[rbridge] Updated charter

[Erik Nordmark]

Joe Touch wrote:
>> So perhaps you can list the numerous problems.
> 
> 
> It works fine, as you noted, over pt-pt links, but not over things that 
> are intended to look like shared media, e.g., subnets.

And the numerous problems in that case are ....

> Why? It walks like a router, talks like a router, and quacks like a 
> router. Examining the IP layer, changing L2 headers, etc. The only thing 
> it doesn't do that a router does - so far - is decrement the TTL. Others 
> would be, e.g., to limit all 1's broadcast.

It might route the packet based on the L2 address instead of IP, for
instance. Hence using a different term than "router" aids in clarity IMHO.

>> What we are talking about is a hybrid, which includes L2 semantics but 
>> might not preserve L2 semantics when carrying IP packets.
> 
> 
> Huh? You're preserving L2 semantics but only for IP, which doesn't care 
> (above) about such preservation?

I think you need to re-read what I wrote above.


> But we were talking about such support in ways that avoided broadcast...

Who has been talking about hybrid devices which interconnect broadcast
and NMBA L2s?

>> At another end of the scale we have what I'd call "IP works". In this 
>> case the cloud of interconnected hybrids collectively exhibit behavior 
>> so that IPv*/ARP/ND/DHCP etc work as expected.
> 
> 
> Why can't we call that a router that doesn't decrement TTL?

Because, AFAIK, it forwards packets based on L2 addresses.
(Remember, we had this mailing list discussion about packets sent to
off-subnet destinations and the interaction with redirects etc, which
resulted in at a minimum packets destined off-subnet need to be routed
based on the L2 destination.)

> Bridges can - and do limit the spread of multicast. They do not limit 
> the spread of broadcast based on L3 semantics (unless doing explicit 
> proxy-arp, but that's not what we're talking about).

I'm confused. We'd talked about ARP/ND flooding a while back, and
concluded there were security and robustness issues around that, which
need considerations.
But I thought the current topic was about interconnecting different
types of L2s (with different address formats), which is orthogonal to 
any limitations on the flooding of broadcasts.

    Erik