The MPLS WG Archive

[Kireeti Kompella <kireeti@juniper.net>]

Hi Frank,

> My perspective is naive, but as I understand it, the current proposals
> require a control link to "overlay" an optical link exactly, and for the
> control path(s) to be associated with groups of optical links according to
> their characteristics (i.e. bandwidth - OC-48 vs OC-192).

> Some of us in the optical world, growing from the telephony (SONET/SDH)
> world do NOT assume that this overlay occurs. We prefer to offer the
> provider (in my case, my customer) to have management networks that are not
> the same as the transport networks. This is because in-band signaling is not
> yet available (though OIF is working on it) and because providers may not
> want to dedicate a wavelength to relatively low-speed management traffic.

We have the notion of separate control channels and data paths in many
drafts.  See draft-ietf-mpls-lmp-00.txt for a brief description.

Kireeti.