Routing WG meeting minutes
Tuesday, 29 January, 2002, Joint Techs Workshop, Tempe, AZ.
WG Chair: ken lindahl <lindahl@ack.berkeley.edu>

Minutes written by ken lindahl, 31 Jan 2002.
Please send any corrections/additions to <lindahl@ack.berkeley.edu>.

Agenda


----------------
Opening comments
----------------
ken asked those present whether they would prefer the next WG meeting to
be during the Spring Member Meeting (6-9 May 2002, Arlington, VA) or during
the next Joint Techs Workshop (28 July - 1 Aug 2002, Boulder, CO). The group
was unanimous in preferring the Joint Techs Workshop.

The Routing Group at Cisco asked for an opportunity to present research it's
done concerning fast convergence in BGP and IS-IS. Unfortunately, the agenda
for the current meeting was already quite full, so they will be invited to
present at either the Spring Member Meeting or the next Joint Techs Workshop.
stay tuned for details.


-------------------------
Abilene NOC Announcements
-------------------------
Matt Davy of the Abilene NOC made announced three changes the NOC will be
implementing in the Abilene core routers:

(1) the NOC will implement a mechanism in which connectors can tag announced
    prefixes with specific communities (yet to be determined) causing the
    Abilene routers to set specific local-preference values on the prefixes.
    This will allow participants with multiple paths to Abilene to determine
    the preferred exit path from Abilene toward the participant's AS. The
    NOC will continue to accept MEDs, but influencing the local-preference
    values will work better for participants that connect through multiple
    connectors (with different AS numbers).

(2) the Abilene routers currently accept prefixes of any length up to /32.
    This policy will be changed so that prefixes longer than /27 will not
    be accepted, except by prior arrangement with the NOC. This change will
    not cause any changes to current routing, and will clean up the announce-
    ments that Abilene makes to its peers.

(3) the Abilene routers will be upgraded to an ST train version of IOS in the
    next couple months. This will permit different NLRI multicast vs unicast
    policies.

Specific dates for these changes were not announced. There was very little
discussion of the changes; in particular, there was no dissent.


-------------------------
CA*net 3 Routing Registry
-------------------------
William Rutherford (GAIT) presented an overview of the CA*net 3 Routing Registry
next generation software. This is a quite detailed and flexible front-end to the
IRRs that CA*net 3 is using, providing a web-based UI for updating the IRRs and
Using them to generate router configs. There is a mechanism for extensions to 
RPSL that have not yet made it into the IRR software; Ca*net 3 is using this
mechanism to support IPv6 and MBGP in the IRRs. William noted that CA*net 3 
prefers the RIPE IRR software over the Merit IRRd software, as the RIPE software
has some support for IPv6 objects; however, apparently the RIPE software has a
more complex installation.
   William's presentation [PDF]

Mark Prior observed that there is some work being done in the RIPE community
to specify objects for IPv6 and MBGP; this is not being done in IETF since the
rps working group has shut down. There is however an I-D:
    RPSL extensions for IPv6 and Multicast Routing Policies

William also presented a live demo of the CA*net 3 RR the following morning.
(There was no connectivity at the WG meeting location.)

ken made some observation's concerning the status of the I2RR WG task: basically
that effort has stumbled: there has been no discernable progress among the
"early adopter" sites for the past year. There are several reasons for this
including the absence of leadership for the task, and uncertainty about future
support from Merit, where the current I2RR server is running. ken solicit the
wg members asking for a volunteer to take leadership of the I2RR effort. Also,
ken will prepare a proposal for Guy Almes to move the I2RR service to UCAID,
onto a machine that will be managed by UCAID personnel.


----------------------------------------------
MPLS VPNs for Policy Constrained Routing (PCR)
----------------------------------------------
Walt Prue (ISI, CENIC/CalREN-2) presented the results of some testing he has
done with Cisco and Juniper, examining the use of MPLS VPNs in gigapop routers
to meeting CalREN-2's PCR needs. (PCR is the term that CalREN-2 uses for it's
flavor of Explicit Routing [ER]. PCR specifies the use of ingress interface and
destination IP address for routing decisions; rather than source and destination
IPs.)
   Walt's presentation

Walt's presentation was of interest to the WG members in attendance, and there
was lively discussion at the conclusion of his presentation. In particular, is
CENIC really going to try this in CalREN-2? ken noted that CalREN-2 currently
has an acceptable, though not elegant, solution using ATM, and guessed that the
MPLS VPN approach would be implemented in the rollout of CENIC's Optical Network
Infrastructure (ONI) in the CalREN-DC service, later this year.
   CENIC ONI description
   Greg Scott's presentation from Joint Techs, Jan 2002, Tempe, AZ