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Re: Switching technologies requiring bidirectional asymmetric LSPs?



All,

I do believe in the need for asymmetric bidirectional LSPs.
Traffic is by nature asymmetric (for the vast majority of it at least).
We may argue that the sum of asymmetric traffic could lead to symmetric
traffic or that the above statement is dependent on the network segment
we are considering, but it will remain true and we should definitely
capitalize on CCAMP prior work by taking benefit from the advantages of
bidirectional LSP setup.

Furthermore, I believe we should not restrict the work and solution to
Ethernet technology only.

martin

Attila Takacs (IJ/ETH) a écrit :
Hi all,
please see inline [at]
Regards,
Attila

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    *From:* owner-ccamp@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-ccamp@ops.ietf.org]
    *On Behalf Of *Igor Bryskin
    *Sent:* Tuesday, April 17, 2007 10:19 PM
    *To:* Adrian Farrel; ccamp@ops.ietf.org; Lou Berger
    *Subject:* Re: Switching technologies requiring bidirectional
    asymmetric LSPs?

    Adrian, Lou

    Please,see in line.

    */Adrian Farrel <adrian@olddog.co.uk>/* wrote:

        Hi,

        I'm a bit surprised that there was no follow-up to Lou's email.

        Does silence indicate that this was put to bed in Prague and
        no-one is
        interested in these LSPs?
[at] well, as Lou mentioned at least a few of us continue an
        offline discussion on the topic.
> So a few of us have been having been discussing the
        asymmetric work
         > presented in Prague and it seems to me we have an open
        question on
         > requirements.
         >
         > It's clear that at least one switching technology (i.e.,
        ethernet/PBB-TE)
         > requires support for bidirectional asymmetric LSPs.

        Is this clear? I continue to hear talk of service requirements,
        but not so
        much of how those services are required to be supported.

        The benefits I have heard are:
        1. Fewer control plane messages
        2. Ease of enforecement of fate-sharing

        IB>> Adrian, you enumerated here the benefits of bidirectional
        LSPs, and BTW you forgot to mention the most important one.
        Ethernet OAM is designed, as I understand, on assumption that
        the trafic  takes the same  paths in both directions. So, if we
        want to preserve the Ethernet native OAM (which we certainly do
        , because this is half of Ethernet functionality) we must map a
        bidiretcional service on either a single bidirectional LSP or
        two unidirectional LSPs using the same path. This is different
        form MPLS where there are no such OAM requirements.
        Lou is talking about asymetrical bi-directional LSPs, and what
        is not clear (at least for me) whether we need asymetrical p2p
        Ethernet services.
[at] Adrian's points are related to the single session vs.
        multiple session discussions we had, which is generally true for
        any bidirectional LSP.
        The bidirectionality of Ethernet comes basically from two
        aspects imho: (1) in any case, as Igor pointed out, most of the
        CFM functions will only operate properly if there are
        symmetrical paths. (2) on the other hand, if a GMPLS LPS is
        essentially a VLAN within which MAC learning is operating one
will need symmetric paths in order the learning functions properly. I had the impression that we already converged before Prague to
        a single remaining question: do we need the >>asymmetric bw<<
        extension for a single session bidirectional LSP. There were
        some possible cases for asymmetric bw LSPs mentioned by Don,
        Diego and myself but these seemed not to convince
        everybody. Imho we should focus on this question not to loop
        into the discussion we had already.
If we agree on that bidirectional services over Ethernet need
        symmetrical paths than we could conclude that using a single
        session to setup the bidirectional LSP would be the preferred
        way at least over Ethernet. In this case, imho it is quite
        reasonable to assume that asymmetrical services that require a
        dedicated LSP would also use a single signaling exchange to
        setup the LSP, hence there would be a need for the asymmetric bw
        extension. Following this thinking, the question turns into the
        aggregation/hierarchy discussion that was bought up by Dimitri
        earlier. That is, do we have the need of LSPs per service. My
        two cents: generally not but there are certain services where it
is indeed a reasonable assumption, e.g., IPTV or private services. These are significant, but not dramatic, requirements.

         > The question is:
         >
         > Is the *requirement* for bidirectional asymmetric LSPs:
         > (a) a technology specific requirement, or
         > (b) one that is common (this is CCAMP after all!) to multiple
        switching
         > technologies?

        CCAMP deals in transport networks. As far as I can see the service
        requirements would be pretty much the same all transport
        networks and would
        certainly be applicable to packet, L2, and TDM (the latter
        because TDM will
        be called on to support L2).

        IB>> See my comment above: there is a differnce between MPLS and
        Ethernet services. Also there are certainly differences between
        MPLS and lambda services (use of the same lambda in both
        directions, for example). So each transport technology may have
        distinct requirements WRT bidirectional services and connections
        on which the services are mapped.

         > Please keep in mind that service requirements are not the
        same thing as
         > switching technology requirements. For example, we have long
        built
         > bidirectional asymmetric services on unidirectional MPLS LSPs.

        Well, exactly!
        Perhaps someone can explain why the Ethernet hardware is forced
        to require
        bidirectional asymmetric LSPs when MPLS is happy without?

        IB>> Again, IMO the answer is to be able to use native Ethernet OAM.

        Igor

         > The answer to this question will help determine if we should
        have a
         > technology specific solution or a generic CCAMP solution (as
        well as the
         > complexity of the solution.)

        We should not take any action that deliberately precludes or
        makes more
        complex the genericisation (is that an American word?) of the
        solution
        unless there is a significant difference in simplicity of solutions.

        But we should take no action at all unless there is some more
        evidence of
        support for this work!

        Adrian




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