Re: [Isis-wg] Request for WG adoption of draft-xu-isis-mpls-elc-00

Hi Robert,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rraszuk@gmail.com [mailto:rraszuk@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Robert
> Raszuk
> Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2014 8:25 PM
> To: Xuxiaohu
> Cc: isis-chairs@tools.ietf.org; draft-xu-isis-mpls-elc@tools.ietf.org;
> isis-wg@ietf.org
> Subject: Re: [Isis-wg] Request for WG adoption of draft-xu-isis-mpls-elc-00
> 
> Hi Xu,
> 
> Actually let me express an opinion that while for other MPLS signalling protocols
> the concept of entropy label as describe in RFC
> 6790 may be useful I would rather question if the same applies to segment
> routing architecture.

I'm a bit confused with the above argument. The EL usage (i.e., the data-plane processing of ELs) is completely independent from the signaling protocols for ELs. In other words, assume operators choose to manually configure the ELC of egress LSRs on a given ingress LSR, the EL trick can be used without any problem. The signaling protocol just provides a way to automatically discovery the ELC of egress LSRs. This situation has no difference from RFC5512. Without RFC5512, do you believe that the MPLS-in-GRE or MPLS-in-IP tunnels couldn't be used between PE pairs? Since he MPLS-based SPRING or SR architecture has no change to the MPLS data-plane, why can't we apply the EL concept directly to SPRING or SR architecture? 

> Fundamental difference here is that other MPLS signalling protocols bind labels
> to FECs. SR on the other hand binds SIDs (which one of the special case of can be
> label) to nodes or links. That means that number of such bindings will naturally
> be orders of magnitude less in the SR concept.

In this thread, we are just talking about the MPLS-based SRPING or SR case. In that case, I don't believe the above argument (i.e., that number of such bindings will naturally
be orders of magnitude less in the SR concept) is true. Compare LDP with the IGP-based label distribution protocol, why do you believe the latter means orders of magnitude less of bindings?

> That means that perhaps one could really analyze if the tuple ELI + EL (one or
> many) is that much needed as opposed to advertise wider range of SIDs and
> simply use those in flat layer for loadbalancing reasons ?
> Just mapping different flows on ingress to different label from said range.

It seems that the above approach you mentioned has been denied by RFC6790 (See section 2 of RFC6790).

> Also that not only can accomplish egress node loadbalancing, but also all via
> nodes will have no problem with such input to a hash function regardless if they
> are SR capable or not ?
> 
> Maybe rather then copying all fixes of MPLS original architecture to SR its better
> to adjust SR architecture to at least not repeat the same mistakes we have
> already made in the past ?

What' the same mistakes in your mind? The entropy label concept as defined in RFC6790? Or allocate a single label rather than a label range for a given FEC?

Best regards,
Xiaohu

> Comments ?
> 
> Cheers,
> R.
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 10:05 AM, Xuxiaohu <xuxiaohu@huawei.com> wrote:
> > Hi WG co-chairs,
> >
> > This draft (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-xu-isis-mpls-elc-00) describes how
> to advertise the MPLS Entropy Label Capability (ELC) using IS-IS in SPRING
> networks. Since
> (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-isis-segment-routing-extensions-00) has
> been adopted as a WG draft, as co-authors of draft-xu-isis-mpls-elc-00, we hope
> you could consider the WG adoption for this draft as well.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Xiaohu (on behalf of all-authors)
> >
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