Subject: Re: [OPSAWG] draft-mizrahi-opsawg-oam-overview-00

From: Tal Mizrahi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:34:00 +0200

Hi Ron,

Since OAM was developed in many parallel paths, some of the mechanisms and terminology, as you say, were inherited from SONET or ATM, while others were developed for IP / Ethernet networks. I believe, indeed that the IETF should adopt a consistent OAM architecture for various transport types, but the current document does not intend to do this.
Indeed, the intent of this document is to provide a brief summary and a comparison of existing OAM mechanisms, emphasizing the differences in terminology and in functionality. With all the OAM chaos that we are up against these days, it feels like such a document is necessary.

Regards,
Tal.

Tal,

What is the intent of this document? If it is merely to exchange

information between SDO's, that's fine. However, I think that you could

take this document a step further. You could use this document to frame

a conversation about which OAM capabilities the IETF should develop and

which they should avoid.

For example, in Section 3.2.4, you distinguish between a failure, a

fault and a defect. In a connection oriented-environment, like SONET,

where bandwidth is reserved even when it is not being used, it makes

sense to manage all three. It also makes sense for the OAM mechanism to

be built into the protocol, as they are in SONET.

However, it is possible that neither assumption is true for

statistically multiplexed, connectionless environments like IP or

Ethernet. If you want to broaden the scope of your document, you might

want to explore these issues.

                                  Ron

                                 /speaking as individual contributor

>       Title           : An Overview of Operations,

> Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) Mechanisms

>       Author(s)       : T. Mizrahi

>       Filename        : draft-mizrahi-opsawg-oam-overview-00.txt

>       Pages           : 22

>       Date            : 2009-10-07

> Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) is a general term

> that refers to detecting and reporting link failures. OAM mechanisms

> have been defined for various layers in the protocol stack, and are

> used with a variety of protocols.

> This document presents an overview of the OAM mechanisms that have

> been defined and are currently being defined by the IETF, as well as

> a comparison to other OAM mechanisms that have been defined by the

> IEEE and ITU-T.

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Tal Mizrahi, Marvell, Switching - Product Definition Architect
Email: [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
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