Re: [Isis-wg] Encoding inconsistency between ISIS and OSPFv2 extensions for SR

Xiaohu,

please see inline:

On 6/13/14 09:51 , Xuxiaohu wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There are some encoding inconsistencies between OSPFv2 extensions and ISIS extensions for SR as follows:
>
> 1. In ISIS-SR, the prefix-sid advertisement is piggybacked on the IP reachability advertisement. In OSPF-SR, the prefix-sid advertisement is piggybacked on OSPF Extended Prefix LSA which is used to advertise other attributes associated with the prefix, rather than the reachability. IMHO, the OSPF encoding is more flexible since the label distribution and the reachability advertisement are independent. As a result, the route summary on area boundaries at least can be enabled as before. Besides, the prefix-SID sub-TLV can be used to advertise a range of prefix/SID pairs (see item2). In fact, ISIS allows us to do the same way as OSPF with a much lower cost (see section 3 of http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-xu-isis-global-label-sid-adv-00). Of course, it seems that you co-authors prefer to the piggyback way.

OSPF LSAs that are used to advertise the prefixex are not extensible, so 
we had to define a new LSA for the purpose of advertising a prefix 
related attributes. ISIS is different, as they can add sub-TLVs to 
existing TLVs.

>
> 2. In ISIS-SR, the Prefix-SID Sub-TLV can only be used to advertise an SID for a single prefix. And it relays on the SID/Label Binding TLV to advertise a range of prefix/SID pairs. In contrast, In OSPF-SR, the prefix-sid sub-TLV can be used to specify a range of addresses and their associated Prefix SIDs. By the way, in the 4.3.  SID/Label Binding sub-TLV. it has the following text: "Range Size: usage is the same as described in Section 4.2." Did you co-authors want to propose two ways (i.e., prefix-sid sub-TLV and SID-Label Binding sub-TLV) to achieve the same goal (i..e, advertise a range of prefix/SID pairs)?

because in OSPF advertisement of the prefix SID is decoupled from the 
advertisement of prefix reachability, we can afford to advertise the 
range of SIDs in the prefix-SID sub-TLV as such.

No, we do not define two ways to achieve the same thing. Binding TLV is 
used for a different purpose and the same usage is only applicable to 
the Range semantics, not to the whole Binding TLV.

> 6. In ISIS-SR, the prefix-SID sub-TLV doesn't contain the MT-ID field since the MT-ID field is already contained in the parent TLV of the prefix-SID sub-TLV. In OSPF, the MT-ID field is contained in the Prefix SID Sub-TLV since the parent TLV of the prefix-sid sub-TLV doesn't contain that MT-ID field. IMHO, it's better to contain the MT-ID in the parent prefix-specific TLV of the prefix-SID sub-TLV. In other words, why not contain the MT-ID in the OSPF Extended Prefix TLV, instead of the prefix-sid sub-TLV (see section 3 of http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-xu-ospf-global-label-sid-adv-00)?

no, we do not want to put the MT-ID in the OSPF Extended Prefix TLV. The 
reason is that attributes are MT specific, not the prefix itself - e.g. 
you may want to advertise different metrics for the same prefix in 
different topologies, not the same prefix twice.

regards,
Peter

>
> Anyway, although it is unavoidable for us to define extensions to both ISIS and OSPF for the same thing due to the fact that both protocols have been widely used, could we try our best to keep the encodings of ISIS and OSPF as consistent as possible for the same functionality? In this way, once someone has read the ISIS extension draft, he or she can easily think of what has been done in the OSPF extension draft accordingly, and vice verse.
>
> Best regards,
> Xiaohu
>
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