Dear Authors,

I have read draft-lapukhov-dataplane-probe-1, and I have some comments.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lapukhov-dataplane-probe-01

I believe that in-band telemetry is certainly a very interesting method, and 
the community can value from working on this draft.


Major comments:

*         The draft seems to be related to the P4 In-band Network Telemetry 
spec (http://p4.org/wp-content/uploads/fixed/INT/INT-current-spec.pdf). 
However, the two documents define different packet formats and different 
metadata fields. Do you plan to align the two documents?

*         The draft should probably include a background section that describes 
the environment. It should explain which entity adds the INT header, and which 
entity is supposed to receive the probe information and analyze it. It should 
also explain whether INT is applied to all data traffic, to a subset of the 
data traffic, or to probe traffic (or all of the above).

*         Since the telemetry header is modified at every hop, there should be 
some discussion about how this affects the L4 checksum of the overlay header 
when using protocols such as VXLAN, Geneve, or GUE.

*         The draft should include a "Security Considerations" section. It 
should discuss potential threats and vulnerabilities imposed by adding INT to 
the network.


Other comments:

*         The abstract and introduction may need some rephrasing. For example, 
there should probably be more text about OAM protocols. Ping and Traceroute 
(which are currently mentioned in the draft) are tools that are used manually 
by network operators, but there is a vast number of OAM protocols that are used 
for automated proactive telemetry (fault detection, loss and delay measurement).

*         The INT spec is currently missing from the reference list: 
http://p4.org/wp-content/uploads/fixed/INT/INT-current-spec.pdf

*         Section 2.1 says "This document does not prescribe any specific 
encapsulation for the data-plane probe."
On the other hand, Figure 2 defines the <Probe Marker> fields, which appear to 
be encapsulation-specific. Moreover, the length of these fields is 
encapsulation-specific, right? Please consider removing the Probe Marker fields 
from this draft.

*         Section 3.2: "residence time is in 48-bits of nanoseconds" - please 
note that the IEEE 1588 standard uses a 64-bit format to represent the 
correctionField (residence time). It is recommended to use the same format here.

*         Section 3.3: the difference between the queueing delay and the 
residence time is (roughly) constant for a given switch. It would be worthwhile 
to explain why both are needed.

*         Section 3.5: the word 'analyzer' is mentioned here for the first time 
without being defined beforehand.

*         s/needs to made/needs to be made/

*         Section 4:

o   "Swap the destination/source IP addresses in the transport header to send 
the packet back to the originator." - again, there is a slight conflict with 
section 2.1, which argues for encapsulation-independence. Moreover, swapping 
the IP addresses is typically not enough (L2 addresses, L4 ports...).

o   On the returning path - are devices expected to update the <Hop Count> 
field?

o   Since <Hop Count> is equal to zero, doesn't the analyzer loose the 
information about the number of hops until the loopback device?

*         Section 5.1: "Probe Id" is mentioned for the first time here without 
prior explanation, so the paragraph is not clear.

*         Section 6: router alert - again, a conflict with encapsulation 
independence...


Regards,
Tal Mizrahi.
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