Here is message posted by Patrik Faltsrom to the WREC list. It looks like
there interest brewing around our work.
Gary
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrik Fältström [mailto:paf(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com]
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 12:20 PM
To: wrec(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu
Subject: Middlebox Features
The IESG is worried about "middlebox features" which comes up all
over the place. Just all over. The way people think about early TCP
termination, "front-ending SSL connections so the SSL is not all the
way to the server", ...etc might not all the time work well in todays
design of the Internet.
Is this trend driven by customers to companies asking for features
without knowing what they are asking for? Because, companies only
make products which customers buy, right? ;-)
We ask if not the WREC wg is the closest group we have on looking
into these issues, and hope that the WREC wg will try to design
functionality which is needed without jumping through too many loops
and bending themselves backwards, violating the ground principles of
end-to-end-communication which the IESG and IAB belive is needed for
fundamental architectual things to work (like IPSEC etc).
One document we have found is draft-tomlinson-epsfw-00.txt, which we
think is interesting because it is discussing some of these issues
(yes, I know it was on the agenda at the last IETF... :-)
Can you please in the work you do on rechartering think about these
"middleware feature" thing, and whether you should not include some
wording about that in your charter? We also would like you to have a
look at draft-tomlinson-epsfw-00.txt and deside if you should have
that document as part of what you work items (so it gets proper
review at least)?
Regards, Patrik
Area Director, Applications Area