[rbridge] WG Review: Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (trill)

[townsley at cisco.com (W. Mark Townsley)]

Adrian Farrel wrote:

>  > In any case, given that ISIS is not mentioned in the TRILL charter, and
>  > presumably that we haven't actually made the choice of *which* routing
>  > protocol TRILL will use at the charter level, I agree that this reference
>  > should be removed.
>  
> OK, that makes sense. Thanks.
>  
> It occurs to me that a fundamental difference between CCAMP and TRILL 
> may be that (at this stage) CCAMP assumes the existence of an IP-based 
> control plane. TRILL will (presumably? possibly?)

I believe  "presumably," at least that is my understanding thus far. The idea 
that there is at least one mode of operation that passes packets right "out of 
the box" is fundamental. Certainly, an IP address needs to exist on the node for 
it to be properly managed, but it seems that this is *after* its connection to 
the network has started to cause big problems ;-)

 > determine that the
> routing protocol should be carried direct over the MAC layer. 
> Nevertheless, we will probably want to flood the same or similar 
> information about the links.

Yes, I think that this is the part that we should be sure to collaborate on. If 
CCAMP has already provided extensions to routing protocols to flood MACs, we 
should probably try and do it as similarly as possible for the poor coders out 
there that will end up doing both, while ensuring we have the proper code-points 
in place to avoid stepping on one another where it hurts.

Thanks,

- Mark