Subject: Several questions regarding draft-kamapabhava-fr-pwe3-01.txt

From: Sasha Vainshtein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 16:31:26 +0200

Claude,
I would highly appreciate several clarifications
regarding draft-kamapabhava-fr-pwe3-01.txt.
1. I have noticed that the FRoPW Control Word still 
   contains bit "P" that distinguishes user and maintenance
   traffic - in spite of the maintenance protocol issue being
   removed from the draft. I assumed that the maintenance issues
   will be covered in a separate generic document (as stated in
   the PWE3 charter). Can you please explain what do you have in mind
   by retaining bit "P"?

2. Why to state that "FRoPW packets which are received out of order
   must be dropped"? What is wrong to letting each PE to decide 
   whether it can or cannot handle re-ordering, and not discard only 
   out-of-order packets that it cannot reorder? Do you see any 
   problem in a situation when PE at one end of the PW supports 
   reordering while PE at the other end does not?

3. The draft defines two modes of operation, but if only one of
   them - port to port - is referred to as a "mode". What is more,
   one mode (the same) is defined as OPTIONAL but neither is
   defined as REQUIRED. Setting aside - for the moment - which mode
   should be which, explicit names for all the modes and
   explicit specification of the REQUIRED mode would be very 
   much in place. In particular, this would help with creating
   a 'per mode' applicability statement (preferably inline -
   the draft is not too long).

4. The draft specifies a set of requirements for FRoPW. 
   Have you considered providing a check-list
   matching these requirements with the design spec? 
   IMHO this would be very useful and (hopefully) not too 
   difficult (in the worst case you can always drop an
   especially inconvenient requirement :-). 
   Personally I would like to understand how the requirement 
   for mapping the traffic management parameters is met
   with this spec. 

Hopefully these questions will be useful.

With best regards,
                                   Sasha Vainshtein
email:     [email-masked]
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           +972-8-9254948 (res.)
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