Re: [Bier] Call for adoption: draft-wijnandsxu-bier-non-mpls-bift-encoding-01

[IJsbrand Wijnands <[e-mail]>]

Eric,

Thanks for the comments.

> That may be true.  However, there are many procedures that can be used to assign domain-wide unique BIFT-ids.  There is no reason for the WG to give the appearance of endorsing any one procedure over any of the thousands of others.  This is really a decision for the network operators.  So I think the document is not very useful.

This is indeed a decision that is made by the operator on how to assign a BIFT-id to the <SD,SI,BSL> triple. It is perfectly valid for operator to do exactly what is described in this draft (encode <SD,SI,BSL> into the BIFT), without having this draft. Documenting one mechanism where we take the triple and auto-generate a BIFT-id I think is useful and simplifies the OAM procedures. If we want to be interoperable among different vendors, I think it is good to have this documented.

> I do however think the document is harmful.  It will inevitably result in the deployment of software (if not hardware) that cannot process non-MPLS BIER packets in which the BIFT-id is not formed according to the rules of this draft.

I don’t think there is a benefit for treating the 20 bit BIFT-id any different than a 20bit value, so I’m less concerned.

> 
> Yes, yes, the draft says that the use of this encoding is OPTIONAL, and the draft is merely Informational.  That won't help us much when some implementation (either from a vendor, or open source) gets deployed that requires the use of this encoding.  
> 
> Drafts that are harmful but not useful should not be adopted by the WG.

Not having to manage the BIFT-id assignments is useful to the operators I think.

> If this draft proceeds, I suggest it be turned into an Independent Submission, so that it can be made clear that the draft just describes a suggestion by the authors.

As long as we get something posted and we can be interoperable I’m good. Although I don’t really think it going to matter to implementors what the official status of the document is. It will not prevent them from mis-behaving if they really want to.

Thx,

Ice.