Internet Society and IETF clash with ITU over MPLS

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Society have said they will continue to develop a common multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) standard, despite the decision by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to develop a competitor.

Last week the ITU voted to work on a new MPLS standard for network operator use, despite signing up to a joint working agreement in December 2008 with the Internet Society and the IETF to develop a joint MPLS standard dubbed MPLS-TP.

“ITU is a consensus based organisation and voting is always a last resort,” said Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU’s telecommunication standardisation bureau.

“In this case it was clear that a significant part of our membership could not accept any further delay in pursuing a solution that will give them the ability to address a real market need.”

The standard proposed by the ITU is not interoperable with the MPLS-TP protocol however and now the IETF and Internet Society have said that the original specification will be pursued nevertheless. If the matter is not resolved then network operators and systems managers will face a huge increase in the complexity of their systems.

“You’ll have vendors that have to buy one system or the other and you will be stuck with what you’ve got,” IETF chairman Russ Housley told V3.co.uk.

“Every network provider needs interoperability and vendors will have to add costs and complexity between products to meet both standards. It’s the situation we originally hoped to avoid.”