RE: [RPRWG] A question on IP over RPR
Hi
I'm the co-chair of the IETF's IPoRPR working group. We are chartered
in the IETF to work out how to run IP (4 and 6) and MPLS over IEEE
802.17 networks. We currently are in a state of administrative
dormancy pending
1 A moderately concrete proposal from you folks as to what an
802.17 network looks like. As I understand it, you've come
to some resolution on some of the issues and such a proposal
should be available soon.
2 revision/updating of the working group's charter to reflect the
work we have to do. The editing work is basically done -- Albert
Herrera, my co-chair, has the edit-lock on the charter and he's
waiting to get some information about what 802.17 decided at the
recent meeting so that we can fill in the last blanks in the
charter. We expect this to be done fairly soon.
Current information on the working group, including pointers to
our email list, charter, documents, and so on, can be found at
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/iporpr-charter.html. While I'll
be glad to answer any further questions about the WG that you
folks may send me directly, or send to this IEEE list, I'd
_prefer_ that you join the IETF mailing list and send the
questions there -- other folks may have similar questions and so on.
That said, we are expecting for the IPoRPR working group to have
a two-pronged effort in developing the necessary standards. The
first would be a "simple" or "basic" model -- the 802.17 network
would be treated as a simple LAN (well, maybe a really really big
LAN :-) much like an Ethernet. Operation of IP/MPLS over 802.17
in this model would be similar to the way things are done for IP
over Ethernet today. The second effort would be a more enhanced
model -- 802.17 specific/unique features (such as QOS/priority,
ring-direction, and so on) would be brought up to IP/MPLS and
they would become 'aware' of the features and be able to use them.
We chose this 2-pronged effort because we feel that the basic-model
can be done fairly easily, allowing a standard to be produced quickly
and thereby helping vendors start their implementation work quickly
(thereby facilitating faster deployment of 802.17 technology).
Frank Kastenholz
co-chair, IPoRPR