Subject: WG Review: Recharter of Multiprotocol Label Switching (mpls)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:41:11 -0400

A modified charter has been submitted for the Multiprotocol Label Switching 
(mpls) working group in the Routing Area of the IETF.  The IESG has not made 
any determination as yet.  The following description was submitted, and is 
provided for informational purposes only.  Please send your comments to 
the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by October 14th.

Please note that as part of the rechartering process, the MPLS WG
is being moved to the RTG (Routing) Area with Alex Zinin as primary
Area Director.

   Multiprotocol Label Switching (mpls)
   -------------------------------------

   Current Status: Active Working Group

   Description of Working Group:

   The MPLS working group is responsible for standardizing a base
   technology for using label switching and for the implementation of
   label-switched paths over various packet based link-level
   technologies, such as Packet-over-Sonet, Frame Relay, ATM, and
   LAN technologies (e.g. all forms of Ethernet, Token Ring, etc.).
   This includes procedures and protocols for the distribution of
   labels between routers and encapsulation.

   The working group is also responsible for specifying the necessary
   MIBs for the functionality specified in the base MPLS technology.

   The first generation of the MPLS standards are largely complete,
   and the current WG work items are:

   - procedures and protocols for multicast protocol extensions for
       point-to-multipoint TE, including soft-preemption

   - Define requirements and mechanisms for MPLS OAM

   - Define an overall OAM framework for MPLS applications

   - MPLS-specific aspects of traffic engineering for multi-areas/multi-AS
       in cooperation with the CCAMP WG

   - Determine (with CCAMP) what procedures are appropriate for evaluating
       proposals to extend the MPLS and GMPLS protocols, and document these

   The Working Group chairs tracking of the working group documents can be
   viewed at http://urax.utfors.net/~loa/MPLS_WG_Drafts.htm