Transparency at the IETF and OIF

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

Dear all,

About the transparency and its importance (especially for the people that
want to remove it from the standard track, or remove purely and simply :-)

Extracted from the carrier OIF requirements for the UNI (oif2000.155.1):

   Multiple levels of transparent services SHALL be supported:
   ·	SONET/SDH Line and Section terminating. 
   ·	SONET/SDH Section terminating with Line transparency. 
   ·	SONET/SDH with Line and Section transparency. 
   ·	Non-SONET/SDH transparent bit-streams. [later version]

This document was co-authored by ATT (Monica and John), UUNET, C&W, WorldCom
and Deutshe Telekom. I agree with this requirement.

The document also list all the members of the OIF carrier group: AT&T, Cable
& Wireless, Deutsche Telekom (D-Nova), Enron, GTS, KDD, Korea Telecom, NTT,
Palm, Sita, Sprint, TDK, Telecom Italia, CSELT, UUNET, WorldCom.	

There are 6 BIG carriers telling that they want to be able to control
transparency at the UNI. Of course it means that they want transparency at
the NNI because otherwise it doesn't make any sense, the transparency being
implemented at the NNI, not the UNI.

I said many times that transparency is useful at the GMPLS UNI, whatever is
happening at the NNI. This is exactly the point that make the OIF and the
carrier group of the OIF.

So, what I am proposing is to keep the transparency that we have today in
GMPLS for the UNI. This is not related to any transmission plane issue,
because it is not implemented at the UNI.

Transparency is also supported by the OIF UNI by the way. This
standardization body is considering it as an important feature. I don't see
any valid reason in that context why we should not have it in GMPLS at the
UNI.

I am very surprised that people fighting against transparency in GMPLS at
the IETF (UNI as I explained already many times) are indeed co-authors
and/or work for companies that approved transparency for the OIF UNI.

Here is the list of manufacturers that approved transparency at the OIF UNI:
*Lucent*, Nortel, Alcatel, Tenor, Tellium, Callient, Sycamore, Acceligth,
Ciena, Lucent, Brightwave, Caspian, Nayna, ONI, Cisco, Juniper, Zaffire,
Avici, Laurel, Sorrento, etc.

To summarize, transparency is:

1) requested by at least 6 big carriers.
2) requested by at least 20 manufacturers.
3) part the OIF UNI (from a standardization body).
4) implemented in many products.

>Again, in terms of metrics, what is considered "interesting for the
>industry"? By the vendor community or the carrier community? I just want
>us to be clear...no more, no less....

Is that a good "metric" ?

I think that we have a rough consensus to keep transparency in the standard
track !

Amazing that nobody reacted against the OIF carriers requirements for the
UNI, and against the OIF UNI specification... Even more amazing that some
people have two different languages, one for IETF and one for the OIF !

Kind regards,

Eric

Eric Mannie
Technology & Standards Strategy Manager
Network Engineering Strategy
EBONE

Terhulpsesteenweg 6A
1560 Hoeilaart - Belgium

Tel:    +32 2 658 56 52
Mobile: +32 496 58 56 52
Fax:    +32 2 658 51 18
E-mail: eric.mannie@ebone.com