On Jun 11, 2010, at 12:25 PM, Erik Nordmark wrote:

> On 06/11/10 01:18 AM, Daniel Gavelle wrote:
>> Erik,
>> 
>> I agree that it is very important to keep the contexts in sync within a
>> network. I can also see that the L2 security can be used to separate
>> networks. Given these two conditions, when would there be a need for two
>> 6LBRS in a network to have different addresses / version number spaces?
> 
> There is a difference between how I would build a product today using the 
> specification, and what we should support in the specification.
> 
> In a product, especially one that uses compression contexts, it makes sense 
> having the ABRO originate from a logical management entity to ensure that all 
> the 6LBRs send out the same information. But that belongs in the vendor's 
> product spec.
> 
> But for general applicability to route-over networks I think allowing the 
> 6LBRs to be autonomous is the right thing to do in the protocol specification.
> 
> Thus the protocol specification isn't the same as the product specification.

Yep, I agree with Erik here. In an enterprise environment you will be able to 
manage the whole 6LBR infrastructure (and the contexts), so we are OK there. In 
home environments you will probably keep LoWPANs separate using L2 encryption. 

However as public/urban 6LoWPAN networks become more common (we are deploying 
one right now in Oulu, Finland), there will be situations where a 6LR will hear 
RAs originated from different authoritative border routers with different 
points of attachment to the Internet (and different sets of context). We have 
two choices what to do in this situation:

a) Say nothing about it. Here we have a risk that a poor 6LR implementation 
will start mixing contexts, or will even advertise two sets of RAs - which is 
obviously broken. This is the case Daniel (and myself) are concerned about.

b) Explicitly say what the 6LR should do in this case. If we explicitly forbid 
a 6LR from attaching to two different LoWPANs at the same time, then this fixes 
this potential problem (it can obviously still attach to multiple default 
routers in the same LoWPAN). This way the host -> 6LR -> 6LBR attachments are 
always under the same authoritative border router (which might be a coordinated 
one as pointed out above). 

Zach

> 
>   Erik
> 
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-- 
Zach Shelby, Chief Nerd, Sensinode Ltd.
http://zachshelby.org  - My blog "On the Internet of Things"
http://6lowpan.net - My book "6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet"
Mobile: +358 40 7796297

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