Subject: [Status] New Non-WG Mailing List: status -- Stacked Tunnels for Source Routing

From: IETF Secretariat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:27:19 -0700

A new IETF non-working group email list has been created.

List address: [email-masked]
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/status
To subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/status

Purpose: The IETF has two packet-based forwarding technologies: IP and MPLS.

IP previously had a source-based routing mechanism made available 
through an IP Option. This mechanism has, however, not been widely used 
and has a number of issues that make its use inadvisable, and other 
mechanisms (such as RFC 1940) do not appear to have been implemented at all.

The ability of a router to influence or control the forwarding path of 
an individual packet or all the packets of a given Forwarding 
Equivalence Class (FEC) is a desirable feature for a number of reasons 
including Label Switched Path stitching, egress protection, explicit 
routing, egress ASBR link selection, and backup (bypass tunnels, Remote 
Loop-Free Alternates) routing. This can be achieved by facilitating 
source-initiated selection of routes to complement the route selection 
provided by existing routing protocols for both inter- domain and 
intra-domain routes.

Historically, distribution of MPLS label binding information was done by 
relying on label distribution protocols such as LDP and RSVP-TE.

Several new proposals have been made to make use of the MPLS forwarding 
plane in novel but backward-compatible ways, and to install forwarding 
instructions using information distributed by the IGP running in the 
network, or through the management plane. It has been suggested that 
similar mechanisms might also be applied in IPv6.

A BoF has been proposed for Berlin to discuss the practicalities of 
various use cases and to establish a consensus around the problem
space and desirability of developing solutions in this area with a view 
to determining whether the IETF should have a Working Group on this 
topic. This list also serves to discuss that BoF proposal.

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