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Fw: liaison response to to IETF ccamp WG on MFA Forum MPLS CNI



Hi,

We have received the attached liaison from the MFA.
I expect it will be posted on the IETF web site in due course. In the mean time, you can find it at www.olddog.co.uk/ccamp.htm

The liaison does not ask for any action from us, but we may want to review the new specification and comment on it.

Thanks,
Adrian
----- Original Message ----- From: "J. Rao Cherukuri" <cherukuri@juniper.net> To: <IAB@ietf.org>; <statements@ietf.org>; <adrian@olddog.co.uk>; <dbrungard@att.com> Cc: "David Sinicrope (RL/TNT)" <david.sinicrope@ericsson.com>; <andrew.g.malis@verizon.com>; "BOCCI Matthew" <Matthew.Bocci@alcatel-lucent.co.uk>; "Ross Callon" <rcallon@juniper.net>; <dward@cisco.com>; <rao.cherukuri@juniper.net>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2007 8:34 PM
Subject: liaison response to to IETF ccamp WG on MFA Forum MPLS CNI


Hi Adrian, Deborah,

Thank you and the CCAMP WG for providing such thorough and valuable
comments.  We have reviewed and incorporated many of them into the CNI
document.  There are a few that we have not incorporated for various
reasons.  We have provided the rationale for these decisions inline
below.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best Regards,
David  Sinicrope  AD Working Group Chair

Rao Cherukuri TC Chair

***************************************

We note that you have opted to define a new RSVP object to support a
multi-class LSP following the rules for vendor private assignment as
described in section 2.2 of RFC3936. We believe that you may have
misinterpreted the purpose of vendor private extensions since such
extensions are specifically not intended to interoperate, but you are
attempting to define a specification directly for the purpose of
interworking devices from different vendors. In your case it would seem
to make more sense to define a standardized extension to the protocol.

MFAF> At the time of development of our specification draft-andersson
was not adopted by IETF.  Also, the Multi Class specification wasn't in
a state where we could refer to it.  Consequently, we chose to use the
vendor private TLV to expedite completion of our document.   In
subsequent revisions of the CNI we will consider following
draft-andersson and obtaining a standard Multi Class TLV.

Should you decide that a standardized extension is better able to
deliver the functionality that you require, we should like to draw your
attention to draft-andersson-rtg-gmpls-change-06.txt that defines how
other SDOs may influence the development of MPLS and GMPLS protocols
within the IETF, and which is currently in IETF last call. The (G)MPLS
suites of protocols have become popular among multiple SDOs resulting in
a need for IETF to clarify its role as the responsible SDO for (G)MPLS
protocol extensions so as to prevent unnecessary replication of
functionality and the resulting interoperability problems.

1. The document is marked as Straw Ballot Text. Can you tell us
  what that means the status of the work is?
MFAF> Review is completed and document is in "last call".

2. We think that your use of terminology may be a little loose.

  In many cases, where you say "MPLS" you are probably referring
  to the data plane, and specifically a packet-switching data
  plane with an MPLS encapsulation.

  But in other cases, "MPLS" and "MPLS-TE" are synonymous and
  refer to a signaling/routing control plane using the MPLS-TE
  extensions to RSVP and to the two IGPs OSPF and IS-IS.

  In many cases you say "GMPLS-TE" which is not something we
  specifically recognise although we can assume that you mean
  simply "GMPLS". Sometimes, where you are trying to
  distinguish a TE LSP established using MPLS-TE from one set
  up using GMPLS you may intend to say "GMPLS TE-LSP" rather
  than "GMPLS-TE LSP".

  We feel that close attention to the terminology may help
  clarify the document.

MFAF> We have gone through the document and reflected your suggestions
in the text.

3. Section 1.1 states:
    The purpose of this specification is to define an MPLS-based
    Client to Network Interconnect (CNI) for establishing GMPLS
    Traffic Engineered (TE) Label Switched Paths (LSPs).
  Can we assume that this means that the client-to-client LSPs
  are established using GMPLS protocols, but that the signaling
  within the core network is out of scope? Especially since
  section 1.2 states:
    At the CNI, it is not desirable to have the client equipment
    participate in the internal control protocols of the MPLS
    network.
MFAF> We have reflected this suggestion in the text of section 1.2.

