Re: [routing-wg]Four byte ASN notation

[Geoff Huston gih@localhost]

Tom Petch wrote:
> Not sure if you aware but there is an IETF Internet Draft winging its way
> through the system on this topic, namely
>
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-michaelson-4byte-as-representation-05.
> txt
speaking as a co-author here: "winging its way" is not a phrase I'd use 
for almost any draft in the IETF system, but in this case its an 
entirely inappropriate characterization of the pace of this document.
The tracked state of this draft is "AD is Watching", but if you look a 
little closer you see that the IETF Area Director listed is not a 
current Routing Area director.
So this characterization is just a little exaggerated!

Like the 4byte AS draft itself I'd tend towards an adjective to describe 
thepace of this document through the IETF as "glacial" but maybe others 
would see "geological" as being closer to reality ;-).
Even so, I encourage those who have some interest in this topic to read 
the draft and comment, either to the authors, to this mailing list, to 
the idr mailing list where the 4 byte ASN work was undertaken in the 
context of the IETF, or wherever else that might take your fancy.
> It did get discussed on the IETF idr list in October 2006, and met significant
> resistance.
Again I have to say that this characterization is just a little exaggerated!


>  There were also comments then about NANOG taking a position on
> this.
err? NANOG "taking a position" ? How? Though some subliminal collective 
subconscious alignment? Or via some alignment of the planets?
>  I haven't seen any discussion since.
Notation is such a strange thing - all kinds of folk have flash opinions 
about notation but in the end notation is like pronounciation - informal 
 use accretes social weight through continued usage and then the 
informaal use becomes a convention which then becomes usage rules. But 
when we try to apply this social process to technology we run into the 
issue of formal notation and rigid grammars because of the issues of 
have a notation that can be used conveniently by both human and machine 
parsers. So it makes some sense to try to define a notation convention 
early on in the process.
The draft notes some alternatives for notation that have been observed 
so far and makes a recommendation to adopt one such notation ("asdot" in 
this case, using the terminology as described in the draft)
> Current status is Application Director Watching
Actual status is "previous AD might have been watching"

Rob Evan's advice to the folk on this list that:

"people do need to review their in-house tools and scripts to ensure 
they will work with numbers expressed in this notation."
is still appropriate and extends far beyond mere notation. The issue is 
one of looking at your operating support system and provisioning tools 
and even if you are not going to upgrade your routers' BGP anytime soon, 
what happens when your customers or peers front up with a 4 byte ASN and 
your systems start to see AS23456 popping up everywhere?
(see slides 38 and 39 of http://www.iepg.org/2007-12-ietf70/asns.pdf for 
some additional pointers here as to what to review and why)

regards,

  Geoff