Internet DRAFT - draft-irtf-sdnrg-layer-terminology
draft-irtf-sdnrg-layer-terminology
SDNRG E. Haleplidis, Ed.
Internet-Draft University of Patras
Intended status: Informational K. Pentikousis, Ed.
Expires: April 25, 2015 EICT
S. Denazis
University of Patras
J. Hadi Salim
Mojatatu Networks
D. Meyer
Brocade
O. Koufopavlou
University of Patras
October 22, 2014
SDN Layers and Architecture Terminology
draft-irtf-sdnrg-layer-terminology-04
Abstract
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) refers to a new approach for
network programmability, that is, the capacity to initialize,
control, change, and manage network behavior dynamically via open
interfaces. SDN emphasizes the role of software in running networks
through the introduction of an abstraction for the data forwarding
plane and, by doing so, separates it from the control plane. This
separation allows faster innovation cycles at both planes as
experience has already shown. However, there is increasing confusion
as to what exactly SDN is, what is the layer structure in an SDN
architecture and how do layers interface with each other. This
document, a product of the IRTF Software-Defined Networking Research
Group (SDNRG), addresses these questions and provides a concise
reference for the SDN research community based on relevant peer-
reviewed literature, the RFC series, and relevant documents by other
standards organizations.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
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time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 25, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 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
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. SDN Layers and Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. Network Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3. Control Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.4. Management Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5. Control and Management Plane Discussion . . . . . . . . . 14
3.5.1. Timescale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.5.2. Persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.5.3. Locality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.5.4. CAP Theorem Insights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.6. Network Services Abstraction Layer . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.7. Application Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4. SDN Model View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1. ForCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2. NETCONF/YANG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3. OpenFlow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.4. Interface to the Routing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.5. SNMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.6. PCEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.7. BFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
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9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1. Introduction
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a term of the programmable
networks paradigm [PNSurvey99][OF08]. In short, SDN refers to the
ability of software applications to program individual network
devices dynamically and therefore control the behavior of the network
as a whole [NV09]. Boucadair and Jacquenet [RFC7149] point out that
SDN is a set of techniques used to facilitate the design, delivery
and operation of network services in a deterministic, dynamic, and
scalable manner.
A key element in SDN is the introduction of an abstraction between
the (traditional) forwarding and control planes in order to separate
them and provide applications with the means necessary to
programmatically control the network. The goal is to leverage this
separation, and the associated programmability, in order to reduce
complexity and enable faster innovation at both planes [A4D05].
The historical evolution of the programmable networks R&D area is
reviewed in detail in [SDNHistory][SDNSurvey], starting with efforts
dating back to the 1980s. As Feamster et al. [SDNHistory] document,
many of the ideas, concepts and concerns are applicable to the latest
R&D in SDN, and SDN standardization we may add, and have been under
extensive investigation and discussion in the research community for
quite some time. For example, Rooney et al. [Tempest] discuss how
to allow third-party access to the network without jeopardizing
network integrity, or how to accommodate legacy networking solutions
in their (then new) programmable environment. Further, the concept
of separating the control and forwarding planes, which is prominent
in SDN, has been extensively discussed even prior to 1998
[Tempest][P1520], in SS7 networks [ITUSS7], Ipsilon Flow Switching
[RFC1953][RFC2297] and ATM [ITUATM].
SDN research often focuses on varying aspects of programmability, and
we are frequently confronted with conflicting points of view
regarding what exactly SDN is. For instance, we find that for
various reasons (e.g. work focusing on one domain and therefore not
necessarily applicable as-is to other domains), certain well-accepted
definitions do not correlate well with each other. For example, both
OpenFlow [OpenFlow] and NETCONF [RFC6241] have been characterized as
SDN interfaces, but they refer to control and management
respectively.
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This motivates us to consolidate the definitions of SDN in the
literature and correlate them with earlier work at the IETF and the
research community. Of particular interest is, for example, to
determine which layers comprise the SDN architecture and which
interfaces and their corresponding attributes are best suitable to be
used between them. As such, the aim of this document is not to
standardize any particular layer or interface but rather to provide a
concise reference which reflects current approaches regarding the SDN
layers architecture. We expect that this document would be useful to
upcoming work in SDNRG as well as future discussions within the SDN
community as a whole.
This document addresses the work item in the SDNRG charter entitled
"Survey of SDN approaches and Taxonomies", fostering better
understanding of prominent SDN technologies in a technology-impartial
and business-agnostic manner but does not constitute a new IETF
standard. It is meant as a common base for further discussion. As
such, we do not make any value statements nor discuss the
applicability of any of the frameworks examined in this draft for any
particular purpose. Instead, we document their characteristics and
attributes and classify them, thus providing a taxonomy. This
document does not intend to provide an exhaustive list of SDN
research issues; interested readers should consider reviewing
[SLTSDN] and [SDNACS]. In particular, Nunes et al. [SLTSDN]
overview SDN-related research topics, e.g. control partitioning,
which is related to the CAP theorem discussed in Section 3.5.4.
