Re: [Lsr] LSR WG Adoption Poll for "Flexible Algorithms: Bandwidth, Delay, Metrics and Constraints" - draft-hegde-lsr-flex-algo-bw-con-02

[Aijun Wang <[e-mail]>]

Hi, Tony:

Aijun Wang
China Telecom

> On May 22, 2021, at 06:40, Tony Li <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Aijun,
> 
>>>> With the introduce of additional constraint information, the problem described in “Introduction” part(Section 1) can be solved.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Please say more.  Claims without rationale are not reasoning.
>> [WAJ]  The introduction part talks mainly how to divert the elephant traffic away from the low bandwidth link. This can be achieved via the introduction of additional constraints information for Flex-ALGO
> 
> 
> Which is exactly what we’ve done: added bandwidth constraints. 

[WAJ] Yes, I agree with this.

> 
> 
>>>> The usage of bandwidth metric in large network is not feasible. 
>>> 
>> [WAJ] The main reason is that bandwidth metric is not cumulative.  
> 
> 
> ??? What are you seeing that implies that?  That is not my understanding at all.

[WAJ] The operator must plan carefully for the metric assignment accordingly to their specific topology to let the traffic pass the necessary high bandwidth path as done in the following example.

> 
> 
>>>> And, would you like to explain more for the following statements(in Section 4.1.1.2)
>>>> “In the interface group mode, every node MUST identify the set of
>>>>    parallel links between a pair of nodes based on IGP link
>>>>    advertisements and MUST consider cumulative bandwidth of the parallel
>>>>    links while arriving at the metric of each link.”
>>>> based on example described in Figure 7? 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The paragraph immediately above explains exactly that. B->C has two parallel 10Gbps links, so it should be considered to be 20Gbps.
>>> 
>>>  
>>>> How the cumulative bandwidth will be used to achieve the result that traffic from B to D will prefer B-C-F-D, not B-E-D? 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> B-C-F-D is 20Gbps. B-E-D is 10Gbps.
>> 
>> [WAJ] OK, let’s add two nodes between node B and C, say they are node M and N. They have also two parallel links to B and C respectively. The two possible path from B to D will be:
>> Path 1: B-M-N-C-F-D
>> Path 2: B-E-D
>> If the “reference bandwidth” is 100G, then metric for each link in B-M-N-C-F-D will be 5, the cumulative metric from B-D for Path 1 “B—N-C-F-D” will be 25, right?
>> The metric for each link in B-E-D will be 10, the cumulative metric from B-D for Path 2 will be 20, right?
>> How can you prefer to the high bandwidth path?
> 
> 
> Override the metric on B-E-D to be even higher.

[WAJ] If such work must be done manually, it certainly weaken the necessary of the automatic metric calculations based on link bandwidth, also the introduction of bandwidth metric.

> 
> The point of the bandwidth metric (at least in this incarnation) is not to make hop count irrelevant. It is to set the metrics relative to the bandwidth so that traffic skews towards higher bandwidths.

[WAJ] This can be done via the “bandwidth constraints sub TLV” that is introduced in this document.

> Hops are still relevant. An operator can adjust the reference bandwidth and add manual metrics to achieve different effects, depending on their precise needs.
[WAJ] Is it more simple and easy to get determined results via setting the link metric based on the additive information?
> 
> Tony
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>