RE: MPLS OAM & the IETF

[Shahram Davari <[e-mail]>]

Scott,

Could you please clarify option (1) a bit more? If this route is taken, still cooperation is needed between ITU and IETF. For example ITU may need MPLS signaling extensions. Also in some cases packet processing may need to be aligned between ITU and IETF in order to avoid conflicts. For example ITU may consider an MPLS path-trace that uses TTL expiration, which requires a TTL expired MPLS packet to be forwarded to MPLS OAM module, while GTTP considers sending MPLS TTL expired packets to ICMP/GTTP module. There needs to be a coordination between IETF and ITU in order to find a common method which could determine whether a packet should be forwarded to OAM or ICMP/GTTP module.

Are these kind of cooperations considered in option 1?

Shahram

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Bradner [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 10:34 AM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: MPLS OAM & the IETF
> 
> 
> subject:   MPLS OAM & the IETF
> 
> The result of the MPLS OAM BOF in Salt Lake City has been 
> confirmed over
> the last few days in the mailing list thread 
> "draft-bonica-tunneltrace-02."
> 
> 
> That result was and is that there are at least two quite 
> different views on
> the type of OAM tools and technologies needed for MPLS networks.  
> 
> My reading of the groups is that one group, who are mostly 
> concerned with
> the transport of IP over MPLS, generally feel that tools 
> approximating the
> traditional "ping" and "traceroute" tools used on IP networks are
> sufficient.  A second group seems to feel that those tools do 
> not provide
> enough of a view of the service a customer is getting to be 
> sufficient and
> that tools approximating traditional telephone system OAM 
> tools are needed
> to get the complete picture.
> 
> Meanwhile, the ITU-T has been working in this area and has a 
> document in
> their equivalent of the IETF Last-Call. Brian Moore, the 
> ITU-T Study Group
> 13 chair, kindly arraigned for the ITU-T document (known as 
> Y.1711) to be
> put on an ftp site so interested IETF folk can take a look at 
> what they
> have done.  The URL is 
> http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com13/ip/sg13-ietf-ftp.ht
ml (IETF folk
have to register to use the FTP site.)

It seems to me that there are two options on what we (the IETF) could do at
this point.

0/ you think I do not understand the issue

1/ split the tasks:  The IETF focus on the ping/traceroute mechanisms and
cede to the ITU-T work on the more telco-like OAM.  In this option the IETF
would publish draft-ohta-mpls-label-value-01.txt as an RFC and assign an
MPLS reserved label value for use by the ITU-T to identify Y.1711
information.

2/ The IETF work on a suite of technologies ranging from the
ping/traceroute-like mechanisms to the more telephone system OAM ones.  The
IETF could try to figure out how to do this in conjunction with the ITU,
though it is a bit late for that considering the state of Y.1711, or be in
competition with the ITU-T.  

So - please indicate your opinion on how the IETF should proceed

1 - split the tasks between the IETF and the ITU-T
2 - IETF produce standards track documents covering both areas
  2a - trying to work with the ITU-T to produce common technology
  2b - in competition with the ITU-T

In any case, it would be good to provide feedback to the ITU-T on Y.1711 if
you see anything that looks broken.


Scott (with sub-ip AD hat on)