Re: globally unique identifiers for lightpaths?

[Ronald van der Pol <Ronald.vanderPol@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 09:40:09 +0100, Leon Gommans wrote:

> Ronald,
> 
> Within our work with Internet2 we discussed the same issue. Essentially
> your need to refer to a "network session id"
> that needs to be created in a globally unique way. Each domain may have
> to take the initiative to create such
> an identifier. In our discussion with Internet2 we started to called it
> a Global Resource Identifier (GRI).
> This identifier essentially allows local domains to assign its resources
> to this GRI. The information related to local resources can was called a
> Local Resource Identifier (LRI). Each domain can use its own conventions
> here. The GRI was essentially build using a domain identifier and some
> number which each domain is free to choose as long as it is unique and
> adheres to some format constraints posed by the inter-domain signalling
> protocol. The random number you mentioned could be one way. One may
> start to think about domain-id's that some authority will issue and this
> might need discussion in the GLIF.

That's why I choose city names. We already have an authority that
keeps a list of city TLAs, namely the UN. On the other hand,
geo locations are probably not the right thing to choose for
network topology information. And some GOLEs are geographically
distributed.

We seem to agree that it is a good idea to have a random number
be part of the name. This can be either a computer generated
number or a time string as I proposed in my previous mail (similar
to DNS serial numbers in the SOA). Computers can use generation
and humans can use the time convention.

So, do we want some ASCII information with semantics in the name
or do we use numbers only and have a system that accepts a
number and provides information about topology, domains, etc.?
The former seems handy from an operational point of view. I
think it is similar to the reason why we use interface descriptions.

Any good ideas out there?

	rvdp