TR-098 LANDevice - Clarifications and suggestions

TR-098 LANDevice term is misnomer. It is actually a 802.1D bridge combining multiple Ethernet ports, USB LAN ports and WLAN Ports. Moreover it is very confusing to the reader of TR-098 ammendment1 specifications which defines sepearate 'Bridging' profile.

After getting some clarifications from some of TR-069 experts, now I have some understanding of differences between LANDevices of Basic profile and 'Bridging' profile.

LANDevices: LANDevices is a bridge device having not only multiple ports, but also can be assigned with IP address(es), configured to have DHCP Server instance. The bridge interface created for each of LANDevices instance becomes Layer 3 interface (IP Interface). Hosts connected to ports of this bridge device get IP addresses from same IP address range configured as part of DHCP Server settings.

Bridge Profile bridges (Layer2 bridging): Conceptually this is similar to LANDevices in that it has multiple ports, but it can't be configured with DHCP Server settings and can't be assigned with IP addresses. In essence it is only meant for pure bridging of the packets. It is mainly useful to connect internal devices directly to Service provider networks such as IPTV STB etc..

I believe that bridging profile was made complicated. It should have had a Ports.{} tables within the briding profile rather than having 'Filter.{}' table and 'Marking.{}' table. LANDevice definition did not even have provision to add new interfaces to it. In my opinion, interfaces should be defined in different profile and add these interfaces to LANDevice bridges or Layer2bridging.

Suggested new profiles and changes to existing profiles:

Interface table: This table represents the physical or logical interfaces of the device. These are fixed interfaces in the device such as physical interfaces - Ethernet, USB etc.

• InternetGatewayDevice.EthernetInterfaces.{i} - This is renamed from 'EthernetLANProfile'. I Removed LANDevices tree node and I kept EthernetInterfaces directly under InternetGatewayDevice.
  

• New paramters: These parameters are in addition to the parameters that were already present.
  


• Name (Read only): Indicates the name of the interface on the device. Indicates 'eth0', 'eth1', etc..

USB LAN Profile also need to have similar changes as above.

VLAN interface: I suggest to have this new profile.

• InternetGatewayDevice.VLANInterface.{i}: ACS can add new entries to it. This configuration is used to create new VLAN interfaces from Ethernet interfaces based on VLAN ID.
• Parameters under this tree:
• Name of VLAN interface (RW variable, string type, maximum size of string 32 bytes): Device creates interface with this name.
  
• Enable (RW Variable, integer type): TRUE (value 1) is to enable the record and FALSE(0) to disable the record. Device should discard packets on disabled VLAN interface.
  
• ParentInterface Reference (RW Variable, String type): This is fully qualified name in EthernetInterfaces or USBInterfacess table. Example: InternetGatewayDevice.EthernetInterfaces{i}. Device creates VLAN interface on this Ethernet interface.
• VLAN ID (RW Variable, Integer type): VLAN ID. Device creates VLAN interface with this identifier.
  
• UntagUponReceive (RW Variable, Integer type): If true, Packet is delivered to stack from VLAN interface by removing VLAN header from the packet. If false, VLAN header is delivered to the sdtack. Default value is TRUE.
• TagWhileTransmit (RW Variable, Integer type): If true, packet delivered to VLAN interface for transmission will include VLAN header. If false, VLAN header is not included in Ethernet packet. Default value is TRUE.
• PriorityMarkWhileTransmit(RW Variable, Integer type): Indicates the priority value to be kept on transmitted packets. This field value is considered by device only if 'TagWhileTransmit' is set to TRUE.
  
• InternetGatewayDevice.VLANInterface.{i}.stats. : This block represents the statistics that are to be gathered by device. 'Sent' variables indicate the number of bytes or packets sent to the VLAN interface for transmission and 'Received' variables indicate the number of bytes or packets received by VLAN interface from parent Ethernet interface
  
• BytesSent (Read Only variable, integer type)
• BytesReceived(Read Only variable, integer type)
• PacketsSent (Read Only variable, integer type)
• PacketsReceived (Read Only variable, integer type).
  

• LANDevices.{i} changes:
• I believe that LANDevices also can be created dynamically. First change is to make it as 'PC' as requirement. Second change is to have 'Ports.{i}' to add bridge ports to the LANDevice.
  
• InternetGatewayDevice.LANDevice.{i}.Ports.{i} : This table and entries can be added, hence requirement is 'PC'.
  
• This block contains following parameters
  
• Interface (RW Variable, String type}. This is fully qualified name from EthernetInterfaces, USBinterfaces, WLANInterfaces and VLANInterfaces.
• L2Bridging changes: It needs to have only following parameters
• Number of Bridges.
• InternetGatewayDevice.Layer2Bridging.Bridge.{i} : ACS can create new instances, hence the requirement is 'PC'. Each table entry represents one bridge. Typically, this is used to bridge LAN and WAN interfaces.
• Name (RW, String type, 32 bytes long): Name of the bridge entry.
• Number of Ports (Read Only, Integer type): Number of ports in the bridge.
• Enable (RW, integer type). Takes 1 or 0 values. 1 indicates the bridge is enabled and 0 indicates that bridge to be disabled.
  
• Status (Read Only, string type) : Status of the bridge.
• InternetGatewaydevice.Layer2Bridging.Bridge.{i}.Port.{i}: This table represented bridge ports.
• Interface : Interface name of the port.
• EtherTypeFilterList, EtherTypeFilterExclude, SourceMACAddressFilterList, SourceMACAddressFilterExclude, DestiMACAddressFilterList, DestMACAddressFilterExclude: Same as TR-098 definition.