To: tsbsg13@itu.int Georges Sebek ITU-T SG13 Question 5 Huub van Helvoort Brian Moore Neal Seitz CC: Russ Housley IESG IAB Mark Townsley Jari Arkko David Ward Ross Callon pwe3 mpls@ietf.org Danny McPherson Stewart Bryant George Swallow Loa Andersson statements@ietf.org For Action: As a direct result of the activities at the Stuttgart meeting, the IAB formed a technical Ad Hoc committee on T-MPLS. It was chartered to prepare the IETF for the proposed cooperation on T-MPLS between the IETF and ITU-T. At the IETF meeting in Vancouver the Ad Hoc committee was approached by people active on T-MPLS in the ITU-T who proposed a joint effort to resolve outstanding issues on two OAM documents (G.8113 and G.8114) that are scheduled for approval in Seoul January 2008. A very aggressive joint plan to resolve the issues were created. Since then the Ad Hoc committee put in a huge effort to review the relevant documents and compiled a list of outstanding issues. The list has more than 60 issues and the process of resolving those has only just started. The compiled list of issues is attached to this liaison. In addition, as the Ad Hoc committee further considered the G.8114 design it became clear that it proposes two applications for label 14, an endpoint OAM alert, a P router OAM alert (i.e. requires the P router to take special action on packets with label 14 in the stack), and we have also see a proposal to further extend use of label 14 to provide a messaging channel for control plane traffic. In addition to the detailed review of G.8113 and G.8114, the IETF MPLS and PWE3 Working Groups therefore have to question whether the proposed approach of using a single reserved label (or indeed any reserved label) is the right approach for the applications that SG13 have in mind, and we believe that this should be added to the issues list as an additional significant concern. The Ad Hoc committee on T-MPLS have come to the conclusion that G.8113 and G.8114 are not ready to be approved. This conclusion was endorsed by the Internet and Routing Area Directors jointly responsible for this technology. The outstanding issues include technical, architectural, and procedural issues. We think it is important that these documents be put "on hold" until these issues are resolved. The method of resolving the issues should involve expedient implementation of the proposed agreement that was drafted in Stuttgart, should follow the MPLS change process, and should be based on the liaison statement sent by the IAB and IESG to you last summer. The documents are available at: http://www.tla-group.com/~loa/IETF-TMPLS-Issues-6.pdf and are attached to this liaison. The issues list and the conclusions above represent the consensus of the IETF MPLS and PWE3 Working Groups. Regards Loa Andersson Stewart Bryant Danny McPherson George Swallow IETF MPLS and PWE3 Working Group Co-Chairs