Zhi,
I have followed the ASON and CCAMP work quite closely over the last couple of
years. I am quite familiar and mostly in agreement with your summary of events
below.
What was not well communicated is that the ITU decided (recently) to do the
GMPLS/ASON extensions themselves. I think many of the postings on this thread
indicate that people were not aware of, and disagree with, this approach.
I can understand the frustration of not getting attention to the needed ASON
requirements in IETF/CCAMP. IETF/CCAMP had been saying (quoting statements
made by chairs and ADs) they need to 'close the gaps' to meet ASON requirements
as far back as IETF-53/Minneapolis (March). CCAMP charter extensions to
address same were suggested(IETF-54/Yokohama CCAMP meeting minutes say "The
charter update is way overdue. Items may be added - protection/restoration,
crankback and multi-area operations."), but CCAMP charter extensions are still
pending even to this day.
However, the answer is not for the ITU (or any other standards body) to extend
IETF protocols, and visa versa. This leads to interoperability problems, I
believe, wherein we have 'ITU-TLVs', 'IETF-TLVs', 'OIF-TLVs', etc. for GMPLS
protocols. Furthermore, we are now inheriting many 'ITU-TLVs' for RSVP-TE and
CRLDP. This precludes, or at least inhibits, proper technical discussion to
arrive at the best technical approach. Further discussion on 'ITU-TLVs' (e.g.,
call control, crankback, etc.) is now moot.
Perhaps we can learn from this and improve the process, e.g.:
a) Bert has proposed a (G)MPLS change process (seems like a good idea),
b) better communication and responsiveness, especially from WG chairs on direct
queries (e.g., 'where is the CCAMP charter update?' has been asked many times,
but there is no response, still pending).
Regards,
Jerry
-----Original Message-----
From: Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi) [mailto:zwlin(_at_)lucent(_dot_)com]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 2:57 AM
To: Ash, Gerald R (Jerry), ALABS; iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org;
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc: Stephen Trowbridge; David Charlap; Loa Andersson
Subject: RE: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational
Hi Jerry,
I'm not sure how long you've followed the entire GMPLS and
ASON work, but I'm assuming here that you weren't part of the
original discussions over the last 1.5 to 2 years on this
matter. That's understandable as this wasn't your original
area of interest.
However, if you talk with some folks involved since the
beginning, you would realize (and also reading Steve's email
on the history, or simply going back to the email archives in
both MPLS and CCAMP) that
(a) ITU-T tried to get the work done in IETF (I believe Steve
mentioned Oct. 21, 2001)
(b) IETF never actually started/initiated work to fill these
gaps. So a set of individuals who happens to attend IETF, OIF
and ITU decided that they would work towards a solution
(c) This solution was submitted into IETF, OIF, and ITU --
with clear intention of trying to get feedback from the
"true" RSVP experts
(d) I (and Bala) created I-Ds in IETF (Bala actually started
this I think sometime in early 2002? -- Bala you can confirm
or correct -- while I submitted my I-D in June 2002)
(e) These documents were never taken seriously (This is the
first email I sent:
http://ops.ietf.org/lists/ccamp/ccamp.2002/msg00918.html --
but of course no one responded)
(f) ITU-T requests which were publicly presented in CCAMP
meetings by Wesam and Steve (see Steve's email to see how
many requests were made) were never taken seriously
The ITU-T delayed their process by several months in order
for RSVP experts (I guess Bob Braden would call folks who's
done this work "non-RSVP experts") to review. Of course no
comments were ever provided by the "true" RSVP experts.
Several individuals tried very hard to try and get a good
relationship and collaboration going amongst the three
organizations. The break-down is not for lack of trying or
exposing the work to the RSVP experts.
As such, although I agree that the original intent of all the
individuals who came into this work expecting to collaborate
and do the work in IETF CCAMP WG, the actual situation is
very much different, and is a result of certain members of
the CCAMP WG community deciding not to bother with paying
attention to the work. Again I can understand the perception
that you get since you weren't involved from the beginning.
But a casual perusal of the email archives (too much work for
me, if you're interested you should take a look at the
history first) would give you a much better and accurate
history of the discussions (see
http://ops.ietf.org/lists/ccamp for the CCAMP email archive,
and
http://cell.onecall.net/cell-relay/archives/mpls/mpls.index.html
for the MPLS email archive).
Thanks
Zhi