The MPLS WG Archive

[Len Nieman <Len.Nieman@mci.com>]

Inline:

>Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 13:01 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Curtis Villamizar <curtis@fictitious.org>
>To: Len Nieman <Len.Nieman@mci.com>
>CC: Curtis Villamizar <curtis@fictitious.org>,
>    "Natale,    Robert C (Bob)" <bnatale@lucent.com>,
>    tnadeau@cisco.com,
>    Adrian Farrel <afarrel@movaz.com>,
>    'MPLS WG' <mpls@UU.NET>
>Reply-to: curtis@fictitious.org
>Original-recipient: rfc822;len.nieman@mci.com
>Subject: Re: prequeal to WG lat call om the LSR mib module

<Major Snip>

>
>To be honest with you, I see by your signature that you're with MCI
>and there are other people in Worldcom that don't share your opinion
>on this.  That is for Worldcom/MCI/UUNET to resolve.

I'm very aware of that, and when I'm responding to a WG list I'm speaking
strictly for myself.

>We speak here in the IETF as individuals and your opinion counts as
>much as anyone's.

Thank you. Maybe I need to start including a "The opinions expressed
are my own" disclaimer.
 
>There seems to be two approaches to configuring ATM and FR service.
>One is to have an offline NMS set the low level switch mappings.  Many
>providers with legacy ATM and FR switches seem to have done this.  The
>preference among ISPs using MPLS has been to use dynamic routing and
>configure only the MPLS LSP requirements (constraints) at the ingress.
>Where we are now is providers want to offer ATM and FR service over
>MPLS and there are clearly two groups in many providers that are
>starting to do this.  One group wants to set inseg/outseg with the MIB
>arguing that it is what they've always done.  The other wants setup on
>the ingress and points out that ATM and FR will be a small minority of
>traffic and configuring the ingress has proven more reliable.

It may sound weird, but I actually agree with both sides on this.

At some point FR and ATM will become a small minority of traffic. But my
opinion is that right now, across the board, there is a lot of customer
and carrier capital money tied up in both. No one is going to just toss
that investment out the window, it will attrit away over time as it
becomes depreciated. Until then, there will still be a lot of FR and ATM
being used to access MPLS networks.

>Maybe you are right.

And maybe not, it's just my opinion.

>The IETF can't decide that internal argument for the providers.
>For now the MIB needs to be read-write.  Providers need to resolve
>this internally and tell their vendors whether they need read-write
>or read-only.

Agreed.

>This argument may go on as long as the cells vs packets argument
>that raged almost a decade ago.

I hope not!

>If it resolves as many of us think it will, we can go with read-only,
>but at this point it is not resolved.
>
>Curtis

Time will tell.

Len