out that is just an assumption, and maybe someone
will impose an assumption. I think it would be ill-considered to do so.
Sorry, now I'm lost...seems the conversation is (here's that bad pun
again) way too ad hoc for me.
I'm not sure if I am supposed to try to respond to this.
Is it hard for you to imagine a network where the subnet
model is not imposed? What about a flat network?
OK, so let me try getting at this model issue another way. Where is the
line drawn above which there are no changes to the TCP/IP protocol
model?
As far as I understand your question, there are no changes to the TCP/IP
protocol
model whatsoever. But that model does not necessarily require subnets.
Is an application that uses TCP and UDP aware that it's running
on a MANET?
No
Does UDP run under different rules in a MANET?
No.
Does a
MANET provide Ethernet emulation so there are no changes to IP?
Opinions vary on this, but my answer would be no. But IP is supposed to run
on stuff that isn't Ethernet. Or, do you disagree?? If you do, then I
don't see
how you can meaningfully participate in a discussion with people who spend
all their time working with IP over media that are _not_ precisely like
Ethernet,
or maybe not even very much like Ethernet.
IMO, this above is the tip of the iceberg, and it is the larger
questions that must be dealt with. The addressing part is just one
component of the bigger picture, and without a coherent bigger
picture, none of this makes sense.
I totally disagree with this because:
(1) We already have credible solutions that work
(2) Your statement requires that we must all go into paralysis
(3) We need to have a "Proposed Standard" to get
get some experience and convergence
(4) There is not today any coherent all-inclusive bigger picture
(5) Nevertheless, we are able to make a lot of sense out of
our pieces of it.
Who is "we"
Well, I am not really able to speak for the wide diversity of people who are
interesting in making the proposed working group, but I was characterizing
that group of people as "we". So let's call them "twdopwaiimtpwg". Then:
I totally disagree with Thonas Narten's quoted statement because:
(1) Twdopwaiimtpwg already have credible solutions that work
(2) His statement requires that twdopwaiimtpwg must all go into paralysis
(3) Twdopwaiimtpwg need to have a "Proposed Standard" to get
get some experience and convergence
(4) There is not today any coherent all-inclusive bigger picture
(5) Nevertheless, twdopwaiimtpwg are able to make a lot of sense out of
twdopwaiimtpwg's pieces of it.
and how does someone who is not "we" come to an
understanding of "our pieces of it"?
There's a lot of work that's been done. Again, I strongly recommend
reviewing the results to date from [manet]. If I were going to try to
understand DHCP, I wouldn't go into [dhc] and say, "Hey, how can
I understand this stuff". !! I might try to get to know some of the people
who _do_ understand it, and do the normal social things that people do.
And, is this a routing protocol that carries unicast, or is this the
definition of the abstract service an "ad hoc subnet" provides?
IP is not a "service". It's a way to establish network connectivity.
Current proposals focus on unicast. I do not see that anyone is
suggesting that we should allocate multicast addresses as part of
the work chartered for [autoconf]. We want one way to dynamically
allocate IP addresses in ad hoc networks. We currently have many
ways.
IP is a lot more than establishing connectivity. IP is an unreliable,
host-to-host data delivery service.
C'mon Ralph. What do you want me to say? Your point is leading nowhere.
I am saying it's not a service. I guess you are too.
We have to know if multicast is available to know how to make existing
address assignment mechanisms work.
I thought I already answered this point. Briefly, I disagree, and to my
understanding
twdopwaiimtpwg basically do not think that the existing address
assignment mechanisms
can be made to work. If you want to talk about multicast some more,
then please be
clear about whether you are discussing the addressing model or the
multicast group
maintenance operations.
Regards,
Charlie P.
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