Re: Flow label versus Extension header - protocol itself

[Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>]

On 5-mei-2005, at 14:10, Francis Dupont wrote:

> > there can not be two different simultaneous uses of flow labels

>    Please tell us why you think this is so,

> => because they have a different definition of what is a flow and
> how the flow state establishment method works.

What is a flow and how it's established is of no importance to us  
here. At some point the source host slaps a flow label on packets  
that it considers to be part of the same flow. How and why it does  
that isn't important for shim6, the only thing we care about is that  
the flow label is unique between the full set of locator addresses  
and that after a rehoming the flow label remains the same so we get  
to recognize the flow in question so we can map the right upper layer  
identifier back.

This doesn't get in the way of other uses for the flow label as it's  
currently defined. Since we get stern warnings from the guy with many  
hats that we can't change the flow label semantics I'll assume that  
other people also won't be able to do that. So we are compatible with  
the existing flow label aothers also have to, so there isn't a problem.