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Re: [EFM] Changes to 100BASE-X and 1000BASE-X PCS, 10G RS




Forwarded from Thomas Dineen.


Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 11:34:06 -0800
From: Thomas Dineen <tdineen@ix.netcom.com>
To: jonathan.thatcher@ieee.org
CC: stds-802-3-efm@ieee.org
Subject: Re: [EFM] Changes to 100BASE-X and 1000BASE-X PCS, 10G RS

Jonathan:

"For my part, if we were going to allow OAM to be an option, I would
strongly prefer that it be an option like 802.3ad, which a customer
can readily identify as a supported feature on a spec sheet, and not
an option that is buried in a PIC table and not readily exposed to the buyer."

    From the stand point of 802.3 all we have control over is a standard,
revision to a standard, or amendment to a standard with clauses including pix tables!

    We have little control, except via management, of how pix options
appear to the customer in a product ipmlementation.

Thomas Dineen


Jonathan Thatcher wrote:

 >With great fear I here tread....
 >
 >As we prepare for this discussion a 2 weeks, let us remember that one of the
 >principal reasons for standardizing 100M and 1G optics at 10km is that the
 >parts available from the industry (when we started) could not be assured to
 >be mutually interoperable. In many cases, under many conditions, they were
 >probably interoperable. To create a standard that assures backward
 >interoperability with parts that were themselves
 >not-necessarily-interoperable... well, I think that this might be an effort
 >in futility.
 >
 >In short, even if we choose to remove the OAM requirements, there is no
 >assurance that even with the an identical PCS that the parts will "play
 >nice."
 >
 >For my part, if we were going to allow OAM to be an option, I would strongly
 >prefer that it be an option like 802.3ad, which a customer can readily
 >identify as a supported feature on a spec sheet, and not an option that is
 >buried in a PIC table and not readily exposed to the buyer. Yes, I realize
 >that 802.3ad was a project, not a clause. Yes, I understand that doing
 >anything like this with OAM is not possible at this stage. That would have
 >required a separate project.
 >
 >jonathan
 >
 >
 >