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Cell Relay Retreat>MPLS-OPS Archive>month:2002-Jan> msg00194



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re: native MPLS switch

  • From: Tom Scott <telecomtom@dacor.net>
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:14:02 -0500
  • Organization: Vedatel
  • Resent-Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 01:09:25 -0500
  • To: mpls-ops@mplsrc.com

Sorry, I forgot to mention a couple more items, but I see from private
email that it should be made explicit.

In addition to simplification by removing ATM and FR transport, we also
need not have SONET/SDH in the forwarding stack. Nor do we necessarily
need to have any particular flavor of IP, since both IPv4 and IPv6 are
projected as clients/requestors of MPLS service. Depending on the
location of the MPLS switch, the routing information in the control
plane may come from BGP, IS-IS or OSPF. It doesn't matter. The addresses
could even be phone numbers. And management manipulations such as ping
(ICMP control messages) would be separated from issues in the forwarding
machine.

So we divorce from BISDN (no ATM, no SONET), and even from IP. The
quesiton is, What would a native MPLS forwrding switch have to do in
this division of labor?

-- TT

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: native MPLS switch
Resent-Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:32:51 -0500
Resent-From: mpls-ops@mplsrc.com
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 19:30:38 -0500
From: Tom Scott <telecomtom@dacor.net>
Organization: Vedatel
To: mpls-ops@mplsrc.com

http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-osu-ipo-mpls-issues-02.txt

Regarding the above URL and a message I posted last week, does anyone
have a list or outline of the functions, or even better an architecture,
of an MPLS forwarding device ("native MPLS switch") that does not depend
on ATM, FR or any other L2 transport technology. See figure 1 of the
draft (the right hand column, "2 layers").

Even if no equipment manufacturers and network operators are currently
deploying native MPLS switches or whatever they might be called, the
question still remains as to the design of a switch that borrows routing
control information from, say, IS-IS and BGP routers, and is optimized
for forwarding variable-length MPLS packets/frames, and a projected
comparison with the price and performance of IP/POS routers and ATM cell
switches.

-- TT


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