Subject: RE: MED for Originated Routes

From: "Natale, Jonathan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 09:36:53 -0400

The point is:
"the base spec does not say what to set the MED to for originated routes"

...the fact that Juniper and Cisco chose sensible things to do
is not an argument for the spec to be silent, is it?

Also, didn't the old spec say to treat a missing MED as all 1's?
(not sure if this is relevant)

-----Original Message-----
From: Mathew Richardson [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 5:59 PM
To: Natale, Jonathan
Cc: 'John G. Scudder'; [email-masked]'; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: MED for Originated Routes

> Natale, Jonathan <[email-masked]> [Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 
>05:30:11PM -0400]: Since no MED is equivalent to MED = 0 *in this 
>case*, they are interoperable.  But the base spec does not say what to 
>set the MED to for originated routes.  So I need to disagree, an 
>addition to the spec is called for.

<snip>

The absence of an MED is equivalent to a MED of zero in all cases.

mrr

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 10:52:12 -0400

> "the base spec does not say what to set the MED to for originated routes"

This is called an implementation decision.

You could put a MED in of 2^32-1 if you wanted to and it would still
be legal.  You would still interoperate.

And your customers would get cranky.

> is not an argument for the spec to be silent, is it?

And why do most routers tend to send a localpref of 100 by default?
Do you think that should be in the spec as well?  I sincerely hope not.

> Also, didn't the old spec say to treat a missing MED as all 1's?

In -14, it says the lowest possible value, which until it was
clarified, could be considered to be smaller than a value of zero.

-- 
Jeff Haas 
NextHop Technologies