Subject: RE: IdleHold

From: "Natale, Jonathan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 13:07:14 -0400

Sue,

I know you asked Greg, but I am on the draft-ietf-idr-bgp4-17.txt.  Am I
lost?  Or maybe you searched for "Idle Hold" like me and missed it (hence my
previous request to change IdleHold to Idle Hold)???

-Jonathan
:-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Hares [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 3:30 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IdleHold

Greg:

1st clarification - there is no IdleHold state in BGP.  There is
an IDLE state with sub-state like features.  Where do you find this
IdleHold state in the words I've attached?

Are we on the same document?

At 10:45 AM 9/12/2002 -0400, Greg Hankins wrote:
>I am still not convinced that IdleHold should be in the new BGP
>specification.
>
>Given that the goal of the WG is to "revise and clarify the base BGP4
>document" and to "document existing practice", I do not think that it
>should be included because this doesn't seem to be an existing practice
>(or at least one practiced by the majority of implementations).
>
>I have two questions:
>
>1. Which existing implementations support the IdleHold state, its timer
>    and flag?

***NO*** Implementation support Idle hold state.

Please refer to the hares-backoff draft for two know possibilities.
GateD by NextHop was the source of one method.  Another method is
attempting to describe cisco's back-off.   We will look to include others.
It's a "drafty" draft right now.  Please send me your favorite
persisent peer oscillation information.

>2. What existing documentation (books/courses/etc) lists IdleHold as a
state
>    in the FSM?

There is no IdleHold state.  There are Idle hold features (see the
bgp draft-15 for those sub-features described.)

>If the answers to these questions are not "the majority", then it isn't
>an existing practice.  Any implementation that does not support this state
>is now automatically non-standards compliant.
>
>I suggest that this state be documented in a separate draft that addresses
>stability.

The sub-state within Idle has been moved to the backoffdraft.
We are taking this approach.  Yakov and I agree that this is a good idea.

Hope this helps.   Do give me a call if this is unclear.  Let me know
if you need the phone number.

Sue

>Greg
>
>--
>Greg Hankins <[email-masked]> | Riverstone Networks, Inc.
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