This document has been extensively reviewed, discussed, and commented
by the vast majority of SDNRG members, a community which certainly
exceeds 100 individuals. It is the consensus of SDNRG that this
document should be published in the IRTF Stream RFC Series [RFC5743].
The remainder of this document is organized as follows. Section 2
explains the terminology used in this document. Section 3 introduces
a high-level overview of current SDN architecture abstractions.
Finally, Section 4 discusses how the SDN Layer Architecture relates
with prominent SDN-enabling technologies.
2. Terminology
This document uses the following terms:
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) - A programmable networks
approach that supports the separation of control and forwarding
planes via standardized interfaces.
Resource - A physical or virtual component available within a
system. Resources can be very simple or fine-grained, e.g. a port
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or a queue, or complex, comprised of multiple resources, e.g. a
network device.
Network Device - A device that performs one or more network
operations related to packet manipulation and forwarding. This
reference model makes no distinction whether a network device is
physical or virtual. A device can also be considered as a
container for resources and can be a resource in itself.
Interface - A point of interaction between two entities. When the
entities are placed at different locations, the interface is
usually implemented through a network protocol. If the entities
are collocated in the same physical location the interface can be
implemented using a software application programming interface
(API), inter-process communication (IPC), or a network protocol.
Application (App) - An application in the context of SDN is a
piece of software that utilizes underlying services to perform a
function. Application operation can be parametrized, for example
by passing certain arguments at call time, but it is meant to be a
standalone piece of software: an App does not offer any interfaces
to other applications or services.
Service - A piece of software that performs one or more functions
and provides one or more APIs to applications or other services of
the same or different layers to make use of said functions and
returns one or more results. Services can be combined with other
services, or called in a certain serialized manner, to create a
new service.
Forwarding Plane (FP) - The collection of resources across all
network devices responsible for forwarding traffic.
Operational Plane (OP) - The collection of resources responsible
for managing the overall operation of individual network devices.
Control plane (CP) - The collection of functions responsible for
controlling one or more network devices. CP instructs network
devices with respect to how to process and forward packets. The
control plane interacts primarily with the forwarding plane and to
a lesser extent with the operational plane.
Management plane (MP) - The collection of functions responsible
for monitoring, configuring and maintaining one or more network
devices or parts of network devices. The management plane is
mostly related with the operational plane and less with the
forwarding plane.
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Application Plane - The collection of applications and services
which program network behavior.
Device and resource Abstraction Layer (DAL) - The device's
resource abstraction layer based on one or more models. If it is
a physical device it may be referred to as the Hardware
Abstraction Layer (HAL). DAL provides a uniform point of
reference for the device's forwarding and operational plane
resources.
Control Abstraction Layer (CAL) - The control plane's abstraction
layer. CAL provides access to the control plane southbound
interface.
Management Abstraction Layer (MAL) - The management plane's
abstraction layer. MAL provides access to the management plane
southbound interface.
Network Services Abstraction Layer (NSAL) - Provides service
abstractions that can be used by applications and services.
3. SDN Layers and Architecture
Figure 1 summarizes in the form of a detailed high-level schematic
the SDN architecture abstractions. Note that in a particular
implementation planes can be collocated with other planes or can be
physically separated, as we discuss below.
SDN is based on the concept of separation between a controlled entity
and a controller entity. The controller manipulates the controlled
entity via an Interface. Interfaces, when local, are mostly API
calls through some library or system call. However, such interfaces
may be extended via some protocol definition, which may use local
inter-process communication (IPC) or a protocol that could also act
remotely; the protocol may be defined as an open standard or in a
proprietary manner.
Day [PiNA] explores the use of IPC as the mainstay for the definition
of recursive network architectures with varying degrees of scope and
range of operation. RINA [RINA] outlines a recursive network
architecture based on IPC which capitalizes on repeating patterns and
structures. This document does not propose a new architecture--we
simply document previous work through a taxonomy. Although recursion
is out of scope for this work, Figure 1 illustrates a hierarchical
model in which layers can be stacked on top of each other and
employed recursively as needed.
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o--------------------------------o
| |
| +-------------+ +----------+ |
| | Application | | Service | |
| +-------------+ +----------+ |
| Application Plane |
o---------------Y----------------o
|
*-----------------------------Y---------------------------------*
| Network Services Abstraction Layer (NSAL) |
*------Y------------------------------------------------Y-------*
| |
| Service Interface |
| |
o------Y------------------o o---------------------Y------o
| | Control Plane | | Management Plane | |
| +----Y----+ +-----+ | | +-----+ +----Y----+ |
| | Service | | App | | | | App | | Service | |
| +----Y----+ +--Y--+ | | +--Y--+ +----Y----+ |
| | | | | | | |
| *----Y-----------Y----* | | *---Y---------------Y----* |
| | Control Abstraction | | | | Management Abstraction | |
| | Layer (CAL) | | | | Layer (MAL) | |
| *----------Y----------* | | *----------Y-------------* |
| | | | | |
o------------|------------o o------------|---------------o
| |
| CP | MP
| Southbound | Southbound
| Interface | Interface
| |
*------------Y---------------------------------Y----------------*
| Device and resource Abstraction Layer (DAL) |
*------------Y---------------------------------Y----------------*
| | | |
| o-------Y----------o +-----+ o--------Y----------o |
| | Forwarding Plane | | App | | Operational Plane | |
| o------------------o +-----+ o-------------------o |
| Network Device |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 1: SDN Layer Architecture
3.1. Overview
This document follows a network device centric approach: Control
mostly refers to the device packet handling capability, while
management typically refer to the overall device operation aspects.
