> - 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 withdue 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 muchbetter 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 abetter 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
