Re: Extensions to OSPF to Support Mobile Ad Hoc Networking

[Russ White <[e-mail]>]

> - at the end of page 4, there was discussion about the fact that too many
> neighbors will cause scalability problems.  This was also discussed in
> Fred Baker's MANET draft from 2002.  Do you intend to introduce
> mechanisms for minimizing the number of neighbors that a router tries to
> become adjacent with, or is that outside the scope of this proposal?

The direction we're going on in this area is to reduce the cost of becoming
adjacent, rather than preventing adjacencies in the first place--at least
at this point.

> - could you please explain why LLS extensions are preferable to defining
> a new packet type (such as Incremental Hello)? If there is no advantage,
> LLS seems a more roundabout way to do it.

Because it doesn't impact backwards compatibility. The LLS extensions will
be quietly ignored if the router doesn't know how to support it, which
allows us to continue and build a "normal" OSPF adjacency with that
neighbor. If we use some other packet type, we either need to send those
packets plus hello's, to maintain backwards compatibility, or only send
this new placket type, which would break backwards compatability.

> - do you foresee additional significant extensions beyond use of MPRs/ack
> strategy for flooding and use of incremental Hellos?

Yes, possibly. There are other uses within OSPF, as well, so it's a generic
extension that's useful for a lot of other things, not just MANET.
Flexibility is good. :-)

:-)

Russ


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