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We view a network device as a complex resource which contains and is
part of multiple resources similar to [DIOPR]. Resources can be
simple, single components of a network device, for example a port or
a queue of the device, and can also be aggregated into complex
resources, for example a network card or a complete network device.
The reader should keep in mind throughout this document that we make
no distinction between "physical" and "virtual" resources or
"hardware" and "software" realizations, as we do not delve into
implementation or performance aspects. In other words, a resource
can be implemented fully in hardware, fully in software, or any
hybrid combination in between. Further, we do not distinguish on
whether a resource is implemented as an overlay or as a part/
component of some other device. In general, network device software
can run on so-called "bare metal" or on a virtualized substrate.
Finally, this document does not discuss how resources are allocated,
orchestrated, and released. Indeed, orchestration is out of scope
for this document.
SDN spans multiple planes as illustrated in Figure 1. Starting from
the bottom part of the figure and moving towards the upper part, we
identify the following planes:
Forwarding Plane - Responsible for handling packets in the
datapath based on the instructions received from the control
plane. Actions of the forwarding plane include, but are not
limited to, forwarding, dropping and changing packets. The
forwarding plane is usually the termination point for control
plane services and applications. The forwarding plane can contain
forwarding resources such as classifiers. The forwarding plane is
also widely referred to as the "data plane" or the "data path".
Operational Plane - Responsible for managing the operational state
of the network device, e.g. whether the device is active or
inactive, the number of ports available, the status of each port,
and so on. The operational plane is usually the termination point
for management plane services and applications. The operational
plane relates to network device resources such as ports, memory,
and so on. We note that some participants of the IRTF SDNRG have
a different opinion in regards to the definition of the
operational plane. That is, one can argue that the operational
plane does not constitute a "plane" per se, but it is in practice
an amalgamation of functions on the forwarding plane. For others,
however, a "plane" allows to distinguish between different areas
of operations and therefore the operational plane should be
included as a "plane" in Figure 1. We have adopted this latter
view in this document.
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Control Plane - Responsible for taking decisions on how packets
should be forwarded by one or more network devices and pushing
such decisions down to the network devices for execution. The
control plane usually focuses mostly on the forwarding plane and
less on the operational plane of the device. The control plane
may be interested in operational plane information which could
include, for instance, the current state of a particular port or
its capabilities. The control plane's main job is to fine-tune
the forwarding tables that reside in the forwarding plane, based
on the network topology or external service requests.
Management Plane - Responsible for monitoring, configuring and
maintaining network devices, e.g. taking decisions regarding the
state of a network device. The management plane usually focuses
mostly on the operational plane of the device and less on the
forwarding plane. The management plane may be used to configure
the forwarding plane, but it does so infrequently and through a
more wholesale approach than the control plane. For instance, the
management plane may set up all or part of the forwarding rules at
once, although such action would be expected to be taken
sparingly.
Application Plane - The plane where applications and services that
define network behavior reside. Applications that directly (or
primarily) support the operation of the forwarding plane (such as
routing processes within the control plane) are not considered
part of the application plane. Note that applications may be
implemented in a modular and distributed fashion and, therefore,
can often span multiple planes in Figure 1.
[RFC7276] has defined the data, control and management plane in terms
of Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM). This document
attempts to broaden the terms defined in [RFC7276] in order to
reflect all aspects of an SDN architecture.
All planes mentioned above are connected via interfaces (as indicated
with "Y" in Figure 1. An interface may take multiple roles depending
on whether the connected planes reside on the same (physical or
virtual) device. If the respective planes are designed so that they
do not have to reside in the same device, then the interface can only
take the form of a protocol. If the planes are co-located on the
same device, then the interface could be implemented via an open/
proprietary protocol, an open/proprietary software inter-process
communication API, or operating system kernel system calls.
Applications, i.e. software programs that perform specific
computations that consume services without providing access to other
applications, can be implemented natively inside a plane or can span
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multiple planes. For instance, applications or services can span
both the control and management plane and, thus, be able to use both
the Control Plane Southbound Interface (CPSI) and Management Plane
Southbound Interface (MPSI), although this is only implicitly
illustrated in Figure 1. An example of such a case would be an
application that uses both [OpenFlow] and [OF-CONFIG].
Services, i.e. software programs that provide APIs to other
applications or services, can also be natively implemented in
specific planes. Services that span multiple planes belong to the
application plane as well.
While not shown explicitly in Figure 1, services, applications and
entire planes, can be placed in a recursive manner thus providing
overlay semantics to the model. For example, application plane
services can provide through NSAL services to other applications or
services. Additional examples include virtual resources that are
realized on top of a physical resources and hierarchical control
plane controllers [KANDOO].
