Subject: RE: MPLS OAM

From: "Deepak Sathyamurthy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 13:58:25 +0530

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas D. Nadeau [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 12:38 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Deepak Sathyamurthy; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: MPLS OAM 

At 10:33 AM 12/30/2002 -0500, Curtis Villamizar wrote:

>In message 
><[email-masked]>,
>"Dee
>pak Sathyamurthy" writes:
> >
> > Hi,
> > =20
> > There are various proposals for supporting trace route and ping on 
> > MPLS. = IP ping and trace route use RFC 2925 MIB. Will there be any 
> > changes, = additions required to this MIB for supporting MPLS ping 
> > and trace route? =20 Regards,
> > Deepak
>
>
>Deepak,
>
>First of all, not all MIBs that are defined get used in practice.  I 
>know of no ISP that is using the ping MIB to drive pings or collect 
>information.  It is just too inefficient to do things that way.  I 
>don't think any routers implement it.  I welcome any corrections.

         There are actually many of my customers using the standard and Cisco-proprietary version of the Ping MIB.  However, as Curtis points out, on a large scale, use of the MIB directly is problematic for performance reasons. This is why many of our customers have moved to using a more automated (proprietary) system called SAA.

>The tier one ISPs that I know have been and probably still are using 
>pings are either doing ad-hoc testing or driving tests from pizza boxes 
>(1U rackmounts) running *ix that do statistical collection and if 
>applicable raise alarms by other means.  In some cases one way 
>measurements are made rather than use ping at all.  Traceroute is 
>almost always strictly ad-hoc testing or very customized information 
>gathering such as the CAIDA skitter program (which doesn't use a MIB).
>
>If we end up doing an LSP-ping MIB, which too may go unused, then 
>someone that thinks it will be used can write it.  IMHO it can be a 
>separate document.

         It can probably be written as a MIB that augments the existing one.

---> Now I wonder if there will be any takers for this as I am hearing that Ping MIB isn't popular with implementers. But what are the reasons for Ping MIB's performance problem? (if at all somebody is attempting to augment it, the info will help in taking care of the issue). 

--Deepak 
         --Tom