Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: WG Review: Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (trill)

From: Tony Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 10:16:22 -0700

Margaret,

Thanks for your response.  IESG cc'ed per your request.

> Please let me know if you have any further questions.  The IESG will be
> making a decision on this charter at our telechat this Thursday (June
> 23rd), so if you have an opinion about whether or not we should charter
> this WG in the IETF, please send your comments to the IESG at
> [email-masked].  We are interested in hearing from folks who do want this
> work charted (especially from folks who are willing to invest time to
> make this happen), as well as from folks who have objections to
> chartering the group.

While I have no objection to chartering this group, I'm left scratching
my head in wonder, trying to find the consistency between accepting this
work and the previous decision to reject the IS-IS work on jumbo frames.
 You may recall that the opinion at the time was that the work would
step on IEEE toes and therefore the work was halted.  The IEEE chooses
not to endorse jumbo frames, so in some sense there is no
'standardization' to be done.  Vendors, however, continue to ship
running code for jumbo frames.  And there is no agreement for IS-IS
operation in such situations.

IMHO, the IETF needs to re-examine its goals and operations in this
regard.  What used to be an organization that was about standardizing
de-facto standards is now engaged in politicking at the expense of
technology.  We claim to eschew kings and voting, but we seem to be
engaged in SDO diplomacy at the expense of code, users, and the
Internet.  Does that seem right to you?

Regards,
Tony Li

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From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 07:49:16 -0400

Hi Tony,

>work and the previous decision to reject the IS-IS work on jumbo frames.

I am sorry, but I am not familiar with the decision to reject work on 
IS-IS jumbo frames.  I don't follow the IS-IS WG, so if the decision 
was made in that context, I would not have been aware of it.

>operation in such situations.

This sounds like a difficult situation.

In the particular case of TRILL, we were concerned that the work 
might conflict with IEEE work, so we talked to the IEEE 802 
leadership about it.  They did not express interest in chartering 
this work in the IEEE, and they did not object to chartering it in 
the IETF.

I am not quite sure what we would have done if the IEEE had said that 
they would not charter the work, but that they objected to the IETF 
chartering the work...  Luckily for me and the folks working on 
TRILL, we did not have to figure out what to do in that situation.

>Internet.  Does that seem right to you?

Personally, I agree with you on many counts...  I think that we do 
our best work when we standardize something that is already 
implemented in various forms and/or when vendors or operators decide 
that it would be useful to standardize an already-deployed 
technology, so that we can maximize interoperability and have a clear 
forum to discuss clarifications and extensions.

There are, of course, a large number of people who don't agree with 
that image of the IETF.  They believe that we should be standardizing 
ideas that come out of our research efforts, developing solutions to 
real (or perceived?) problems with the operation of the Internet, 
and/or standardizing solutions that will meet the needs of market 
niches that are not addressed by current technologies.   In fact, I 
suspect that most of us have fallen into one of those camps from 
time-to-time.

There is a widely held belief that standardizing a solution greatly 
increases the possibility that vendors and operators will implement 
and deploy the solution, and I am really not sure that this is the 
case...  Maybe this is a cultural issue -- 3GPP vendor and operators, 
for example, will implement and deploy whatever is standardized as 
"3GPP".  But, the more traditional Internet doesn't work that way -- 
we can't make someone implement something by standardizing it, and we 
can't prevent them by not standardizing it.  It might help for us to 
remember that more often.

Ultimately, though, the best way to address this problem is not by 
trying to enforce a specific view of the IETF from the top down 
(which would defeat the whole purpose), but through communicating a 
different vision of the IETF and trying to get enough people to adopt 
that vision that it becomes the prevailing culture (again?).

Margaret

I

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From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 08:11:12 -0400

> this work in the IEEE, and they did not object to chartering it in 

I am told that there is a new work item developing somewhere in IEEE
802, "shortest path bridging", which will deal with optimum paths and
fast convergence while maintaining current forwarding semantics.  I
was also told that there is talk of a tutorial BOF at the Paris IETF
about it.  I'm trying to get my source to speak up and say all this
wrt TRILL.

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 08:44:48 -0400

Hi Scott,

We are aware of this proposed work in the IEEE, and the major 
proponents of this work (Mick Seaman and Norm Finn) were present on 
the call that we had with IEEE 802 leadership to discuss chartering 
the TRILL WG in the IETF.

The proposed IEEE effort is an (R)STP-based mechanism and will, 
therefore, have different applicability than a link-state-based 
mechanism, such as TRILL.  I am not sure how/if either will fare in 
the market, but they are not directly overlapping efforts.  In fact, 
there has been some interest in TRILL expressed by  at least one IEEE 
WG chair, as that group may have a need for a link-state Ethernet 
routing mechanism.

Margaret

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From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 08:58:41 -0400

OK thanks.

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From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 08:54:45 -0400

Hi All,

Erik forwarded this message to me, so that I could reply.  I used to 
be on routing-discussion (at least I thought I was), but I don't seem 
to be now, so please include me in any responses.

