Subject: Need for an open access IPv6 working group at the IETF

From: Francois Menard <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 02:43:55 -0400 (EDT)

Folks,

With the positive result in Lafayette a few hours ago, and the increased 
reliance on non-standard Multi-VRF in CMTS for cable modem open access in 
Canada (which is finally being turned on as we speak), I think it is 
finally time to get my July 17, 1999 proposal out of the drawer (making it 
its 6th anniversary today by pure coincidence... proving again that things 
never change... or at least take forever to change...).

What process should I follow to make this happen from a distance if I 
cannot manage to travel onsite at an IETF meeting? (Vancouver is as far 
from here as Paris!, but I am tempted to go.)

Can anyone comment about whether I should be able to expect getting an 
MPLS LSP straight out of a Cisco CMTS into my own provider edge router as 
an ISP rather than rely on this being done internally by the cable carrier 
to a 7206 acting as the PE, but then running policy routing on the source 
IP address to select the right interface towards the ISP and then require 
to run the DHCP server on behalf of the ISP?

Does anybody know whether this:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps259/prod_bulletin09186a00800921d7.html

is known to be standardized and interoperable at the MPLS level with other 
provider hardware?

I know some people my think that I should ask these questions to Cisco 
directly, but really, this is not the case... In Canada the CMTS hardware 
that cable carriers use might be cisco, but ISPs are free to select the PE 
hardware of their choice... So there is cause for concern that the cable 
carriers might be able to get LSPs straight out of the CMTS devices into 
PEs running at the ISP premises, but are refusing to do so, to restrict 
the cable modem unbundling framework in a manner which is not going to 
stand up for 2 seconds in a complaint at the CRTC (and I'm getting quite 
good at those).

Has anybody got a better architecture to propose?  Do not say PPPoE 
please... I want something that is IPv6 friendly.

I still have in the back of my mind the idea of #1) using IPv6, #2) 
partitioning the flow field range and #3) doing admission control on 
certain ranges in combination with peering on an interdomain basis with 
QoS using a specific DSCP profile for peering across (not the Internet), 
but across the PSTN equivalent of a bill&keep IMT trunk if you want.

My thinking is of getting an LSP from the CMTS serving the cable modem CPE 
of the third party ISP, straight into the third party ISP.

This would allow a fully bridged dedicaed LAN per third party ISP 
end-customer (one per home, using the DOCSIS session identifier to filter 
out broadcast traffic from neighbours on the same optical node).

The third party ISP would then only need to have an IPv6 router with one 
leg into each LAN of each of its residential customers so that NDP works 
as-is.

Does anyone make an IPv6 router with say, the capability of 1000 
subinterfaces? I'd like to have an off-list discussion on this topic with 
those who feel their gear is up to the task.

Does anyone make a tunnel stack for Windows XP which supports IPv4 tunnel 
over IPv6? Does anyone make a router which supports an IPv4 tunnel over 
IPv6?  Does anyone make a VoIP ATA which supports IPv6? Does anoyone make 
an ADSL2+ router + H.264 settop box which supports an IPv4 tunnel over 
IPv6?

Anybody in Asia with the genius to make this happen ?

Best regards,

-=Francois=-
[email-masked]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For references, see a copy of my email dating from July 17, 1999:

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 14:13:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Francois D. Menard" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Equal Access Working Group ...
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Fred, everyone,

I wonder if we should not have a new working group within the IETF that
would issue informational RFC's on the topics of equal access
using Internet Protocol technologies.

Here in Canada, there is a trend in the government mandating shared access
of the high speed Internet access facilities of the incumbent carriers.

This means that instead of mandating shared access to the spectrum, the
government seems to be increasingly satisfied with the incumbents offering
interfaces at Layer 3 to satisfy the pouding requests of the non-facility
based ISP's for a reasonable rate for a connection at the last mile.

Unfortunately, we are already facing a huge problem:

The CATV industry is lining up on variants of Source-Address-Looked
Routing (a.k.a policy routing in Cisco-land) (not to call it source
routing which seems to have more of a meaning for putting the path that
the packet should take in the header of the packet).  This isin't too
bad as long as the CATV operators are confident to be capable of
implementing this in a scaleable manner.  So far, only Regional
Cablesystems of Sudbury/Timmins Ontario has done it and seems to
be satisfied with it.

The huge problem is that Bell Canada seems to have unilaterally
decided to choose the hidious PPPoE solution for implementing
shared access of its monopoly on the last mile for high-speed
Internet access.

I am no expert at this, but my recent research demonstrates that
looking at IP protocols from the angle of Equal Access makes you
think very differently.   Equal Access MPLS ... hmmm

I for one would like to see a serious effort on the part of the
IETF to make recommendations which would represent thorough concensus
from the part of IETF members.

For example, I would like to see a debate on the issue of the scalabiluty
of path selection according to the source address of the packet.  This
seems to me the only fair solution because it is the only one that would
route with information that is present on the simplest packet.  Routing
based on TOS, Tags or any other form of packet differentiation basically
implies that the person who is in control of the packet differentiation
has a bigger hammer than you.  And we're talking here of "equal access
routing".  Is is fair to say that source-looked routing is "fragile"
or "slow", with zillions of startups implementing fast paths based on
IP header information on a per packet basis ?

Pointers, ideas, anything ?

-=Francois=-

--
[email-masked]
819 692 1383

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
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https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Clint Chaplin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 01:20:59 -0700

The below looks to me, at way too late at night, like something that a
car mechanic in  cartoon might say to a naive customer when he wanted
to snow them.

Which shows something, but I'm not sure what.

