Tony -

From: Tony Li <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Tony Li
Sent: Monday, October 6, 2025 11:25 AM
To: Les Ginsberg (ginsberg) <[email protected]>
Cc: Tony Przygienda <[email protected]>; 
[email protected]; lsr <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Lsr] Further Comments on draft-prz-lsr-hierarchical-snps


Hi Les,

Please see inline.


If you do not reply, then we assume that you have seen the error of your ways 
and subsequently agree.  Silence is assent.

[LES:] I think we all have experience on how dangerous an assumption that can 
be – but I won’t debate…
In this case I thought we had both expressed our POV and I didn’t have more to 
say.


If you disagree and do not reply, we have no way of knowing that we do not have 
consensus. If you choose not to debate, that is your choice, but then to 
reiterate the exact same points months later is a disservice to the working 
group.  The working group can only make progress when all parties participate 
and behave professionally.
[LES:] Life has taught me that “silence != agreement”.
But I note your POV and you now clearly know that I do not agree. 😊


This can happen because the Fletcher checksum, like any hashing function, has 
hash collisions. They’re rare, but they can happen. This means that the legacy 
mechanism is NOT 100% reliable, just close to it.  I will happily stipulate 
that it is Super Good Enough.
[LES:] So, that was my original understanding – but Tony P’s response (today) 
made me think perhaps you were talking about the different checksum case.
As regards the same checksum case, my point was/is that for standard IS-IS PDUs 
(SNPs or LSPs) if the data in the PDU differs you still have the actual TLVs 
themselves. If something has been corrupted that is not detected by the PDU 
checksum, we still have multiple detection mechanisms as a result of data 
corruption. For example:

  *   Bad TLV code
  *   Bad TLV length
  *   Bad TLV data
You don’t have that with HSNPs.


The TLVs of the LSP are not contained in CSNPs.  I do not understand your point 
at all.

CSNPs only contain the LSP lifetime, ID, Sequence number, and checksum.  Please 
see ISO 10589, section 9.10 and 9.11.
[LES:] Correct. And you have that info for each LSP in the sender’s database.
The PDU checksum is only used to verify that data has not been corrupted during 
transmission/reception. It is not compared against a checksum on the receiver.
A PDU checksum collision would imply that some data in the LSP entry TLVs was 
corrupted – which would mean that some LSP entry data (LSPID, seq #, checksum, 
lifetime) was altered in a way that was not detected by the PDU checksum – but 
you would still have a modified LSP entry which would not match what the 
receiver has in its database.
With HSNP you do not have per LSP information – so if a hash collision occurs 
you cannot tell that there is a difference in the LSPDB even when there is.

   Les

We are debating the corner cases of the CSNP and HSNP mechanisms, nothing else.

T

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