At 1:31 PM -0700 6/18/03, Vach Kompella wrote:
> - the IETF's track record for this work so far is quite poor
That's not a problem of the ppvpn group only. It is a problem of the IETF.
Generally agree.
I don't need to refresh your memory about IPSec, do I? SKIP, Skeme, Oakley,
IKE. AH or ESP with auth? 5 years of bloody fighting.
I'm not sure how to argue with the statement "the IETF has done a
horrible job with a similar working group, so we want our working
group in the IETF".
First off, I agree with you about the IPsec WG, and think it is a
very good indicator of what the IETF does poorly, particularly in the
area of focus. (Hint: look at the number of WG Internet Drafts there
are right now in IPsec that no one is working on.) The problems in
the IPsec WG and others are typical of the problems of the WGs that
are working on trusted VPN technologies.
It's wherever the action is that the political jostling for position
is the most
prominent. That's also where the leadership needs to be strong and
participants
need to have a "nose to the grindstone" attitude. That's hardly an indication
that the work should not be chartered or worked upon.
Er, yes it is. There is no indication that we will do a better job
than the terrible job we are doing now. What you propose sounds like
"we're terrible parents for our six children and barely have enough
time to pay attention to them, but maybe we'll be better with the
seventh."
> We have not shown any ability to create standards in this area with
due speed or predictability. We have not shown the good judgement
needed to limit the scope of the work we do. (Look at the number of
L2VPN-based Working Group drafts in PWE3 and PPVPN, much less the
large number of non-WG documents being actively discussed.
Do you think the new L2VPN charter addresses these concerns of scoping? How
about the timelines? Basically, it's going to be a WG issue, chairs and
participants, to finish the WG charter items first.
Why do you think that the re-chartered WG will have any more luck
with these than the current one? There are a zillion hardware vendors
and service providers who have reasons to want the dozens of
documents that are in the current WGs, and it takes very little
effort on their part to promote their views. The IETF structure does
poorly in such an environment; maybe a different standards body would
do better.
> The IETF understands the need for layer 2 technologies for OAM much
better than we understand the Internet customer's need (or even
concern) for layer 2 transport of their IP packets. This is because
we have a tighter relationship with operators than we do with
Internet users, and because Internet users generally could care less
about how their ISPs move their traffic as long as they meet the
service level agreements. The ISPs would love to have better
cross-vendor interop for the L2VPN technologies, but so far the
vendors haven't had time to think about that because they have been
overloaded with the literally dozens of flavors that are being
discussed in the IETF.
Are you talking PWE3 or L2VPN?
Yes. There is a significant amount of spillage between the two.
The gazillion drafts is in PWE3. The interop issues are localized
to the drafts
with contention, silly issues of where bits should go.
There are 16 pseudowire types:
0x0001 Frame Relay DLCI
0x0002 ATM AAL5 SDU VCC transport
0x0003 ATM transparent cell transport
0x0004 Ethernet Tagged Mode
0x0005 Ethernet
0x0006 HDLC
0x0007 PPP
0x0008 SONET/SDH Circuit Emulation Service Over MPLS (CEM) [8]
0x0009 ATM n-to-one VCC cell transport
0x000A ATM n-to-one VPC cell transport
0x000B IP Layer2 Transport
0x000C ATM one-to-one VCC Cell Mode
0x000D ATM one-to-one VPC Cell Mode
0x000E ATM AAL5 PDU VCC transport
0x000F Frame-Relay Port mode
0x0010 SONET/SDH Circuit Emulation over Packet (CEP)
At least half of these are and have been interoperable. It is the harder (and
more arcane, IMHO) PW types that people are having a hard time coming to some
sort of compromise.
And why should the IETF care at all about these? There are other fora
for layer-2 interworking.
BTW, I'm glad to see you have a healthier respect for providers than
Kurtis who
claims that "most of these providers have bought what their vendor
told them to
buy."
He and I might both be right. In my talks with service providers, I
find that many of them who want to expand their presence in, or just
get into, the "IP VPN" market look at what hardware they have on hand
in their core (they certainly can't buy any significant new hardware
these days) and base their decision on the layer-2 technologies on
that. Usually, the customers don't know or care. If the customers
care, they only care enough to ask "are you using MPLS" and then node
sagely when their service provider says yes. (Humorously, the very
large service provider who doesn't use MPLS in their core says that
it usually only takes one or more sentences to convince the
prospective customer that MPLS is not needed.)
> We will never know if there is another organization who could do a
better job than this because no other organization will take on the
work while the 800-pound gorilla of standards bodies is flailing
around in the area. There are certainly other organizations that can
take it on, such as the MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance. They might do
just as bad of a job as we have so far, but they could also do much
better because they are much more focused.
An 800-pound gorilla conjures up images of one less nimble of foot.
Exactly.
IMHO, not
the right metaphor for the IETF.
But one that I believe is apt, at least for all of the trusted VPN
work the IETF is doing currently.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium