RE: draft-bonica-tunneltrace-02

["Thomas D. Nadeau" <tnadeau@cisco.com>]

         Neil,

         I am very glad that you have taken the time to reply to my
response. Regards Tom.

>Hi Tom...I am very glad you raised these points....please see my
>observations on them.  regards Neil
>
><snip>
> > Achitectural correctness is bunk if it
> > does not leads to
> > implementations that cannot support the architecture in such
> > a way as to a) be
> > implemented in one's lifetime,
>NH=> I wholeheartedly agree with this......and for as long as I can remember
>management-plane X-I/Fs have been promised but never materialised.

         Again you misstate the facts. Management IFs exist today: SNMP,
LSP ping, etc...

>However,
>wrt to the topic here I am already aware of trial implementations by certain
>vendors and Shahram Davari has been involved since very early on....
>and since his company cuts the silicon many then use then this tells me it 
>can't
>be be too complex.  Maybe this is just a problem for your company?....a
>quick look-see at who has problems seems to indicate Cisco figures largely
>here in a class of 1.

         Lets not misrepresent the facts again. There are lots of equipment 
vendors
who think that there are alternative ways of achieving defect 
detection/repair using
simpler, more practical mechanisms. These same vendors and operators alike
spoke out at the OAM BOF against your grand architecture of OAM for this
reason.  I have also been told this numerous times by operational carrier
types privately as well.

> > Please don't just refer us again to your OAM draft,
> > because I think  it is clear that is a non-starter.
>NH=> Why is this.....and are you speaking on behalf of yourself, Cisco or
>the IETF?

         People at the IETF speak for themselves.  Read the IETF guidelines
if you are unclear on this.

>By saying this you are also stating that you also don't
>value/respect the fact that these requirements are supported by the
>following carriers AT&T, SBC, NTT, DT, Sprint, BT (+ a list of
>manafuacturers, who are prepared it seems to meet these requirements).
>You offer no rationale for this statement.......so I can only assume you (or
>your company) disagree with these carrier's  requirements.

         I always value the input of carriers, and specifically weigh 
heavily the input
from their operational  organizations (versus marketing or research). I 
learned this
lesson a long time ago. It is what drives what I do every day. Crrier 
representatives
who are on the operational side of their organizations have expressed concern
publicly and to me privately over these requirements and the approaches 
proposed
to solve them in Y.1711.  I am hearing that people want to use simpler 
approaches,
even if they are not architecturally pure. Some of these approaches that 
are available
today and won't double the cost of a device because the OAM functions are 
built
on top of existing software, and thus don't require an army of software and 
hardware
developers to realize.

         I really think that operators and vendors want to eat OAM pudding,
not just talk about what color and shape it is. I just think if we try to 
build the
pudding described in Y.1711, that we will all starve

> >  If there are still holes after this exercise, lets work together
> > on these problems and find efficient and solvable solutions
> > to them. This may not result
> > in an architectural correct over-all grand reference,
>NH=> Let me paraphrase what you are saying here:
>-       I assume this remark is suggesting that the requirements given in
>draft-harrison-mpls-oam-req-01.txt (and also in Y.1710) is not really what
>carriers want, even though they are asking for them, and that Y.1711 is not
>a good solution....

         I do not think that Y.1711 presents good solutions to the problem of
OAM. I don't think I am out in left field on this one either. So again, I
propose that we work on practical solutions to the problem of OAM
for MPLS.

         --Tom





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Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.