Session Date/Time: 21 Mar 2022 12:00

manet Session Minutes

Summary

The manet working group meeting focused on two main items: reaching a decision on the future of the credit-based flow control documents, specifically whether to merge them as suggested by a TSV area review, and discussing the ongoing working group adoption call for D-LAB related drafts. The group decided to keep the credit-based flow control documents separate as originally structured and to extend adoption calls to all three D-LAB drafts to encourage broader discussion. Additionally, future work items including inter-satellite link routing and a practical application for Simplified Multicast Forwarding (SMF) were discussed.

Key Discussion Points

Credit-Based Flow Control Documents:
- Three credit-based flow control drafts had undergone TSV area review, receiving feedback which has been addressed in new versions.
- The primary remaining point of discussion was a strong suggestion from reviewer David Black to merge the "diff-serve aware credit extension" and "traffic classification" drafts, citing potential clarity benefits for implementers.
- The authors deferred to the working group's decision, as the WG had initially decided to split these documents for unambiguous conformance.
- The chair noted that merging these two would impact a fourth draft (Ether-based credit flow control), potentially leading to two documents with significant content overlap and requiring extensive rework.
- The AD indicated that from an IESG perspective, publishing them as one or four separate RFCs made little difference, provided they are properly cross-referenced and ideally published simultaneously. He emphasized that the reviewer's suggestion was not a blocking technical issue.
- The long history of these documents and the need to progress them were highlighted.
D-LAB Related Drafts:
- An adoption call is running for Henning Roger's "D-LAB radio band parameters" draft.
- Discussion on the mailing list has touched upon how to represent frequency information for frequency-hopping radios.
- Clarification was made that "bandwidth" in the context of the draft refers to spectral bandwidth (Hertz), not data throughput (bits per second).
- The co-chair questioned why only one of the three related D-LAB drafts was under adoption call.
- The chair agreed to issue adoption calls for all three D-LAB drafts to broaden discussion.
Future Work - Inter-Satellite Links (ISL):
- Discussion explored the potential role of the manet WG in routing over ISL, given its ad-hoc network characteristics.
- It was noted that ISL work, encompassing mobility, routing, and potentially semantic addressing, is complex and spans multiple working groups (DMM, INT, RTGWG).
- Interest was expressed in using ISL as a real-world use case for semantic routing discussions, which are also happening in IRTF (T2RG).
- The AD, also an author on ISL drafts, expressed the need for broader community interest and participation from constellation providers to make standardization efforts fruitful at the IETF.
- There was a suggestion to consolidate the routing aspects of ISL work into a single working group, with manet being a candidate due to available capacity.
Future Work - Simplified Multicast Forwarding (SMF):
- A presentation detailed a "Duff" (Deutsche American Freundschaft) conversion program developed to integrate NRL's SMF implementation (RFC 6621) with Henning Roger's OLSRv2 implementation (Olsrd2, RFC 7181).
- The tool leverages OLSRv2's Multi-Point Relay (MPR) selection information for SMF's Source-Based MPR (SBMPR) mechanism, overcoming format incompatibilities between the two implementations.
- Duff queries Olsrd2 for symmetric neighbors and MPR selectors, converts the data, and feeds it to NRL SMF, also logging the information.

Decisions and Action Items

Decision: The working group decided to keep the credit-based flow control documents separate as they were originally structured, rather than merging them.
Action Item (Chair): The chair will send a message to the manet mailing list to confirm the decision to keep the credit-based flow control documents separate and allow a final period for feedback (approximately 1-2 weeks).
Action Item (Chair): The chair will follow up with David Black (TSV reviewer) to confirm that his other comments on the credit-based flow control documents (excluding the merge suggestion) have been satisfactorily addressed in the latest versions.
Action Item (Chair): The chair will issue working group adoption calls for the remaining two D-LAB related drafts by Henning Roger, in addition to the "radio band parameters" draft already under call, to encourage broader discussion.
Action Item (Lou Berger): Lou Berger will revisit the "D-LAB clarifications and lessons learned" draft once the credit-based flow control documents are submitted to the IESG.
Action Item (Chair): The chair will follow up with Henning Roger regarding the OLSRv2 router restart recommendations prompted by an interoperability issue.
Action Item (Chair/Alvaro Retana): The AD will carry discussions regarding the housing and future of inter-satellite link routing work within the IETF to other routing ADs.

Next Steps

Working group members are encouraged to actively participate in the adoption calls for all three D-LAB drafts on the mailing list.
The chair will continue to monitor discussions on inter-satellite link routing and semantic routing across relevant IETF/IRTF groups (DMM, INT, RTGWG, T2RG) to assess potential future engagement for manet.
The chair will work to close an open errata related to a previous document.
A future manet meeting in Philadelphia is anticipated, pending IETF event planning.