Subject: [ANCP] Technology dependence in ANCP

From: Tom Taylor <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:31:23 -0500

This started out as a note on the use of Access-Loop-Circuit-Id TLV in the Port 
Management message and how that would evolve when we started working on PON. 
However, a bit of research indicated to me that we have fundamental problems 
extending the protocol in its current form to a new technology. The key 
difficulty is the definition of the Extension TLV in section 5.4.1.1 of the base 
protocol draft. According to this section:

"The Message Type plus the Tech Value uniquely define a single Extension Type 
and can be treated as a single 16 bit extension type."

That means that whatever extensions to the Port Management message we define for 
DSL have to be defined all over again for PON. Would it not make more sense to 
decouple the technology type from the extension type?

Tom Taylor