John,

Thank you very much for the explanation.

More questions are inserted below:

-----Original Message-----
[Snipped]

> Why can’t receivers assume the “the tunnel’s remote endpoint is the UPDATE’s 
> BGP next hop” if the remote sub-TLV is not present?

… because the spec doesn’t say that?

Of course, the spec could (even at this late date) be changed to permit that 
behavior, but I don’t see it bringing any benefit since those semantics are 
already defined using remote endpoint = 0. Furthermore, advertising the sub-tlv 
with remote endpoint = 0 has the merit that it makes it explicit the behavior 
is desired, vs. having it happen by accident if the sub-tlv is inadvertently 
omitted.

[Linda] That is a very good point. I am just curious if all other TLVs/subTLVs 
of BGP's UPDATEs must be present with value NULL (0) to emphasize that it is 
not accidently omitted?

If you have a compelling case for needing to omit the remote endpoint sub-tlv 
and get the stated effects, instead of including it with value 0, please do 
share.
[Linda] simply a shorter message body, not sure if it is compelling enough.


> Another question: which of the following interpretation of the above 
> paragraph is correct?
>  “tunnel’s remote endpoint is the UPDATE’s BGP netxt hop” == “tunnel’s remote 
> endpoint is the originating node of the UPDATE message”
> Or
> “tunnel’s remote endpoint is the UPDATE’s BGP netxt hop” == “tunnel’s remote 
> endpoint is the next hop for the routes indicated in the received UPDATE 
> message”

I think it’s unambiguously the latter, since “BGP next hop” is a term of art. 
One might say “BGP NEXT_HOP” except that’s not formally correct for MP-BGP, 
where the right thing would be “value of the Network Address of Next Hop field 
within the MP_REACH_NLRI attribute”. So the text should either stand as written 
(my preference) or if great precision is needed, it could say something like 
“tunnel’s endpoint is the value depicted in either the UPDATE’s Network Address 
of Next Hop field within the MP_REACH_NLRI attribute if present, or NEXT_HOP 
attribute otherwise.”

[Linda] Your statement is indeed much clearer. Thank you. When a Node-A 
constructs this Tunnel-Encap UPDATE for routes attached to Node-A, does it use 
its own address in the  “UPDATE’s Network Address of Next Hop field”?  Does it 
have the options of using Node-A’s “Loopback address”, or the address of one of 
the ports on Node-A’s ?
If another node, say Node-B constructs this Tunnel-Encap UPDATE on behalf of 
Node-A, will the address in the  “UPDATE’s Network Address of Next Hop field” 
same as the Node-A address?
Under what scenarios, the address in “Remote endpoint sub-TLV” is different 
from the ““UPDATE’s Network Address of Next Hop field”?

Apart from the plain reading of the text, the other reason I think the first 
interpretation is not correct is, how is a receiver supposed to know what “the 
originating node of the UPDATE message” is? Without specified procedures, that 
relate to fields within the message, it would be ambiguous.
[Linda] Isn’t the Source Address of the UPDATE message same as the originating 
node of the UPDATE message?

Thanks,

—John

_______________________________________________
rtgwg mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtgwg

Reply via email to