Document: draft-ietf-spring-cs-sr-policy
Title: Circuit Style Segment Routing Policy
Reviewer: Dhruv Dhody
Review result: Has Issues

# RTGDIR review of draft-ietf-spring-cs-sr-policy

Hello,

I have been selected as the Routing Directorate reviewer for this draft. The
Routing Directorate seeks to review all routing or routing-related drafts as
they pass through IETF last call and IESG review, and sometimes on special
request. The purpose of the review is to provide assistance to the Routing ADs.
For more information about the Routing Directorate, please see
https://wiki.ietf.org/en/group/rtg/RtgDir

Although these comments are primarily for the use of the Routing ADs, it would
be helpful if you could consider them along with any other IETF Last Call
comments that you receive, and strive to resolve them through discussion or by
updating the draft.

Document: draft-ietf-spring-cs-sr-policy
Reviewer: Dhruv Dhody
Review Date: 2025-12-17
IETF LC End Date: 2025-12-19
Intended Status: Informational

## Summary

I have concerns about this document that I think should be resolved before
publication.

## Comments

- This document describes how existing SR Policy mechanisms can be used to
support circuit-style services with deterministic paths, bandwidth guarantees,
and protection/restoration behavior. The overall approach is understandable and
largely consistent with the SR Policy architecture. However, the document would
benefit from clearer separation between architectural guidance and
protocol-specific behavior, more careful use of normative language in an
Informational document, and expanded discussion of security and manageability
considerations introduced by CS-SR Policies themselves.

- Several sections describe protocol mechanisms (PCEP, BGP SR Policy, BGP-LS,
YANG, OAM) that are already part of the existing SR Policy architecture, but
are framed in a way that suggests they are specific to CS-SR Policies. It would
help clarity to explicitly state where CS-SR reuses existing mechanisms
unchanged, and where (if anywhere) new semantics are introduced. A case in
point is the third paragraph and the list that follows it in Section 4.

## Major

- The document makes use of BCP14 keywords to provide protocol-level guidance
in an Informational SPRING document. In several cases, this appears to restate
existing protocol behavior, while in other cases it introduces new normative
expectations on protocol behavior. For new normative protocol behavior, the
place to specify it is in the respective protocol documents standards track
document within the respective WGs. IMHO this document should focus at the
abstract architecture level in the style of RFC 9256 and not go into details of
protocol procedures.

- The Security Considerations section focuses primarily on securing the
underlying protocol mechanisms. This does not fully capture the security
implications introduced by CS-SR Policies themselves — including persistent
deterministic paths, bandwidth guarantees, and co-routed bidirectional behavior
— which can amplify the impact of misconfiguration or malicious use even when
control-plane security mechanisms are in place. It would be helpful for the
document to discuss potential security and operational risks such as: resource
exhaustion or starvation of other services, abuse of persistent non-reoptimized
paths, and the consequences if assumptions about bidirectional co-routing are
violated (intentionally or otherwise), including possible impacts on failure
detection, protection switching, and SLA compliance. There is additional attack
surface and failure modes introduced by CS-SR Policies.

- Even though this is an RTGDIR review, I encourage the authors to consider
adding a dedicated Manageability Considerations section, with the current
Section 10 folded into it. I specifically would like to see some scalability
impact.

## Minor

- In Section 1, I tripped at “identical latency in both directions”. Is
“identical” meant literally, or is near-symmetric latency intended?

- In Section 4, the text states that “each link in the topology MUST have” a
set of properties. Read literally, this impose these requirements on all links
in the SR topology, even those not used by any CS-SR Policy. It would help to
clarify these requirements apply to links that are used by, or intended to
support, CS-SR Policies.

- In Section 4, for *“Statically configured or auto-generated, but persistent:
to ensure that its value does not change after an event that may cause dynamic
states to change (e.g., router reboot)”*, it seems that **persistence** is the
key characteristic being required. It may be clearer to focus on persistence
first, and note configuration or auto-generation as possible ways to achieve it
(e.g., “…persistent, which could be statically configured or auto-generated”).

- In Section 4, for the use of SHOULD regarding assignment of adjacency-SIDs
per member link, can you clarify in which cases this would not be done?
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-spring-cs-sr-policy-13.html#section-4-8

- In Section 4, the discussion of reporting mechanisms appears to treat PCEP,
BGP, and YANG as mutually exclusive cases. In SR Policy architecture these can
be used in parallel.

- Section 5 characteristics does not mention CP switching in both direction. It
is currently mentioned in Section 8.1 only but it ought to be a key
characteristics. Further, I notice the use of RECOMMENDED for single segment
list per CP, but if multiple SLs per CP is allowed (even though not
recommended), the document should clarify how they are to be handled to meet
the stated requirements.

- In section 8.2.1, "The P bit may be..", you need to specify where is this P
bit? I think you meant P flag in the Common Object Header, in which case you
should reference RFC 9753. "The "Objective Function (OF) TLV" as defined", the
correct TLV name is OF-List TLV. "When using PCE-initated mode, no signaling of
diversity requirements between headends and the PCE is required.", this does
not align with RFC 8800.

## Nits

- Section 8.3.2.1.3, s/for the covered candidate path/for the recovered
candidate path/

Thanks!
Dhruv



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