Re: [netmod] ACL draft defines ether-type as a string

[William Lupton <[e-mail]>]

Editorial: ethertype (no hyphen) seems to be more common than ether-type (28 versus 11 matches in the YANG catalog, plus IEEE seem to use the no-hyphen version).

Also (even more editorial), I don’t see the need for the rather distracting ‘0x’ in the name, so would suggest ethertype-XXXX (yes, I realise that this decision is in the IEEE bailiwick).

William

> On 18 Jul 2017, at 08:21, Mahesh Jethanandani <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> The issue of ether-type defined as a string was discussed with participants from IEEE in IETF. It was generally agreed that since ether-types are well known values, and centrally managed, that they be defined as enumerations. There was some clarification sought by IEEE on which values need to be published. It was suggested that ether-types that are either private or do not have a protocol identified would be named as ether-type-0xXXXX where 0xXXXX represents the value assigned. All the remaining ether-types will be defined as enums with the well known names. 
> 
> As far as the impact of that on the ACL draft is concerned, it will be to remove all local definitions for ether-type from the draft, such as the one below and instead use the definition from IEEE, whenever that is done. It does however put a dependency on the IEEE model.
> 
>     leaf ether-type {
>       type string {
>         pattern '[0-9a-fA-F]{4}';
>       }
>       description
>         "The Ethernet Type (or Length) value represented
>          in the canonical order defined by IEEE 802.
>          The canonical representation uses lowercase
>          characters.
> 
>          Note: This is not the most ideal way to define
>          ether-types. Ether-types are well known types
>          and are registered with RAC in IEEE. So they
>          should well defined types with values. For now
>          this model is defining it as a string.
>          There is a note out to IEEE that needs to be
>          turned into a liaison statement asking them to
>          define all ether-types for the industry to use.";
>       reference
>         "IEEE 802-2014 Clause 9.2";
>     }
>     reference
>       "IEEE 802: IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan
>        Area Networks: Overview and Architecture.";
>   }