The MPLS WG Archive

[Curtis Villamizar <curtis@avici.com>]

In message <F033F6FEF3F1D111BD150000F8CD143103D98B8E@zcard007.ca.nortel.com>, "
Don Fedyk" writes:
> 
> Bora
> 
> We went through a lot of this thought process and came to the 
> conclusion that defining the place to put the metric was the
> most we would do now. One of the rejected schemes was a metric 
> descriptor that told you the type explicitly. So a 4 byte 
> type vector could identify the metric carried and you could
> actually do correlation if I put metric x as delay and you 
> put metric y as delay as long as we stuck to a standard 
> descriptor identifying "delay" we could interwork.  
> 
> So we currently propose an implicit definition as opposed 
> to an explicit definition. My understanding is you would 
> favor the more explicit definition. Then you need to define 
> the identifying codes and that is where the debates start.
> I think it is like politics, the more you specific you get 
> the less people agree with you. ;-)
> 
> Don


Bora, Don,

A compromise that seems to have worked well in diff-serv was to split
the 6 bit space into two parts, one predefined, where some consesus
was needed for assignement and the other was designated for
local-assignment.

The same sort of compromise would probably please the most people in
this case as well.

I don't mean to lend my support for this proposal by commenting and
suggesting a compromise.  By introducing too much protocol which is
partially defined, and possibly not well enough thought out, we could
be creating the standards process equivalent of a Tower of Babel.
[Which might not be policially correct since that's ISO territory. :)]

Curtis