RE: MPLS OAM & the IETF

[neil.2.harrison@bt.com]

Come on guys...you cannot say this and still allow IETF to countenance GMPLS
work on SDH/OTNs.  It also presupposes one has agreement on some quite
fundamental networking principles that *have* to embrace cnls, co/pkt-sw and
co/cct-sw, and to date I am not comfortable I can 'trust' one body to create
the required networking solutions I need.

regards, Neil
<snip>
Giles Heron wrote 06 March 2002 23:17
> George Swallow wrote:
> 
> >>Could you please clarify option (1) a bit more? If this route is
> >>taken, still cooperation is needed between ITU and IETF. For example
> >>ITU may need MPLS signaling extensions. Also in some cases packet
> >>processing may need to be aligned between ITU and IETF in order to
> >>avoid conflicts. For example ITU may consider an MPLS 
> path-trace that
> >>uses TTL expiration, which requires a TTL expired MPLS packet to be
> >>forwarded to MPLS OAM module, while GTTP considers sending MPLS TTL
> >>expired packets to ICMP/GTTP module. There needs to be a 
> coordination
> >>between IETF and ITU in order to find a common method which could
> >>determine whether a packet should be forwarded to OAM or ICMP/GTTP
> >>module.
> >>
> > 
> > It's precisely issues such as these that lead me to believe that it
> > would be best if *only one* standards body owns a core technology.
> > Certainly other bodies should be free to create applications, define
> > extentions, and do implementation agreements.  But when it come to
> > something a central as the basic forwarding plane, one group alone
> > should handle it.
> > 
> > Allowing another body to redifine core functions WILL lead to
> > interoperability problems.
> 
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> I'm not sure which of Scott's options this corresponds to, though!  I 
> don't want to see the IETF working on MPLS OAM as per option 2, but 
> option 1 seems to be a step down the road of allowing the ITU to 
> "co-own" MPLS?
> 
> Giles
>