The Routing Over Large Clouds Mailing List Archive by date

[jhalpern@us.Newbridge.com (Joel Halpern)]

While much of this draft is a good translation of the OSPF mechanisms 
over to the server synchronization problem, I have one serious concern
with this document.

The draft includes a "Designated Server".
"The DS is the contact point within the SC for off-SG stations wishing to
 query the state of the SG."

Since the only kind of query is an NHRP query, this appears to say that
the DS is the only station that is supposed to receive NHRP queries from 
outside the SG.  This is clearly not true, as a router (supporting NHRP)
which has interfaces in more than one LAG may be a point of contact.
Also, this "designated Server" mechanism is completely unnecessary and
introduces undesirable complexities into the mechanism.
(Within a strictly ATMARP environment, there is no off-LIS query
 mechanism)

It is possible that the draft intends the server group to be a subset of
the LIS/LAG, and that somehow this is intended to automatically create
the "mesh-tree" of connected subgroups.  However, the mechansims definitely
does not accomplish taht, so I have assumed that was not the intent.


Now, for some minor comments:
1) I am not sure it is worthwhile to have "Cache Alignment Summary" records.
    There is only one piece of information omitted from said "summary".
    It seems to me we might be better off paying the small price in bytes 
    for reducing the number of mechanisms.

2) The hello mechanism uses a hello/hello reply to confirm communication
    between two servers.  I certainly understand why such confirmation is
    sought.  In other recent protocol work, we observed that if the hello
    has both the local and remote identities (with zero for the remote
    identity if none has been received), it is easy to maintain up-state
    with only one message instead of two.  You do not even need a sequence
    number.  Again, this is a matter of simplification.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern				jhalpern@newbridge.com
Newbridge Networks Inc.