[OTR-dev] mpOTR: shutdown()

[Abel Luck]

Hi,

After reading and trying to fully digest the mpOTR paper and proposed
"spec", we have some questions/concerns about how it will work on
networks with periodic disruptions.

These questions are specific to the implementation of OTR for a future
specification.

Question 1: How do we determine when a user has "left" due to network
timeout/instability vs simply quitting?

Relevant section of specification:

"When users wish to join or leave a chatroom, the proto-
col shuts down the current session and then calls Initiate()
with the new set of participants to initialize a new chat ses-
sion." (pg 7)


I propose a timeout of some number of seconds. Thoughts?

Question 2: How do clients decide to initiate Shutdown()? What happens
if some clients initiate it but others do not?

"When the application determines that there are no out-
standing in-flight messages between participants and that
the chat session should be ended, it invokes the Shutdown()
algorithm." (pg 9)

This is related to the question of error handling, we need to specify
how to handle errors.

Finally, page 11 states "We are currently implementing and improving the
efficiency of mpOTR." Has there been any work on this since publication?

~abel

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