Re: LMP vs. NTIP vs. "funiculus"

[Andre Fredette <[e-mail]>]

Maarten,

You make some good points.  I believe that one of the objectives of LMP is 
to reproduce the capabilities currently present in the transport plane.  As 
you point out, with the advent of PXCs, some of the functionality 
traditionally handled with in-band SONET signalling needs to be exchanged 
in another way.  We will also be dealing with other technologies, such as 
Ethernet, that does not have built-in overhead.

Also, as we move towards distributed control of multi-vendor optical 
networks via GMPLS, open protocols are needed between the different nodes 
for exchanging the necessary information.  In addition to the fault 
handling capabilities you describe, I think we need discovery capabilities 
that will reduce the required manual configuration.

I believe there are two questions at hand:
(1)  Which protocol should be used to exchange the information in 
GMPLS-controlled networks?, and
(2)  What information needs to be exchanged?

The mpls, and now ccamp, working groups in the IETF have been working on 
LMP to solve question (1) for the past year.  Unless there is an 
overwhelming need to create a new protocol, I think we should stick with 
LMP (and I haven't even seen an underwhelming reason to switch :-).

Question (2) could use some additional discussion as it pertains to 
transport systems.  We have a proposal in draft-fredette-lmp-wdm-01.  Some 
good ideas exist in draft-sahay-ccamp-ntip-00, and you've made some good 
points in your note.

Andre

At 01:05 PM 3/26/2001 +0200, Maarten Vissers wrote:
>When looking at the LMP work I am have the impression at the moment that
>it is partly duplicating capabilities already present in the transport
>plane.