The RFC Editor's current position on Mohsen Banan's EMSD

[braden@ISI.EDU]

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>From VM Sat Jan  9 13:16:18 1999
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 10:04:45 -0800
From: braden@ISI.EDU
To: iesg@ISI.EDU, moore@cs.utk.edu, braden@ISI.EDU
Subject: Re: The RFC Editor's current position on Mohsen Banan's EMSD
Cc: jkrey@ISI.EDU, rfc-ed@ISI.EDU
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PS: We intended to CC: Mohsen Banan on the preceding [actually, following]
message, but
forgot.  We are forwarding a copy to him now.  Banan has asked for
openness in communications between the RFC Editor and the IESG on this
issue, and we think that this is reasonable and appropriate.

Bob


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>From VM Sat Jan  9 13:16:18 1999
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 10:00:29 -0800
From: braden@ISI.EDU
To: iesg@ISI.EDU, moore@cs.utk.edu
Subject: The RFC Editor's current position on Mohsen Banan's EMSD 
Cc: braden@ISI.EDU, jkrey@ISI.EDU, rfc-ed@ISI.EDU
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Status:   


Mohsen Banan has asked that his EMSD (Efficient Mail Submission and
Delivery) protocol be published as an Informational RFC.  After
conversations with the Area Director as well as two independent experts
(*) in the wireless industry, we have concluded that the RFC Editor
should publish this document.  We believe this is what Jon would
have done.

There are some legitimate concerns about EMSD from the IETF/Internet
viewpoint.  Here are the ones we have considered.

	1. Is this an end-run around our standards process?

		Basically, no.  The standards involved here, EMSD and
		its matching transport protocol ESRO, are designed for
		a very specialized environment: bandwidth-poor wireless
		nets on the edge of the Internet.

		At present there does not appear to be any
		standardization effort in this area by the wireless
		industry.  There are various proprietary solutions, but
		these are generally primitive protocols (e.g., X.25
		adaptations, or worse).  EMSD might in fact be useful
		in getting a standards effort started, and archiving it
		as an RFC seems appropriate.

	2. Do these protocols pose a danger to the Internet?

		Not in their intended application -- two-way pagers and
		similar terminals operating in a bandwidth-poor
		environment at the edge of the Internet.

		However, EMSD is tightly coupled to Banan's transaction
		transport protocol ESRO (previously published in RFC
		2188).  Were ESRO to become widely used in the
		Internet, its lack of congestion control would
		certainly be a threat to the Internet.  It seems
		unlikely that this could happen, but we note that
		Neda's web pages do contain some worrying suggestion
		that they are trying to sell EMSG/ESRO for more general
		Internet use.  This is an issue for the IESG to keep an
		eye on.

		Also note that the EMSD document specifies both an SMTP
		replacement and an 822-equivalent encoding.  Separating
		these might be useful, but again this does not seem to
		be a show-stopper for publication as an Informational
		RFC.

	3. Keith Moore has raised the question that there may be
		problems gatewaying mail between SMTP and EMSD.

		If true and if EMSD became widely used, this could be a
		serious issue.  Perhaps Banan could be persuaded to
		prepare a document specifying the mapping between the
		two mail systems.

		[Note from RTB: it appears that EMSD is X.400-lite, in
		that some of its semantic model is taken from X.400 and
		does not map well to/from SMTP.  Unfortunately, the
		document is sufficiently obscure and incomplete that
		it is unclear to me the extent to which this is true.]

	4. Is Banan trying to exploit the appearance of IETF concurrence
		on EMSD?

		I actually don't think so, but it would be appropriate
		for the IESG to ask him to make every effort to avoid
		any such appearance.

		In particular, the title of the document was presented
		to us as: "Neda's ...".  We believe that having a
		company name in the title in this way is completely
		inappropriate.  We will ask Banan to remove "Neda's" from
		the title before publication.

Based on these comments, the IESG might want to prepare a paragraph
that addresses points 1, 2, and 4.  Thus, it would say that this
protocol is intended for a specific environment, low-bandwidth wireless
links, not for general Internet use.  It would also say the usual thing
about not being a standard, etc.

Note that these considerations do not ask how good the EMSD/ESRO
protocol is, or how clearly and precisely it is documented.
We have formed some (negative) opinions on these issues, but
these judgments ought not to directly affect the decision on
whether to publish.  If EMSD has any future influence, there
will hopefully be a round of further engineering and documentation.

We will await your decision on an IESG paragraph before publishing
this document.

Bob Braden
Joyce Reynolds

____________________
*Bill Frezza , Wireless Computing Associates
 and Mark Taylor, Teledesic.

Note: Both were aware of Banan's work and generally approved of it.  Neither
had actually read the document in question.

PS:
One interesting point came up that may be important to the IESG and to
the Internet.  The GSM industry is developing a packet radio version of
GSM, called GPRS.  Bill Frezza remarked that it would be a VERY GOOD
thing for the GPRS folks to start talking with the IETF folks.  See
attached message for a contact.


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>From frezza@alum.MIT.EDU Wed Jan  6 13:30:55 1999
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Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1999 16:28:29 -0500
To: braden@ISI.EDU
From: Bill Frezza <frezza@alum.MIT.EDU>
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Bob,

It was a pleasure chatting with you today. The fella you want to talk with
at Ericsson is

LARS WETTERBORG <lars.wetterborg@era.ericsson.se> 

He not only will be familiar with the history of CDPD and the LSM
protocols, but should be able to put you in touch with the GSM GPRS community.

Cheers,

Bill

______________________________
Bill Frezza, General Partner
Adams Capital Management
668 Stoney Hill Rd., Suite 155
Yardley, PA 19067
Phone: 215-321-0929
Email: frezza@alum.MIT.EDU
Interactive Pager: frezza@bellsouthips.com
Web: www.acm.com

PGP key available at pgpkeys.mit.edu


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