Status update about GIST

Hi all,

It has been a bit silent the last weeks about what is actually happening with GIST. You might still remember that GIST go sent to the IESG and underwent the IESG review and discussion. 

The GIST spec got quite an amount of ABSTAINS during the IESG review and therefore is blocked. Most of the IESG members have had concerns about GIST and this led to the ABSTAINS. 

However, to get things progressed, Magnus initiated a joint telechat between the IESG, Robert, Henning and me to discuss the ABSTAINS. The call took place on Thursday, May 15, 5:30 pm CEST. Here is brief summary (that reassembles my memory): 

The discussion with the IESG centered around the Router Alert Options in IPv4 but also touching IPv6. The general concern about thiss is that NSIS could lead to a flood of IP packets including IP RAO options and that this could effect existing RSVP-TE deployments, plus all current routers (as IP options go to the slow path), and finally that packets with RAO options are anyhow filtered at the edges of the Internet. This cause most of the ABSTAINS and the call for GIST being pushed to the experimental track instead the standards track. 

The issues associated with RAO were discussed for quite some while (I remember 1 hours or so) and we couldn't find any agreement for the IESG on staying with RAO as part of the GIST spec AND going for standards track. The envisioned solutions to this is, revert to packet filtering mechanism (e.g. 5-tuple) to intercept GIST packets, instead of RAO, in the GIST specification. This would be allowed to go GIST as standard track. The RAO part will be cut out of the GIST spec and pushed to a separate document. This new document will go on experimental track. 

This splitting will also effect the NSLPs, as they are also definin RAO usage. 

  Martin



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