Subject: IEEE 802.1 actions on Provider Bridges

From: Norman Finn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 21:49:42 -0800

To summarize, unofficially (I have no official liaison position), what
happened with regard to L2 service providers at the IEEE P802.1 meeting
last week:

 1. P802.1 forwarded a Project Authorization Request to start 802.1AD,
    an amendment to IEEE Std. 802.1Q-1998 (the VLAN standard) to cover
    Provider Bridges.  (Relevant portions of PAR follow my signature.)

 2. We can expect 802.1AD to specify the operation of a provider's
    Bridged LAN offering Layer 2 services.  The primary foci are
    expected to be the Provider/Customer interface, and Q-over-Q tag
    operations.  We can expect it to use an outer 802.1Q tag, where
    needed, to differentiate among different customers' services.

 3. Given that this project will be an amendment to 802.1Q, MAC-in-MAC
    techniques will not be a possibility.  That does not rule out some
    type of MAC-in-MAC technique, for either this or for other
    purposes, in the future.

 4. There is every expectation that 802.1AD and VPLS will be perfectly
    compatible, interoperable, and have a minimum of overlap, with the
    L2-VPNs defined by PPVPN, assuming that the recent dt-l2vpn mailing
    list discussions regarding the partitioning of the functions of an
    NPE or a PE-rs into a "provider bridge" and some number of
    "Emulated LAN Segments" are carried through.

-- Norm

RELEVANT PARTS OF 802.1AD PAR:

TITLE OF DOCUMENT: Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks.
Virtual Bridged Local Area Networks. Amendment 4: Provider Bridges.

SCOPE: To develop an architecture and bridge (-1-) protocols, compatible
and interoperable with existing Bridged Local Area Network protocols and
equipment, to provide separate instances of the MAC service (-3-) to
multiple independent users of a Bridged Local Area Network (-1-, -2-) in a
manner that does not require cooperation among the users, and requires a
minimum of cooperation between the users and the provider of the MAC
service. To define basic management of users' MAC services.

References: -1- IEEE Std. 802.1D, -2- IEEE Std. 802.1Q, -3- IEEE Std. 802,
-4- IEEE P802.1S.

PURPOSE: This standard will enable a Service Provider to offer the
equivalent of separate LAN Segments, Bridged or Virtual Bridged LANs,
to a number of users, over the Provider's bridged network. This Standard
will enable the use of the architecture and protocols of IEEE Std 802.1Q,
and provide for interoperability and consistent management.

---

From: "Cheng-Yin Lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Nov 2002 11:16:23 -0500

Norm,
Thanks for sending this summary to the PPVPN mailing list.

In Atlanta, some questions were raised about overlapping work between the IEEE
and the IETF, the suggestion was to take this to the mailing list.

In particular:

>       L2-VPNs defined by PPVPN,
>

I believe there is function overlap in IEEE Q in Q  work and VPLS. To me,
minimum overlap would imply using IEEE functions where applicable rather than
specifying something in parallel.

> partitioning of the functions of an
Could you kindly elaborate on the above partitioning of functions pls?

thanks
cheng-yin