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BIER Payload Label
draft-zzhang-bier-payload-label-00

Document Type Expired Internet-Draft (individual)
Expired & archived
Authors Zhaohui (Jeffrey) Zhang , Toerless Eckert , Hooman Bidgoli , Zheng Zhang
Last updated 2025-12-11 (Latest revision 2025-06-09)
RFC stream (None)
Intended RFC status (None)
Formats
Stream Stream state (No stream defined)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
RFC Editor Note (None)
IESG IESG state Expired
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
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This Internet-Draft is no longer active. A copy of the expired Internet-Draft is available in these formats:

Abstract

The BIER Encapsulation RFC8296 specifies that the "Proto" field in the BIER header is set to 1 if an MPLS label stack follows the BIER header and the top of the stack label is a downstream-assigned label, and is set to 2 if the top of stack label is an upstream-assigned label, which is looked up in the context-specific label forwarding table that can be derived from the BIER header. The terms upstream/downstream-assignment are inappropriate to describe the required forwarding for new MPLS label semantics such as SRGB and DCB labels as defined in RFC8402 and RFC9573 respectively. This can result in potentially inconsistent implementation choices causing potential interoperability issues. This document rectifies this situation by changing the IANA BIER Next Protocol Identifier semantic for MPLS code points from their label semantic to the required LFIB in the forwarding plane, hence covering those new type of labels without changing behavior for existing upstream/downstream-assigned labels.

Authors

Zhaohui (Jeffrey) Zhang
Toerless Eckert
Hooman Bidgoli
Zheng Zhang

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)