[RRG] EXPLISP BOF at the Dublin IETF

[Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net>]

All,

As you probably know, sometime ago the LISP team asked for a BOF in the 
Dublin IETF. It was not easy to decide what to do with this request. The 
initial request was for a WG that would produce standards. 
Unfortunately, we are not quite there yet. The technology just is not 
ready, not this particular proposal nor the other ones. We might be 
heading into the right direction with map-n-encap/translate, but before 
standards can be created we need to have a solid understanding of what 
the mapping system should be like, how the old and new Internet can talk 
to each other, and what the effects to the rest of the Internet will be.

That being said, the question turned into whether we could have a group 
that focuses on experimental RFCs. I do value implementation experience 
and ability to test things. Frankly, I think the RRG is doing exactly 
the right thing by focusing on concepts and not protocols, but the other 
side is perhaps too neglected; some discussion of experimentation and 
bottom-up design would also be helpful. Like keeping the coders awake... 
Of course,  the other extreme would also be bad, if we ignored 
conceptual problems as long as we can test something. The right approach 
would be somewhere in the middle. And routing scalability is a hard 
problem that needs face to face time, possibly lots of it. Can we 
provide more time?

On the other hand, why do we need yet another group to look at this? We 
certainly don't want to send a signal that the RRG can be closed, the 
work has moved to IETF. We don't want to send a signal that the protocol 
selection is done, and the answer is Lisp. That would premature. And we 
do not want to have a group that merely ships RFCs, without trying to 
advance our knowledge of the issues relating to the solutions.

With all the above in mind, I have approved a limited scope BOF for 
Dublin. This BOF/WG focuses on LISP and ALT, documents the open issues 
in these designs, suggests ways to conduct tests to resolve those 
issues, and acts as a forum to provide information about results of 
those experiments. My hope is that some of this information can also be 
fed back to the RRG, and helps the overall design decisions. All design 
discussion should continue on the RRG list as-is.

Welcome to the BOF in Dublin! (But I do not yet know what day and time 
it will be.) And as always with BOFs, we expect the community to provide 
input that helps the decision to create or not the eventual WG. Or an 
Exploratory Group in this case -- see RFC 5111 for more details.

Experimentation in LISP BoF (EXPLISP)
=====================================

Name:                Experimentation in LISP BoF (EXPLISP)
Date and time:  (TBD)
Chairs:              Darrel Lewis <darlewis@cisco.com>
                    David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>

AGENDA:
------
5 min Agenda bashing                                       Chairs
15 min Goals and scope of the BOF, relation to RRG          Arkko
10 min Introduction to LISP and solution space              Farinacci
15 min Open issues in mapping systems                       Fuller
15 min Open issues in interworking                          Lewis
15 min Implications to upper layers                         Thaler
75 min Open discussion on experimentation and WG creation   All

BOF DESCRIPTION
---------------

The IAB arranged a workshop in October, 2006 to focus on routing and
addressing issues [0]. This workshop identified scalability problems
in the global routing system. The research community is working to map
the overall design space and understand the tradeoffs between the
different solutions. This work happens in the Routing Research Group
(RRG). The solutions discovered so far have interesting behaviours
that are not fully understood by mere desk analysis. For instance,
some of the solutions have packet reordering and delay implications
that may affect higher layers. Some have MTU implications for large
parts of the Internet. Most solutions require deployment of new nodes,
and the incentive models for deploying them are not entirely clear.

LISP and the LISP Alternative Topology mapping system (ALT) is one
solution in the overall design space, under the general category of
"map-and-encapsulate" mechanisms. The purpose of this BOF is to form
an Exploratory Group (RFC 5111) at the IETF. The group will host
discussions and documents necessary to perform experiments that help
the community understand how the above behaviors are effected by LISP
and ALT

The expected outputs are:

- document(s) that describe open issues where experimentation
 may be helpful,
- document(s) that describe planned experiments and results thereof,
 and
- experimental protocol specifications (exp, June 2009)

As an Exploratory Group, this group has a finite lifetime of 18
months. At the end of those 18 months, and depending on the outcome
of the experiments and the design work from the RRG, the group
may either be terminated or rechartered. The group shall also:

- clearly label its results as experimental
- avoid design discussions that are within the scope of the RRG,
- refrain from spending significant amount of time on the well
 understood parts of map-and-encapsulate mechanisms
- demonstrate commitment to focus on experiments before
 submitting any protocol specifications for publication
 as RFCs

This group is only focused on LISP and ALT. Some results may apply to
other designs as well, such as solutions involving a similar mapping
system but a different encapsulation scheme. But this is not
guaranteed. If other proposals surface from the research community
with equally interesting questions that would benefit from similar
experimentation, future groups can be created for that purpose, as
long as there appears to be sufficient interest in the community for
such work. The interest is demonstrated via XXX independent
implementation efforts.


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