Subject: [Bier] Supported BIER BitString length

From: IJsbrand Wijnands <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 10:05:08 +0200

Hi Folks,

This goes back to a comment I made at the mic during the first BIER WG meeting.

The current focus is to support a BitString length of 256, and it looks like all vendors participating will be able to support this value. However, it does seem useful to support lower values in case a network has fewer edge nodes then 256. If a network has no more than 64, why send a BitMask length of 256? Also, if in the future routers will support higher value than 256, say 512, its useful that these routers support 256 in order to be interoperable with older routers.

What I’m suggesting is modify the BIER architecture draft to make it mandatory for a BIER router to support all possible value BitString lengths, below its maximum, as defined in the architecture draft. This does not have to be on by default, but enabled by configuration.

Comments?

Thx,

Ice.