Note that the focus in this document is, of course, on the north/
south communication between entities in different planes. But this,
clearly, does not exclude entity communication within any one plane.
It must be noted, however, that in Figure 1 we present an abstract
view of the various planes, which is devoid of implementation
details. Many implementations in the past have opted for placing the
management plane on top of the control plane. This can be
interpreted as having the control plane acting as a service to the
management plane. Further, in many networks especially in Internet
routers and Ethernet switches, the control plane has been usually
implemented as tightly coupled with the network device. When taken
as a whole, the control plane has been distributed network-wide. On
the other hand, the management plane has been traditionally
centralized and has been responsible for managing the control plane
and the devices. However, with the adoption of SDN principles, this
distinction is no longer so clear-cut.
Additionally, this document considers four abstraction layers:
The Device and resource Abstraction Layer (DAL) abstracts the
device's forwarding and operational plane resources to the control
and management plane. Variations of DAL may abstract both planes
or either of the two and may abstract any plane of the device to
either the control or management plane.
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The Control Abstraction Layer (CAL) abstracts the CP southbound
interface and the DAL from the applications and services of the
control plane.
The Management Abstraction Layer (MAL) abstracts the MP southbound
interface and the DAL from the applications and services of the
management plane.
The Network Services Abstraction Layer (NSAL) provides service
abstractions for use by applications and other services.
At the time of this writing, SDN-related activities have begun in
other SDOs. For example, at the ITU work on architectural [ITUSG13]
and signaling requirements and protocols [ITUSG11] has commenced, but
the respective study groups have yet to publish their documents with
the exception of [ITUY3300]. The views presented in [ITUY3300] as
well as [ONFArch] are well aligned with this document.
3.2. Network Devices
A Network Device is an entity that receives packets on its ports and
performs one or more network functions on them. For example, the
network device could forward a received packet, drop it, alter the
packet header (or payload) and forward the packet, and so on. A
Network Device is an aggregation of multiple resources such as ports,
CPU, memory and queues. Resources are either simple or can be
aggregated to form complex resources that can be viewed as one
resource. The Network Device is in itself a complex resource.
Examples of Network Devices include switches and routers. Additional
examples include network elements that may operate at a layer above
IP, such as firewalls, load balancers and video transcoders; or below
IP, such as Layer 2 switches, optical or microwave network elements.
Network devices can be implemented in hardware or software and can be
either physical or virtual. As has already been mentioned before,
this document makes no such distinction. Each network device has a
presence in a Forwarding Plane and an Operational Plane.
The Forwarding Plane, commonly referred to as the "data path", is
responsible for handling and forwarding packets. The Forwarding
Plane provides switching, routing, packet transformation and
filtering functions. Resources of the forwarding plane include but
are not limited to filters, meters, markers and classifiers.
The Operational Plane is responsible for the operational state of the
network device, for instance, with respect to status of network ports
and interfaces. Operational plane resources include, but are not
limited to, memory, CPU, ports, interfaces and queues.
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The Forwarding and the Operational Planes are exposed via the Device
and resource Abstraction Layer (DAL), which may be expressed by one
or more abstraction models. Examples of Forwarding Plane abstraction
models are ForCES [RFC5812], OpenFlow [OpenFlow], YANG model
[RFC6020], and SNMP MIBs [RFC3418]. Examples of the Operational
Plane abstraction model include the ForCES model [RFC5812], the YANG
model [RFC6020], and SNMP MIBs [RFC3418].
Note that applications can also reside in a network device. Examples
of such applications include event monitoring, and handling
(offloading) topology discovery or ARP [RFC0826] in the device itself
instead of forwarding such traffic to the control plane.
3.3. Control Plane
The control plane is usually distributed and is responsible mainly
for the configuration of the forwarding plane using a Control Plane
Southbound Interface (CPSI) with DAL as a point of reference. CP is
responsible for instructing FP about how to handle network packets.
Communication between control plane entities, colloquially referred
to as the "east-west" interface, is usually implemented through
gateway protocols such as BGP [RFC4271] or other protocols such as
PCEP [RFC5440]. These corresponding protocol messages are usually
exchanged in-band and subsequently redirected by the forwarding plane
to the control plane for further processing. Examples in this
category include [RCP], [SoftRouter] and [RouteFlow].
Control Plane functionalities usually include:
o Topology discovery and maintenance
o Packet route selection and instantiation
o Path failover mechanisms
The CPSI is usually defined with the following characteristics:
o time-critical interface which requires low latency and sometimes
high bandwidth in order to perform many operations in short order
o oriented towards wire efficiency and device representation instead
of human readability
Examples include fast- and high-frequency of flow or table updates,
high throughput and robustness for packet handling and events.
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CPSI can be implemented using a protocol, an API or even interprocess
communication. If the Control Plane and the Network Device are not
collocated, then this interface is certainly a protocol. Examples of
CPSIs are ForCES [RFC5810] and the Openflow protocol [OpenFlow].
