Re: Flow label - the problem

[Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>]

On 22-apr-2005, at 9:55, marcelo bagnulo braun wrote:

> From the practical perspective, i guess that using the flow id may  
> be a bit more trickier than an extension header, but it also has a  
> clear practical benefit w.r.t. overhead.

Exactly.

> My main doubt about using the flow id is w.r.t. alternatives usages  
> of the flow id that may end up clashing with this shim usage. I  
> mean, the flow id is located in the main IPv6 header, which makes  
> it useful as a field to be used in a hop per hop basis, i.e.  
> routers can used for forwarding and so on. OTOH, the shim protocol,  
> and in particular the context tag used for demux, is clearly an end  
> to end information i.e. it won't be used by routers, and there is  
> no need to place it in the main IPv6 header.

I understand. But I believe the current suggestions for using the  
flow label for shim6 don't get in the way of using the flow label for  
other purposes, and we in fact use it for what its intended purpose:  
to identify flows/sessions quickly without having to look deep inside  
the packet.