IETF / IEEE 802.1 Liaison Report – 29 July 2008

The IEEE is about to publish the Provider Backbone Bridging (formally, P802.1ah) amendment to P802.1Q. It has received approval from the IEEE 802 Executive Committee for publication.

The IEEE is nearing publication of the corresponding management update project document (P802.1ap). It has passed a final work group ballot and is being forwarded for sponsor ballot (this is a final stage in which balloting is strictly yes/no; if a large enough number of people vote yes, the next step is forwarding it to the Executive Committee for approval).

Completion of the Provider Backbone Bridging project means that this standard technology is now part of existing “prior art” for IETF activities relating to 802.1Q (such as L2VPN, PWE3, TRILL).

The shortest path bridging project (P802.1aq) has recently become more active having a newly appointed editor (Don Fedyk) who is taking this task over from Mick Seaman and is working with Ali Sajassi and Mick (along with a substantial number of reviewers). Because the scope of this activity includes PBB and Enterprise bridged networks, uses IS-IS as the link-state routing protocol, and has a number of other areas of overlap with work going on in the TRILL working group, this work bears watching.

This report was prepared for the IAB by Eric Gray