At 14:44:54 AM -0400 6/20/05, Eric W Gray wrote:
>Tony,
>
>     No disagreement from me.  Perhaps the next obvious question is - has
>anyone taken this to the
>IEEE?

We have talked to the IEEE about this, and they are very aware of 
this work.  There were several e-mail exchanges with IEEE 802 leaders 
in response to the first charter that was circulated for external 
review last November.  This lead to an e-mail discussion between IEEE 
leadership and the IESG/IAB.  We then had a conference call between 
the interested IESG folks, Bernard Aboba (IEEE liaison manager for 
the IETF) and the IEEE 802 leadership.  An rbridge (AKA TRILL) 
tutorial was also held at an IEEE 802 plenary.

The IEEE is developing a solution for shortest-path bridging, an 
(R)STP approach being developed in IEEE 802.1.  We were quite 
concerned about the potential for conflict between the TRILL work and 
the IEEE 802.1 work, and that was discussed via e-mail and on the 
call.  In the end, we concluded that a link-state-based approach will 
have different applicability than an (R)STP-based approach, and there 
has even some interest in a link-state-based approach from other 
parts of IEEE 802.

We also discussed where this work would best be housed -- in the 
IETF, in the iEEE or as a joint activity.  We don't have any 
mechanism for joint activities with the IEEE, and that option was 
quickly dismissed.  We understand that this is close to the line 
between the two organizations, but the conclusion of our discussions 
was that the development of a link-state-based Ethernet routing 
mechanism is better done in the IETF than in the IEEE.  The IEEE 
leadership did not object to the IETF pursuing this work.

The IEEE 802.1 technical leaders (Mick Seaman and Norm Finn) 
suggested that this work should be review by IEEE 802.1 for 
compliance with the Ethernet service model, and the charter includes 
a request for a formal liaison relationship with IEEE 802.1 for this 
purpose.  It has been pointed out that the purpose of the liaison 
relationship is not clear enough in the current charter, and we will 
be modifying the charter to add explicit IEEE 802.1 review milestones 
for both the architecture document and the specification.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.  The IESG will 
be making a decision on this charter at our telechat this Thursday 
(June 23rd), so if you have an opinion about whether or not we should 
charter this WG in the IETF, please send your comments to the IESG at 
[email-masked].  We are interested in hearing from folks who do want 
this work charted (especially from folks who are willing to invest 
time to make this happen), as well as from folks who have objections 
to chartering the group.

Thanks,
Margaret

---

From: Tony Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 09:24:16 -0700

Hi Margaret,

> In the particular case of TRILL, we were concerned that the work might
> conflict with IEEE work, so we talked to the IEEE 802 leadership about
> it.  They did not express interest in chartering this work in the IEEE,
> and they did not object to chartering it in the IETF.
> 
> chartering the work...  Luckily for me and the folks working on TRILL,
> we did not have to figure out what to do in that situation.

Given this, I would like to propose that we re-open the work on IS-IS
over jumbo frames.  Since the IEEE has clearly said that jumbo frames
are out of scope, they can hardly object to the IETF working on it.

> trying to enforce a specific view of the IETF from the top down (which
> would defeat the whole purpose), but through communicating a different
> vision of the IETF and trying to get enough people to adopt that vision
> that it becomes the prevailing culture (again?).

Please see above.  We were stopped previously by the IESG adopting just
such a specific view about structured standards development and imposing
it from the top down.  You seem to indicate that the situation may have
changed and that the IESG may now be more amenable to a more pragmatic
approach.

Regards,
Tony

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From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:17:45 -0400

Tony,

  [cc: header slightly trimmed]

>I would like to propose that we re-open the work on IS-IS

My recollection, assisted with email archives, was that in December
2001, you, Randy and Ran agreed on a way forward: split the longer MTU
specification into a new document, and then define IS-IS over that.
Randy sent out drafts called draft-ymbk-mtu-00 in late 2001/early 2002
that I thought were for the first step, but I never saw anything beyond
that.

Since this was happening right as I was becoming an AD, perhaps I have
some of the details of the plan wrong, but I had thought that there was
a way forward that was then dropped by the participants due to lack of
cycles, not because the IESG said no.

  Bill

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From: Tony Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 10:43:09 -0700

Bill,

Sorry, but I was explicitly told to stop work.

Regardless of that, are you saying that it's possible to continue the work?

Tony

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From: Erik Nordmark <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 14:22:26 -0700

> that I thought were for the first step, but I never saw anything beyond

My recollection is that the feedback from IEEE 802 was that we shouldn't 
touch non-standard things like jumbo-frames, and as a result nothing 
more was done in this area.

Perhaps we asked a suboptimal question back then; whether IEEE 802 liked 
the idea of us doing something for jumboframes and IS-IS. Had we instead 
asked them whether they were going to specify how jumboframes work with 
IS-IS, we would probably have received a different answer.

    Erik