The MPLS WG Archive

[Curtis Villamizar <curtis@fictitious.org>]

In message <4B6D09F3B826D411A67300D0B706EFDEB03D60@nt-exch-yow.pmc-sierra.bc.ca
>, Shahram Davari writes:
> >Regardless of the process that the IETF uses to address the 
> >contributions, network need for extensions, to address applications 
> >outside the IETF scope, will continue to be identified.  For that 
> >reason, there will be real network need for those extensions.  
> 
> It might be a good idea to require that all IETF protocols support
> vendor-specific extensions, so that they could be used by other SDOs
> and for experiments.
> 
> -Shahram


How does a committee experiment with a protocol?  AFAIK most SDOs
don't "experiment" they just write standards without trying them out,
then try to mandate that everyone implement them still not knowing for
sure if they actually work.  Its the IETF that experiments first.
That's the "running code" thing you might have heard about.

All of the protocols support extension mechanisms.  One or more
vendors often experiment with protocol extensions, label documents
with TBD for codepoints and pick an unused one temporarily.  Once
sufficient consensus is acheived that the protocol extension is at
least worthwhile, which often follows successful limited deployment,
the TBD is given an IANA assignment while the details are worked out.
This works just fine.  

Running code and successful deployment do carry weight in the IETF but
even that is not absolute as evident by the MPLS/ICMP extensions which
were successfully deployed but rejected.

If you mean that any committee should be able to try to mandate any
extension they please, then I don't think its a good idea.

Curtis