There has been a lot of buzz recently about a second OAM (Operations, Administration, and Maintenance) solution for MPLS-TP that will cause interoperability problems between MPLS-TP and MPLS. It is accurate that there is an alternative OAM based on ITU-T Y.1731 (Ethernet OAM) proposed by a number of vendors and countries and indeed, it will cause interoperability issues. As a strong believer in standards, I certainly hope that a second approach does not occur because vendors and customers do not need the additional cost burden that a lack of interoperability causes. The fact is that only the draft recommendation for MPLS-TP OAM based on Y.1731 has begun the first step in a very long approval ITU process -- but nothing more – and in my estimates will take well over a year and could easily take up to two years to standardize. IETF MPLS OAM is widely deployed in MPLS networks today and will simply be extended as MPLS-TP is deployed as a next generation transport solution. In fact, recent interoperability testing of MPLS-TP took place at the MPLS World Congress earlier this month in Paris.
I believe that after careful consideration most operators will see the benefit of having a single end-to-end methodology to operate and manage converged packet optical transport networks, which MPLS-TP using MPLS OAM provides. Operators who select another method that is perceived to meet their short term needs now my ultimately learn that it fails to provide everything they had expected, and that having multiple OAM methods (one for Ethernet and another for MPLS) is not cost effective. It will be interesting to see what happens moving forward. At the very least, operators should make an informed decision on which approach is right for them.
We are excited by yesterday’s news that Polycom is adopting the TelePresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP), the only open, multi-screen Telepresence interoperability protocol that is currently available. In the video below, David Hsieh, Vice President of Marketing for Cisco TelePresence and the Emerging Technologies Group, discusses why this announcement is exciting for advancing interoperability throughout the industry and how it can benefit customers.
Well I am just recovering from a fantastic IETF-79 held in Beijing, PRC from November 7-12. I have to say that the MPLS Conference 2010, held in Washington D.C. from October 24-27 was a resounding success!
MPLS-TP was the hot topic at MPLS 2010 this year in Washington D.C. Cisco had a strong presence e.g. with seven Cisco distinguished engineer and technical lead presenters:
Monique Morrow, Distinguished Engineer
Luyuan Fang, Principal Engineer
George Swallow, Distinguished Engineer
Santiago Alvarez, Distinguished Engineer
Azhar Sayeed, Director of Product Marketing
Clarence Filsfils, Distinguished Engineer
Zafar Ali, Technical Leader
Cisco had presentations on MPLS-TP, multicast, mobility, optical and cloud. Following, is my presentation from the Technical Sessions on Day 1
IP services are dominating overall network traffic growth and service providers are now truly architecting a transition from legacy Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) networks to packet transport networks. It’s no longer a question of if, but when. The Transport Profile for MPLS or MPLS-TP is the packet transport technology of choice, marrying the efficiency and flexibility of packet with the robust characteristics of a traditional transport network. The telecommunications industry has embraced this emerging standard, mainly because it is subset of and interoperable with widely deployed IP/MPLS technology. To ensure this interoperability, it was collectively decided by both the ITU-T and IETF that the IETF will be responsible to define the protocol and functionality of MPLS-TP. The embeded spreadsheet specifies which RFCs have been completed and which contributions have been accepted and are in progress as Working Group drafts.
This vision is finally coming to fruition. For the first time since its inception, a standards-based interoperability test for MPLS-TP was conducted by Isocore. The results of this interoperability test were announced this week and demonstrate to the market the reality of a true MPLS-TP standard and that the vendor community is following and adopting this standard. The interoperability focused on showing how systems from multiple vendors can work together while enabling transport-like characteristics such as statically provisioned paths, protection switching, in band OAM and OAM verification. All of the capabilities tested have been defined in RFC 5860, RFC 5654, RFC 5586 and RFC 5921 which are currently published standards from the IETF.
