Hello all- I have been working on description of transport plane for NSI. I think what is coming out of this makes the coordination simpler in some ways and also raises a problem to be resolved. 1) NSI is basically a resource reservation and instantiation protocol. The resource it deals with is connections between ports. A connectionin NSI map to a links in NML quite nicely. So this is the part that is simpler- there is no need to distinguish between networks and links as NSI has been doing. 2) Resources controlled by an NS provider agent are a set of ports between which it can provide transport connection. This can be represented by a group in NML. The group of NML resources is a combination of nodes and links. The problem is that the NSI resource may a terminate with a link or a node. If it terminates with a node, the node has a port. If it terminates with at link, links currently have no port. This is the problem - NSI resource [NML group] has ports on the edge while NML does not define port links, and link may be last topological element in the group. To resolve this problem NSI could call end points something other than ports, or NML could define links as having ports. I am not sure which way is better. Having ports be specific to nodes makes it possible to describe switching and termination capabilities for the port, which don't exist on links. Having ports exist on links seems to correspond to the G.800 and ASON view where nodes and links have ports and where ports connect to each other is a point. This also makes the names on the edge the same for both NML and NSI which might be desirable. Comments or suggestions? John