Hi Authors,

I read this new version and have a major concern on the ECMP support.


*         The new version adds ECMP support section (4.1) and require switches 
and routers SHOULD provide ECMP on the NVGRE packet using the outer frame 
fields and entire Key field (32-bit).  This means that the solution not only 
requires the change on the endpoint devices but also the change on the 
intermediate switches and routers, which put the high bar for the network. Rare 
switches and routers today support GRE key based load balance.

*         To support GRE Key based load balancing, the hardware has to check 
the GRE Key presence and the protocol type to avoid a mis-operation on other 
GRE usages, which is bad.

*         Using 8 bits in the Key field for flow entropy is not sufficient for 
all the applications.

*         Directly disclosing VSID to underlying network can be a security 
concern in some cases.

*         The draft further suggests the interim solution for ECMP support 
(without any hardware upgrade). It is to assign multiple physical addresses 
(PA, outer address) to NVGRE end point and use policy controlling the choice of 
PA to be used. This makes operation complex.

We can have a better solution to support ECMP. Most switches and routers today 
support 5 tuple based load balance. Five tuple are IP src/dst addr, tcp|udp 
src/dst ports, and IP protocol type. draft-yong-tsvwg-gre-in-udp-encap-01 
proposes the gre-in-udp encapsulation for GRE encapsulated protocols to be 
tunneled over IP networks where ECMP exists. This solution supports 16 bits 
flow entropy, does not require any change on intermediate switches and routers, 
and applies to any GRE encapsulated protocol. It also gives the ingress end 
point flexibility to generate the flow entropy without explicitly exposing 
VSID. I highly recommend NVGRE proposal to adopt this method for ECMP support.

Here is the draft. The TSVWG will adopt it as WG draft soon.

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-yong-tsvwg-gre-in-udp-encap/

Regards,
Lucy

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