A new IETF working group has been proposed in the IETF. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following Description was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only: Common Control and Measurement Planes (coma) -------------------------------------------- Current Status: Proposed Working Group Organizational Overview The CoMa working group coordinates the work within the IETF towards defining a common control plane and a separate common measurement plane for ISP and SP core tunnel technologies. The purpose of the group, besides specifying the common control and the common measurement protocols, is to ensure that inputs and requirements from the MPLS, IPO, PPVPN and TE working groups (and future ones that may be formed on related topics) are completely taken into account, and that those working groups (and future related others) produce results that make best, cleanest use of the commonalities in control and the commonalities in measurement. Description of the Working Group: Over the last few years the need for common control and status protocols for representing and manipulating layer 1 and 2 resources has become more urgent. Particularly pressing is the need to accommodate switched optical networks where the intermediate switches, while controllable via IP-based protocols, are transparent above the physical layer to the data traffic flowing through them. From a control perspective, there is the need to perform such network engineering functions as traffic engineering, provisioning path protection and restoration, and path preemption in a common way across both physical and tunneled technologies. Common measurement is Independent of the actual control regime. It requires the ability to report on the status and properties of he subcomponent parts of a network (e.g. lambdas, fibers, PVCs, switch ports, optical cross connects) to elements such as external servers, the routing plane, or a database, and to report on the properties and liveness status of paths currently instantiated. This working group will tackle the problem of creating both the common control and common measurement planes for tunnels and phyical paths. It will deal with the technology-independent control and measurement aspects of traffic engineering, protection/restoration, and tunnel operation. It will define protocol support for resource sharing and preemption. It will ensure that the control and measurement protocols are capable of operation both within and across administrative boundaries. Both intra-domain and inter-domain scopes are important, and CoMa will design with both scopes in mind, however the working group may determine that intra-domain protocols require faster development than those that cross administrative boundaries. Specific tasks for the working group include the following: - Define a single control protocol and a single measurement protocol such that they are independent of each other. This allows the measurement protocol to be used by multiple consumers, including layer 3 routing protocols, centralized path computation servers, and passive path and resource monitoring devices, among others. Similarly, it allows the control protocol to use knowledge obtained by means other than the measurement protocol. Existing IETF protocols should be used as the basis for both protocols to every extent possible. - Define the control protocol and the measurement protocol such that they support multiple tunnel and physical path technologies (e.g. O-O and O-E-O optical switches, MPLS, GRE) using input from technology-specific working groups such as MPLS, IPO, etc. - Define and incorporate into the control and measurement protocols those network resource properties that are common across technologies. For properties which are technology-specific (e.g. wavelength-dependent dispersion of fiber paths) give guidance to the technology-specific group(s) for how to incorporate their parameters into the protocols. - Define how the properties of network resources gathered by the measurement protocol can be distributed in layer 3 routing protocols, such as OSPF and ISIS. This includes recommended methods for aggregation and summarization of data as needed for scalability. - Define the relationship between layer 3 routing protocols and the common control protocol for establishing and maintaining paths. - Using input from the TE working group, ensure that the control and measurement protocols provide both the information and the control functions adequate to support the traffic provisioning and engineering operations of service providers. - Ensure that multi-layer path protection and restoration functions are achievable using the defined control and measurement protocols, either separately or in combination. - Define protocol support for path measurement and liveness monitoring, including considerations of what the currency of the measure data needs to be, how much overhead can be tolerated for such measurement, and how the measurements impact various control mechanisms (including, but not limited to the common control protocol). Working Group Organization In doing this work, the WG will work closely with the following other WGs and constituencies: - Engage SPs to further refine service requirements from a Service Provider perspective and to ensure that such a protocol can work reasonably with existing management and provisioning systems. - Jointly develop any enhancements or modifications to the traffic engineering aspects of control plane operation with the TE working group - Jointly progress any IGP metrics/parameters with the ISIS and OSPF WGs - Accommodate technology specific input from the IPO WG, and other tunnel technologies as needed (e.g. GRE). In addition, The CoMA WG should ensure good communication with other standards bodies such as the ITU-T, and interoperability forums such as the OIF and ODSI engaged in IP/optical control plane work. But as is generally true with IETF working groups, formal liaison planning will be done by the IAB, and the communications flow about technical work will be on a technical and individual contributor basis otherwise.
