PCE Working Group Meeting - Thursday, November 11, 2010, 5:40 PM

1. Introduction

- Co-chairs continue to work on recharter text. Text will be provided for the WG to review.
- Two new RFCs since Maastricht (RFC 6006: PCEP Extensions for P2MP TE-LSPs and RFC 6007: Synchronized VECtor List)
- Co-chairs are requesting a PCE Vendor Constraints contributor to help progress the document.
- WG has 13 new documents, yet almost no discussion on the list. We need more private discussions to be moved to the WG list.
- Co-chairs request contributors of new drafts to consider PCE architecture implications when proposing new solutions.

2.1. PCEP Extensions for GMPLS
Cyril Margaria was the presenter.

- Authors were reminded that we should avoid proprietary architecture for carrying vendor constraints. Also any experimental code point requests should be limited to one or two code points.
- Authors clarified that load balancing is described in the document to handle different route requests, not route diversity.
- Co-chairs highlighted that load balancing has no relevance to VCAT, so the document terminology usage may need updating.

2.2. PCEP Requirement for RWA
Presenter was Young Lee.

- Authors requested working group last call. Co-chairs pointed out there are minor gaps in the document that need editorial updates and fixes. Authors will perform review and editorial clean up and add text where necessary.
- Co-chairs requested that the authors of this document consider the general requirements and WSON specific requirements and if necessary, sync requirements with the GMPLS document authors. 

2.3. PCEP Extensions for Signal Compatibility Constraints in WSON
Presenter was Young Lee.

- WG highlighted that there is already a requirements document for WSON. Authors mentioned the basic RWA requirements and OEO/Compatibility requirements were previously discussed and it was decided to keep them separate.
- WG also highlighted that OSPF typically carries the information described in the document. Why would PCEP need to duplicate this information? Authors mentioned that the IGP/OSPF conveys some information (possibilities) but additional information is also required for the PCE, especially if multiple choices exist. Offline discussion is suggested to clarify situation.

2.4. Requirement for Cooperation between PCE and Distributed Routing Controller

- Solution described seems to be a distributed routing engine that computes routes. Authors were reminded that the IETF specifies protocols between network elements.

3.1. Extensions to PCEP for Hierarchical PCEs

- Co-chairs highlighted that objective functions may benefit from some description of the use case. This can be described in the H-PCE framework document.
- It was established that 15-20 people in the room had read the H-PCE extensions document.

3.2. Shortest Constrained P2MP Inter-Domain TE LSPs

- Co-chairs requested the authors confirm the optimality of the core-tree. Is the core-tree truly optimal, or simply provides a “good enough” solution.   

- WG discussions included how recovery should be handled. Perhaps in the event of failure, computation of the path should be limited where possible, so the entire should not be recomputed. Additionally the co-chairs reminded the WG that local protection can be provided with fast reroute (RSVP-TE) mechanisms and P2MP backup trees (NP hard).

- Co-chairs requested that the authors highlight protection and recovery discussions and move them to the list.

3.3. Path Key MIB

Co-chairs propose that WG waits for one week. If there are no objections then co-chairs will poll for WG adoption.

3.4. Relayed CSPF for Multi-Area Multi-AS PCE

Cancelled

4.1. Temporary Reservation of Computed Path Resources

 - Co-chairs highlighted their concerns with stateful conditions that may cause race conditions in some scenarios. If resource priority is required, then existing techniques already provide priority and soft pre-emption. It is important that the use of PCE does not prevent other PCC requests to access network resources.

- The authors presented a solution that will require further discussion and clarification that the mechanisms described are necessary. Further mailing list discussion is requested.

4.2. Stateful PCE

- Co-chairs requested that the authors consider and document motivation of the solution in more detail. Careful consideration of synchronization with multiple PCEs will also be required.  

5.1. P2MP PCEP MIB

- No specific comments.

5.2. Backup Node Computation

- Motivation of the mechanisms described requires further discussion. It is not clear why existing solutions using ERO and XRO techniques cannot be used for similar functionality.
- It was highlighted by a WG member that service backup is the responsibility of the network planning department.