Re: [mpls] [sfc] The first nibble issue associated with MPLS encapsulation

Sasha,

I think that you are both right and wrong, there is no "Early IANA
De-allocation" process😉.

However, since we are not requesting a new value from any register,
I think we are fine using right away.

A packet in an mpls tunnel with the first nibble gives two pieces of
information

- it may be a bier packet
- it is not IPv4 or IPv6, thus a node the do mpls load sharing not do
   that if the first nibble is 4 or 6

The first is just a hint, the second is a reality, but nothing of this
comes from an IANA registry for first nibble.

/Loa

On 2016-04-13 20:35, Alexander Vainshtein wrote:
> I concur with Loa - with a qualifier:
> AFAIK there is no such thing as an "Early IANA De-allocation" process😉.
> So we may still have to wait some time until these values become formally available for reuse.
>
> My 2c.
>
> Thumb typed on my cellphone
> Regards,
> Sasha
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Loa Andersson <loa@pi.nu>
> Date: Wed, April 13, 2016 3:16 PM +0300
> To: mpls@ietf.org, "tom p." <daedulus@btconnect.com>
> Subject: Re: [mpls] [sfc] The first nibble issue associated with MPLS encapsulation
>
>
> Tom,
>
>
> On 2016-04-13 19:53, t.petch wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Eric C Rosen" <erosen@juniper.net>
>> Sent: Monday, April 11, 2016 3:19 PM
>>
>>
>>> (Removed sfc from the cc-list, this seems out of scope for that WG.)
>>>
>>> In designing the BIER header, the BIER WG is free to mandate any value
>>> it chooses in the first nibble.  These values do not come from a
>> "first
>>> nibble" registry.
>>>
>>> It seems prudent to put a value like 5 for the following reasons:
>>>
>>> - If a BIER packet is being parsed by an off-line tool, this is a good
>>> hint (though just a hint) that the packet is actually a BIER packet;
>>>
>>> - If a BIER packet is traveling through an MPLS tunnel, and it
>> traverses
>>> a node that does its MPLS load splitting by guessing at the type of
>> the
>>> payload, then this is  a good hint that the MPLS payload is not IPv4,
>>> IPv6, or PW.
>>>
>>> This strategy does incur a risk.  Suppose IPv5 gets designed,
>>> implemented, and deployed, and folks start to deploy hardware that
>> does
>>
>> Too late;  see
>>
>>
>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-boucadair-ip-version-5-8-9-historic-00
>
> Isn't this just in time - if IPv5 is made historic - we can safely use
> it.
>
> /Loa
>>
>> Discussion on the int-area list.
>>
>> Tom Petch
>>
>>
>>
>>> MPLS load balancing by inspecting the IPv5 headers of the MPLS
>>> payloads.  If a BIER packet is traversing an MPLS tunnel,
>> inappropriate
>>> load splitting may occur if the hardware thinks the payload is IPv5
>>> rather than BIER.
>>>
>>> This particular risk doesn't seem very significant to me.
>>>
>>> Thus I don't think there's anything here that needs fixing.
>>>
>>
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>
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