The MPLS WG Archive

[Stephen Trowbridge <sjtrowbridge@lucent.com>]

Kireeti,
I'm not sure that this is the same.
IETF develops control plane technology that can control SONET/SDH
equipment used to carry physical layer connections supporting an
IP network. Presumably SONET/SDH doesn't need to change for this
application as long as virtual concatenation, etc. support the
necessary pipe sizes.

If SONET/SDH did not have what was required for this application,
I assume that IETF should first come to T1X1/ITU-T for the needed
extensions (much as ITU-T first came to IETF for the needed extensions-
remember?). If ITU-T then was not interested to help and if standardized
SONET/SDH did not meet the requirements, I suppose
that IETF would have the right to do what it needed for its
application and inform ITU-T what it had done.

ITU-T wants to apply the control plane technology to a general
purpose (not necessarily IP) transport network. In contrast to
the IP network, you have demarcation points User/Network and
between network operators for billing purposes, etc. This
leads to some new requirements (e.g., call & connection separation)
not met by the base protocol. Is it reasonable that we want to
use the (G)MPLS protocols as a base and (inside or outside of
IETF) define the minimum set of extensions to meet the requirements,
or should we just have stuck with PNNI?
Regards,
Steve

Kireeti Kompella wrote:
> 
> Hi Steve,
> 
> On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Stephen Trowbridge wrote:
> 
> > If they decide not to be involved and the other SDO goes ahead with
> > developing their own solution, they don't need to bless the extension,
> > or even like it, but they do need to accept it.
> 
> Going back to the examples that Deborah brought up: what if other SDOs
> produced variants of SDH -- would you say that the ITU "do need to
> accept it"?
> 
> Kireeti.