Subject: [bess] Protocol Action: 'MVPN: Using Bidirectional P-Tunnels' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-bidir-04.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 10:05:11 -0700

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'MVPN: Using Bidirectional P-Tunnels'
  (draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-bidir-04.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the BGP Enabled Services Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Alvaro Retana, Alia Atlas and Deborah
Brungard.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-bidir/

Technical Summary

   A set of prior RFCs specify procedures for supporting multicast in
   BGP/MPLS IP VPNs.  These procedures allow customer multicast data to
   travel across a service provider's backbone network through a set of
   multicast tunnels.  The tunnels are advertised in certain BGP
   multicast "auto-discovery" routes, by means of a BGP attribute known
   as the "Provider Multicast Service Interface (PMSI) Tunnel
   attribute".  Encodings have been defined that allow the PMSI Tunnel
   attribute to identify bidirectional (multipoint-to-multipoint)
   multicast distribution trees.  However, the prior RFCs do not provide
   all the necessary procedures for using bidirectional tunnels to
   support multicast VPNs.  This document updates RFCs 6513, 6514 and
   6625 by specifying those procedures.  In particular, it specifies the
   procedures for assigning customer multicast flows (unidirectional or
   bidirectional) to specific bidirectional tunnels in the provider
   backbone, for advertising such assignments, and for determining which
   flows have been assigned to which tunnels.

Working Group Summary

  The consensus for adoption back in 2011 was rough, with a few 
  contributors disagreeing on the scope that bidir P-tunnels should apply to. 
  This debate has settled down a long time ago and the document has 
  evolved since; no disagreement was expressed in the last years, nor 
  during the last calls.

Document Quality

   The document is believe to be of good quality by the shepherd. It can be
   noted that it was written by a co-autor of the base mVPN specs based on
   an understanding of underspecified areas, which are now addressed. 
  
   It has been indicated that Cisco has implemented the two main methods
   described by these specs, the Flat Partitioned Method (with MP2MP LSPs) 
   and the Unpartitioned method (with MP2MP LSPs and also with BIDIR-PIM).

   The document had two thorough reviews (by a WG contributor and by the 
   shepherd), leading to substantive changes in the document.

Personnel

   Thomas Morin is the Document Shepherd.
   Alvaro Retana is the Responsible Area Director.