The Control Abstraction Layer (CAL) provides access to control
applications and services to various CPSIs. The Control Plane may
support more than one CPSIs.
Control applications can use CAL to control a network device without
providing any service to upper layers. Examples include applications
that perform control functions, such as OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP.
Control Plane service examples include a virtual private LAN service,
service tunnels, topology services, etc.
3.4. Management Plane
The Management Plane is usually centralized and aims to ensure that
the network as a whole is running optimally by communicating with the
network devices' Operational Plane using a Management Plane
Southbound Interface (MPSI) with DAL as a point of reference.
Management plane functionalities are typically initiated, based on an
overall network view, and traditionally have been human-centric.
However, lately algorithms are replacing most human intervention.
Management plane functionalities [FCAPS] typically include:
o Fault and Monitoring management
o Configuration management
In addition, management plane functionalities may also include
entities such as orchestrators, Virtual Function Managers (VNF
manager) and Virtualised Infrastructure Managers, as described in
[NFVArch]. Such entities can use management interfaces to
operational plane resources to request and provision resources for
virtual functions, as well as instruct the instantiation of virtual
forwarding functions on top of physical forwarding functions. The
possibility of a common abstraction model for both SDN and NFV is
explored in [SDNNFV]. Note, however, that these are only examples of
applications and services in the management plane and not formal
definitions of entities in this document. As has been noted above,
orchestration and therefore the definition of any associated entities
is out of scope for this document.
The MPSI, in contrast to the CPSI, is usually not a time-critical
interface and does not share the CPSI requirements.
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MPSI is typically closer to human interaction than CPSI (cf.
[RFC3535]) and, therefore, MPSI usually has the following
characteristics:
o It is oriented more towards usability, with optimal wire
performance being a secondary concern
o Messages tend to be less frequent than in the CPSI
As an example of usability versus performance, we refer to the
consensus of the 2002 IAB Workshop [RFC3535], such as that the key
requirement for a network management technology is ease of use and
not performance. As per [RFC6632], textual configuration files
should be able to contain international characters. Human-readable
strings should utilize UTF-8, and protocol elements should be in
case-insensitive ASCII which require more processing capabilities to
parse.
MPSI can range from a protocol, to an API or even interprocess
communication. If the Management Plane is not embedded in the
network device, the MPSI is certainly a protocol. Examples of MPSIs
are ForCES [RFC5810], NETCONF [RFC6241], IPFIX [RFC7011], SYSLOG
[RFC5424], OVSDB [RFC7047] and SNMP [RFC3411].
The Management Abstraction Layer (MAL) provides access to management
applications and services to various MPSIs. The Management Plane may
support more than one MPSI.
Management Applications can use MAL to manage the network device
without providing any service to upper layers. Examples of
management applications include network monitoring, fault detection
and recovery applications.
Management Plane Services provide access to other services or
applications above the Management Plane.
3.5. Control and Management Plane Discussion
The definition of a clear distinction between "control" and
"management" in the context of SDN received significant community
attention during the preparation of this document. We observed that
the role of the management plane has been earlier largely ignored or
specified as out-of-scope for the SDN ecosystem. In the remainder of
this subsection we summarize the characteristics that differentiate
the two planes in order to have a clear understanding of the
mechanics, capabilities and needs of each respective interface.
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3.5.1. Timescale
A point has been raised regarding the reference timescales for the
control and management planes. That is, how fast is the respective
plane required to react, or needs to manipulate, the forwarding or
operational plane of the device. In general, the control plane needs
to send updates "often", which translates roughly to a range of
milliseconds; that requires high-bandwidth and low-latency links. In
contrast, the management plane reacts generally at longer time
frames, i.e. minutes, hours or even days, and thus wire-efficiency is
not always a critical concern. A good example of this is the case of
changing the configuration state of the device.
3.5.2. Persistence
Another distinction between the control and management planes relates
to state persistence. A state is considered ephemeral if it has a
very limited lifespan. A good example is determining routing, which
is usually associated with the control plane. On the other hand, a
persistent state has an extended lifespan which may range from hours
to days and months and is usually associated with the management
plane. Persistent state is also usually associated with data store
of the state.
3.5.3. Locality
As mentioned earlier, traditionally the control plane has been
executed locally on the network device and is distributed in nature
whilst the management plane is usually executed in a centralized
manner, remotely from the device. However, with the advent of SDN
centralizing, or "locally centralizing" the controller tends to
muddle the distinction of the control and management plane based on
locality.
3.5.4. CAP Theorem Insights
The CAP theorem views a distributed computing system as composed of
multiple computational resources (i.e., CPU, memory, storage) that
are connected via a communications network and together perform a
task. The theorem, or conjecture by some, identifies three
characteristics of distributed systems that are universally
desirable:
o Consistency, meaning that the system responds identically to a
query no matter which node receives the request (or does not
respond at all)
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o Availability, i.e. that the system always responds to a request
(although the response may not be consistent or correct)
o Partition tolerance, namely that the system continues to function
even when specific nodes or the communications network fail.
