CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Tony Li/cisco Systems

Minutes of the Source Demand Routing Working Group (SDR)

The SDRP forwarding protocol and prototype has been stable for some
time.  There are two issues now facing the working group:  1) mechanisms
for constructing source routes to make the forwarding code useful, and
2) working with IPng folks to support SDR functionality.  Looking a bit
farther ahead, the SDR requirements raised by integrated-services/RSVP
traffic should be addressed.  This meeting was composed of two parts:  a
discussion of RIB query support in IDRP to support SDR route
construction, and a joint meeting with the SIPP Working Group to present
a strawman proposal on SDR support in IPng.


IDRP Support

As introduction to the IDRP support discussion, Deborah Estrin reviewed
the two basic route construction approaches under development:  RIB
query and path explorer.  Activity has been focused mainly at USC/ISI
and Merit.

Sue Hares presented some new functionality to enable route computation
by obtaining information through IDRP. The mechanisms permit a node to
query an IDRP speaker via a IDRP RIB Refresh message, with the response
being a series of update messages.  The facility allows the requestor to
get a single snapshot of the IDRP speaker's database, or to get a
continuous series of updates, effectively forming a one-way IDRP
peering.  The requestor can specify particular attributes in the
information request, including QOS and NLRI criteria.

The response can contain information from the IDRP speaker's Loc_RIB or
Adj_RIB, so that the requestor also learns some information about all of
the IDRP speaker's neighbors.  The end of the initial response is also
clearly delimited by a message so that the requestor can begin
computation.

Deborah briefly addressed two related issues:  one was the role of the
Route Server/Routing Arbiter in route construction and acquisition, and
the second was the proposed use of SDR routes to guide multicast (e.g.,
PIM) join messages along alternate routes to join the distribution tree,
when the generic unicast route is inadequate.


SDR/SIPP Joint Session

The working group then went to a joint session with the SIPP Working
Group, where SDR for IPv6 was discussed.  Peter Ford presented a basic
proposal in which SDR would become an optional header in an IPv6 packet.
There was some inconclusive discussion about the utility of strict
source routing and for the requirement of policy routing in general.
After this discussion, it was decided that SDR for IPv6 is indeed of
interest and that this work should continue in the SDR Working Group.