RE: WG Consensus Call: draft-swallow-gmpls-overlay-00.txt

["Lazer, Monica A, ALASO" <mlazer@att.com>]

Kireeti,
Generally speaking, I do not think it is a good idea to proliferate
multiple options supporting the same thing. It will make
interoperability efforts quite painful. So, regarding you points, I
would like to bring the following.
OIF produces interoperability agreements, it is a forum recognized by
ITU-T, and until recently also by IETF. It has had a liaison process
with both (among others). In this sense I do not quite understand your
point a. Other interoperability forums, such as ATMF, TMF produce
agreements, which are then referenced by both vendors and operators for
compliance. So, in this sense it is not clear to me what is the truth
value of the statement in point a. Not clear what the semantics are -
ITU-T produces recommendations. So would one than state that they are
not standards? IETF produces RFC (request for comments?) Then these are
also not standards?

Regarding point b - true. But I would like to understand what is the
value for the whole industry in doing this, which brings me to point c.
While the application may not be identical, I believe that the
application addressed by this draft can easily supported by the existing
UNI 1.0.

Overall, I was glad to see IETF agreeing to the importance of the
overlay model for the carriers, which are still the owners of the more
ubiquitous networks. However, I believe that we should be careful about
proliferating protocols without due diligence in assessing whether they
are required. From a carrier perspective, supporting a third UNI
alternative will bring additional concerns regarding interoperability
and managing the network. Since the existing networks use a range of
control alternatives, having a protocol that only works with one
protocol, which is not widely deployed, will make it difficult to
operate. UNI 1.0 allows transition to use of GMPLS-based protocols
without the assumption of overnight replacement of existing control
plane implementations, which is not even feasible for a large network.

Monica A. Lazer
Network Architecture and Reliability

908 234 8462
mlazer@att.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Kireeti Kompella [mailto:kireeti@juniper.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 5:04 AM
To: Khuzema Pithewan
Cc: ccamp@ops.ietf.org
Subject: RE: WG Consensus Call: draft-swallow-gmpls-overlay-00.txt

> This draft addresses the overlay networks which UNI1.0 from OIF
addresses.
> shouldn't we have one document addressing one problem. In fact, UNI1.0
> addresses it in-depth, so why there is a need of another document
talking
> about overlay networks?

I guess you haven't really been following the CCAMP email, so I'll
repeat:
(a) the OIF UNI1.0 is *not* a standard;
(b) just because the OIF is discussing something doesn't preclude the
    IETF from discussing it;
(c) the problems addressed are not quite the same.

If having two documents in this space is an issue, please make your
concerns known to the OIF.

Kireeti.