In particular the l2 multipathing work has progressed rather well and now allows 16 symmetric algorithms with additional opaque mechanisms for the addition of many more. What is very interesting about this work is that these are head end chosen so you get a lot of control over how traffic will be placed.

The TRILL base protocol specification is now quite mature and the latest version is available at
​http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-trill-rbridge-protocol-14

Thanks,
Donald

Donald

I claimed that the IEEE is not open. You can’t get any material on what they are doing, or how they do it, or what the the current progress is. Which is quite annoying for ‘public’ standards.

I was easily able to access and evaluate material from the IETF. I agree, you could not be anymore open.

Greg

I don’t understand why you are having difficulties getting access to what is going on in the TRILL WG in the IETF. The charter, which I admit is a little out of date, is here:
http://www.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter/trill-charter.html

That charter page has links to the one RFC the TRILL WG has had published and to the base protocol specification draft, currently at:
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-trill-rbridge-protocol-13.txt

As drafts are updated in the IETF, the direct text link, as above, to the old version goes away and a new link with the version number incremented is created, but here is a link to an html-ized version of draft –13 which should continue to work even after draft –14 comes out:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-trill-rbridge-protocol-13

As for what is happening in the TRILL WG itself, minutes of all its meetings, like those for every IETF working group, are published in the proceedings of the IETF meetings. The proceedings are all linked from here:
http://www.ietf.org/meeting/proceedings.html
TRILL did not meet at the 72nd or 75th IETF meetings and I think there is at least one earlier one it skipped but if you go look at, for example, the proceedings for the 73rd and 74th IETF meetings, it is not that hard to find the TRILL meeting minutes. In fact, if you can’t make it to an IETF meeting, most of the WG meetings are publicly broadcast by streaming audio and you can call in to ask questions and there is usually an IRC channel with someone posting summaries of what is happening in real time and relaying questions anyone on the IRC channel has.
In fact, I find it very hard to conceive of any practical way in which IETF working groups could be more open. (I haven’t even mentioned the IETF fundamental that all the working group mailing lists are open and anyone can subscribe.)

Thanks,
Donald

I do not believe the drafts are publically available, but most of the input to them is, check out:

http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2009/

If you want to go backwards in time, the directories are also there for previous years…enjoy!

IMO there has been steady progress since 802.1ah was in scope, as it was a more natural fit for what SPB was trying to achieve.…

cheers
D

I also remain skeptical about the IEEE competence. Ethernet is a success in spite of IEEE procedures and processes when I consider the multiple Wireless LAN cockups. Not to mention VLAN tagging.… oh I could go on.

It’s a shame that it won’t be ready until 2H2010, it was originally promised in 2008, maybe early 2009.

Until the IEEE does it better, I will remain critical. Show me results and transparency.

The critique of IEEE is IMO ill-informed. IETF (for example) resolves conflicts by publishing multiple RFCs and letting the industry decide, which simply punts their problems onto all of us. IEEE at least has the concept of “distinct identity” for a given project. It may take a little longer to get a standard but any industry confusion is capped there.…

BTW 802.1aq is progressing nicely, has numerous pre-standard deployments, and should be baked as a standard in 1H2010…