Re: [mpls] Regarding adopting draft-song-mpls-extension-header - do we need post stack data?

[Tony Li <[e-mail]>]

Hi Stewart,


> iOAM is  not the only use case, that is another in the latency control/deterministic networking area, which is in itself fundamental to the ambitions of the 5G/6G world. Some of these approaches require a timestamp in the packet and it is not clear that we can shoehorn this into the MPLS stack itself.


Each LSE gives us 30 bits to play with. I have yet to see a timestamp that is more than 64 bits, so at worst, this would seem like 3 LSEs, which is entirely doable.


> I can also see a need for more sophisticated security models than we have at the moment, and again I doubt that we can fit these in the stack.


I would like to understand this concern in more detail. Again, just bits in the NAS is not a major concern. While fewer bits are of course better, we do have a significant capacity available.  Unless we’re talking about a model where we add a signature per-hop, I’m failing to envision anything that would be problematic.

I will point out that dispensing with PSD now is not a perpetual ban. If we do decide that we need it later, we can easily re-introduce it. So if we don’t have an immediate need, we could (and, out of minimalism, should) set it aside and come back to it if the need is articulated.

Regards,
Tony