4. Can you clarify why you have selected GMPLS protocols and not
  MPLS-TE protocols on which to build your CNI. We are not
  opposed to this, but are seeking to understand the choice.
  Perhaps the main reason is the requirement for bidirectional
  LSPs.
MFAF> To facilitate use of bi-direction LSPs and to leverage existing
implementations of the standard.
We have reflected this rationale in the text of section 1.2.

5. Can you clarify whether the core network is assumed to be
  PSC only? That is, for example, if the CNI encoding is POS,
  would it be acceptable for the PE and the rest of the core
  network to switch the LSP as TDM until the remote PE or even
  CE, or do you require that the PE must perform packet
  switching? If the PE must perform packet switching, is it
  still acceptable for the core LSP (PE-PE) to be switched at
  some other technology?
MFAF>We assume that the core is PSC only.  The CNI is implemented at the
edge of the network.
Details of the core network beyond what is stated in section 1.3 are
beyond the scope of the CNI.

6. Section 1.3 states:
    Where the network uses MPLS-TE signaling, the PE routers are
    expected to perform the translation.
  It is our opinion that this translation is non-trivial and may
  be impossible for some of the GMPLS services that are
  available at the CNI. For example, supporting a bidirectional
  service over an MPLS-TE signaling network requires additional
  coordination between the end-points that is currently not
  available in the MPLS-TE extensions to RSVP-TE.
  From the following text in section 7.1, we assume that the PE
  may refuse a CNI request if it is unable to provide the
  required level of function.
     The transport network in the provider network is a GMPLS or
     MPLS-TE based packet switched network that must support
     request for uni-directional LSPs and may support requests
     for bi-directional LSPs
MFAF> In section 1.3 we state that the core has support for a minimum
set of GMPLS capabilities.
e.g., bidirectional LSP support, traffic engineering QoS capabilities.

7. Section 2.1
  The correct expansion of "GMPLS" is "Generalized Multiprotocol
  Label Switching". In view of you chosen expansion of "MPLS",
  you may prefer to show this as "Generalized Multi Protocol
  Label Switching".

  The correct expansion of "FEC" is "Forwarding Equivalence
  Class".

MFAF> We have reflected this suggestion in the text.  See the Acronyms
section.

8. Section 7.2 states:
    The CE and PE nodes are inter-connected by point-to-point
    interfaces.  The signaling channel is "in-band", i.e., the
    labeled packets share the same access connection as the
    RSVP-TE signaling.
  This is an acceptable, but not required, method of deploying
  GMPLS-based signaling. It is our suspicion reading this very
  short section that it is your intention to forbid the use of
  the IF_ID RSVP_HOP Object at the CNI. Can you confirm or deny
  this?

MFAF> At our last meeting in Chicago we decided to allow the use of the
IF_ID_RSVP_HOP as an option.  See section 7.2.

9. Section 7.3 states:
    A client need only know its own address, a reachable address
    of the adjacent PE-node, and know the address of any other
    client to which it wishes to connect.  The addresses listed
    above must be configured on each client.

    A PE need only know (and track) the addresses on interfaces
    attached to clients, as well as the Node IDs of these
    attached clients. In addition, the IP/MPLS network needs to
    know reachability to the interface addresses and Node IDs of
    other PEs to which an attached client is permitted to
    connect.

  This appears to miss the fact that the client will address a
  CNI connection request to a remote client address. The local
  PE must, therefore, know how to route to these client
  addresses that are outside the core routing domain.

  Perhaps the final sentence should say CE not PE?

  But in 9.1.2 you have:
    When a PE receives a Path message from a client that
    contains no ERO indicating transit network selection, then
    the PE is responsible for progressing the Path message
    toward the destination.  The progression of the Path
    message is beyond the scope of this specification.

  While the details are clearly out of scope, it *is* relevant
  to the definition of the CNI how the core acquires and
  distributes the client-side addressing information that is
  necessary for routing across the core. You will observe that
  the problem you are solving (including the fact that the
  client addresses may come from an address space that overlaps
  with the core address space) is similar to the L3VPN problem.

MFAF> We corrected the text to address this issue in section 7.3.
Also see the changes in section 9.1.2.

10. What is the expected behavior from the core network when an
   E-LSP is requested at the CNI?

   Can we assume that the expectation is that an appropriate
   E-LSP will also be established across the core so that
   Diffserv behavior will be performed along the whole length
   of the client-client connection, or is this not a
   requirement?

   If core Diffserv behavior is required, how will the core
   handle the presence of multiple classes?

