Another important use case we should consider if reviving API this is ability to detect network unavailability causes based on topology. E.g.: is only the local WiFi network is slow/down or the whole route to the ISP or route to the target app?
We had a short discussion about this last TPAC and main feedback was about privacy concerns. I would imagine some non privacy violating definition could be devised if there is enough consensus about the importance of such use case.
________________________________
From: Marcos Caceres <marcosc@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2021 8:59 AM
To: Thomas Steiner <tomac@google.com>; Christiansen, Kenneth R <kenneth.r.christiansen@intel.com>; Kostiainen, Anssi <anssi.kostiainen@intel.com>; Yoav Weiss <yoavweiss@google.com>; Addy Osmani <addyo@google.com>; TOREINI, EHSAN <ehsan.toreini@durham.ac.uk>; Noam Helfman <noamh@microsoft.com>; Tarun Bansal <tbansal@google.com>; W3C Devices and Sensors WG <public-device-apis@w3.org>; Alex Russell <slightlyoff@chromium.org>; ilya@igvita.com <ilya@igvita.com>; Pete LePage <petele@google.com>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Network Information API
> On 16 Aug 2021, at 10:26 pm, Thomas Steiner <tomac@google.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 2:50 AM Marcos Caceres <marcosc@w3.org> wrote:
> Thanks for attempting to pick this up again. My opinion/advice as someone involved with this API from the beginning...
>
> Thanks a lot, greatly appreciated!
To be frank (and this is not in any way directed at you, Thomas!): After 7+ years, I think the API is now too poisoned by bad history to revive. I'd urge us to just cut our losses and see if we can just do something new/entirely different or come at this from a different angle.
Instead of focusing on the API at all, if we can get other implementers - which are noticeably absent from the cc: and possibly the working group (!) - to agree on a tiny set of use cases, I think that would be a better (re)start to this effort.
Otherwise, I worry that we are going to just fall into the "well, we all think it's a good idea" Chromium-echo-chamber, while just further frustrating and polarizing WebKit and Gecko folks with respect to the netinfo use cases. I know that's not on purpose, but that's kinda where we are (specially with anything "net info").
Kind regards,
Marcos