Subject: [mpls] Liaison from MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance on RFC 3036 Proposed Revisions

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 01:04:26 -0400

This email was originally sent by a non-list member and is being held up
pending approval.  To get it out quickly to the list, I'm resending it on
behalf of Rao Cherukuri, [email-masked].

Dear George, Loa, and Ina:

A recent message on the MPLS WG mailing list
(http://www.cell-relay.com/mhonarc/mpls/2004-Sep/msg00043.html) has
suggested changes to RFC 3036 ("LDP Specification") and called for comments
on the proposed changes.  One of the proposed changes is to deprecate the
use of the Host Address FEC TLV.  Two Implementation Agreements published by
the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance (MFA), "MPLS Proxy Admission Control
Definition" and "MPLS Proxy Admission Control Protocol", MFA.6.0.0 and 
MFA.7.0.0
(http://www.mplsforum.org/tech/mpls-proxy-admission-control-definition-ia.pdf 
and
http://www.mplsforum.org/tech/mpls-proxy-admission-control-protocol-ia.pdf)
make use of the Host Address FEC TLV.  MPLS Proxy Admission Control provides
a bandwidth-based reservation/admission facility for MPLS networks.  There
are implementations of this protocol in progress.

While the proposed changes make a Prefix FEC TLV with a 32-bit mask
equivalent to a Host Address FEC TLV, adopting the Prefix FEC TLV would
require changes to approved and published MFA documents, and changes to the
implementations.  Also, since MPLS Proxy Admission Control only uses host
addresses, using the Prefix FEC TLV would necessitate an additional check
that the prefix was always 32 bits.  Therefore, the MFA kindly requests that
the Host Address FEC TLV not be deprecated, and that it continues to be
supported in future revisions of LDP.

In RFC 3036, there is a semantic difference between a Host Address and a
prefix with length 32.  The new version proposes to remove the semantic
difference.  This is not a problem for the MPLS Proxy Admission Control; we
are just requesting that the Host Address codepoint not be deprecated.

Please advise us as soon as possible about the decision on this issue.

Cordially,
Rao Cherukuri
MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance
Technical Committee Chair

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

---

From: Eric Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 01:29:59 -0400

Andy,

    This liaison makes it seem as if there are implementations out in 
the world
that depend on the use of the Host Address FEC. Do you know if that is the
case?  If so, where were the vendors that implement it when the question was
asked earlier?

    Or is this a case of a "paper-dependency" where the real 
implementations
actually use the 32 bit prefix FEC?

--
Eric

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 01:46:00 -0400

Eric,

We recently completed work on the spec, and implementations are in 
progress.  So it's a timing thing mostly.  If the question is asked again 
in a few months, there will be implementations to report on.  It's not a 
paper dependency - the spec uses the Host Address FEC as currently specified.

Cheers,
Andy

-----------

At 10/8/2004 01:29 AM -0400, Eric Gray wrote:
>Andy,
>
>    This liaison makes it seem as if there are implementations out in the 
> world
>    Or is this a case of a "paper-dependency" where the real implementations