[rbridge] Questions - VLANs & MPLS

[Kris Price]

Donald Eastlake wrote:
> I would suggest that you look at the IETF Proceedings and the TRILL WG 
> presentations and minutes therein as well as reading the change history 
> in the base protocol document.

Will check these out, thanks.

>     Also, I was curious why MPLS wasn't used as the forwarding method..?
> 
>  
> Why should it have? The starting point for TRILL/RBridges was always to 
> do Layer 2 forwarding based on link state routing as proposed in Radia's 
> original Infocom paper:
> http://www.ieee-infocom.org/2004/Papers/26_1.PDF 
> Nowhere in your message do you state any reason why MPLS would be a 
> better idea.

Sorry my original phrasing may have suggested I thought it should.

I don't necessarily think it should've been used, but it seems it could 
feasibly be used to achieve a similar outcome. I realise this is 
simplifying a lot of whats involved though, and I should maybe think it 
through more.

So I was curious if it had been considered and rejected and why. Maybe 
its something thats been given thought previously in another WG.

I figured the benefits were:

  * Use of an existing forwarding method

  * Existing hardware support - this is an assumption. It may not be so 
simple and may require just as much work as is needed to implement RBridges.


Cheers
Kris