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RE: [EFM] OAM - Faye's seven points




Fletcher,

What I meant CPE discovery is actually the 
discovery of the CPE itself.  Not the
subscriber CPE port.  I do agree that MAC
address can be used for CPE port (or subscriber
port) data encryption.  

     EFM link +-----+
      --------o CPE o ------ Subscriber line A
              |     o ------ Subscriber line B
              +-----+

So here are two issues:

1. OAM traffic that terminates at CPE.  It probably
doesn't require encryption (or does it?).

2. Subscriber traffic that travels through CPE
and EFM link.  This is the part we are discussing
the possibility of encryption to protect user
data from each other.  What mechanism we should
use for the encryption is out of scope of this
group.  There will be impact for the OAM though
whether we decide the encryption is needed or not.

-faye

-----Original Message-----
From: Fletcher E Kittredge [mailto:fkittred@gwi.net]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 8:42 AM
To: bob.barrett@fourthtrack.com
Cc: Faye Ly; Geoff Thompson; stds-802-3-efm@ieee.org
Subject: Re: [EFM] OAM - Faye's seven points 




Below, please read "Ethernet MAC address" for MAC address.

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001 11:25:43 +0100  "Bob Barrett" wrote:
> > 3. CPE registration or inventory (The former is the action and the
later
> > is
> > the results).
> 
> Some form of registration, even if it is operator driven is mandatory.
> Auto registration is desirable.

Is this not just the use of an Ethernet MAC address?  As a provider of
both cable and dsl based public ethernets,  we think the MAC address
works well.

One of the reasons the Ethernet MAC address works well is that the SP
already has the necessity of monitoring the network in order to pick
up the MAC addresses of customer equipment beyond the CPE.  This
information is sufficent to provide the ability to map any given
Ethernet Frame to a customer.  Such a mapping is required in order to
provide secure networks.

For a SP, two illustrations of the necessity of such a mapping are the
recent "Code Red" infestation when SPs needed to contact customers to
inform them of infected servers and the events of September 11th,
2001.  For those outside the US, like most (all?) SPs serving the US
market, we have been spending time this week responding to subpoenas.

thank you,
fletcher