Subject: New draft on Inter-area/AS MPLS TE: draft-vasseur-ayyangar-inter-area-AS-TE-00.txt

From: Jean Philippe Vasseur <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 17:06:33 -0500

Hi,

During IETF-58, two drafts related to Inter-area and Inter-AS MPLS TE were 
presented:
	- draft-vasseur-inter-AS-TE (JP Vasseur / Raymond Zhang)
	- draft-ayyangar-inter-region-te (Arthi Ayyangar)
It was agreed with the WG to merge the two drafts which should cover 
solutions for both inter-area and inter-AS MPLS TE and for both packet and 
non-packet TE LSPs. Here is the result of this merge.

In a nutshell, the draft proposes three TE LSPs types (Contiguous, Stitched 
and Nested) and two inter-area/AS TE path computation methods (Per-area/AS, 
distributed PCEs). We tried to also describe the applicability of each TE 
LSP type and path computation method as well as their respective pros and 
cons with regards to several aspects (path optimality, reoptimization, 
diverse path computation, DS-TE, hierarchy, policy control, ...).

Just a side note regarding the terminology: the comment was made several 
times that the PCS terminology was confusing and may be interpreted as 
"off-line". Hence this has been changed for PCE (Path Computation Element), 
where the PCE may be an ABR or an ASBR. This applies to one of the 
distributed path computation method described in this draft.

Several SPs expressed an interest in this draft.

Comments are obviously more than welcome !

We'd like to specifically thank Adrian Farrel for his contribution to this 
merged draft.

JP.