Continuing to try to focus on the core concern:
At 12:54 PM 7/7/2001, ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com wrote:
However, note that we still do not have a way to specify QoS at the lower
layers and that all efforts to provide that capability over the last 30
years have failed.
And what makes you think that exactly the same thing won't happen here if we
turn a simple priority label into a full-featured QoS scheme with tightly
specified semantics?
I think you flipped the high-order bit on the semantics of my comment.
The 30 years has been marked by a syntactic field that has had no semantics
standard. That is what you are supporting now, though the 30 years says it
won't be productive.
IPv6 is attempting to provide detailed semantics. Last I heard, that is
both difficult and believed to be essential for v6 QoS.
I believe that a less nailed down mechanism is potentially quite useful as a
tool that MTA implementors and service providers can use to build various
services. It is NOT a service in and of itself,
This is an interesting approach to Internet standards. Let's define field
syntax, but defer defining standard semantics until the industry
experiments enough to converge on a specific.
Imagine how much more effective Internet development would have been had
that been done for, say, IP addressing. To use your words, the field would
have been "quite useful as a tool that [IP] implementors and service
providers [could] use to build various services." The same for domain name
semantics.
Or wouldn't it be fun to specify a TCP windowing syntax, and then told
implementors to develop whatever semantics they wanted. I'm sure the
interaction between, say, a Sun implementation and a Microsoft
implementation would be treat to watch.
Of course, what you are describing is something that warrants -- at most --
experimental status, not Internet standards status. Even then, the idea of
having syntax without semantics are downright strange as an IETF activity.
and if you succeed in turning
it into one at the outset I predict you will find that it will either fail to
match up to what customers want, what service providers can provide, or what
enough MTAs can implement to actually deploy.
Thank you. You are saying that we do not know enough to specify a standard
semantics for priority. I entirely agree.
We are not ready for an IETF standards effort for email priority.
Apparently we ARE ready for private efforts at exploring preferred
semantics. That's excellent.
Tools first. Then services.
Not quite. What you are saying is syntax first. Then semantics.
That worked really well for IP precedence and SNMPv1 security didn't it?
Debating methodology dictates that I cite 3 examples, but these two seem
more than sufficient.
No doubt I'm wrong. Please provide some examples of Internet standards
that have been defined in this way and that have succeeded.
d/
----------
Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.273.6464