Subject: Follow-on Questions about PWs

From: Keith Knightson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 15:38:45 -0400

Dear experts,

Thanks for the quick answer to my previous question:

  "When a PW is set up between PE1 and, say,  PE2, is any intermediate 
entity (not an edge device) aware of it?"

This seems to have produced the definitive answer "No".

I now have some follow-on questions, sorry about this.....

Does a point-to-multipoint PW depend (and exclusively) on the 
availablility of an exactly equivalent underlying point-to-multipoint 
tunnel?

In other words, a point-to-multipoint PW can never exist without an 
exactly equivalent underlying point-to-multipoint tunnel?

Which I assume, in practice,  depends on the underlying medium having 
the appropriate multicast capability?

Since multiplexing field in the encapsulation protocol is still only 
examined at the edge PEs, demux/remux among PWs can take never place 
at any intermediate point, even if it might be efficient to do such a 
distributed multicast at an intermediate point, because no such 
facility exists in the underlying transport?

Regards

Keith Knightson