Subject: (ION) IP address resolution in a frame relay SVC environment

From: [email-masked] (Sabine Kuehn)
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 98 14:22:45 +0100

Hi,

what is the current state of standardization for address resolution 
for SVC environment in frame relay? I have seen next in draft 
<draft-ietf-ion-fr-update-03.txt> that this topic is or will be disscussed in 
the ion working group. 
Moreover, I'm interested in getting information if there are any 
additional requirements in the interworking of frame relay and atm concerning 
the SVC environment and with IP based on them.

I appreciate any assistance you can provide.

Thanks,
Sabine Kuehn
-- 
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|Sabine Kuehn       http://wwwrn.inf.tu-dresden.de/~kuehn
|Dresden University of Technology   phone: 0351/ 463 8352

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From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 09:43:50 -0500 (EST)

Sabine,

> <draft-ietf-ion-fr-update-03.txt> that this topic is or will be
> disscussed in the ion working group.
>
> additional requirements in the interworking of frame relay and atm
> concerning the SVC environment and with IP based on them. 
> 

You have asked some very good questions.

I've been mulling over some of these issues myself, since I'm involved
both on the IP and the Frame Relay sides of things.  Up to this point,
not much has happened, since FR has, in reality, remained a mostly PVC
service (even though SVCs have now been implemented on most of the FR
switches). 

However, there have been some recent developments that may help move
matters along.  On the service side, several public service providers
have announced tariffed SVC services (available either now or sometime
soon). The primary business driver for this hasn't been data, however,
but for voice calls over FR. 

There is progress on the standards front as well.  The Frame Relay
Forum is getting closer on completing its work on FR/ATM SVC signaling
interworking.  One of the major sticking points, addressing
interoperability, was recently resolved by the ITU adopting NSAP-format
addresses for FR in X.36 and X.76; prior to that, they had been
restricted to ATM only. 

This, in turn, will make it easier to specify how to use NHRP for FR
SVC address resolution.  Since joined FR/ATM networks using SVC
signaling interworking will appear, at the IP layer, to be a single
NBMA network, then we want NHRP for FR to be virtually (if not
completely) identical to NHRP for ATM. 

In pretty much the same time frame, we should see the FR Forum work on
SVC interworking complete and NHRP published as an RFC.  It should then
be relatively simple to turn out a relatively thin draft on using NHRP
for FR SVCs as well (if it even turns out one is necessary; I haven't
completely thought it through yet, but it should be virtually
identical, perhaps specifying the use of a subset of the addressing
options available in the baseline NHRP RFC). 

There is other work ongoing on the IETF regarding IP over FR as well; I
refer you to draft-ietf-mpls-fr-00.txt, which defines MPLS over FR, and
of course RFC 1973 (PPP over FR), which is useful for remote access to
ISPs via FR, in order to utilize PPP-based services at the ISP ingress
(RADIUS, etc.). 

I hope this helps answer your questions.  I would also be interested in
hearing about any other thinking people on the list have been doing on
the topic. 

Cheers,
Andy
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew G. Malis  [email-masked]  phone:978 952-7414   fax:978 392-1484
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