In 2000 Eric Brewer [CAPBR] conjectured that a distributed system can
satisfy any two of these guarantees at the same time, but not all
three. This conjecture was later proven by Gilbert and Lynch [CAPGL]
and is now usually referred to as the CAP theorem [CAPFN].
Forwarding a packet through a network correctly is a computational
problem. One of the major abstractions that SDN posits is that all
network elements are computational resources that perform the simple
computational task of inspecting fields in an incoming packet and
deciding how to forward it. Since the task of forwarding a packet
from network ingress to network egress is obviously carried out by a
large number of forwarding elements, the network of forwarding
devices is a distributed computational system. Hence, the CAP
theorem applies to forwarding of packets.
In the context of the CAP theorem, if one considers partition
tolerance of paramount importance, traditional control plane
operations are usually local and fast (available), while management
plane operations are usually centralized (consistent) and may be
slow.
The CAP theorem also provides insights into SDN architectures. For
example a centralized SDN controller acts as a consistent global
database, and specific SDN mechanisms ensure that a packet entering
the network is handled consistently by all SDN switches. The issue
of tolerance to loss of connectivity to the controller is not
addressed by the basic SDN model. When an SDN switch cannot reach
its controller, the flow will be unavailable until the connection is
restored. The use of multiple non-collocated SDN controllers has
been proposed (e.g., by configuring the SDN switch with a list of
controllers); this may improve partition tolerance, but at the cost
of loss of absolute consistency. Panda et al. [CAPFN] provide a
first exploration of how the CAP theorem applies to SDN.
3.6. Network Services Abstraction Layer
The Network Services Abstraction Layer (NSAL) provides access from
services of the control, management and application planes to other
services and applications. We note that the term SAL is overloaded,
as it is often used in several contexts ranging from system design to
service-oriented architectures, therefore we explicitly add "Network"
to the title of this layer to emphasize that this term relates to
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Figure 1 and we map it accordingly in Section 4 to prominent SDN
approaches.
Service Interfaces can take many forms pertaining to their specific
requirements. Examples of service interfaces include but are not
limited to, RESTful APIs, open protocols such as NETCONF, inter-
process communication, CORBA [CORBA] interfaces, and so on. The two
leading approaches for service interfaces are RESTful interfaces and
RPC interfaces. Both follow a client-server architecture and use XML
or JSON to pass messages but each has some slightly different
characteristics.
RESTful interfaces, designed according to the representational state
transfer design paradigm [REST], have the following characteristics:
o Resource identification - individual resources are identified
using a resource identifier, for example a URI.
o Manipulation of resources through representations - Resources are
represented in a format like JSON, XML or HTML.
o Self-descriptive messages - Each message has enough information to
describe how the message is to be processed.
o Hypermedia as the engine of application state - a client needs no
prior knowledge of how to interact with a server, not through a
fixed interface.
Remote procedure calls (RPC), e.g. [RFC5531], XML-RPC and the like,
have the following characteristics:
o Individual procedures are identified using an identifier
o A client needs to know the procedure name and the associated
parameters
3.7. Application Plane
Applications and services that use services from the control and/or
management plane form the Application Plane.
Additionally, services residing in the Application Plane may provide
services to other services and applications that reside in the
application plane via the service interface.
Examples of applications include network topology discovery, network
provisioning, path reservation, etc.
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4. SDN Model View
We advocate that the SDN southbound interface should encompass both
CSPI and MPSI.
SDN controllers such as [NOX] and [Beacon] are a collection of
control plane applications and services that implement a CPSI, [NOX]
and [Beacon] both use OpenFlow, and provide a northbound interface
for applications. The SDN northbound interface for controllers is
implemented in the Network Services Abstraction Layer of Figure 1.
The above model can be used to describe in a concise manner all
prominent SDN-enabling technologies, as we explain in the following
subsections.
4.1. ForCES
The IETF-standardized Forwarding and Control Element Separation
(ForCES) framework [RFC3746] consists of one model and two protocols.
ForCES separates the Forwarding from the Control Plane via an open
interface, namely the ForCES protocol [RFC5810] which operates on
entities of the forwarding plane that have been modeled using the
ForCES model [RFC5812].
The ForCES model [RFC5812] is based on the fact that a network
element is composed of numerous logically separate entities that
cooperate to provide a given functionality -such as routing or IP
switching- and yet appear as a normal integrated network element to
external entities and secondly with a protocol to transport
information.
ForCES models the Forwarding Plane using Logical Functional Blocks
(LFBs) which when connected in a graph compose the Forwarding Element
(FE). LFBs are described in an XML language, based on an XML schema.
LFB definitions include base and custom-defined datatypes; metadata
definitions; input and output ports; operational parameters or
components; capabilities and event definitions.
The ForCES model can be used to define LFBs from fine- to coarse-
grained as needed, irrespective of whether they are physical or
virtual.
The ForCES protocol is agnostic to the model and can be used to
monitor, configure and control any ForCES-modeled element. The
protocol has very simple commands: Set, Get and Del(ete). The ForCES
protocol has been designed for high throughput and fast updates.
