Subject: Review of draft-ietf-sip-hitchhikers-guide-05

From: Christian Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:23:18 +0300

Folks,

I was asked by IESG to review the SIP Hitchhikers Guide draft.  And even
though last call is over for this document, I think it makes sense to
share my review on this list.  The Hitchhikers Guide is a very useful
synopsis of important SIP-related specifications.  The RFC numbering
scheme makes it difficult to identify specifications of a common
subject, so documents such as this are of great help for navigating
through large protocol suits such as that of SIP.

This Hitchhiker's Guide certainly has publication quality, and it should
be published as soon as possible.  I do, however, have three suggestions
for increasing the usefulness of this document even further.  Perhaps
these could be taken into account before publication:

- The scoping of the Hitchhiker's Guide in section 2, which identifies
   the types of documents that are considered by the guide, is a bit
   complex because it consists of several rules and several
   exceptions.  I would assume that the average reader couldn't tell,
   after all,  whether documents for a particular purpose are in-scope
   or not.  Of  course, I do acknowledge that, with the large set of
   SIP-related  documents, it is not easy to come up with a crisp
   definition of  which documents are "relevant" and which are not.
   But perhaps a  very simple approach would do the job:  I would
   suggest to simply  state that those documents are included that are
   relevant to SIP or  SDP in general, or to a large class of
   applications, and documents  for a specific application are not.

- Why are neither requirements nor architecture documents in-scope of
   the Hitchhiker's Guide?  Requirements can be essential for defining
   the applicability of a method.  Architectures are important to
   understand how multiple methods fit together.  Shouldn't
   requirements and architecture documents therefore be in-scope of
   the  Hitchhiker's Guide?  Of course, not all such documents can be
   listed  due to their large number.  But perhaps the most relevant
   can.

- The first bullet in section 2 defines a SIP "extension" as a
   mechnanism that "changes or updates" SIP.  Since this definition
   differs from the common meaning of the word "extension", I suggest
   using the term "modification" instead.  This would also avoid
   confusion with later parts of the Hitchhiker's Guide, where the
   term  "extension" is used in its common meaning.

Best regards,
- Christian

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