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Cell Relay Retreat>MPLS WG Archive>month:2003-Nov> msg00159



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on documenting ECMP (was on the mpls oam framework)

  • From: "Naidu, Venkata" <Venkata.Naidu@Marconi.com>
  • Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 16:14:14 -0500
  • Cc: "'David Allan'" <dallan@nortelnetworks.com>, "'tnadeau@cisco.com'" <tnadeau@cisco.com>, mpls@UU.NET

Curtis,

-> Without hierarchical LSPs, RSVP/TE does not have multipath unless 1)
-> more than one LSP is configured to the same destination with equal
-> cost and MP is enabled, or 2) more than one LSP is on a path to
-> different egress and the total cost is the same, and this form of MP
-> is both supported and enabled.  This form of MP is easy to deal with
-> from an OAM standpoint because the only branch is at ingress.

  Very delightful to read such a good technical explanation. But...
  what ever you said above that current MPLS signaling can't support
  ECMP at non-ingress branch point is a limitation. From MPLS-TE
  point of view, all the necessary information to split the traffic
  at non-ingress can be calculated easily. Unfortunately, signaling
  doesn't support that.

  If given a chance, such an ECMP split can be computed by ingress
  CSPF by finding all augmented "equal min-cost max-flow" paths to 
  the destination. Chosing any of least/farthest such common ancestor 
  split can be made as part of singaling decision.

-> QoS based on EXP can be enabled and ECMP can also be 
-> enabled.  If each
-> branch of the path honors the EXP bits, QoS still works and exists in
-> the presense of ECMP, over LDP or RSVP/TE.  There is very clear
-> existance proof of this.

  I view ECMP as a TE mechanism than a QoS workhorse. TE and QoS are
  infact orthogonal.

Venkata.