MFAF>This is assumed and although how it is done is beyond the
scope of the specification, section 7.4.1 now states what is expected of
the network.

11. You are correct to observe that the ERO is optional in GMPLS
   implementations (sections 9.1.1 and 9.1.2), however, since
   you are specifying a profile for use at the CNI, and since
   both the CE and the PE must be CNI-aware (i.e., you cannot
   simply use legacy implementations) you may find it convenient
   to mandate support of the ERO at the CNI.

   We believe that in practice all implementations support ERO.

MFAF> We still do not mandate ERO because there was no agreement
within the MFAF TC to mandate it.  See changes made in 9.1.2.

12. In section 9.1.1 you have:
     The client populates the ERO object with only one sub-object
     containing an Autonomous System Number (ASN) representing a
     transit network beyond the originating service provider.
     The client equipment must set the ASN sub-object 'L' bit to
     1, indicating a loose route.
   It is not completely clear what is meant by 'the originating
   service provider', but we assume that this refers to the
   network that the ingress PE belongs to. In this case, this
    ERO is malformed and will be rejected. The first sub-object
   of a received ERO must always define an abstract node that
   the receiver is a member of. See RFC 3209, section 4.3.4.1,
   point 1).

MFAF> We reflected this in section 9.1.1.

13. In section 9.4:
     PE next to a client receives a PathErr with
     Path_State_Removed from the network, it may in turn
     generate either a ResvTear or PathTear, whichever is
     applicable, to be sent to the client.
   There are no circumstances in which a PE receiving a PathErr
   with Path_State_Removed from the network would send PathTear
   to the client.

   It is unclear to us why you would specify that the CNI built
   on GMPLS might not use this standard GMPLS procedure.

MFAF>We reflected this in section 9.4.

14. In section 9.5.3:
     The Extended Classtype object is signaled in the Path
     message, and saved in the Path State Block (PSB) at every
     hop.
   We recommend that you simply state that the state is stored
   as every hop. The existence of a PSB is implementation-
   specific.

   Can you please clarify "at every hop". Are you expecting
   nodes in the core network to store this information. If so,
   you should note that the core nodes will not recognize the
   object class and will reject any messages carrying it.

   We also suggest that before progressing your own extensions
   for multi-class DSTE LSPs you should look at the existing
   work within the IETF:

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-minei-diffserv-te-multi-class-
02.txt
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-minei-diffserv-te-multi-class
-02.txt> .
   If this work is not adequate for your requirements, we
   would encourage you to work with its authors to produce
   a single standardized solution within the IETF.

MFAF>We removed all references to PSB, and all reference to "at every
hop".
This better aligns with our scope of not specifying the network
internals.
See section 9.5.3.

15. In 9.5.4:
     An LSR that recognizes the Extended Classtype object and
     that receives a Path message which contains the Extended
     Classtype object but which does not contain a Label Request
     object or which does not have a session type of
     LSP_Tunnel_IPv4, must send a PathErr message towards the
     sender with the error code 'extended-classtype Error' and
     an error value of 'Unexpected Extended Classtype object'.
     These are defined below:
   Why do you define new parsing behavior for the absence of a
   Label Request object (by the way, you should say Generalized
   Label Request object, since this is GMPLS)? The absence of
   mandatory objects is already covered in RFC2205.

MFAF> We removed the reference to "the absence of (Generalized) Label
Request object".
This implies that if the Generalized Label Request object is missing,
the relevant procedures of RFC 2205 will
be performed.

16. The error code defined in 9.5.4 is conformant with RFC 3936.
   You may wish to look at draft-swallow-rsvp-user-error-spec
   in case this gives you the ability to handle more detailed
   private error codes.

MFAF> In our specifications we are limited to referring only to
documents
that have been progressed to the RFC editor queue and beyond.  We will
certainly
consider reference to draft-swallow-rsvp-user-error-spec in future
revisions of the CNI.

Finally, we would like to refer you to
draft-kumaki-ccamp-mpls-gmpls-interwork-reqts-01.txt and
draft-ietf-ccamp-mpls-gmpls-interwork-fmwk-01.txt for the latest state
of discussions in CCAMP with respect to interworking MPLS and GMPLS
networks.

MFAF> Thanks for pointing out these documents.  We will consider these
should our work
scope be expanded to include details of the core network and MPLS and
GMPLS interworking.

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