Subject: [bmwg] New Charter Paragraphs

From: "MORTON, ALFRED C (AL)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 15:53:56 -0400

BMWG,

As we close in on the re-charter text, we decided at our IETF-89 session
to keep Datacenter and VNF paragraphs separate.

To that end, we already have a Datacenter-oriented paragraph in our charter,
but it needs editing -- please make suggestions!

* Data Center Bridging Devices:
    Some key concepts from BMWG's past work are not meaningful when testing
    switches that implement new IEEE specifications in the area of data
    center bridging. For example, throughput as defined in RFC 1242 cannot
    be measured when testing devices that implement three new IEEE
    specifications: priority-based flow control (802.1Qbb); priority groups
    (802.1Qaz); and congestion notification (802.1Qau).
    Since devices that implement these new congestion-management
    specifications should never drop frames, and since the metric of
    throughput distinguishes between non-zero and zero drop rates, no
    throughput measurement is possible using the existing methodology.
    The current emphasis is on the Priority Flow Control aspects of
    Data Center Bridging, and the work will include an investigation
    into whether TRILL RBridges require any specific treatment in the
    methodology. This work will update RFC 2544 and exchange periodic
    Liaisons with IEEE 802.1 DCB Task Group, especially at WG Last Call.

Also, here's the (slightly modified) text for VNF activity:

* VNF and related Infrastructure Benchmarking

Benchmarking Methodologies have reliably characterized many physical devices. 
This work item extends and enhances the methods to virtual network functions (VNF)
and their unique supporting infrastructure. First, the new task space will be 
considered to ensure that common issues are considered  from the start. 
Virtual routers, switches and platform capacity and performance characteristics 
will follow, including comparisons between physical and virtual functions.

Finally, I'll leave it to the authors to say more, but I noticed a new draft
on our tools page:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bhuvan-bmwg-of-controller-benchmarking-00

take a look, is this something we should consider including on our ride?

Comments by April 14th, please.

regards,
Al/Sarah
bmwg co-chairs