CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Ross Callon/DEC IS-IS Minutes The IS-IS Working Group met the morning of August 1, 1990, at the IETF meeting in Vancouver, BC. We reviewed the most current Integrated IS-IS specification. The greatest amount of discussion was on the authentication field. Several problems with the current text in the spec were pointed out. Also, whatever we do will probably conflict with whatever the authentication folks eventually tell us to do. One option was therefore to go back to what was originally in the spec, which is to leave the contents of the authentication field unspecified. However, there is an urgent need for the most basic form of error supression. For example, it is very useful to provide a simple mechanism for preventing mis-configuration of a single link from causing two large routing domains to inadvertantly merge into one domain. After a great deal of discussion, it was agreed that we would like to do just about the same thing that OSPF already does: provide a simple password mechanism with an escape to allow future identification of other mechanisms. Ross Callon (as editor for the IS-IS specification) was instructed to remove the details of the authentication field from the main body of the spec, specifying the contents of the field as ``to be determined'', and to provide an annex to the spec specifying how to use the authentication field for carrying a simple password. Also, we agreed to use the same value for the authentication type field as used by OSPF, in the off-chance that future assignments between authentication type fields could be kept in alignment. It was pointed out that the current definition of the manner of carrying TAG information in the ``interdomain routing protocol information field'' was difficult to process (in particular, it required that before processing an ``IP External Reachability Information'' field, the implementation would first have to check what the following field is, and if it is an ``Interdomain Routing Protocol Information'' field, then process the two fields in parallel). After discussion, an alternate encoding was agreed upon. There was a discussion of the possibility that the amount of information carried in the Inter-Domain Routing Protocol Information field may be large, and that in some cases the bulk of level 2 routers (those that don't do inter-domain routing directly) would therefore be required to store information that they don't have any use for. This would appear to mean that folks determining how to use this field need to give careful consideration to what inter-domain routing information should be put into this field, and what should be carried by other means. Ross agreed to add a note to the spec describing this issue. 1 The limit on the maximum number of addresses that can be assigned to a single interface was discussed. There was general agreement that multiple IP addresses per interface was useful in some cases (particularly for transition), but there was no obvious reason to limit a router to two addresses per interface (as in the current spec). It was agreed that a better limit was whatever number of addresses could fit into one occurrence of the ``IP Interface Address'' field in IS-IS Hello packets, which implies a maximum of 63 IP addresses per interface. It was agreed that this limit was plenty big enough, also that there was no need to pick a smaller limit. Rob Hagens pointed out that the use of the term ``segmentation'' in section 3.6 was inconsistent with the terminology used in the OSI spec (the meaning was consistent, just the terminology was different). Ross agreed to fix this. It was agreed that after these changes were made, the spec was ready to be published as an Internet Draft, and submitted as an RFC. Ross agreed to send the draft spec to the Working Group first in case anyone could find any nits. A few other minor editorial nits were also transmitted to Ross during side discussions. Attendees Karl Auerbach auerbach@csl.sri.com Fred Baker baker@vitalink.com Art Berggreen art@opal.acc.com Chet Birger cbirger@bbn.com Ross Callon callon@bigfut.enet.dec.com C. Allan Cargille cargille@cs.wisc.edu Curtis Cox zk0001@nhis.navy.mil Farokh Deboo fjd@interlink.com Dino Farinacci dino@buckeye.esd.3com.com Jeffrey Fitzgerald jjf@fibercom.com Chris Gunner gunner@osicwg.enet.dec.com Yong Guo guo@cs.ubc.ca Robert Hagens hagens@cs.wisc.edu Tony Hain alh@eagle.es.net Susan Hares skh@merit.edu Peter Harrison harrison@miden.ucs.unimelb.edu.au Kathleen Huber khuber@bbn.com Paulina Knibbe knibbe@cisco.com Holly Knight holly@apple.com Alex Koifman akoifman@bbn.com Gregory Lauer glauer@bbn.com Walter Lazear lazear@gateway.mitre.org Solomon Liou solomon%penril@uunet.uu.net Yoni Malachi malachi@polya.stanford.edu Douglas Montgomery dougm@osi3.ncsl.nist.gov Rebecca Nitzan nitzan@nsipo.nasa.gov 2 Zbigniew Opalka zopalka@bbn.com Brad Parker brad@cayman.com Michael Reilly reilly@nsl.dec.com Jim Reinstedler jimr@ub.com Jim Showalter gamma@mintaka.dca.mil Keith Sklower sklower@okeeffe.berkeley.edu Frank Solensky solensky@interlan.interlan.com John Veizades veizades@apple.com Chris Weider clw@merit.edu Steve Willis swillis@wellfleet.com Walter Wimer ww0n+@andrew.cmu.edu Linda Winkler b32357@anlvm.ctd.anl.gov Allan Young rcoay@possum.ecg.rmit.oz.au 3