Liaison statement
Completion of 802.1AX-REV Link Aggregation to IETF Internet Area and Internet Area WG

Colleagues,

The 802.1 Working Group is pleased to inform you that the revision of IEEE
802.1AX Link Aggregation has completed and is expected to be approved prior to
the end of the year. We are attaching the final draft (D4.54) for your
information. We are informing you because we believe that it is relevant to
ongoing work in your organizations.

802.1AX is a complete revision of the Link Aggregation document, including the
widely deployed Link Aggregation Control Protocol. This revision extends this
protocol to define the Distributed Resilient Network Interconnect (DRNI), that
supports up to three separate systems terminating each end of an aggregation of
point-to-point links. Together, these “portals” appear to each of their
attached networks to offer a single pathway to the other network, while
maintaining their individual roles as members of their own networks. Of course,
backwards compatibility with existing single-system-at-each-end LACP
implementations is maintained. In addition, this revision adds the ability for
non-DRNI systems to negotiate bi-directional symmetry.

Realizing that you are all very busy, we direct your attention to the opening
sections of Clause 9 for a relatively brief exposition of the goals of the DRNI
and an overview of its principles of operation.

Thank you for your attention. We will be glad to respond to any questions.

Best regards,
Glenn Parsons, Chair IEEE 802.1 Working Group (glenn.parsons@ericsson.com)
Stephen Haddock, Chair IEEE 802.1 Interworking Task Group
(shaddock@stanfordalumni.org)