Re: the future of the MEXT working group

> Hello folks,
>
> For several years now, I have been studying 4G wireless
> network architecture and wondering why there is such a
> disconnect between, say, LTE mobility management and
> IETF mobility management.  Mobile IP has a secondary
> role, to say the least.  IETF approaches may be seen to
> have several inadequacies, and 3GPP approaches also show
> some major problems.  I think that it is important for
> the IETF to devote some serious effort towards bringing
> these two worlds together, because current directions
> are leading towards an impossibly baroque, wasteful,
> nearly impenetrable mess of complication.  The effects
> overall is loss of performance and opportunity.
>
> Taking a look at S101 and S103, we can immediately
> recognize that they are drastically more complicated,
> restrictive, and operationally more expensive than
> Mobile IP.  Taking a look at S102, we immediately see
> that 3GPP mobility management threatens to be different
> for each class of application, with an unnecessary
> per-application proliferation of servers, protocol,
> permissions, traffic controls, configuration, and so on.
> Taking a look at recent efforts towards WiFi offload,
> we see the same trend of complication and software
> hacks that could be avoided with proper IETF
> approaches.
>
> On the IETF side, we should specify:
> - Integrated authentication for access control
>   as well as IP address continuity
> - Location-assisted handovers (think MIIS / ANDSF)
> - Modular/alternative security
> - Signaling on control plane, user traffic on
>   data plane
> - Alternative tunneling (GTP is simply not going
>   to die a quick death, to say the least)
> - geez, the list does go on, but no one reads
>   long lists ...
> ...
>
> I don't know if we already have 3GPP liaison, but
> if we do the communication channels don't seem to
> have had very much effect within the [mext] work
> lately.
>
> My fear is that if we don't take action, we are
> choosing a future that is ever more complicated,
> non-extendible, non-flexible, radio technology
> specific, application specific, and bug-ridden.
> In short, everything we don't want the Internet
> to be.  And, I am sure no one here doubts that
> the Internet of the future is all high-speed
> wireless.  Where is the IETF going to be?
>
> If the [mext] working group is shut down, there
> is no natural place for this work to happen.
> Therefore, I hope that [mext] would NOT shut
> down, and instead recharter to tackle these
> urgent problems.
>
> Regards,
> Charlie P.
>
>
>
> On 10/28/2011 5:08 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> We are making some changes to the working group. While we have
>> successfully published a large number of specifications in recent years,
>> recently it has been difficult to make progress in the group. The chairs
>> and ADs have looked at the situation and we believe we need a new focus
>> and a bit of new organization as well. We are terminating the working
>> group and moving the one remaining active work item to a new working
>> group, the "DMM" working group. Here's what is going to happen:
>>
>> o Jouni Korhonen and Julien Laganier will become the chairs of the
>> group.
>>
>> o The group will meet in Taipei (there is a MEXT slot in the agenda).
>>
>> o The charter of the group will be changed to focus only on the
>> distributed mobility effort. We should discuss the details of this
>> charter change both on the list and in the meeting. The meeting agenda
>> should reserve some time both for technical discussions as well as the
>> charter discussion.
>>
>> o Once the discussion on the list and in the meeting has finished, we
>> will rename the group to "DMM" and put the new charter in effect.
>>
>> o If there are any other specifications that people would like to
>> publish beyond the distributed mobility work, we can offer to AD sponsor
>> them to RFCs outside the new working group. If there is some significant
>> new activity, we can create new working groups for that.
>>
>> Comments and feedback and/or alternate suggestions on this plan are
>> welcome.
>>
>> We would like to thank Marcelo for your many years of service in MEXT.
>> We could not have completed all the work we did without your energy and
>> push for high quality results. We would also like to thank Jouni for
>> taking on this new challenge, and Julien for continuing the work in this
>> space.
>>
>> Jari and Ralph
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mext
>>
>
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