RE: VPN Identifiers

["Hamid Ould-Brahim" <[e-mail]>]

Richard,

[clipped...]

> 
> The point is that currently different mechanisms use different VPN ID
> formats. 

I would say instead "different mechanisms use different global unique
identifiers some of them are intended to uniquely identify a VPN."

>If it is decided that 
> draft-ouldbrahim-ppvpn-gid-03.txt is the best
> VPN ID format to use then that's fine, but for inter-dependency and
> interoperability reasons it should be used across all VPN mechanisms.
> Looking at draft-ouldbrahim-ppvpn-gid-03.txt, do we really 
> need 4+ different
> naming methods for a VPN? I think two options for global 
> identifiers at the
> most should be sufficient, i.e. AS#, or OUI, although 
> obviously one global
> ID would be preferable.

draft-ouldbrahim-ppvpn-gid-03.txt tries to define formats for 
supporting global unique identifiers mainly intended for VPN 
solutions and mostly targeting control planes, and among these 
formats it supports the route target and RFC2685 formats within
an 8 octets length field. These ids are required to be unique 
only within a given solution and they do not necessarily identify 
a VPN. A particular solution may decide to assign a gid to uniquely 
identify a VPN if it wants to, and may want to use gids for other
purposes as well. 

The draft does not solve the problem of defining a unique VPN-ID 
format intended to be used everywhere across all solutions including 
management. In my view if one wants to solve this problem and enforce 
that id on all solutions and on all the components of a given solution
then there is already rfc2685 standard which pretty 
much meets the definition you mentioned below. Whether solutions 
within l2vpns will be using it everywhere is obviously 
another thing. 

Hamid.

> 
> Richard
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Eric Rosen [mailto:[e-mail]]
> > Sent: 11 August 2003 18:26
> > To: Spencer,R,Richard,XGH5 R
> > Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
> > Subject: Re: VPN Identifiers 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > We already  have an  8-byte VPN-Id format  which can  be 
> > based either  on AS
> > numbers or on OUIs, and is  extensible to other possibilities 
> > as well.  Have
> > you looked at draft-ouldbrahim-ppvpn-gid-03.txt? 
> > 
> 
>