[rbridge] Question about reserved nicknames

[Donald Eastlake]

Hi Radia,

The behavior you describe is what was intended for the reserved
nicknames with the one minor exception that there is currently no
requirement to examine the ingress nickname on receipt of a known
unicast TRILL data frame. So an RBridge might not discard such a frame
if the ingress nickname was a reserved value. Perhaps that should be a
requirement.

This was discussed on the list. Its really not much different from the
extra reserved multicast bridging MAC addresses, which are dropped by
any bridge which doesn't understand them, or the extra reserved
multicast TRILL MAC addresses, which are dropped by and RBridge which
doesn't understand them. Maybe the reserved nicknames will be helpful
in handling control messages on links that don't have outside MAC
addresses or somehow helpful in implementing "provider RBridges"
if/when we want to do something like that. In any case, it is quite
cheap to reserve them and, if we ever want the behavior of dropping
such TRILL frames, that requirement has to be imposed from the
beginning.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-634-2066 (home)
 155 Beaver Street
 Milford, MA 01757 USA
 d3e3e3 at gmail.com



On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:28 AM, Radia Perlman <Radia.Perlman at sun.com> wrote:
> I notice there were some nicknames set aside as "reserved". What are
> RBridges
> supposed to do about reserved nicknames? Merely not request them, or check
> data packets, and drop
> packets with the TRILL header having either ingress or egress nickname
> field set as one of the reserved values?
>
> If the latter, what do people envision using reserved nicknames for in
> the future?
> Would such a use be compatible with existing RBridges discarding frames
> that use reserved nicknames?
>
> Radia
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