I am going to let other people explain. I think my email was clear. 

Dino

> On Jul 27, 2014, at 8:28 PM, Tom Herbert <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 2:21 PM, Dino Farinacci <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 2. The VXLAN-GPE draft should focus only on the VXLAN-GPE header and 
>>> requires the assignment of a new UDP port.   The fact that the VXLAN-GPE 
>>> header closely resembles VXLAN may be convenient for implementers, but this 
>>> protocol by definition is not backward compatible with VXLAN.
>> 
>> If you do that then it will be harder for VXLAN-GPE systems to interoperate 
>> with a VXLAN systems. Because a VXLAN-GPE system will need to open and 
>> maintain 2 UDP sockets. And an implementaiton will have to be careful to not 
>> set the P-bit for the VXLAN socket or clear the P-bit for VXLAN-GPE socket. 
>> This is all completely unnecessary and one way or the other should be used.
> I am not sure what you are suggesting. AFAICT there is no backwards
> compatible means to to add the protocol field to VXLAN which is the
> motivation for the new UDP port, which in turn implies a new protocol
> (which also implies an opportunity to add a more general set of
> protocol features like version number and options extensions which are
> also not backwards compatible). Maybe it's possible to break
> compatibility within the protocol and assume that out of band
> mechanisms could negotiate use of P-bit to compensate, but I assume
> there's already quite a bit of VXLAN deployment so that seems pretty
> shaky robustness-wise to me.
> 
> It's not just adding the protocol field that would be an issue, even
> adding the OAM bit to VXLAN would be problematic. Per VXLAN spec
> unspecified flag bits are ignored on receive, so if the OAM bit were
> subsequently defined in VXLAN it will be ignored by existing
> implementations and these packets will be processed normally-- this
> seems to be incompatible with the proposed VXLAN-gpe requirement that
> "When the O bit is set to 1, the packet is an OAM packet and OAM
> processing MUST occur." (btw 'OAM processing' is awfully ambiguous to
> be a MUST here IMO).
> 
> Allowing the reserved bits in the header to be ignored on receive
> limits the usefulness in that new bits that are defined can only be
> advisory and not fundamentally change interpretation of the packet.
> Had the requirement in VXLAN been that packets with unknown bits set
> be dropped, then adding P-bit and O-bit could have been done with
> backwards compatibility. This might be a reasonable requirement to
> consider if new protocol (i.e. new port number) is undertaken.
> 
> Thanks,
> Tom
> 
>> And if *it was agreed* on to use different UDP port numbers (like the way 
>> LISP did it for L2 versus L3 packet encapsulation), we wouldn't need the 
>> P-bit at all. But there was push back (by somebody) to not allocate another 
>> port for VXLAN, so the demux was forced to be in the VXLAN header.
>> 
>> And is also the reason this baggage is being carried over the LISP when it 
>> really isn't needed.
>> 
>>> 3. True, the ‘P’ bit is not needed for backward compatibility, but I’m not 
>>> against it if there is value to make it consistent with the LISP-GPE header.
>> 
>> There is no incremental benefit to use the P-bit for LISP. We had a solution 
>> but because of the requirement to have no new port for VXLAN, LISP is 
>> affected.
>> 
>> Just another example how the working group is putting effort into things 
>> that creates more work but no benefit. Don't get me wrong, the cisco guys 
>> did this (the VXLAN and LISP same position for P-bit) for consistency, and 
>> they should be applauded for that. But if VXLAN could have another port 
>> number assigned for "other protocols", maybe the VXLAN-GPE would look so 
>> much different.
>> 
>> Something to think about as the working group now has new productivity 
>> mentality.
>> 
>> Dino
>> 
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