Chris -

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christian Hopps <cho...@chopps.org>
> Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2022 1:36 PM
> To: Peter Psenak (ppsenak) <ppse...@cisco.com>
> Cc: Christian Hopps <cho...@chopps.org>; Tony Li <tony...@tony.li>; Les
> Ginsberg (ginsberg) <ginsb...@cisco.com>; Robert Raszuk
> <rob...@raszuk.net>; Henk Smit <henk.i...@xs4all.nl>; lsr@ietf.org
> Subject: Re: [Lsr] New Version Notification for draft-pkaneria-lsr-multi-tlv-
> 01.txt
> 
> 
> Peter Psenak <ppsenak=40cisco....@dmarc.ietf.org> writes:
> 
> > Chris,
> >
> > On 06/10/2022 18:34, Christian Hopps wrote:
> >> Peter Psenak <ppse...@cisco.com> writes:
> >>
> >>> Tony, Les,
> >>>
> >>> I believe we can all agree that we do not want to change the behavior of
> >>> existing implementations that support MP-TLVs based on the
> advertisements of the
> >>> MP-capability from other routers - it would break existing networks.
> Even the
> >>> text in the MP-TLV draft does not suggest that to be the case.
> >> Are people not looking at the spreadsheet Tony put together?
> >> Which implicit multi-part TLVs are these "existing implementations"
> >> advertising that keep getting referred to? Please let's work with real data
> --
> >> the spreadsheet shows a grand total of *0* TLVs that could fall in this
> >> category.
> >
> > then the spreadsheet is incorrect.
> >
> > I know of implementation that can send and receive Multi part TLVs for
> IPv4/IPv6
> > (MT) IP Reach, (MT) Extended IS reachability and IS-IS Router CAPABILITY
> TLV to
> > start with.
> 
> Do you know all of the implementations, and all of those that don't? If we
> could publish that list then we presumably could explore more simple
> solutions. :)
> 
> People keep talking about breaking deployed networks, but that assumes
> there are functional networks with implicit MP-TLVs in them. I am not sure I
> accept the assertion that these networks are truly functional.
> 
> AFAICT these networks are *lucky* to be working. There's no document to
> point at, there's no bit to look at, there's literally nothing to help an 
> operator
> or their routers know if all the routers correctly receive and process these
> implicit MP-TLVs. These networks are one network change (even as small as
> an interface up or down event) away from failing, or may even be failing
> already but not yet in a noticeable way. This is the case regardless of what
> type of bit or functionality this document provides.

[LES:] I don't agree at all with your characterization.

MP-TLVs (explicit or implicit) are not an extension of the protocol - they are 
completely consistent with the base operation of the protocol. I have always 
viewed lack of support for MP-TLVs as an implementation limitation - not a gap 
in the protocol.
Until relatively recently, there was no need to send MP-TLVs for 
neighbors/prefixes and since it is far from trivial to implement MP-TLV support 
it is understandable why most(all?) implementations did not include such 
support initially.
But this does not mean that the protocol itself lacks the support.

Would it have been better if all RFCs were explicit about the possibility of 
MP-TLVs? Sure - but hindsight is always easier than foresight.
And even in those cases where MP-TLV support was explicitly defined, this did 
not guarantee that all implementations had that support. Vendors make decisions 
based on business as to how they spend their development budget and I think we 
are both familiar with decisions to defer support for some aspects of the 
protocol until a stronger business case arises.

Regarding existing networks, MP-TLVs are an aspect of scale and feature 
support. If your deployment includes many flex-algos or a large number of TE 
attributes or other features which add to the information needing to be 
advertised, then MP-TLVs are required.
Implementations which do not support MP-TLVs cannot be deployed in such 
environments - and it isn’t because of interoperability issues - it is because 
they do not support the scale/features required.

As my employer has implementations which do support MP-TLVs, I can say that we 
do not depend upon luck - but we do depend upon careful planning. We work with 
our customers to ensure that the design of the network - including the 
capabilities of the routers deployed - is considered.


   Les

> 
> So while looking for a solution here, I think less weight should be placed on
> these "lucky networks". I'm not saying we should intentionally break them,
> but they should also not count as "fully-functional" either.
> 
> Thanks,
> Chris.
> [as wg-member]
> 
> 
> >
> > thanks,
> > Peter
> >> Thanks,
> >> Chris.
> >>
> >>> I find the discussion about advertising supported capabilities for
> management
> >>> purposes in IGPs interesting, but not specific, nor directly related to 
> >>> the
> >>> MP-TLV draft. Keeping the two separate would make a lot of sense.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> my 2c,
> >>> Peter
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 05/10/2022 22:18, Tony Li wrote:
> >>>> Les,
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Oct 5, 2022, at 1:14 PM, Les Ginsberg (ginsberg)
> >>>>> <ginsberg=40cisco....@dmarc.ietf.org
> >>>>> <mailto:ginsberg=40cisco....@dmarc.ietf.org>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> */[LES:] It is clear that we have different opinions on this – and there
> are
> >>>>> multiple folks on both sides of this discussion./*
> >>>>> */What I would hope we can agree on is to separate the discussion of
> adding
> >>>>> advertisement of “feature supported” from the MP-TLV draft by
> writing a
> >>>>> separate draft on this proposal./*
> >>>>> */This would allow the two pieces of work to progress independently
> – as they
> >>>>> should./*
> >>>>> *//*
> >>>>> */This makes sense to me since the proposal to advertise feature
> support is
> >>>>> clearly not limited to MP-TLV and has no bearing on how MP-TLVs are
> >>>>> encoded./*
> >>>>> *//*
> >>>>> */Can we agree on this?/*
> >>>> Sorry, I’m not on board with this.  The two functions would end up
> >>>> disconnected, all the way to the field.
> >>>> T
> >>>>
> >>
> >
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> > Lsr@ietf.org
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