IETF 125 PCE WG Minutes

Tuesday, March 17th 2026 — Session IV
16:00 - 17:30 (Shenzhen, Grand Ballroom 1)
08:00 - 09:30 (UTC)

Introduction

1.1 Administrivia, Agenda Bashing (Chairs, 5 mins) [5/90]

1.2 WG Status (Chairs, 5 mins) [10/90]

1.3 State of WG I-Ds, open issues, and next steps (Chairs, 10 mins)
[20/90]

2.1 WGLC changes for multi-path (Samuel Sidor, 10 mins) [30/90]
draft-ietf-pce-multipath

[Dhruv] Thanks for making all of these changes during this final
review.
[Adrian] As doc shepherd just to say it's all kind of ready to go
but waiting for authors to go ahead then finish the cycle then
recheck the writeup.
[Dhruv] Perfect.

2.2 Performance Measurements (Rakesh Gandhi, 10 mins) [40/90]
draft-gandhi-pce-pm

2.3 Amendment to Stateful PCE (Andrew Stone, 5 mins) [45/90]
draft-many-pce-stateful-amendment

[Dhruv] Good amount of content to add for the operational side.
[Andrew] Yeah some of the backwords compatible stuff is
operationally need to be pointed to. Enforce backup PCE need config
rules can go at it from that angle.
[Dhruv] A question for the benefit of everyone even though it
doesn't solve the problem why it's worth doing. Make it clear why
this change is better.
[Andrew] True, can say it's better because no open questions and
PCC and PCE respect it then nothing special to worry about. Without
it you don't know and need to do something special and gymnastics in
proprietary solution.
[Dhruv] You convinced me want it to be out in open for rest of
working group.
[Andrew] Also this doesn't say don't solve it, but that needs new
work and it's not trivial.
[Dhruv] To me it's a candidate for adoption and Julien and I will
take into consideration.

2.4 LSP State Reporting (Samuel Sidor, 5 mins) [50/90]
draft-sidor-pce-lsp-state-reporting-extensions

[Li Zhang] Missed the previous discussion, question for the flag
indicating bsid can be used for computing a path. In RFC 9604 if it
reports bsid then it can use it to compute a path. So why need a new
flag here if it can be used for computing a path.
[Samuel] The PCEP binding SID RFC is being referred to? That's
specifying if the BSID should be allocated and who should be
allocating, not whether the binding SID can be used for other
policies, such as if it's in the middle. My understanding is
existing just specifies flags to indicate BSID should be allocated
and who, pce or pcc, not whether it can be used in middle of path
computation. No flag like that.
[Dhruv] Samuel would be good to clarify without this T flag you
can use it / not use - is it only when this flag is enabled am i
allowed to use it or not. confusion what I'm hearing.
[Samuel] Basically without this extension the behavior isn't
modified at all. Trying to introduce explicit behavior.
[Andrew] To echo Samuel, the BSID RFC is about configuring a BSID
side, the configuration to the node either to assign or self assign,
where as this flag is to control whether PCEs are allowed to use it.
[Samuel] Can clarify it more in the draft.
[Andrew] Also if you have a lot of BSIDs in the network, can help
with scale to reduce the search space.

3.1 SR P2MP Policy (Hooman Bidgoli, 5 mins) [55/90]
draft-ietf-pce-sr-p2mp-policy

[Dhruv] Related to liveness, if PCE is involved then its worth
including. When we do liveness detection we focus within the PCEP to
focus how everything is running. It's useful but can likely exist in
another document and be referenced. Can be focused on how the PCEP
is used in this flow.
[Hooman] So something such as PCE can see the state of the network
.
[Dhruv] Only if that's what it's doing and everything seems to be
local.
[Hooman] I'm open what I thought liveness was more about how to
protect local or end to end tree failure.
[Dhruv] Completely agree for document on how sr p2mp works, but
this one focused on pcep extensions. Was hoping this information
would be in another document and be referenced and how PCEP is
involved and talk about how things like what happens when no PCE is
there, like that liveness detection. Mechanisms already there. We do
features for other like bier and detnet, don't want to focus on
their liveness but the PCEP part.
[Zafar] Having a lot of detail regarding FRR in this doc, since
it's a PCEP version, and anything to do with FRR SR policy p2mp
should be done elsewhere and clarified elsewhere. Would like to see
the references used for the link failure for local optimization,
which is not something pcep is involved with. Having something FRR
related, description here should be done elsewhere.
[Dhruv] I also owe you comments and was discussing with Andrew, a
note to Andrew will respond to that this is next in our WGLC queue.

3.2 SRv6 Inter-layer Network Programming (Minxue Wang, 5 mins)
[60/90]
draft-many-pce-srv6-inter-layer-network-programing

[Dhruv] Would be useful to tell if i receive this NAI how am I
using this information. Tunnel ID at the two endpoints but how this
tunnel ID helps when setting up the path. Explain how one uses it,
like a figure or description why a new NAI is needed.

3.3 SRv6 Policy SID List Optimization (Zafar Ali, 5 mins) [65/90]

3.4 MSD Consideration (Zafar Ali, 5 mins) [70/90]
draft-ali-pce-sr-policy-msd-consideration

4.1 PCEP-LS Optical (Xiao Li, 5 mins) [75/90]
draft-lee-pce-pcep-ls-optical

[Zafar] Reservation about this work is BGP-LS already done this,
so PCEP base got adopted because it was experimental. Have not seen
any update I recall on the experiment. Running a parallel thing for
something that has wide deployment of BGP-LS, view of the experiment
would be useful.
[Adrian] You're right the PCEP-LS is experimental and still inside
the WG, this draft is also experimental. Continueing that
experiment. Maybe we'll see result of optical before packet
experiments and get a feeling of whether there's success or not. Not
the intention for PCEP-LS to get wide deployment until results of
the experiment.
[Zafar] Is PCEP right vehicle, not clear

4.2 Fine Grain Transport (Liuyan / Minxue, 10 mins) [85/90]
draft-han-pce-fgmtn-setup
draft-han-pce-ls-fgmtn-reporting
draft-han-pce-path-computation-fg-transport

[Dhruv] This was discussed in CCAMP as well?
[Fatai] Requirement draft discussed in CCAMP, from chair
perspective more about PCEP extension so in scope of PCE WG.
Danielle sent email to chairs to see where it should be. Saw your
response, and asked authors to explore in other groups. Even for the
requirement draft still in the scope of PCE
[Dhruv] Meant we follow the work for what ITU CCAMP set, and
whether they are ready for us to take on or not
[Fatai] ITU already did their dataplane work

4.3 Bounded Latency (Quan Xiong, 5 mins) [90/90]
draft-xiong-pce-detnet-bounded-latency