Re: GMPLS Last Calls

[Eric Gray <eric.gray@sandburst.com>]

Anonymous,

    Look, I know that these IETF mailing lists are prone to flame wars
and that many people prefer to be silent 'lurkers' as a result.  But, unless
people are willing to come forward with their comments directly, it is not
very likely that they will be heard.  Also, in spite of Randy's comments,
people DO want to hear from members of companies.  It is easy to express
high sounding, but meaningless, opinions when posting as 'an individual' -
especially when posting from an anonymous free E-mail account (as so
many people do these days).

    Understand that - if you come forward with an opinion or idea that you
and your colleagues have come up with together - your opinion/idea will have
only the weight of an individual opinion.  In theory, your opinions and ideas
should be considered by IETF participants solely on their merit and not as a
result of who you work for (or what your position is in the IETF).  Also, in
theory, it is understood that your individual opinions and ideas do not reflect
the opinions and ideas of your employer.  And most of us (wink, wink) believe
this too.

    Personally, I think there is entirely too much censure (read 'flames') going

on.  If you and your colleagues each individually express the same opinion,
you will hear comments like 'well, one company heard from'.  On the other
hand, if one of you expresses a common opinion, he/she will be censured for
not expressing an individual opinion.  It may seem like you can't win, but you
have to try.   And - until some IETF 'king' decides to stoop to literal censure
- your opinions will be heard in spite of the flames... :-)

--
Eric Gray

'Anonymous' wrote:

> Eric,
>
> I agree with you whole heartedly.  We must have the inputs from the carriers
> and not from the vendors alone.  Some vendors are pushing MPLS, GMPLS now,
> like this are the best ideas since sliced bread.  But others (Global
> Crossing's Plonka, and Ananth, etc.) have pointed out in different forums the
> problems with MPLS.
>
> Issues that we have found relate to -
>
> 1.  MPLS is not for QoS (See first paragraph of Chapter 6 of Yakov Rekhter's
> book: MPLS - TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS, MK Publisher), Yakov says, " To
> many people, QoS is the driving factor behind MPLS.  This is actually
> something of a misconception......QoS is not a very strong reason to deploy
> MPLS..."
>
> 2.  To do VPN with MPLS with extensions is a bad idea also since BGP is a
> routing protocol that changes state quite often and to use it for VPN with
> MPLS tags is not really a very smart solution as a recent comm related
> magazine article points out (I don't have it here but I can provide it if you
> are interested),
>
> 2.  If not for QoS, then is it for TE?  As others have said on this MPLS
> thread, you can easily do TE with a host of network management tools
> available out there - if not real-time, for sure, near-real-time.
>
> 3.  Other issues pertaining to MPLS are - scalability: explicit path, RSVP,
> CSFP, all found not scalable from the dawn of these technologies (see Nortel
> site slides on MPLS for one confirmation), and finally
>
> 4. No one addresses the fact that tagging and variable packet sizing enroute
> for a packet is extremely high memory and processing hog (hardly acceptable
> for the hundreds and thousands of older routers out there) not to mention the
> issues of label explosion, TTL, and risk of MTU violation and subsequent
> fragmentation and retagging of packets.
>
> My colleagues and I wonder why no one speaks up.
>
> (Please feel free to use these items in the thread if you don't use my name.
> Thanks.)
>
> (Anonymous)
>
> Eric Gray wrote:
>
> > Randy,
> >
> >     Is this one of your usual insightful comments?  Let's see what our
> > studio audience has to say - Bzztzzt!  Apparently that was a wrong
> > answer.  :-)
> >
> >     Repeatedly we ask for input from carriers.  We get some and we
> > hear that we're only interested in hearing from individuals?  As Lloyd
> > said, interesting...
> >
> > --
> > Eric Gray
> >
> > You wrote:
> >
> > > > These are the collective opinions of me and my colleagues
> > >
> > > as the ietf is composed of individuals, i have not read your irrelevant
> > > message.  should you have personal expertise you wish to share, i would
> > > be very inteested in hearing it.
> > >
> > > randy