Subject: Issues list, #17: Section 3, Page 8, Paragraph 3 - Obsolete?

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 11:45:19 -0500

> Status: No Consensus
> Change: Potentially
> Summary: Do existing vendors rely on this, or no?  If no, remove it.
> 
> Discussion:
> 
> This issue was spawned from the discussions in issue 16, specifically:
> 
> Anonymous reviwer:
> 
>  > Section 3, page 8, para 3 - "The hosts executing..."  This paragraph
>  > seems obsolete.
> 
> Yakov:
> 
>  I'll take it out.
> 
> With regard to this, Siva asked if some route optimizaiton vendors rely on
> this.
> 
> This was discussed in the "proxy: more commetns on draft -18" thread.

To provide context, this paragraph currently reads:

:   The hosts executing BGP need not be routers.  A non-routing host
:   could exchange routing information with routers via EGP [RFC904] or
:   even an interior routing protocol. That non-routing host could then
:   use BGP to exchange routing information with a border router in
:   another Autonomous System. The implications and applications of this
:   architecture are for further study.

There are several deployed entities that could be considered to "exploit"
this paragraph.  Route collectors, route servers, bandwidth shapers
and other optimizers.  However, the original text may be showing its
age a little bit.

Perhaps the following might be a bit more appropriate:

"The hosts executing BGP need not be routers.  A non-routing host may
 exchange routing information with a BGP speaker for reasons
 that are outside the scope of this document."

I would also propose adding to the same paragraph (but could be persuaded
to drop it since it is *logically* redundant):
"These non-routing hosts should exercise great care not to insert 
 themselves into the forwarding path if they re-announce BGP routes."

-- 
Jeff Haas 
NextHop Technologies

---

From: Yakov Rekhter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 08:00:27 -0800

Jeff,

>  themselves into the forwarding path if they re-announce BGP routes."

Since operations of non-routing host are outside the scope of the
document, and since the document doesn't preclude non-routing hosts
to run BGP, I would prefer just to take the following paragraph out,
and not to add any new text.

   The hosts executing BGP need not be routers.  A non-routing host
   could exchange routing information with routers via EGP [RFC904] or
   even an interior routing protocol. That non-routing host could then
   use BGP to exchange routing information with a border router in
   another Autonomous System. The implications and applications of this
   architecture are for further study.

Yakov.

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 11:31:49 -0500

Yakov,

On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 08:00:27AM -0800, Yakov Rekhter wrote:
> document,

Ok.

> and since the document doesn't preclude non-routing hosts

I'll change my suggestion then.

At the beginning of the document, we define:
   BGP speaker
	 A router that implements BGP.

This (potentially) restricts a speaker to being a router.
Additionally, several spots in the text where we probably should
say "BGP speaker", we use router.

What do you think?

-- 
Jeff Haas 
NextHop Technologies

---

From: Yakov Rekhter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 08:48:26 -0800

Jeff,

> 	 A router that implements BGP.

Seems reasonable.

> say "BGP speaker", we use router.

In view of the above change, we could use the term "BGP speaker"
(as in the definition section we restrict BGP speaker to be
a router).

Yakov.

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 12:06:56 -0500

Yakov,

> > 	 A router that implements BGP.

Which is what I perceive to be a problem.

Were we to substitute all places (where appropriate) within the text
where we say "router" and mean "BGP speaker", and simply define
BGP speaker as "An entity that implements the BGP protocol", we
allow routers and potentially other things.  

The above text requires a BGP speaker to be a router.

-- 
Jeff Haas 
NextHop Technologies