Subject: Re: WG review: Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks (l2vpn)

From: Bob Braden <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:09:03 -0700 (PDT)

*> 
  *> I can think of some possible reasons, not necessarily exclusive
  *> 
  *> - this is a bad idea/impossible to do well, so we shouldn't do it
  *> - some other organization is already doing it, so we shouldn't
  *> - we're too stupid to get it right, so we shouldn't do it
  *> - the IETF is too large, so we shouldn't be adding more work
  *> 

Harald,

Here is one more to consider: maybe it is outside the mainstream of the
Internet architecture.  [Optimizing to leave IP out of the stack and do
direct L2 communication certainly SOUNDS like a retrograde step to me,
too.  Twenty years ago I was arguing with a UCLA professor, who
insisted that IP was too much overhead and that he needed to do direct
LAN transmission to get adequate performance for his distributed file
system.  He eventually figured out the fallacy, because the product
produced by his company had the IP layer in place.  Have we forgotten
these lessons?]

There is an infinite number of variations on the technology that the
IETF COULD develop, and for every one, there is some vendor or set of
vendors who would love to be able to sell sanctioned boxes.  That does
not mean it is in the best interest of the community or the technology
to develop them all.  I believe that the IESG needs to say NO more
often.  I know that's tough, but that's why we chose such excellent
members of the IESG.

Bob Braden

---

From: Ping Pan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 11:04:30 -0700

> produced by his company had the IP layer in place.  Have we forgotten

Bob,

I think not. If you look like what people are working on in this area, 
it is all IP-driven:
  - at data plane, L2 flows are aggregated through GRE, MPLS... tunnels.
  - at control layer, it all IP: LDP, BGP, Radius...

Along with L3VPN, I argue this is mainstream Internet. If there is a 
problem, I start to worry if we are overloading some of the protocols. 
Well... if it aint broken, why fix it? :-)

If you concern about building nation-wide L2 bridging backbones with 
spanning trees running off the roof, :-) so far, I have not seen people 
seriously moving toward that direction.

As for IESG, the problem is not about having a new IETF WG. Rather, why 
are we spending so much time and energy on standardization? How many 
times are people going to write architecture and framework RFC's?

2 cents,

- Ping

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 10:00:47 +0200

> times are people going to write architecture and framework RFC's?

until they learn to express their architectures and frameworks concisely?

in many cases, I think the important parts of an architecture or framework 
could be expressed in four pages. But most architecture and framework 
documents go on for fifty pages.

why?