17 July 2002 -- The MPLS Forum has made progress in MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) interoperability following a Technical Committee meeting in Berlin.
The MPLS Forum has taken the following four documents to final ballot:
- LDP/CR-LDP (Label Distribution Protocol/Constraint-based Routing LDP) Conformance Test Coverage Implementation Agreement;
- RSVP-TE (Reservation Protocol Traffic Engineering) Conformance Test Coverage Implementation Agreement;
- MPLS PVC (Permanent Virtual Circuit) UNI (User-to-Network Interface) Implementation Agreement; and
- AAL2 (ATM Adaptation Layer 2) over MPLS Implementation Agreement.
Rick Wilder, VP of technology for the MPLS Forum and chief technology officer of service provider Masergy, said: "The MPLS Forum expects to continue this speedy progress in the coming months in other key interoperability and implementation agreement areas."
Also, working groups within the MPLS Forum are moving ahead with other strategic work items.
The Interoperability Working Group is progressing the following specifications:
- RSVP-TE Interoperability;
- BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)/MPLS VPN (Virtual Private Network) Interoperability;
- Layer 2 over MPLS Interoperability; and
- LDP/CR-LDP Interoperability (the most recently accepted work item).
The Applications and Deployment Working Group is progressing Voice over MPLS Version 2 as well as several other work items including:
- FR/MPLS Interworking;
- PNNI (Private Network-to-Network Interface)/MPLS Interworking; and
- TDM over AAL1 over MPLS.
New work has begun on ATM/MPLS encapsulation, MPLS Service Definition Framework and Hierarchical LSPs (Label Switched Path).
The MPLS Forum's next Technical Committee meeting is at Kohala Coast, Hawaii on 24-26 September.
* The test plans from the world's largest MPLS interoperability demonstration at June's SUPERCOMM 2002 event in Atlanta, GA, USA are being made available to the general public at:
http://www.mplsforum.org/Supercomm.htm