The IETF is on my mind this week (for pretty obvious reasons). If anyone is in Vancouver, and would like to meet up, send me an email. In the meantime, here are a few drafts the Packet Pushers community should be interested in (even if you don’t think you are, you should be!). Please note that the links below are to the most recent version of each draft at the time of this post –more recent versions could be (and probably will be) published at any time.
OSPF Stub Router Advertisement
This draft makes some changes in the way OSPF advertises a stub router, or a router that no traffic should transit. This is useful in large scale hub and spoke networks using OSPF to prevent spokes from being used as paths to destinations that aren’t attached to the spoke router itself.
OSPF Incremental Link State Database Synchronization
Again, a draft to increase the efficiency of OSPF in operation. This one improves the speed at which two OSPF routers can move from two-way to full state by allowing the link state databases to be incrementally exchanged, rather than fully exchanged.
Interface to the Routing System Framework
This is another form of a software defined network, like OpenFlow. Only time will tell what the interaction between the ONF and the IETF is going to be, and how the standards actually shake out, but it’s worth watching this space.
A Framework and Requirements for Energy Aware Control Planes
This is one of two drafts building a framework around the concept of energy control planes –or rather, modifications to routing and switching protocols that will allow the network to route around unneeded routers and switches, so these devices can be put into sleep or hibernation mode.
Home Networking Architecture for IPv6
Homenet is a working group building standards for small, self configuring home networks. The general idea is that an end user could simply plug various pieces of equipment in at home, and it would all “just work.”
Using BGP for routing in large-scale data centers
This is one for all you data center design folks describing Microsoft’s use of BGP in their data center. An interesting read.
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