In yesterday's meeting, there was a request for more information on the VLAN label range requirement. From the original OIF liaison, the description was:
"We are investigating label formats to represent a list or range of VLAN identifiers, as used in MEF.11 bundling. In the case where a large number of non-consecutive VLAN identifiers is used for the same connection, we would like to keep the label to a reasonable size."
The requirement to send a range of VLAN identifiers in signalling arises in the bundling feature in Ethernet services as specified in Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and ITU-T SG15 documents. In the MEF, the MEF.11 spec "User Network Interface (UNI) Requirements and Framework" there is a UNI service attribute called "bundling" that is described as "A UNI attribute in which more than one CE-VLAN ID is associated with an EVC." It is more fully described in MEF.10 "Ethernet Services Attributes Phase 1". Both technical specs may be obtained free at: http://www.metroethernetforum.org/TechSpec.htm
Equivalent ITU-T Recs. are G.8011, G8011.1, and G.8011.2. These are available to ITU-T members, or under a "3 free" capability on the ITU-T website.
Of interest is the MEF Ethernet Link Management Interface (E-LMI) defined in MEF.16 that has an encoding for passing VLAN ranges between the UNI client and network. This in a structure called the "CE-VLAN ID/EVC Map information element".
I hope this provides more clarity to the VLAN label range issue.
Stephen Shew
Metro Ethernet Networks
Nortel
sdshew@nortel.com
Telephone: +1 613 763 2462 / ESN 393 2462