Subject: RE: Communication in response to the OIF

From: "Ash, Gerald R (Jerry), ALABS" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 12:22:00 -0600

Kireeti,

I would not characterize the interactions between ITU-T and IETF as a "cooperative effort" at this point.  IMO "adversarial effort" would be more accurate, but "joint effort" might be more PC.

I don't see that much cooperation between ITU-T and IETF quite yet on GMPLS/ASON.  The GMPLS/ASON signaling effort is still suffering from deep differences in views on G.7713.2 versus http://ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-rsvp-te-ason-01.txt.  I believe that the signaling piece of the OIF interoperability demo is based on G.7713.2.  The GMPLS/ASON routing effort also appears to have some significant differences in views at this point, stemming in part from differences arising out of G.7715.1 IMO.

Hopefully this will all work out, but the tone at IETF-59 didn't give me a lot of hope that this "cooperative effort" is going happen any time soon.

Thanks,
Jerry

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On
Behalf Of Kireeti Kompella
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 9:13 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Alex Zinin; Bill Fenner
Subject: Communication in response to the OIF

Hi All,

Here's a first draft of a reply to the OIF.  Please comment to the
list by Monday, March 15 2004.

If someone has email addresses for Steve Joiner, Jim Jones and John
McDonough (and titles for the last two), that would be very helpful.

Thanks,
Kireeti.
--------

<Date>

 From: Kireeti Kompella & Adrian Farrel, IETF CCAMP Working Group Chairs

To: Mr. Steve Joiner, OIF Technical Committee Chair
Cc: Jim Jones,
Cc: John McDonough,
Cc: Alex Zinin,       IETF Routing Area Director
Cc: Bill Fenner,      IETF Routing Area Director

Dear Steve,

Thank you for your communication regarding the current status of OIF
signaling and routing work, and the associated documentation.  This
communication is in response.  As there is no formal liaison
relationship yet between the IETF and the OIF, this communication is
not treated as a liaison; hopefully, this situation will be rectified
soon.

Thank you too for allowing Mr. Lyndon Ong to present a synopsis of
the work going on at the OIF with regard to Intra-carrier E-NNI
routing.  It was both useful and enlightening.

However, both of these gave us cause for alarm, on two fronts:
a) The development of new or modified code points and procedures
   in OSPF without expert review from the OSPF WG in the IETF
   contravenes IETF procedure, especially as the IETF pays special
   attention to changes in protocols in the Routing Area, such as
   OSPF.
b) The development of routing for optical networks without expert
   review from the CCAMP WG is also a source of concern, especially
   in the light of a cooperative effort between the ITU-T and the
   IETF in exactly this area.

Mr. Ong's emphasis that this work was experimental and purely for the
purpose of testing alleviated some of our concerns.  It would be very
helpful to hear this officially from the OIF; furthermore, in the
interests of openness and full disclosure, we would strongly urge the
modification of a paragraph in the Introduction of the draft routing
document OIF2003.259 as follows:

   "The base protocol as defined by this document is OSPF with
    extensions for Traffic Engineering and GMPLS.  This document
    proposes to use GMPLS-OSPF to operate at each hierarchical
    level, with multiple such levels stacking up to form the
    routing hierarchy.  Extensions have been defined in the forms
    of (sub-) TLVs to accommodate the requirements as defined in the
    G.8080, G.7715, and G.7715.1.  Note that these extensions as
    currently specified are purely for the purpose of experimentation
    and testing; in particular, they have not yet been reviewed by
    the OSPF and CCAMP Working Groups in the IETF.  Furthermore they
    use experimental codepoints, and as such must not be used in
    production deployments."

Mr. Ong also brought to our attention that the OIF will be holding
an interoperability demonstration of this specification at the
SuperComm in June 2004.  Due to the preliminary nature of this
specification, the IETF would strongly recommend that the words
OSPF, OSPF-TE and GMPLS not be used in the context of this
demonstration, nor that there be any implication that this work
has been reviewed or sanctioned by the IETF.

It would be helpful in determining the future relationship between
the IETF and the OIF to understand how the OIF intends to progress
this document.

 o Is this intended to become an Implementation Agreement in
   something close to its current form?

 o Does the OIF intend to submit this as a submission in the ITU-T
   SG15 to become a Recommendation?

 o Does the OIF intend to submit this document as an Internet Draft
   to become an IETF RFC?

Thank you for your attention in this matter, and for initiating this
dialogue.  We hope that this develops into a fruitful relationship.
To that end, we enclose a product of the joint work between the
ITU-T and the IETF on Routing Requirements for ASON.  This is a
work in progress, and we solicit your comments:
 - to identify any requirements that the OIF has over and above those
    requirements established by the ITU-T ASON model
 - to ensure that the solution developed within the IETF addresses
    the requirements of both the ITU-T and OIF.

We hope that your feedback will signal the beginning of an active
cooperation between the IETF and the OIF.

Sincerely,
<etc.>

<attachment: current version of GMPLS ASON Routing Requirements doc>

---

From: Stephen J Trowbridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 12:17:51 -0700

Jerry,
I see you missed the Q.14/15 Rapporteur's meeting in Chicago.

Once upon a time, what you say was true. ITU-T and IETF got off to a very rocky
start. ITU-T (which was accustomed to collaborating with other standards
organizations) would routinely send information about what they were doing to
IETF (which has historically gone it alone). Most in IETF would either not even
read what ITU-T sent over, or would just get steamed about the fact that ITU-T
was doing something different without writing down their concerns and sending it
back to ITU-T in a form that could be considered in their deliberations.

But of late, through a combination of cross participation (Kireeti and Adrian
have each attended Q.14 meetings) and regular and frequent communications, this
has been steadily improving. Many of the issues and differences have been
resolved, and of the issues and differences that still remain, I think there is
a growing understanding within each organization of why the other organization
has taken the direction they have.

So let's not live in the past. Yes, things were very bad at the start. Now we
are talking, and things are getting steadily better. I think it is accurate to
characterize the way we are working today as cooperation.
Regards,
Steve

---

From: Kireeti Kompella <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 12:51:05 -0800 (PST)

Hi Jerry,

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Ash, Gerald R (Jerry), ALABS wrote:

> Kireeti,
>
> I would not characterize the interactions between ITU-T and IETF as
> a "cooperative effort" at this point.  IMO "adversarial effort"
> would be more accurate, but "joint effort" might be more PC.

Well, there are two fronts (yes, now it sounds like a battle :-)):
a) signaling, and
b) routing.

On the signaling front, what you say is the case, at present.
However, with routing, the IETF and ITU-T have gotten off to a better
start, and hopefully we'll come up with a solution agreeable to all,
at least within the bounds of "rough consensus".

The communication with the OIF focussed on routing, hence the term
"cooperative effort".

> I don't see that much cooperation between ITU-T and IETF quite yet
> on GMPLS/ASON.  The GMPLS/ASON signaling effort is still suffering
> from deep differences in views on G.7713.2 versus
> http://ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-rsvp-te-ason-01.txt.
> I believe that the signaling piece of the OIF interoperability demo
> is based on G.7713.2.  The GMPLS/ASON routing effort also appears to
> have some significant differences in views at this point, stemming
> in part from differences arising out of G.7715.1 IMO.
>
> Hopefully this will all work out, but the tone at IETF-59 didn't
> give me a lot of hope that this "cooperative effort" is going happen
> any time soon.

I (eternal optimist) hope that routing will work out.  Where we go
with signaling is unfortunately still unclear.

Kireeti.
-------