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What we disagree on RE: TE Requirements Draft-ELSP



Nabil and Shahram,

The one option we disagree on is:
(iiia): Using E-LSPs with traffic from multiple OAs with multiple BW and 
single value for all other attributes (preemption, CT, affinity...).

I recommend we do NOT add support for (iiia) in DSTE-REQTs at this stage. 
Here is why:
         1) (iiia) brings absolutely no new functionality
         2) (iiia) may only be used in limited situations
         3) the only benefit is debatable in practical networks
         4) it requires protocol extensions and options , which we already 
have a lot of
         5) these protocol extensions have been explicitely discussed and 
rejected earlier
         6) we still don't know whether there are SPs which may really 
benefit from this

More details on each point:

1) this brings absolutely NO new functionality: absolutely anything you can 
do with (iiia) can be done with L-LSPs already. There has been some 
statements along the lines of "(iiia) gives you better restoration this and 
that"; this is absolutely incorrect since you can achieve anything you can 
do with (iiia) (and more) using L-LSPs. So I'd like to make it 100% clear 
that (iiia) is purely about doing in a different way something which can 
already be done .

2) (iiia) may only be used in few cases. (iiia) could only be used to group 
OAs which have different bandwidth requirements BUT have the same affinity 
requirement, have the same preemption requirement, have the same protection 
requirement and have the same Class-Type requirements.
As an interesting example, let's use our Voice_signaling and voice_payload 
example which Nabil also mentions in his draft. Because Voice_payload and 
Voice_signaling have very differnet QoS requirements, I would expect those 
to be typically configured by SP under different Class-Types. This means 
that (iiia) could actually not be used to transport them on a single E-LSP. 
They may also have different preemption priorities because SP may want to 
make sure voice_payload is routed as close as possible to its SPF (because 
of its delay/jitter requirements) while voice_sig may afford to be routed a 
little further away from its SPF. Again, this would mean (iiia) could not 
be used.
So the bottom line is that the SP would sometimes happen to be able to 
group some OAs together with (iiia) but often won't be able to.

3) The only arguable benefit is debatable in practical networks. First, as 
Joel pointed out, it must be made clear that most of the scalability 
aspects are actually equivalent between (iiia) and using L-LSPs. In 
particular on the operational front, they both require the SP to manage 
things at the granularity of the OA (ie monitor/compute/configure bandwidth 
requirements on a per OA basis). I believe this is often the dominant 
scalability burden.
So the only arguable benefit is you may have less LSPs.
But considering the previous point you might be able to group some OAs and 
probably won't  be able to group others so the ballpark maybe that, if 
you're lucky, (iiia) will result in twice less LSPs. I am not sure a factor 
2 in pure number of LSPs (when you have to manage thing at the OA level 
anyway) is a make or break element.

4) (iiia) requires protocol extensions. Although we've tried to resist 
adding options in the "Diff-Serv over MPLS" spec, there are already (too?) 
many options. In my opinion, adding yet another option (to do differently 
what we can already do) is simply going one little step further towards 
making MPLS too complicated. Not a big step, but a step in the wrong direction.

5) Signaling multiple bandwidth is an option that has been considered in 
the making of "Diff-Serv over MPLS" and explicitely excluded as offering 
too little gain over the other options which can already cover the 
requirement and not having clear SP requirements behind. This has been 
validated and revalidated and rerevalidated through the multiple last calls 
on the spec in the MPLS WG and Diff-Serv WG, I don't see any significant 
information justifying reversing that decision.

6) We still don't know whether there are life SPs which expect to be in the 
precise situation where (iiia) would help i.e:
         - OAs have differnet bandwidth constraints but same 
preemption/affinity/CT/restoration
         - a factor of about 2 in number of LSPs makes a significant 
difference (when operations is done on a per-OA basis anyway).


Cheers

Francois

At 12:13 03/12/2001 -0500, Nabil Seddigh wrote:

>Sorry, I guess I wasn't explicit enough.
>
>Yes, (iiib) should not be specifically added until someone expresses
>an interest in it.
>
>
>Best,
>Nabil Seddigh
>
>
> > We understand you're after (iiia). My question was about (iiib). I think
> > your words above implyi you're agreeing with the proposal for (iiib), but
> > can you be explicit about it. Let me repeat the question:
> > "So again, leaving aside (iiia) for now, can you agree that (iiib) should
> > not specifically be added to REQTS draft for now until SPs have expressed
> > the requirement for it?"
> >
> > thanks
> >
> > Francois
> >
> > >Best,
> > >Nabil