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

[Mark.Jones@mail.sprint.com]

I agree with the separation of GMPLS into the two applications.  There 
does not appear to be any significant move to collapse the management or 
signaling for L3/2 and L1/0 at this time, given the different models 
that apply for them and the infrastructures in our companies that manage 
them.  The plan for addressing the two applications need not be the 
same.

The L3/2 application is near and dear to the heart of the IETF.  The 
L1/0 application is of interest to those who wish to collapse the 
management into a single layer.  In my opinion, the IETF might also 
address this approach, given the IETF participants are the ones in 
support of this collapsed management or at least common protocol 
solution for what is today two signaling layers.  However, as stated 
before, the collapse approach is not realistic today for a 
multi-service, multi-protocol network.

On the other hand, the L1/0 application requirements and models have 
been defined and are best understood at the ITU-T.  Ideally, the 
protocol expertise at the IETF would be applied to the ITU-T model and 
requirements to address the L1/0 application, but attempts to do that 
have been met with great resistance in the past.  Perhaps that was a 
result of the fact that GMPLS implementations were not separated out 
into the two different applications.  However, I don't think it is 
realistic to expect the IETF experts to be motivated to understand the 
ITU-T models and requirements, given the application is outside of their 
primary area of interest.  That said, I believe the IETF should reach an 
agreement on how to work with outside groups that develop "major 
extensions" to the protocol.

Mark Loyd Jones
Optical Transport and Networking
Sprint - Wireline Technology Development
913-794-2139
 

-----Original Message-----
From: dwfedyk [mailto:dwfedyk@nortelnetworks.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 7:49 AM
To: gash
Cc: mpls; ccamp
Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-andersson-mpls-g-chng-proc-00.txt


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