2.5.11 UniDirectional Link Routing (udlr)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 44th IETF Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It may now be out-of-date. Last Modified: 01-Mar-99

Chair(s):

Walid Dabbous <dabbous@sophia.inria.fr>
Yongguang Zhang <ygz@hrl.com>

Routing Area Director(s):

Rob Coltun <rcoltun@lightera.com>

Routing Area Advisor:

Rob Coltun <rcoltun@lightera.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion:udlr@sophia.inria.fr
To Subscribe: udlr-request@sophia.inria.fr
Archive: ftp://zenon.inria.fr/rodeo/udlr/archive.txt

Description of Working Group:

Note: An alternate site for UDLR's files is: ftp://irl.cs.ucla.edu/pub/udlr

High bandwidth, unidirectional transmission to low cost, receiver-only hardware is becoming an emerging network fabric, e.g. broadcast satellite links or some cable links.

Two cases for unidirectional links support may be envisaged:

1. unidirectional links on top of bidirectional underlying network (wired Internet) 2. bidirectional islands connected via unidirectional links.

In both cases, the integration of unidirectional links may require changes to the routing protocols in order to preserve dynamic routing across these links. A short term solution (i.e. to solve the first case) is to adopt current protocols with possible modifications. A long term solution (i.e. for the second case) is to propose, design and implement protocols that remove assumed link symmetry (e.g. by supporting 2-way metrics).

There have been several proposed approaches for the short term case. The first is based on the modification of the common routing protocols (RIP, OSPF, DVMRP) in order to support unidirectional links. The second is to add a layer between the network interface and the routing software to emulate bi-directional links through tunnels.

The purpose of the UDLR Working Group, therefore, is to study these approaches and suggest a short term solution to provide dynamic routing (including multicast) in the presence of unidirectional links.

Goals and Milestones:

Apr 97

  

Meet at IETF. Finish discussion of the general solution.

Apr 97

  

Post the description of the proposed solutions and the issues for the short term solution as I-D(s).

Aug 97

  

Preliminary experiments results of the short term solution.

Aug 97

  

Post the description of the short term solution as an I-D.

Dec 97

  

Produce Informational RFC on the proposed approach.

Dec 97

  

End WG.

Internet-Drafts:

No Request For Comments

Current Meeting Report

None received.

Slides

None received.