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.

Like the 4byte AS draft itself I'd tend towards an adjective to describe
the pace of this document through the IETF as "slow" or even "glacial" 
but maybe others  would see "geological" as being appropriate ;-).
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.

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