Subject: draft IETF48 GSMP WG minutes

From: Hans Sjöstrand (ETX)<[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 09:50:25 +0200

below is the draft WG minutes from Pittsburg. 

Regards
/// Hasse

----
The GSMP working group held a meeting at IETF48.  The meeting was
chaired by Kenneth Sundell, and notes were taken by Hans Sjostrand
and by Avri Doria.

There were 2 main areas of discussion and 2 technical I-Ds presented.

-Last Call documents:

Last call was initiated on 21 July and is scheduled to terminate on 18
August.  The reason the last call was made longer then the required 2
weeks was to accomodate folks attending the IETF who did not have time
to review the material.  Additionally the MSF is doing its 'WG last
call' equivalent on the same documents at the moment.  Their review is
also slated to end on 18 August.  After that the documents will be
recycled to handle all the editorial issues, and if there are no new
substantive issues, will be passed along to the IESG for the continuing
process.  If there are technical issues, the affected docs will go
through another WG last call. All 4 documents will be passed on as a
set.

Avri Doria did a review of:

draft-ietf-gsmp-06.txt

    There were two substantive changes made between -05 and -6.  The
    first was the additon of the replace flag in the add branch
    command.  This flag was added to accomodate some traditional
    telephony switching systems.  The second change was the removal of
    Diff Serv support from the service model chapter.  This was
    removed becasue there were no suggestion on how this would be
    used. Support for Diff Serv service model can be added to GSMP at
    a latter time in a separate document.

draft-ietf-gsmp-encaps-02.txt

    Changes between -01 and -02 were all editorial in nature.

draft-ietf-gsmp-applicability-01.txt

    Changes between -00 and -01 were all editorial in nature.

Hans Sjostrand did a review of draft-ietf-gsmp-mib-02.txt
    
    Quite a few changes were made between -01 and 02. These consisted
    primarily of: a new structure where VSCE, VSE and session data was
    separated, encap got theis own MIB groups and 10 notifications were
    added. The new object structure was presented to the WG.

    There is a problem with notification object as described in the
    draft. The proposed solution is to add extra notification objects. No
    comments from the floor on this issue.

    There where some last call comments, from people that had
    experience with getting mibs through IESG. Ipv4 specific stuff has
    to be generalized to support Ipv6 and storage type has to be
    clarified.

    The mib will be updated with the last call comments in a -03
    version which will be out in a few weeks time.

During the discussion, Hans noted that the GSMP archive is not fully
working, i.e. it's not possible to retrieve the August file. Avri promised
to check up on that.  

- New charter discussion.

Avri presented a proposal, which has been sent out to the list. 

With the submission of the current WG docs to the IESG the WG
milestones will be met.  There are two alternatives:

    - The group goes dormant until it is either shut down or awakened
    due to operational experience.    
    - The Charter is updated.
    
The discuyssion for the re-charter included:

    -- Support for Optical switches.  
    This was discussed in the group and there is very strong interest
    in seeing it done.  The primary argument for doing the work
    concerned the fact that some optical switch vendors are putting so
    much focus into the optical layer that they don't really have the
    resources necessary to add the IP superstructure into their
    products.  It may also not be apprpriate to do so in all cases.
    Using GSMP to do this seems reasonable.  Avri mentioned that she
    had spoken to Jim Luciani (one of the co-chairs of the proposed
    IPO group) about this and indicated that he is agreement with the
    GSMP WG taking on this work.  
    
    Statement from the floor; GSMP is today only of  interest
    for the vendors who doing both HW and SW, the small optical startups
    have no clue of SW, so it should be boosted by them.  Avri
    responded that the carriers are also picking up some interest and
    that GSMP is used within MSF which architecture corresponds to
    GSMPs.  But that she agreed that this should be of interst to
    Optical vendors.

    -- Support for Switch Partitioning 
    There has been a call from some service providers and vendors for
    GSMP to support switch partitioning.  This could be done either
    within the GSMP protocol or a-priori by a MIB or PIB.  In either
    case to make switch partitioning dynamic would require GSMP
    support.  It was mentioned that if this task is approved as a
    GSMP work item it will require cooperation with the VPN BoF/WG to
    understand the requirements.
    
