Re: [irs-discuss] Suggestions for IRS Way Forward

James,

Thanks for the feedback.  I certainly agree that the topology
data-model should be an early focus and deliverable.

At the end of my talk this morning, I did try to describe how to scope
the work so as to keep it within reasonable bounds to make work.

A way of focusing the work, I think, is to discuss and agree on a few
key use-cases that we want to facilitate.

I fully expect that at least one of those use-cases will depend on the
topology data-model.

Alia

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 6:24 PM, James Kempf <james.kempf@ericsson.com> wrote:
> So after seeing part of Alia's talk this morning (I had to leave in the middle unfortunately), I'd like to make a couple suggestions. There were a lot of ideas presented in the talk, enough for an entire IETF Area. I think to make tangible progress, the work needs to be focussed on a small subset that would be of immediate interest and usability.
>
> There are a couple areas that suggest themselves, but one that would be useful in work that I've been involved in is a standardized format for network topology representation and a protocol for exchanging it. The Onix OpenFlow controller has a network information base with a specialized format for network topology, and every OpenFlow controller requires this. Having a standardized way to represent it might foster a common topology database package. Another application is network management. Every network management system needs some kind of topology representation. Finally, though I am not an expert in PCE construction, it would seem to me that a PCE would need some kind of topology representation in order to perform path calculations. Having a way,for example, for the OpenFlow controller and the PCE to exchange topology information would be really useful.  I would say to start with physical topology because that is fundamental, but make the format flexible enough to support
>  virtual topology representation.
>
>                         jak
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