Last Call Review of draft-ietf-bess-ir-03
review-ietf-bess-ir-03-genart-lc-kyzivat-2016-08-09-00

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Document: draft-ietf-bess-ir-04
Reviewer: Paul Kyzivat
Review Date: 2016-08-09
IETF LC End Date: 2016-08-10
IESG Telechat date: 2016-08-18

Summary:

Unfortunately, I don't have the expertise to review this draft.

(Of the review summaries available to me, the one I want to use is "This
draft has serious issues, described in the review, and needs to be
rethought." But I don't think I am in a position to make such a
judgement given my lack of knowledge of the subject domain.)

Issues:

Major: 0
Minor: 2
Nits:  0

(1) MINOR:

Section 5 begins:

    As previously specified, when the "Tunnel Type" field of a PTA is set
    to "IR", the "Tunnel Identifier" field of that PTA does not contain
    the IR P-tunnel identifier.  This section specifies the procedures
    for setting the "Tunnel Identifier" field of the PTA when the "Tunnel
    Type" field of the PTA is set to "IR".

I have trouble parsing this so it makes sense. The problem is with "As
previously specified". Normally when I see something like this I expect
it to mean "previously within this document". I think in this case it
means in RFCs 6513 and/or 6514. I think this ought to be clearer. E.g.,

    As specified in [RFC6513], ...

(2) MINOR (?!?):

Lacking any knowledge of the subject matter of this draft, I found it
impossible to review in a meaningful way. But I tried!

I came to the tentative conclusion that this document is struggling to
document an extremely complex system. In such a situation publishing the
sort of documentation provided here is probably better than not doing
so. But I fear it isn't sufficient - that it will be unlikely that a new
implementer, schooled in the subject matter, will be able to create a
correct implementation. The problem is with the system/algorithms, not
with the document.

(NOTE: I've made this minor rather than major because I don't consider
myself competent to say this is a real problem or if it is one that this
draft should be expected to fix.)