Minutes GSMP Working Group, Adelaide 3/30/00 
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   The meeting was co-chaired by Avri Doria and Kenneth 
   Sundell and was divided into two sections; the review of 
   current documentation and the discussion about future work 
   items for the working group. 
   The minutes were taken by Kenneth. 

   Changes to the three standards track documents currently 
   being worked on were discussed. While there were several 
   editorial and minor technical comments on the drafts, there 
   were no major technical objections. The plan is to update 
   the documents, fixing known problems by the end of April 
   and then to have a WG last call during May. 
  

1.  Review of draft-ietf-gsmp-04 

   Avri presented the changes since revision ­02. Revision ­03 
   was issued before the editing session in New Orleans (Feb 
   3), while revision -04 was released after that session. 
   Since the differences between ­02 and ­03 has not been 
   presented at an IETF meeting, though they had been 
   presented on the mailing list, the co-chairs decided to 
   present all changes from ­02 to ­04 in this session. There 
   will be at least a revision ­05 before the document will 
   proceed to working group last call. 

   The encapsulation section was, as previously agreed, moved 
   to a separate document, draft-ietf-gsmp-encaps-00.txt. 

   All failure response messages were gathered and moved to 
   appendix A. 

   The ­04 introduced the notion of TLV Labels, i.e. labels 
   that are longer than 28 bits. For clarity, the notion of 
   extended label has changed to stacked label. 

   The ­03 introduced the reservation message which allows for 
   resources to be reserved for a connection before the actual 
   label mapping is known. Revision -03 also included support 
   for redundant adjacencies. 

   A proposal for adding output/input service selectors in the 
   Add Branch message had been discussed on the list and also 
   proposed at the New Orleans editing session. The capability 
   was added to ­04. 

   Other additions to ­04 included: a simple mechanism for 
   turning of the flow control, a way to do multicast queries 
   in order to support those switches that have dedicated 
   ranges of labels for multipoint connections, support for 
   discontinuous label ranges, the addition of event sequence 
   numbers and event flags to the port configuration message. 

   Additionally, the service model was updated to include 
   support for Circuit Emulation Services (-04). 
  

2.  Review of draft-ietf-gsmp-mib-01 (15) 

   Joachim Buerkle presented the updated GSMP MIB that is co- 
   authored by Hans Sjostrand and Balaji Srinivasan. 

   The GSMP MIB was totally rewritten. The GSMP MIB is focused 
   on the protocol and not covering partition issues. Joachim 
   pointed at work done in MSF where they are producing a 
   protocol independent partition MIB. He went through the 
   different GSMP MIB objects (slides will be available in the 
   proceedings). 

   There was a question about whether the structure of 
   multiple controller to a single switch partition should be 
   represented in the MIB.  The answer was yes. 

   The document will be updated during April. Updates in the 
   next version will be mainly changes in wordings, some new 
   tables and maybe addition of statistics into the MIB. 
  

3.  Review of draft-ietf-gsmp-applicability-00.txt 

   Avri presented the applicability draft. There is a minor 
   set of documents that are needed before we can proceed to 
   IESG group last call. Apart from the GSMP specification, 
   GSMP MIB and GSMP Encapsulation documents, an informational 
   RFC for GSMP applicability is needed. The document 
   introduces the reader to concepts and notions that are used 
   within GSMP e.g. switch partitioning, controller/switch 
   interaction and service support. 

   A question about the MSF's role in relation to GSMP was 
   raised, i.e. where they defining their own version of GSMP. 
   Avri answered that IETF is defining the protocol and MSF 
   will be referencing the RFC in its implementation 
   agreement. Joachim clarified that MSF draft applicability 
   documents are not publicly available until they have been 
   approved for release by the membership. 

   The minimal set of messages needed to support MPLS was 
   discussed. The applicability document list the messages 
   required for minimal MPLS support. 

4.  Security issues in draft-ietf-gsmp-encaps-00 

   The main content of the encapsulation draft was moved from 
   draft-ietf-gsmp-02.txt. A security section has been added 
   to the document. A change that needs to be made to that 
   draft involves requiring the support of IPsec when the IP 
   encapsulation is used. 
  

5.  Working Group Last Call 

   Text revision of the GSMP spec will be due in approximately 
   3 weeks. The GSMP MIB co-authors will try to make a new 
   revision within the next 3-4 weeks. It is very important 
   that people read the documents and send appropriate 
   comments on the list. Non technical editorial changes 
   should be sent to the authors directly. 

   A two weeks WG Last Call will be issued in the beginning of 
   May. 
  

6.  Implementation Experience 

   Joachim Buerkle of Marconi communications (wireline access 
   system) presented on their work with GSMP. They have 
   produced I-Ds on resource reservation, move output branch 
   and GSMP MIB. In their implementation they are using the 
   ATM encapsulation and  implementing the  ATM specific 
   features. 

   There were questions about interoperability. A lot of 
   people say that they are implementing GSMP, but only a few 
   have done this in public. Service providers are soliciting 
   products. 
  

7.  Discussion of charter update 

   The group then spoke about future activities.  Unless the 
   charter is redefined, the working group will go dormant 
   after the last call until implementations and 
   implementation issues crop up. A discussion was held to 
   determine whether there was real interest in adding 
   additional features to GSMP beyond those currently planned. 
   Several different possibilities where discussed. 

7.1  Requirements for GSMP support of Optical switching 

   A presentation was made on using GSMP for controlling Edge 
   nodes, and optical interconnects within an IP over optics 
   environment.  This presentation was essentially a 
   repetition of one given earlier in the week at the IPO BOF, 
   though it did focus more on the changes required in GSMP 
   then on the possibilities for optical network control. 
   Basically, a controller/router could control an OXC over 
   GSMP, either through use of an out of bound network or via 
   a dedicated "control" wavelength. 

   New label TLVs were introduced to handle label types such 
   as fiber bundle, arbitrary number fibers in that bundle, a 
   single fiber, arbitrary lambdas in that fiber, a single 
   lambda etc. 

   Several questions were raised; whether we need a raw 
   optical encapsulation for GSMP messages or if we should 
   require use of the IP encapsulation, whether we need one 
   single TLV or several for accommodating the different types 
   of optical labels and whether there was an existing service 
   model for optical switches which GSMP could use or would 
   the group need to define one. 

7.2  Future Requirements for GSMP 

   Several other proposals for new work were discussed: 

   -  Add support for SDH port types. 

   -  Investigate a rework of the flow control mechanisms in 
      GSMP. 

   -  Add support for switching IP packets (L3 switching). 
      Part of the support for this already exists in the 
      protocol, but many of the elements which would be 
      required, are still lacking. This effort would probably 
      require a requirements effort first. 

   -  Continue tracking work on QoS service models. 
  

7.3  Conclusion 

   There was definite interest in continuing the work of the 
   WG. In fact instead of having a passive (i.e. does anyone 
   object to continuing work on these and similar items), we 
   had an active show of hands on whether folks thought these 
   issues were worth pursuing. Of those voting, and 
   approximately 2/3 voted, there was a clear consensus for 
   continuing the group. The intention is the chairs discuss a 
   specific charter amendment on the list before making the 
   formal request to the IESG. 

   In terms of vendors and service providers interested in 
   seeing the work continuing, there was positive interest 
   from several companies.