RE: [IP-Optical] Re: Proposed text for the concatenation

["Mannie, Eric" <Eric.Mannie@ebone.com>]

Hello Zhi,

Let's be adult as you said many times, we are speaking about TWO features
(not hundreds as you like to present it):

- transparency.
- concatenation.

You are afraid that implementation will not interoperate ? You should better
speak first about the two signaling protocols that we have in GMPLS. GMPLS
has options, like all control planes and nobody has to implement everything.
This is signaling not a transmission format.

>So, what is the metric for deciding? I'm sure there are many vendors who
>are reading this waiting to add their "unique" features to the document
>as well...

We said *many* times that we didn't want to include all features from all
manufacturers but just as small set of basic features that seems to be
interesting for the industry. The proof is that you don't have in the draft
these hundreds of famous features that are you are afraid by. What else
should I repeat ?

Let's be democratic as you said, my notion of democracy is not to remove
these two features from the draft because your don't implement them.

I understood from the many e-mails send by your company since three weeks
that you don't want to see any transparency and any new form of
concatenation in the draft. However this draft is not your product
description. It is not a product description, it is a signaling
specification with options.

You are trying to present this work as if it was made and decided by a small
set of people, that's not right and not fair. The fact is that you didn't
pay attention to it and came very late into the process trying to impose
your own ideas to the group. We had exactly the same kind of discussion
since more than two months with your colleagues one by one, I guess this is
part of your strategy.

We proposed, as requested by your colleagues, to make a distinction between
what is defined in SDH/SONET and what is not. I agreed that's a good idea to
clarify the draft. In addition, these two mechanisms are 100% optional. Now
of course you want more, you want to remove everything (that's what you call
democracy). Obviously, you don't want to reach a consensus, does it worth to
continue these discussions ?

Regards,

Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: Zhi-Wei Lin [mailto:zwlin@lucent.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 5:38 AM
To: Mannie, Eric
Cc: 'Guo-Qiang Wang'; ccamp@ops.ietf.org;
ip-optical@lists.bell-labs.com; q11/15; t1x1.5
Subject: Re: [IP-Optical] Re: Proposed text for the concatenation



Hi,

I think your questions cannot be answered either way. Whether features
are needed for one or two vendors is up to each vendor to decide what
they want. 

As for how many vendor is needed for a standard. Again this question
doesn't really apply. We as engineers and the development community has
to study a problem to make sure that it will not unduly impact existing
networks, that what we are looking at should be sound and technically
superior and that it will help provide added value to networks. As these
transport capabilities will likely require people of transport expertise
to study first, that's what we should do. Let's not get too "trigger
happy" and include something "just because it's there", and then decide
to remove when "standards say no". That like "putting the cart in front
of the horse".

As to how many companies and how many people's names are on the
contribution. Let's be intelligent adults here. As someone once asked
me, "if you see a million flies eating feces, would you also eat?"
(sorry people! it is disgusting but I had to give an extreme analogy).
Sometimes the majority may not be correct. I am not saying I am correct
either. It all depends on the background knowledge base and the
underlying motive of the people...

As to how many processes followed, how many meetings held, how many
conferences given, how many emails exchanged...an idea doesn't get
better with repetition. As someone once said at some standards meeting
"if an idea stinks, it doesn't matter how many times some idea is
presented, it still stinks that many times". So the number of times is
not a reason for making a decision. 

Let's be technical, let the experts in the right group decide, and we
should not jump the gun. Let's be adults and let's help make the telecom
industry and the standards process a respectable place...




"Mannie, Eric" wrote:

> I don't work for a vendor :-) Who told you that some features are needed
> only for one or two vendors ? How do you quantify the number of vendors
that
> are needed to have a standard ? We work on a consensus based and this
draft
> has 17 companies on it with 30 people. Usually it is much much less at the
> IETF, you only have a small number of co-authors. I already gave a summary
> of the process that we followed, all the meetings that we hold, all the
> conference call that we hold, all the e-mails that we exchanged, etc.
> 
> You described one model in your e-mail, that's a valid model but this is
not
> THE (only) model. There are plenty of other models that can be fulfilled
> with GMPLS.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Eric
>