On 7/16/05, Francois Menard <[email-masked]> wrote:

-- 
Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin
Wireless Security Technologist
Wireless Standards Manager

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:17:13 +0200

Francois,

> using Internet Protocol technologies. 

Well, I'm quite sure the answer is no. That is a business model, policy and
governance question, and these are not areas within the IETF's mission.
Discussion of specific vendor's products is also outside our scope, except
when they directly illustrate technical discussions.

It's clear that producing technical standards that are fair and open is
in the IETF's mission, and that is where we should focus. If you have
technical proposals that tackle this, they are most welcome, in Paris,
Vancouver, or on-line.

You might, however, be interested by RFC 4084.

Regards

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Brian E Carpenter
IETF Chair

Francois Menard wrote:
> reliance on non-standard Multi-VRF in CMTS for cable modem open access 
> in Canada (which is finally being turned on as we speak), I think it is 
> finally time to get my July 17, 1999 proposal out of the drawer (making 
> it its 6th anniversary today by pure coincidence... proving again that 
> things never change... or at least take forever to change...).
> 
> MPLS LSP straight out of a Cisco CMTS into my own provider edge router 
> as an ISP rather than rely on this being done internally by the cable 
> carrier to a 7206 acting as the PE, but then running policy routing on 
> the source IP address to select the right interface towards the ISP and 
> then require to run the DHCP server on behalf of the ISP?
> 
> is known to be standardized and interoperable at the MPLS level with 
> other provider hardware?
> 
> directly, but really, this is not the case... In Canada the CMTS 
> hardware that cable carriers use might be cisco, but ISPs are free to 
> select the PE hardware of their choice... So there is cause for concern 
> that the cable carriers might be able to get LSPs straight out of the 
> CMTS devices into PEs running at the ISP premises, but are refusing to 
> do so, to restrict the cable modem unbundling framework in a manner 
> which is not going to stand up for 2 seconds in a complaint at the CRTC 
> (and I'm getting quite good at those).
> 
> My thinking is of getting an LSP from the CMTS serving the cable modem 
> CPE of the third party ISP, straight into the third party ISP.
> 
> end-customer (one per home, using the DOCSIS session identifier to 
> filter out broadcast traffic from neighbours on the same optical node).
> 
> subinterfaces? I'd like to have an off-list discussion on this topic 
> with those who feel their gear is up to the task.
> 
> Does anyone make a tunnel stack for Windows XP which supports IPv4 
> tunnel over IPv6? Does anyone make a router which supports an IPv4 
> tunnel over IPv6?  Does anyone make a VoIP ATA which supports IPv6? Does 
> anoyone make an ADSL2+ router + H.264 settop box which supports an IPv4 
> tunnel over IPv6?
>

---

From: Francois Menard <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:19:22 -0400 (EDT)

> governance question, and these are not areas within the IETF's mission.

I am in agreement that open access issues as they relate to business 
models, policy or governance, are not areas within the IETF mission.

However, you have avoided giving consideration to the technical guts of my 
proposal: re: IPv6 flow field range partitioning, IPv6 prefix propagation 
and MPLS LSP to v6 flow mapping (as they emerge from DOCSIS SIDs).  I am 
not proposing an open access working group per se, but I would like to 
know what the IETF-ers think about how best to support multiple 
simultaneous ISPs in an IETF-standardized sort of way.  Do not ask me to 
have these discussions at Cablelabs... they do not want it. So where else?

I've been out of touch for a while, so if anybody can bring me up to speed 
in a manner that is a bit more enthusiastic, I would appreciate deeply.

> when they directly illustrate technical discussions.

Can one at least tell me whether Multi-VRF is known to be an IETF 
standard? What is the RFC?

> technical proposals that tackle this, they are most welcome, in Paris,

I should propose an ID in the IPv6 working group?

> You might, however, be interested by RFC 4084.

I do not see the relevance of this RFC.  Anything else?

-=Francois=-
819 692 1383

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:21:29 -0700

Since the CMTS is not the originating node it can not modify the flow label
field, so do not look there. This sounds exactly like the case that the
routing header was created for, but for some reason people consistently
refuse to look there ...

I agree there needs to be some thought about a standardized way to handle
the problem and would like to continue this discussion off list for now. 

Tony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Francois Menard
> Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 10:19 AM
> To: Brian E Carpenter
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Need for an open access IPv6 working group at the IETF
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 11:24:17 +0200

Francois Menard wrote:
> However, you have avoided giving consideration to the technical guts of 
> my proposal: re: IPv6 flow field range partitioning, IPv6 prefix 
> propagation and MPLS LSP to v6 flow mapping (as they emerge from DOCSIS 
> SIDs).  I am not proposing an open access working group per se, but I 
> would like to know what the IETF-ers think about how best to support 
> multiple simultaneous ISPs in an IETF-standardized sort of way.  Do not 
> ask me to have these discussions at Cablelabs... they do not want it. So 
> where else?

That should be discussed either in the relevant WGs or initially off line
with anyone who shows interest.

> I've been out of touch for a while, so if anybody can bring me up to 
> speed in a manner that is a bit more enthusiastic, I would appreciate 
> deeply.
> 

Somebody from the Routing area probably needs to answer that.

> I should propose an ID in the IPv6 working group?

I'm not sure that is the right WG; not everything IPv6-ish takes
place in the IPv6 WG. In fact, almost every IETF WG should take
account of IPv6 issues. The VPN work in the IETF is split between
the Internet and Routing areas - see the list of active WGs
at http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/wg-dir.html

> I do not see the relevance of this RFC.  

It's the nearest we have to documentation of what "Internet access"
means objectively.

     Brian