(2) Physical Topology Discovery Protocol and MIB
<draft-ietf-ptopomib-pdp-03.txt>
Agenda
------
Issues - PTOPO MIB I-D
Issues - PDP I-D
Ready for WG Last Call?
Intellectual Property Discussion
Next Steps for the PTOPOMIB WG
Minutes
-------
1) Issues - PTOPO MIB I-D
There were no new comments on this draft, and no new issues
raised at the meeting regarding this draft.
2) Issues - PDP I-D
The only open issue for this draft is related to the MAC
address assignment for the PTOPO Discovery Protocol.
THe following table describes the desired behavior
for bridging entities, which either implements PDP
(pdp-aware) or doesn't implement PDP (pdp-unaware).
STP port PDP-unaware PDP-aware
state bridges bridges
-----------------------------------------------------
blocked discard tx/rx, no fwd
forwarding flood tx/rx. prefer no fwd
For ports In the STP blocked state, PDP-aware bridge
HW may drop received PDP PDUs instead of processing them. This is
undesirable, since the discovery of physical topology information
should not be impeded or limited by logical network topologies.
The Assigned Numbers document (RFC 1700, p. 172) defines an IANA
Ethernet Address Block, which is reserved for special multicast
addresses such as the one needed for PDP. (These addresses are
in the range 01-00-5E-00-00-00 to 01-00-5E-7F-FF-FF.)
The static forwarding table of each PDP-aware bridge could be
configured to prevent PDP messages from being forwarded
on every port except the "CPU port/higher level PDP entity".
The WG prefers to obtain an IEEE multicast address, such that
the desired forwarding behavior is achieved without static FDB
configuration. [Ed. - not sure what range this is.]
If this address assignment is not possible, then the WG will ask
IANA if a group address assignment from the IANA Ethernet Block.
3) Ready for WG Last Call?
The WG agreed that both documents are complete (pending the
MAC address assignment), and they should be forwarded
to the Area Director so the IESG review process may start
right away.
4) Intellectual Property Discussion
There was a brief discussion on the IBM patent issues
relating to both PTOPOMIB WG documents. The WG will
continue to monitor any progress on vendor implementations
and any (publicly-available) patent issue resolution details.
A straw-poll was taken to measure vendor interest in implementing
the MIB and/or PDP in next 6 - 9 months
- none plan to implement PDP
- 3 plan to implement the PTOPO MIB; more will be interested
if/when the patent issues are resolved
It was noted by the Area Director that 90% of negotiations
end up with a license fee around 1% of the product price.
5) Next Steps for the PTOPOMIB WG
The WG discussed some possible future work items:
- other discovery protocols
- e.g., relation to ILMI
- logical topology
- identify VLAN trunking, STP, etc.
- domain topology (topology server)
- mgr-to-mgr topology info exchange
- schema definitions
- DTMF wants schema for CIM model
- end-to-end topology
across the internet???
A straw poll was held to gauge interest in future work:
6 think consideration of at least one of these work items
in about a year is appropriate.
2 think no future work by this WG is needed.
There was some strong objection to duplication of MIB objects,
such as those found in the ILMI MIB, Bridge MIB, etc. The
topology server work item seemed to be the most popular
(and in some cases the only) area of future work of interest
to most WG members.
Any and all of these issues may be discussed on the WG
mailing list after the current work is completed.
