Session Date/Time: 26 Jul 2024 15:00

edm

Summary

The edm session focused on the draft document providing concrete advice on greasing and related techniques for evolvability, deployability, and maintainability of protocols. Discussions covered the current status of the draft, pull requests, abuse potential of greasing, target audience, and future directions, including continuous greasing and incentive alignment. The group decided to focus on the current scope of the document and release a revision in September, while continuing discussions on broader topics in parallel.

Key Discussion Points

Status of the draft: The document is currently an IAB track individual draft. The goal is to have one more revision before formally proposing it for adoption by the IAB.
Abuse Potential: The discussion explored the potential for greasing to be used in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and the importance of monitoring and setting limits on the usage of greased values. The similarity to padding and the potential for creating excessive state were also discussed.
Audience of the Document: There was extensive discussion on who the target audience of the document should be. Should it focus on implementers, protocol designers, or both? The emerging consensus was to address both audiences in the same document, potentially in different sections. A third audience might include working group chairs reviewing new protocols.
Greasing in Existing Protocols: The session explored how to apply greasing in extant protocols such as EPP and DNS, focusing on the need for guidance on how to do this without disrupting existing deployments.
Continuous Greasing: A recurring theme was the idea of continuous greasing (or "continuous experimentation"). This envisions periodically introducing new greased code points to incentivize implementers to properly handle unknown values and test the evolvability of the protocol ecosystem. The group discussed the implications of this for IANA registries and the need for a well-defined process for requesting new code points.
Incentive Alignment: The group discussed the incentives for implementing greasing correctly, noting that implementers face competing priorities between protocol correctness and customer satisfaction. A need for mechanisms that incentivize the right behaviour while minimizing disruption was identified.
Web Transport/HTTP3 Example: The example of web transport's interaction with HTTP/3 highlighted the challenges of handling greasing when extensions introduce new interaction patterns. It underscores the need to check for allowed frame types instead of simply dropping unknown values.

Decisions and Action Items

Action Item: Lucas and Dave to collaborate on adding examples and extra policy to the document, including sections on mitigating abuse potential and guidelines for extant protocols.
Decision: Focus on the current scope of the document for the next revision.
Action Item: Lucas to create a new cut of the draft incorporating the polish, and release it in September.
Action Item: Investigate and potentially document a process for rapidly requesting new greased code points from IANA.
Action Item: File an issue or email the EDM list to present any concrete ideas/proposed text concerning ecosystem incentives and/or continuous greasing.
Action Item: Add a reference to RFC 8170 to the document to improve the coverage of incentives for protocol adoption and transitions.

Next Steps

Lucas and Dave will work on updating the draft with concrete examples, added policies, and edits.
Lucas will release a revised draft in September.
The group will discuss the broader concepts of ecosystem incentives and continuous greasing in parallel, potentially organizing an interim meeting if there is sufficient energy and written proposals to discuss.
Following the September revision, the group will engage with the IAB and the architecture discuss list to pursue formal adoption of the document.