Subject: PIM Working Group Minutes (Adelaide)

From: Tom Pusateri <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2000 07:10:41 -0700

Here are some draft minutes from the PIM meeting. Please send
me comments in the next few days before I submit them as
the official minutes.

Thanks,
Tom

The PIM working group met in Adelaide Australia on March 27th, 2000.

The main discussion items centered around Source Specific Multicast (SSM).

But first, Isidor Kouvelas <[email-masked]> talked about open
issues with the PIM sparse mode spec. These are summarized at the
web page:  http://www.aciri.org/fenner/mcast/pim/sm/issues.html

A discussion of the spec continued with concerns being raised over
implementation dependencies in the spec which clouded the protocol
description. The comment was made that even if all of the issues
mentioned on the web page were corrected, the spec was still
encumbered with the implementation details. Further discussion of
the spec was postponed until after the other presentations.

Gene Bowen <[email-masked]> presented the draft
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-bhattach-diot-PIMSO-00.txt
outlining deployment plans for PIM-SSM within a trial site of Sprint
Labs where 200 homes are connected via switched ethernet.

Hal Sandick <[email-masked]> and Isidor Kouvelas both
presented drafts on PIM considerations for supporting Source Specific
Multicast. Their drafts were complimentary and summarized the issues
of handling addresses in the SSM range with PIM.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-sandick-pimsm-ssmrules-00.txt
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-bhaskar-pim-ss-00.txt

Brian Haberman <[email-masked]> discussed the latest
update to PIM for IPv6.
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-pim-ipv6-03.txt
There are no outstanding issues with this document and it is simply
waiting on the other PIM documents to advance.

We ended the meeting with a discussion about whether to document
the PIM SSM rules as a complete protocol spec or an add-on to the
existing spec. The concensus was that since their was still concerns
with the existing spec, a stand-alone spec would be written. Hugh
Holbrook <[email-masked]> volunteered to author this.

It was noted that this new PIM SSM document could be the basis for
a new spec. Bill Fenner <[email-masked]> volunteered to
work with Mark Handley <[email-masked]> and Hugh Holbrook to add
the remaining pieces to Hugh's document to create a completely new
PIM sparse mode spec that integrated the PIM SSM considerations.
Bill and Mark enlisted help from implementors for reviewing of the
new document. Other implementors not present at the meeting are
highly encouraged to participate in the review or contribute text
under the framework developed by Bill, Mark, and Hugh.

---

From: Liming Wei <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2000 11:16:21 -0700 (PDT)

> From: Tom Pusateri <[email-masked]>
> 

The reason it had so much detail was because the majority of questions
raised have been on implementations.  Seperating implementation
details from the spec might be a good thing in stablizing the spec,
but a separate implementation draft would be useful for implementors
and for those involved in deployment.  I had thought about doing so
for a long time but never had time to implement it (and don't think I
will in the near future). But if someone volunteers for it, I'd surely
be glad to serve as a reviewer.

> Holbrook <[email-masked]> volunteered to author this.

I agree this is the better way to do it.

> under the framework developed by Bill, Mark, and Hugh.

1. There are too many documents about SSM today. It will be good if
   folks can consolidate into one scheme. History has shown that
   competition among protocol designers generates less beneficial
   progress than collaborations (as pointed out by Braden et al).
   Lets see if PIM WG can do better in this round of changes.

2. Yiqun has already started to generate newly formated draft based
   on the existing draft. But he may not have spent too much time on
   it yet. It will be good if Bill and company can publish a brief plan
   of actions, so that other folks at least know if this is a protocol
   redesign effort, or if it is mainly to generate a better written
   spec of the existing design, with correctness and ambibuities
   issues hashed out. This might be clear to folks who went to
   Australia, but not clear to those who didn't go. If Bill's is a
   new design, Yiqun will need to continue editing the existing draft,
   otherwise we should not have two different drafts on the same
   protocol.

3. As I need to read through all submissions as WG drafts anyway,
   I can review earlier drafts if needed.

And Tom, Thanks for taking the minutes.

-Liming