Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) Protocol Specification
RFC 5810
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Doria, Ed.
Request for Comments: 5810 Lulea University of Technology
Category: Standards Track J. Hadi Salim, Ed.
ISSN: 2070-1721 Znyx
R. Haas, Ed.
IBM
H. Khosravi, Ed.
Intel
W. Wang, Ed.
L. Dong
Zhejiang Gongshang University
R. Gopal
Nokia
J. Halpern
March 2010
Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES)
Protocol Specification
Abstract
This document specifies the Forwarding and Control Element Separation
(ForCES) protocol. The ForCES protocol is used for communications
between Control Elements(CEs) and Forwarding Elements (FEs) in a
ForCES Network Element (ForCES NE). This specification is intended
to meet the ForCES protocol requirements defined in RFC 3654.
Besides the ForCES protocol, this specification also defines the
requirements for the Transport Mapping Layer (TML).
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5810.
Doria, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 5810 ForCES March 2010
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Doria, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 5810 ForCES March 2010
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................5
2. Terminology and Conventions .....................................6
2.1. Requirements Language ......................................6
2.2. Other Notation .............................................6
2.3. Integers ...................................................6
3. Definitions .....................................................6
4. Overview .......................................................10
4.1. Protocol Framework ........................................11
4.1.1. The PL .............................................13
4.1.2. The TML ............................................14
4.1.3. The FEM/CEM Interface ..............................14
4.2. ForCES Protocol Phases ....................................15
4.2.1. Pre-association ....................................16
4.2.2. Post-association ...................................18
4.3. Protocol Mechanisms .......................................19
4.3.1. Transactions, Atomicity, Execution, and Responses ..19
4.3.2. Scalability ........................................25
4.3.3. Heartbeat Mechanism ................................26
4.3.4. FE Object and FE Protocol LFBs .....................27
4.4. Protocol Scenarios ........................................27
4.4.1. Association Setup State ............................27
4.4.2. Association Established State or Steady State ......29
5. TML Requirements ...............................................31
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