Re: [mpls] I-D Action: draft-xu-mpls-payload-protocol-identifier-00.txt

Hi Andy,

Sorry for my late response due to a long National Day holiday. 

First of all, thanks a lot for your comments. I agree that using a PW is a way of identifying the MPLS payload type. However, just for the purpose of using the EtherType field in the Ethernet header, it requires to establish a full mesh of P2P PWs between PE routers in addition to adding a 14-byte-long fake Ethernet header to each MPLS packet. Doesn't it seem a bit heavy-weight, in the case where the number of PE routers is huge enough that [RFC4447] signaling is not suitable anymore for setting up the PW?

Best regards,
Xiaohu

> -----邮件原件-----
> 发件人: mpls-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:mpls-bounces@ietf.org] 代表 Andrew
> G. Malis
> 发送时间: 2013年9月26日 21:44
> 收件人: mpls@ietf.org
> 主题: Re: [mpls] I-D Action: draft-xu-mpls-payload-protocol-identifier-00.txt
> 
> A history lesson for the young-ins out there: this draft brings me
> back to the Good Old Days, when we had a nice little fight about
> whether or not all MPLS packets should include a protocol identifier
> or not, similar to multiprotocol encapsulation for Frame Relay (RFC
> 2427) and ATM (RFC 2684) (and interestingly, neither of those two RFCs
> are referenced by this one). Those of us that wanted to include a
> protocol ID in MPLS packets lost in the end.
> 
> However, the difference between then and now is that now we have
> pseudowires, and not only that, we already have a PW that implements
> the functionality of this draft, RFC 6658. Just use RFC 6658 and be
> done with it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Andy
> 
> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 6:09 AM,  <internet-drafts@ietf.org> wrote:
> >
> > A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
> >
> >
> >         Title           : MPLS Payload Protocol Identifier
> >         Author(s)       : Xiaohu Xu
> >                           Mach(Guoyi) Chen
> >         Filename        : draft-xu-mpls-payload-protocol-identifier-00.txt
> >         Pages           : 7
> >         Date            : 2013-09-26
> >
> > Abstract:
> >    The MPLS label stack has no explicit protocol identifier field to
> >    indicate the protocol type of the MPLS payload. This document
> >    proposes a mechanism for containing a protocol identifier field
> >    within the MPLS packet, which may be useful in some emerging use
> >    cases (e.g., network service chain and MPLS payload inspection).
> >
> >
> > The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
> > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-xu-mpls-payload-protocol-identifier
> >
> > There's also a htmlized version available at:
> > http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-xu-mpls-payload-protocol-identifier-00
> >
> >
> > Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
> > until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
> >
> > Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
> > ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > I-D-Announce mailing list
> > I-D-Announce@ietf.org
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce
> > Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
> > or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
> _______________________________________________
> mpls mailing list
> mpls@ietf.org
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mpls