Re: [eap] EAP WG Last Call on Network Discovery and Selection Problem Document
Hi Bernard,
(cc'ing to 802.21 mailing list)
I've read draft-ietf-eap-netsel-problem-06.txt. The draft looks good
for being published as an Informational RFC. I have only minor
comments. Please see below.
YO: The following four drafts have been expired.
[I-D.arkko-eap-service-identity-auth], [I-D.groeting-eap-netselection-results]
[I-D.josefsson-pppext-eap-tls-eap], [I-D.marques-ddp]
YO: The following reference should be updated to refer to 802.1X 2004
edition.
[IEEE.8021X]
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, "Local
and Metropolitan Area Networks: Port-Based Network Access
Control", IEEE Standard 802.1X, September 2001.
YO: The following TGu document may be replaced with the latest TGu
draft, which is Draft P802.11u_D0.03.
[11-05-0822-03-000u-tgu-requirements]
Moreton, M., "TGu Requirements", IEEE Contribution 11-05-
0822-03-000u-tgu-requirements, August 2005.
YO: The following reference should be updated to refer to 802.21 D04.00
[IEEE.802.21]
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, "Draft
IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks:
Media Independent Handover Services", IEEE IEEE 802.21,
D03.00, December 2006.
A.2. IEEE 802
o IEEE 802.11u is working on realm discovery and network selection
[11-05-0822-03-000u-tgu-requirements]. This includes a mechanism
for enabling a station to determine the identities it can use to
authenticate to an access network, prior to associating with that
network. As noted earlier, solving this problem requires the AP
to maintain an up to date "default free" realm routing table,
which is not feasible without dynamic routing support within the
AAA infrastructure. Similarly, apriori discovery of features
supported within home realms (such as enrollment) is also
difficult to implement in a scalable way, absent support for
dynamic routing.
YO: I am not sure whether the above text still applies to the latest
TGu draft P802.11u_D0.03 which defines a mechanism named GAS (Generic
Advertisement Service) to carry 802.21 Information Service messages.
Determination of network capabilities (such as
QoS support) is considerably simpler, since these depend solely on
the hardware and software contained within the AP.
o IEEE 802.21 [IEEE.802.21] is developing standards to enable
handover between heterogeneous link layers, including both IEEE
802 and non-IEEE 802 networks. To enable this, a general
mechanism for capability advertisement is being developed, which
could conceivably benefit aspects of the network selection
problem, such as realm discovery. For example, IEEE 802.21 is
developing Information Elements (IEs) which may assist with
network selection, including information relevant to both layer 2
and layer 3. Query mechanisms (including both XML and TLV
support) are also under development.
YO: It should be noted that the point of use of query mechanisms is
that query-based network discovery can reduce the amount of
information exchanged for network discovery by filtering out
unnecessary information. Also, it might be worth mentioning that
802.21 also defines an an RDF schema to allow use of a query language
(i.e., SPARQL). The schema is normative part of 802.21 draft and also
described in draft-ohba-802dot21-basic-schema-00.txt (this I-D is
submitted for a persistent URL of the RDF schema to be assigned by
IANA).
Best Regards,
Yoshihiro Ohba