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With respect to Figure 1, the ForCES model [RFC5812] is suitable for
the DAL, both for the Operational and the Forwarding Plane, using
LFBs. The ForCES protocol [RFC5810] has been designed and is
suitable for the CPSI, although it could also be utilized for the
MPSI.
4.2. NETCONF/YANG
The Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF [RFC6241]), is an IETF-
standardized network management protocol [RFC6632]. NETCONF provides
mechanisms to install, manipulate, and delete the configuration of
network devices.
NETCONF protocol operations are realized as remote procedure calls
(RPCs). The NETCONF protocol uses an Extensible Markup Language
(XML) based data encoding for the configuration data as well as the
protocol messages. Recent studies, such as [ESNet] and [PENet], have
shown that NETCONF performs better than SNMP [RFC3411].
Additionally, the YANG data modeling language [RFC6020] has been
developed for specifying NETCONF data models and protocol operations.
YANG is a data modeling language used to model configuration and
state data manipulated by NETCONF, NETCONF remote procedure calls,
and NETCONF notifications.
YANG models the hierarchical organization of data as a tree, in which
each node has either a value or a set of child nodes. Additionally,
YANG structures data models into modules and submodules allowing
reusability and augmentation. YANG models can describe constraints
to be enforced on the data. Additionally YANG has a set of base
datatype and allows custom defined datatypes as well.
YANG allows the definition of NETCONF RPCs allowing the protocol to
have an extensible number of commands. For RPC definition, the
operations names, input parameters, and output parameters are defined
using YANG data definition statements.
With respect to Figure 1, the YANG model [RFC6020] is suitable for
specifying DAL for the forwarding and operational plane. NETCONF
[RFC6241] is suitable for the MPSI. NETCONF is a management protocol
[RFC6241] which was not (originally) designed for fast CP updates,
and it might not be suitable for addressing the requirements of CPSI.
4.3. OpenFlow
OpenFlow is a framework originally developed at Stanford University,
and currently under active standards development [OpenFlow] through
the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Initially, the goal was to
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provide a way for researchers to run experimental protocols in a
production network [OFSIGC]. OpenFlow has undergone many revisions
and additional revisions are likely. The following description
reflects version 1.4 [OpenFlow]. In short, OpenFlow defines a
protocol through which a logically centralized controller can control
an OpenFlow switch. Each OpenFlow-compliant switch maintains one or
more flow tables which are used to perform packet lookups. Distinct
actions are to be taken regarding packet lookup and forwarding. A
group table and an OpenFlow channel to external controllers are also
part of the switch specification.
With respect to Figure 1, the Openflow switch specifications
[OpenFlow] define a DAL for the Forwarding Plane as well as for CPSI.
The OF-CONFIG protocol [OF-CONFIG] based on the YANG model [RFC6020],
provides a DAL for the Forwarding and Operational Plane of an
OpenFlow switch, and specifies NETCONF [RFC6241] as the MPSI. OF-
CONFIG overlaps with the OpenFlow DAL, but with NETCONF [RFC6241] as
the transport protocol it shares the limitations described in the
previous section.
4.4. Interface to the Routing System
Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) provides a standard interface
to the routing system for real-time or event-driven interaction
through a collection of protocol-based control or management
interfaces. Essentially, one of the main goals of I2RS, is to make
the routing information base (RIB) programmable thus enabling new
kinds of network provisioning and operation.
I2RS does not initially intend to create new interfaces, but rather
leverage or extend existing ones and define informational models for
the routing system. For example, the latest I2RS problem statement
[I-D.ietf-i2rs-problem-statement] discusses previously-defined IETF
protocols such as ForCES [RFC5810], NETCONF [RFC6241], and SNMP
[RFC3417]. Regarding the definition of informational and data
models, the I2RS working group has opted to use the YANG [RFC6020]
modelling language.
Currently the I2RS working group is developing an Information Model
[I-D.ietf-i2rs-rib-info-model] in regards to the Network Services
Abstraction Layer for the I2RS agent.
With respect to Figure 1, the I2RS architecture
[I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture] encompasses the Control and Application
Planes and uses any CPSI and DAL that is available, whether that may
be ForCES [RFC5810], OpenFlow [OpenFlow] or another interface. In
addition, the I2RS agent is a Control Plane Service. All services or
applications on top of that belong to either the Control, Management
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or the Application plane. In the I2RS documents, management access
to the agent may be provided by management protocols like SNMP and
NETCONF. The I2RS protocol may also be mapped to the Service
Interface as it will provide access even to other than control
applications.
4.5. SNMP
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an IETF-standardized
management protocol and is currently at its third revision (SNMPv3)
[RFC3417][RFC3412][RFC3414]. It consists of a set of standards for
network management, including an application layer protocol, a
database schema, and a set of data objects. SNMP exposes management
data (managed objects) in the form of variables on the managed
systems, which describe the system configuration. These variables
can then be queried and set by managing applications.
