[Nsi-wg] 3rd Party connection requests

[Jerry Sobieski]

I wish to pose two questions for discussion regarding Connection Service 
request handling:

1st:  Can we reserve resources backwards? 

2nd:  How should third party requests be handled?

Backward Reservations-

This is simply doing a path finding process backwards - from destination 
to source.   This does not (must not) change the direction of the 
connection that is established in the transport plane, it simply 
constructs the viable path tree from the destination towards the 
source.  THis should still develop a valid connection path, but it may 
not be the same path selected by a forward pathfinding process...

My recommendation:  It should not matter whether a path is discovered 
from Source to Destination or vice versa.  And it is up to the local 
domain as to decide how to decompose a connection request and perform 
the path finding/resource allocation within its domain.   Any 
intermediate hops specified in a PO must be honored.

3rd Party Requests

A "3rd Party Request" is a request receive by a local NSA that specifies 
end-points that are not located within the local NSA's domain.  I.e. 
there is no basis for assuming that the [shortest/best] connection path 
will transit the local domain.  So the question is: should the local NSA 
simply forward the request towards the Source (or Destination) ? or can 
the local NSA insert a local intermediate STP (a loose hop) in the path 
object, thus forcing the connection to transit the local domain?  

Since this has to do with how we handle a request - not particularly 
pathfinding per se, I think we need to think about this to decide if we 
need to make some firm declaration about this.  

One potentially questionable result of this issue is that an 
intermediate NSA who handles a request could insert a local hop into the 
Path Object, thus forcng the connection thru their domain.   If this 
sounds ominous, it is.   So we should consider what the desired action 
should be and how to be certain it is followed.

Thoughts?
Jerry