Re: Flow Label support in the Node Requirements bis document

[Brian Haberman <[e-mail]>]

I agree that an update should be done prior to publishing the Node 
Requirements draft, but I have some issues with the language (not the 
intent) proposed below...

On 11/2/11 10:50 PM, [e-mail] wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There has been some discussions whether or not we should add support for the Flow Label in
> Soon to be RFC 6434<draft-ietf-6man-node-req-bis-11.txt>  As a straw man proposal, if we add
> Support, I would suggest the following text:
>
> All nodes SHOULD support RFC 6437, IPv6 Flow Label Specification,
> defines the IPv6 Flow Label.  Specifically:
>
>      "Forwarding nodes such as routers and load distributors MUST NOT
>        depend only on Flow Label values being uniformly distributed. "
>
>      "It is therefore RECOMMENDED  that source hosts support the flow
>        label by setting the flow label field for all packets of a given flow to the
>        same value chosen from  an approximation to a discrete uniform distribution. "

First, I propose that the text be added to section 5.1, which discusses 
the specifications that must be supported at the IPv6 layer.  Second, I 
would modify the text proposed to clean up the introductory component as 
follows:

      All nodes SHOULD support the setting and use of the IPv6 Flow
      Label field as defined in the IPv6 Flow Label specification
      [RFC6437].  Forwarding nodes such as routers and load distributors
      MUST NOT depend only on Flow Label values being uniformly
      distributed.  It is RECOMMENDED that source hosts support the flow
      label by setting the Flow Label field for all packets of a given
      flow to the same value chosen from an approximation to a discrete
      uniform distribution.

Regards,
Brian (who is not wearing any hats at this time)