Subject: Re: FW: Another clarification on the FE Model

From: "Khosravi, Hormuzd M" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:29:04 -0700

-----Original Message-----
From: Jamal Hadi Salim [mailto:[email-masked]] 

> An LFB may access one or more tables that are configured by the ForCES
> protocols.  But the LFB is an abstraction of the packet processing
> operation plus its associated tables.
> 
> [HK] This is my understanding as well. Thanks a lot for the prompt
> clarification!
> Jamal, others, any comments on this ?

That is my understanding as well. I think we are discusing something
beyond that though:
The meaning of instanceid is per LFB semantic. What are the kinds of
semantics that we expect to see? In some cases it may make sense to have
the tableid to be the instanceid. Not in every case.
And as in the other thread - the one reason to maintain the multi-tables
is for virtualization. There is more than one way to do that.

Its important for the protocol to be laid out such that it can
do both the "instanceid is a tableid" and "instanceid is a table row"
view.

[HK] The "instanceid is a table row", is what is causing the current
confusion.
Jamal, could you elaborate a bit on your thoughts on this? For example,
in case of a Meter with 100 entries in a Meter table on the FE, do you
view this as a single Meter LFB instance containing a table or 100 Meter
LFB instances ?

Thanks
Hormuzd

---

From: Jamal Hadi Salim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:36:35 -0400

> From: Jamal Hadi Salim [mailto:[email-masked]]

[..]

>From a policy perspective i would view each of the 100 entries as an
instance with an instanceid. Instanceid in this case would be a table
row index which only holds parameters for the LFB instantiation.
Note, such represantiation may not be very suitable for some forms of
classifiers such as IPV4 LPM or when you wish to virtualize by having
multi-tables. In such a case, the protocol instance could be a tableid
with something within LFB data specifics index the table row.

cheers,
jamal