[LINK] NBN layer 3 services

[David Lochrin]

On Saturday 12 December 2009 11:38, Scott Howard wrote:
> http://www.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter/mpls-charter.html  would be a 
> good place to start when looking for IETF "Informational" and 
> "Standards Track" documents on MPLS, dating back over 10 years.

That page refers the reader to the "RFC Editor Search Engine" where I obtained the list I mentioned.

According to The MPLS Resource Centre at http://www.mplsrc.com/faq1.shtml#MPLS%20History

| d. What is the status of the MPLS standard?
|
| Most MPLS standards are currently in the "Internet Draft" phase, 
| though several have now moved into the RFC-STD phase.  See 
| "MPLS Standards" for a complete listing of current ID's and RFC's.  
| [...] 
|
| There's no such thing as a single MPLS "standard".  Instead there 
| a set of RFCs and IDs that together allow the building of an MPLS 
| system.  For example, a typical IP router spec. sheet will list about 
| 20 RFCs to which this router will comply.  If you go to the IETF web 
| site (http://www.ietf.org), then click on "I-D Keyword Search", enter 
| "MPLS" as your search term, and crank up the number of items to be 
| returned, (or visit http://www.mplsrc.com/standards.shtml) you'll 
| find over 100 drafts currently stored.  These drafts have a lifetime 
| of 6 months.

MPLS is very complex, and is most certainly ~not~ a mature, stable standard despite having been under development for almost ten years that I'm aware.

For that reason I think it would be foolish to build such fundamental national infrastructure as the NBN on MPLS technology.  The scale and importance of the NBN to national functioning requires a conservative trade-off in favour of proven technology and simplicity.

There are historical precedents for this.  Repeaters in undersea coaxial-cable links continued using vacuum tubes ("valves") long after transistors came into use, despite the many advantages of transistors, because vacuum tubes were proven technology, undersea cables were very important, and repairing them was very expensive.

David