Thanks for the response, Brian.
> > Are there reasons for preferring to put a flow label inside the > > IPv6 header? Is this being done on the advice of folks who are > > standardizing label switching technologies? > > >No, because it has nothing to do with label switching. It's much >more to do with QOS than routing. We know how to use the draft-rajahalme- >label for Intserv and Diffserv, but it may well have other QOS >usage as well. It's end2end property is vital for that and completely >different from the swappable MPLS-type label. But, I still don't understand why an IPv6 QoS/diffserv flow label is "completely different" from an MPLS-type label... I do understand that MPLS labels are swapped at each intermediate node, and that IPv6 flow labels will not be. What are the other differences? Will we still use the IPv6 destination address in each packet to determine the next-hop router? Or will routers set-up state regarding the next-hop associated with each flow label? If the former, then I understand the difference. An intermediate router would need to read the IPv6 (or IPv4) header, anyway, in order to forward the packet. The IPv6 flow label would just be some additional information to influence packet queuing or processing. However, if the latter (routers save next-hop state based on flow labels), wouldn't it be better to develop a mechanism that could work with both IPv6 and IPv4, so that routers will not have to behave differently for IPv6 and IPv4 packets? If I seem to be missing an important point or concept, please send some hints or pointers. Thanks, Margaret -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List IPng Home Page: http://playground.sun.com/ipng FTP archive: ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng Direct all administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
