[rbridge] RBridge: a case of study

[James Carlson]

Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 writes:
> @@@ This is not some new change just coming from Silvano. For some time
> now the base protocol specification has assumed that all the islands of
> a VLAN seen by an Rbridge get glued together. Bridges can keep them
> apart because they are myopic. Rbridges have a global view and it would
> add significant complexity to the protocol to somehow defeat the
> automatic connection of station on a VLAN by Rbridges. This was
> discussed extensively on the list including such ideas as adding a
> further qualifying "island-ID" or something to the VLANID+Address that
> are the current basis for TRILL routing. There was no support for such
> added complexity.

I'm asking about how Silvano Gai's diagram agrees with the current
spec.

According to the current spec, you have to configure any outer VLAN ID
number that's present.  It's in the realm of manual configuration and
thus doesn't violate anything the administrator has specifically set
up.

If I read Silvano Gai's diagram correctly, that configuration isn't
present.  Instead, the RBridges _automatically_ discover the
non-default connections amongst themselves, and use them as they see
fit.  (At a guess, they do so by sending Hello messages on all 4094
VLAN ID numbers.)

I'm not asking to have islands supported.  I agree that it'd be a
mess.  I'm asking whether he's assuming they'll always be
automatically glued together without manual configuration, even if
there are restricted outer VLANs.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive        71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
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