    Question from the floor: There was a proposal to use PIBS which
    are carried by COPS for partioning. It was therefore unclear which
    protocol the group wanted to use?  David Putxolu responded that
    the authors wanted to raise the interest for the area, we made a
    pib. This could be adjusted.

    Hans commented that the switch partition work item has the
    character of bottom-up work, and that the GSMP wg should focus on
    the GSMP and related issues, and avoid become an architectural
    group to deal with all issues of switch - controller separation.
    Avri responded that this was true and that the architectural
    issues would need to be resolved with the cooperation of other
    groups working on issues of VPN control.  Avri also mentioned that
    the MSF was interested in the problem of switch partitioning and
    could be counted on to request changes to GSMP to support switch
    partitioning.

    -- Support for IP forwarding devices
    There is a proposal to add suppurt for IP forwarding devices. MSF
    is adding IP support in their next version, and HW implementations
    are going to become available. In his presentation David Putzolu
    argued that this work is best suited for IETF Routing area and
    that the specific expertise needed currently existed in the GSMP
    WG.

    --Other work items 
    In additon to the items mentioned above that were part of the
    formal proposal, several items were suggested by wg members.  These
    consisted of suggestions for other switch support,
    e.g. SDH/Sonet. These will be added to the re-charter application
    since there was concensus on doing this.  Some discussion will
    occur on the list to develop the list of device types that should
    be supported.
    
    There was one comment from the floor that the group should focus
    on support for Optical Switching alone since this was the biggest
    opportunity for deployment of GSMP.  This was generally not
    supported, especially by those who suggested that GSMP be
    extended to support other switch types.
    
    --Milestones

    Avri presented some proposed milestones,  
    - Document requirements for switch partitioning 
    - Document requirements for optical switching  
    - Document requirements for IP packet switches
    - Produce extensions, MIBs and PIBs consitent with the requirements
    - Update base gsmpv3 due to implementation experience
    
Avri asked if there was consensus in the group with proceeding on all
the proposed areas. Handraising and humming indicated approval for
proceeding on all, with no opposition indicated.

A new charter will be created and posted to the list. First draft on
requirement will be introduced into next IETF. The group agreed on
that six month for requirements and a year for the extensions were
reasonable targets. Operational implementation is coming in due time.

Avri also asked for information about the different
implementations. If this information was not confidential it should be
posted to the list, otherwise, if it was confidential it could be
privately posted to the chairs. This would then be relayed to the
IESG, which could be expected to maintain the confidentiality.

-I-Ds Presented

Two PIBS were presented; one on switch partitioning and one on IP 
forwarding.  There was some discussion on accepting them as WG work
items, but this was put off pending the approval of a new charter.

IP Forwarding PIB < draft-khosravi-ip-fwd-pib-00.txt> - Hormuzd
Khosravi

    The purpose of the presentation was not to go into the discussion
    of mibs and pibs, but to guage the interest in GSMP WG.  The
    motivation is offloading the routing protocol computation e.g. on
    a network processor. Also, MSF will require support for IP. COPS
    may be useful. The pibs fits well with the gsmp framework.

    The actual model is based on the IP forwarding table rfc2096. But
    stripped to only contain the parts necessary to configure the
    device to do the forwarding decision.  Open issues are IPv6,
    Multicast and multipath forwarding. Proposal to accept this as a
    WG item.

    Avri responded that even if the group is supportive to the idea,
    it can't be made a WG item before the recharter.

Multiple Virtual Router Partitioning Policy Information Base 
<draft-anderson-mvr-pib-00.txt> - Todd Andersen

    The work is derived and is largely based on a MSF mib written by
    the co-authors. The motivation is that MSF is adopting GSMP as
    reference point, but standard mechanisms to define virtual
    switches do not exist but are required. NBVPN uses MVR. It was
    reiterated that the transport mechanism is not important, it's the
    data model itself that was the focus of the work.

    Partitioned resources is bandwidth, buffer space, label space,
    routing table space, IP addresses.  Open issues are: Virtual ports
    between the VRs. It's also an open issue whether this work should
    be done in GSMP WG or the potential NBVPN WG.

    Avri responded that it is most likely well suited as joint work.

There being no more comments or issues, the meeting adjourned by Kenneth.