Subject: [mpls] Protocol Action: 'Label Edge Router Forwarding of IPv4 Option Packets' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-mpls-ip-options-07.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2011 07:05:32 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Label Edge Router Forwarding of IPv4 Option Packets'
  (draft-ietf-mpls-ip-options-07.txt) as a Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Multiprotocol Label Switching Working
Group.

The IESG contact persons are Adrian Farrel and Stewart Bryant.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mpls-ip-options/

Technical Summary

Requirements for Label Edge Router Forwarding of IPv4 Option Packets specifies 
how Label Edge Routers (LER) should behave when determining whether to MPLS 
encapsulate an IP packet with header options.  Lack of a formal standard has resulted 
in different LER forwarding behaviors for IP packets with header options despite being 
associated with a prefix-based Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC). IP option packets
 that belong to a prefix-based FEC but fail to be MPLS encapsulated simply due to their 
header options present a security risk against the MPLS infrastructure. Further, LERs 
that are unable to MPLS encapsulate IP packets with header options cannot operate in 
certain MPLS environments.  While this newly defined LER behavior is mandatory to 
implement, it is optional to invoke.

Working Group Summary

Nothing worth noting, except that there was some discussion of whether this should go
 forward as an informational draft.  The WG consensus was to have it on the Standards 
track. Further details of this dicussion can be seen in the proto write-up.

Document Quality

This is not a protocol extension but implementations of the described mechanism may 
exist.  The document quality is good as well as the review.

Personnel

George Swallow is the Document Shepherd
Adrian Farrel is the responsible Area Director