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[DNA] Simplification of DNAv4 specification
It has been suggested that the DNAv4 specification can be simplified by
recommending that implementations simultaneously test reachability to one or
more networks in parallel with attempting to obtain a configuration via
DHCPv4. While -15 allows this, it is optional rather than recommended
behavior, and so the specification still has to accomodate the case where an
implementation attempts to obtain configuration serially.
By assuming that the implementation attempts to obtain configuration by
multiple mechanisms in parallel, it can be guaranteed that DNAv4 will not
take longer than DHCPv4 to obtain a configuration. It also simplifies the
DNAv4 client implementation, since the client can determine the set of
networks for which it has an operable configuration, and select a subset of
that for reachability testing without having to consider link layer hints
other than "link up".
For example, if a host has a still-valid DHCP leases on three networks, it
can do 3 reachability tests in parallel with attempting to obtain a
configuration via DHCPv4.
The downside of this approach is the extra traffic. However, it appears that
this risk can be mitigated via rate limiting, jittering and exponential
backoff. Overall, the benefits of this approach, in terms of a simplified
implementation and improved performance and robustness seem to be worth the
costs.
Comments welcome. A strawman draft is available here:
http://www.drizzle.com/~aboba/DNA/draft-ietf-dhc-dna-ipv4-16.txt