Re: Adoption call criteria for CRH? [was: Re: CRH and RH0]

[Tom Herbert <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:12 PM Robert Raszuk <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> John,
>
> May I add one more perspective to this.
>
> 6man just standardized SRH. Why SRH content can not be filled by
controller and used for the very same purpose as authors intend to use CRH
for ?
>
> Oh one may say there is no compression there ... If so I recommend to
take a look at uSID and vSID proposals.
>
Hi Robert,

I took a look at these proposals. It's very obvious that the format of CRH
is significantly simpler than either of these and is simpler than SRH as
well. Complexity in protocol format correlates to how amenable the protocol
is to feaible implementation (in HW and SW), how well it can be secured,
and how efficient in terms of wire overhead and processing overhead.

It is interesting to note that figure Figure 3 in
draft-decraene-spring-srv6-vlsid-03 would be identical to Figure 1 in
draft-bonica-6man-comp-rtg-hdr-22 if the Last Entry, Flags, Tag, and TLVs
fields were removed. Since these fields aren't used in the common case,
they are easily compressed by simply removing them. So the material
difference between the formats is how the length of SIDs is determined. In
CRH this is explicit in the routing type, there is one type for 16-bit SID
format and one type for 32-bit format. AFAICT in vSID the SID length is
more like a negotiated parameter that per destination address that uses the
same routing type as SRH. While the vSID method might be more flexible and
allow arbitrary SID lengths, it leads to more complexity since the routing
header can no longer be parsed without external information. For instance,
if a management device snoops packets in the path it wouldn't be able to
parse the SID list without participating in the protocol that distributes
the length information. Similarly, if a legacy SRH receiver receives a vSID
header it seems like it would parse it incorrectly.

In any case, I don't see why the vSID and CRH proposals couldn't be unified
or why SR wouldn't be able to use CRH to convey compressed SIDs.

Tom

> Is it in good interest of anyone deploying segment routing to have to
deal with N different non interoperable headers ? Does it make anyone's
life easier ?
>
> Kind regards,
> Robert.
>
> PS. So my own side observation lead me to believe it is not about "too
early to ask for adoption" ... it is actually "way too late"
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 10:01 PM John Scudder <jgs=
[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> I’m a little confused about this conversation and I’d like to ask the
chairs for clarification. My actual questions are at the end of this
long(ish) message, and can be summarized as (1) does 6man require consent
from SPRING before defining routing headers, and (2) what criteria are the
chairs using to decide when an adoption call is OK?
>>
>> It seems to me there are at least two, only vaguely related,
conversations going on. One of them is a debate about the assertion that
6man can’t even consider taking up CRH unless SPRING approves it. The other
is a more free-wheeling line of questioning about “what is CRH for anyway”?
>>
>> I presume both of these relate to Ron’s request for an adoption call.
Here’s what the minutes from the interim have:
>>
>> > Bob: Thank you Ron. I think it's too early for adoption call.
>> >
>> > Ron: What is needed to get to adoption call.
>> >
>> > Bob: I can't answer right now.
>> >
>> > Ron: Can I ask on list?
>> >
>> > Bob: OK.
>> >
>> > Ole: Related to what's going on in spring.
>>
>> Too bad we have no audio recording, but that’s not too far from my
recollection. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve seen this answered on list yet, so
I’m asking again.
>>
>> Regarding the SPRING-related process stuff:
>>
>> I have quite a bit of history with how SPRING was chartered; I was one
of the original co-chairs and helped write the charter, god help me. I can
tell you for certain there was no intent that SPRING should have exclusive
ownership of source routing in the IETF, the name isn’t a power-grab, it’s
a clever backronym, as we do in the IETF. If one entity in the IETF were to
take charge of all source routing, that sounds more like a new area than a
WG. But don’t take my word for it, go read the various iterations of the
charter. As anyone who’s looked at the Segment Routing document set can
tell, Segment Routing is one, very specific, way of doing source routing.
As Ketan and others have pointed out, it’s a pile of architecture plus the
bits and pieces to instantiate that architecture. That is fine, but the
idea that merely because a technology might be used to instantiate part of
that architecture, it’s owned by SPRING, is overreach. Just because a
sandwich is a filling between two pieces of starch, doesn’t mean every
filling between two pieces of starch is a sandwich. [1]
>>
>> But at any rate, the question for the chairs is: do you think 6man needs
SPRING’s permission in order to consider adopting CRH? Does 6man need
permission from SPRING for all routing headers, or just some, and if it’s
just some, what characterizes them?
>>
>> Regarding the more general “what is CRH for anyway” stuff:
>>
>> This seems to me to be exactly the kind of discussion one would normally
have in the context of an adoption call. Why is it not being had in that
context? To rewind back to the interim, if it’s still “too early for
adoption call”, what has to happen for it not to be too early?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> —John
>>
>> [1] https://cuberule.com
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