Re: I-D ACTION:draft-andersson-mpls-g-chng-proc-00.txt

[Don Fedyk <dwfedyk@nortelnetworks.com>]

Along the lines of Jerry's comments.

When we put together GMPLS the first drafts were under specified 
intentionally to capture the essence of GMPLS. We put aside many 
arguments saying lets specify at a high level and fill in the details 
later. The discussions on this thread are in two major veins one 
attempting to fill the details and the other containing and controlling 
the changes. GMPLS needs to be specified more accurately and in my 
opinion it needs to be decomposed to a more layered approach.  I think 
if we applied GMPLS at at some layers (L3/2), (L1/L0) for example,  
independently but self similar it would offer a mechanism to move 
forward where some legacy systems could be specified to be GMPLS 
friendly. For example signaling for Layer 3/2 can be tunneled through 
the a lower layer. We already have some work in this direction. 
Similarly traffic engineering information for L1/L0 in a TE database 
would need different  attributes than a the TE database at L3/2. I 
don't think you want to burden a L3/L2 system with these attributes in 
an overlay model. The expertise for these layer is not all contained in 
the IETF. I think we should put a plan forward to make this happen 
within the IETF process. After this was accomplished  I think some 
people are thinking of collapsing layers even more but the logical 
partitioning of layers may help keep the protocols and databases 
simpler.   Right now were are treating GMPLS like a big bowl of jelly 
when it should look more like a layer cake.

Regards,
Don