Subject: FW: Practical implementation of ForCES protocol (thesis topic)

From: "Putzolu, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:30:12 -0800

Forwarded by request to forces mailing list from Abid Ghufran
[[email-masked]].

Dear Sir, 

I am a post-graduate student of High Speed Networks and Distributed
Systems at Oxford Brookes University UK. 

I have been following various IETF working groups and their produced
(RFC,Draft,Informational) documents. For my thesis I am thinking of
taking up the practical implementation of the ForCES protocol, over a
Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) infrastructure. I have not gone through
the relevant documents in depth as yet, and before doing so, I would
like to take an opinion. In your view, would it be a good thesis topic
to explore the ForCES protocol infrastructure, practically? I have much
more to this idea but would like to discuss with a member of the team,
initially about its feasibility and significance. 

I shall be looking forward to a reply. 

Thank you very much, 

Abid Ghufran. 

MSc HSN & DS. 

Oxford Brookes. 

UK.

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From: "Wang,Weiming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:09:20 +0800

David,

I suppose the following change on thie LFB definitions. Pls comment it.

Change:
   LFB (Logical Function Block) Class (or Type) -- the basic building
   blocks that are operated on by the Forces protocol.  The LFB is a
   well defined, logically separable functional block that resides in
   the FE and is controlled by the CE via ForCES protocol.  The LFB may
   reside at the FE's datapath and process packets or may be purely a
   control entity that is operated on by the CE.

   LFB (Logical Function Block) Instance -- As a packet flows through an
   FE along a datapath, it flows through one or multiple LFB instances,
   with each implementing an instance of a certain LFB type.  There may
   be multiple instances of the same LFB in an FE's datapath.  Note that
   we often refer to LFBs without distinguishing between LFB type and
   LFB instance when we believe the implied reference is obvious for the
   given context.

To:
   LFB (Logical Function Block)  -- the basic building block that is operated on
by the Forces protocol.  The LFB is a  well defined, logically separable
functional block that resides in the FE and is controlled by the CE via ForCES
protocol.  The LFB may reside at the FE's datapath and process packets or may be
purely a control entity that is operated on by the CE.  Note that the LFB is a
functionally accurate abstraction of the FE's processing capabilities, but not a
hardware-accurate representation of the FE implementation.

  LFB Class(or Type) and LFB Instance -- LFBs are categorized by LFB Classes(or
Types).  An LFB Instance repsesents an LFB Class (or Type) existence. There may
be multiple instances of the same LFB Class (or Type) in an FE.  An LFB Class is
represented  by an LFB Class ID, and an LFB Instance is represented by an LFB
Instance ID.  As a result, an LFB Class ID associated with an LFB Instance ID
uniquely specify an LFB existence.

Thanks,
Weiming

[email-masked]
2005-11-14.20:21:04

The current definition of LFB instance implies incorrectly that all LFB
instances are in the data path.  If anything, consider combining LFB Type and
instance in a single definition because they are so closely related. The LFB
definitions should also clearly call out that LFBs are a functionally accurate
abstraction of the FE's packet processing capabilities, but not a hardware-
accurate representation of the FE implementation.

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From: "Wang,Weiming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:35:20 +0800

Hi all,

Some of the issues in the tracker(http://www.mip4.org/issues/tracker/forces/)
has just been closed because they have been solved. Now we still have issue9 and
issue39(can be solved very soon), and issues62-79 for solutions. Pls make
comments towards the issues.

Thanks very much.

Weiming

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From: Avri Doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:42:59 -0800

On 25 nov 2005, at 00.35, Wang,Weiming wrote:

> has just been closed because they have been solved.

i am confused.  have they actually been closed in the tracker or just  
written up as closed. because i am using open issues to do the  
updates and figure they should only be closed, once the draft they  
are in is released and people can check that they are truly closed in  
the draft.

if i have go through closed issues to find those that are still open  
on draft -05 that will make the process much harder.

if anyone actually closed one, please let me know which.

thanks
a.

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From: Weiming Wang <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:58:09 +0800

Avri,

The issues I claimed closed are those that have already been solved in -05
version and the text have been incorperated in the version.  I think Jamal has
made a good summary on the issues by marking it as "resolved in draft -05" as
the last responses to the issues (He might just have forgot to mark them as
accepted or refused to close the issues. some are from me and others with the
same indicators). You may double check them if theres any doubts.

Thanks,
Weiming

----- Original Message -----
From: "Avri Doria" <[email-masked]>

---

From: Avri Doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 09:28:22 -0800

Hi,

thanks.  I just wanted to make sure that none of the issues not yet  
fixed in -05 remained open even if they were 'resolved' until -06  
came out.

i am going through the issues as well as the email list trying to  
catch everything, and want to make sure i don't miss anything if  
possible.

so was just trying to clear up my confusion.

a.