[rbridge] Consensus Check: MAC learning timers

[James Carlson]

Joe Touch writes:
> James Carlson wrote:
> > Instead, our role is to design TRILL, and specify what's _required_ to
> > make that work.  Is there an issue here that, if someone had a good
> > reason to use some other set of defaults for these parameters, doing
> > so would break TRILL?
> 
> I'm concerned about breaking the non-TRILL devices by TRILL behavior. If
> our caches have timeouts different from theirs, then the overall system
> won't be as plug-and-play -- or, more specifically, more 'replug-and-play'.
> 
> That's why we're recommending IEEE values and defaults; that didn't come
> out of the blue.

Yes, and that's precisely the reason to "recommend" those defaults --
as in BCP 14 "SHOULD."  I never did suggest that they came out of the
blue or that anyone ought to ignore them.

However, as a matter of operating TRILL, they don't appear (to me at
least) to be key issues that will cause TRILL failure.  That means
they're not a "MUST."

I think it's an important distinction, but I suppose it's not a hill
worth dying on.  If you feel that we simply cannot proceed without a
"MUST" here, or a copy of some IEEE text, then I'll relent.  It's not
as though I was going to ignore those defaults myself anyway.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677