Files
hq/03-DESIGN/01-to-be
jschoubben b944904f1a Audit the scenario model for generality, and fix what it found
The question is not whether the model covers our mesh but whether it can
express any mesh. Audited against the axes a deployment varies along, with
the standard being every property that changes how the mesh BEHAVES rather
than every property a network has — bandwidth does not change correctness,
MTU does.

One real bug, now fixed. A segment with no gateway was read as the
internet, which made an isolated network inexpressible: a LAN with no route
out would have been treated as public and forced onto documentation
addresses. Segments now state kind: public or private, and a private
segment with no gateway is an island. A mesh spanning a site with no
internet is a real topology.

One modelling error, now corrected. The three positions were framed by
ownership — a gateway you control versus one you do not. The axis is
forwardability. Carrier-grade NAT is your own connection and is still
unforwardable, so it belongs with the café network. Gateways gain
forwardable:, independent of nat:, and publishing through an unforwardable
one is a declaration error because that is the constraint being reproduced.

Three genuine gaps recorded in priority order. Address family: cidr is
implicitly v4, and a v6-only node is not exotic — a mesh that assumes v4
fails there completely rather than partially, which makes this a second
world rather than a refinement. Expiring NAT mappings: without them
keepalive behaviour is hoped for rather than tested, and for a mesh mostly
behind NAT that is the fault that shows up after an idle night. MTU:
tunnels fragment, and a smaller-MTU path establishes a connection that then
silently drops large packets — the exact shape this effort exists to stop
shipping.

Latency and loss are deliberately out: they change performance, not
correctness, and modelling them makes a network simulator rather than a
fixture.

Also adds a NAT primer, because the three positions are consequences of it
and the document should not assume the reader already knows why a mesh
dials outward and never inward.
2026-08-23 22:48:46 +02:00
..

03-DESIGN / 01-to-be

The mesh being built toward. Every statement here traces to a record in 02-DECISIONS/; nothing arrives by drafting.

A document here describes an intention. What currently runs is in 00-as-is/, and the two are never merged — when something ships, the as-is document is written and this one's status becomes implemented.

Document Covers Rests on
00-work-breakdown.md How the decomposition gets built, in what order, and where a human must look ADR 0015
01-end-to-end-testing.md The lab: a real mesh a change can be run against before it reaches nodes ADR 0016, 0029
02-scenario-declaration.md What a scenario declares — the underlay, and what to place on it ADR 0031

Not yet written

  • The eight bounded contexts. ADR 0015 decides the decomposition; the per-context specifications do not exist yet. The work breakdown says in what order they are needed.
  • Domain grouping outside the core. ADR 0017 settles the principle and explicitly does not settle the domain list. That is a research effort, not a design document, until it concludes.