SNMP uses an extensible design for describing data, defined by
management information bases (MIBs). MIBs describe the structure of
the management data of a device subsystem. MIBs use a hierarchical
namespace containing object identifiers (OID). Each OID identifies a
variable that can be read or set via SNMP. MIBs use the notation
defined by Structure of Management Information Version 2 [RFC2578]
An early example of SNMP in the context of SDN is discussed in
[Peregrine].
With respect to Figure 1, SNMP MIBs can be used to describe DAL for
the Forwarding and Operational Plane. Similar to YANG, SNMP MIBs are
able to describe DAL for the Forwarding Plane. SNMP, similar to
NETCONF, is suited for the MPSI.
4.6. PCEP
The Path Computation Element (PCE) [RFC4655] architecture defines an
entity capable of computing paths for a single service or a set of
services. A PCE might be a network node, network management station,
or dedicated computational platform that is resource-aware and has
the ability to consider multiple constraints for a variety of path
computation problems and switching technologies. The PCE
Communication Protocol (PCEP) [RFC5440] is an IETF protocol for
communication between a Path Computation Client (PCC) and a PCE, or
between multiple PCEs.
The PCE represents a vision of networks that separates path
computation for services, the signaling of end-to-end connections and
actual packet forwarding. The definition of online and offline path
computation is dependent on the reachability of the PCE from network
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and NMS nodes, and the type of optimization request which may
significantly impact the optimization response time from the PCE to
the PCC.
The PCEP messaging mechanism facilitates the specification of
computation endpoints (source and destination node addresses) and
objective functions (requested algorithm and optimization criteria),
and the associated constraints such as traffic parameters (e.g.
requested bandwidth), the switching capability, and encoding type.
With respect to Figure 1, PCE is a control plane service that
provides services for control plane applications. PCEP may be used
as an east-west interface between PCEs which may act as domain
control entities (services and applications). The PCE working group
is specifying extensions [I-D.ietf-pce-stateful-pce], which allow an
active PCE to control, using PCEP, MPLS or GMPLS Label Switched Paths
(LSP), thus making it applicable for the CPSI for MPLS and GMPLS
switches.
4.7. BFD
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) [RFC5880], is an IETF-
standardized network protocol designed for detecting path failures
between two forwarding elements, including physical interfaces,
subinterfaces, data link(s), and to the extent possible the
forwarding engines themselves, with potentially very low latency.
BFD can provide low-overhead failure detection on any kind of path
between systems, including direct physical links, virtual circuits,
tunnels, MPLS LSPs, multihop routed paths, and unidirectional links
where there exists a return path as well. It is often implemented in
some component of the forwarding engine of a system, in cases where
the forwarding and control engines are separated.
With respect to Figure 1, a BFD agent can be implemneted as a control
plane service or application that would use the CPSI towards the
forwarding plane to send/receive BFD packets. However a BFD agent is
usually implemented as an application on the device and use the
forwarding plane to send/receive BFD packets and update the
operational plane resources accordingly. Services and applications
of control and management plane that monitor or has subscribed to
changes of resources, learn these changes through their respective
interface and will take the necessary action.
5. Summary
This document has been developed after a thorough and detailed
analysis of related peer-reviewed literature, the RFC series, and
documents produced by other relevant standards organizations. It has
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been reviewed publicly by the wider SDN community and we hope that it
can serve as a handy tool for network researchers, engineers and
practitioners in the years to come.
We conclude this document with a brief summary of the SDN
architecture layers terminology. In general, we consider a network
element as a composition of resources. Each network element has a
forwarding plane (FP), responsible for handling packets in the
datapath, and an operational plane (OP), responsible for managing the
operational state of the device. Resources in the network element
are abstracted by the device and resource abstraction layer (DAL) to
be controlled and managed by services or applications that belong to
the control or management plane. The control plane (CP) is
responsible for taking decisions on how packets should be forwarded.
The management plane (MP) is responsible for monitoring, configuring
and maintaining network devices. Service interfaces are abstracted
by the network service abstraction layer (NSAL) where other more
network applications or services may use them. The taxonomy
introduced in this document defines distinct SDN planes, abstraction
layers and interfaces, aiming to clarify SDN terminology and
establish commonly accepted reference definitions across the SDN
community irrespective of specific implementation choices.
6. Contributors
The authors would like to acknowledge (in alphabetical order) the
following persons as contributors to this document. They all
provided text, pointers and comments that made this document more
complete:
Daniel King for providing text related to PCEP.
Scott Mansfield for information regarding current ITU work on SDN.
Yaakov Stein for providing text related to the CAP theorem and SDO-
related information.
Russ White for text suggestions on the definitions on control,
management and application.
7. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Salvatore Loreto and Sudhir
Modali for their contributions in the initial discussion on the SDNRG
mailing list as well as their draft-specific comments; they helped
put this document in a better shape.
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Additionally we would like to thank (in alphabetical order) Shivleela
Arlimatti, Roland Bless, Scott Brim, Alan Clark, Luis Miguel
Contreras Murillo, Tim Copley, Linda Dunbar, Ken Gray, Deniz Gurkan,
Dave Hood, Georgios Karagiannis, Bhumip Khasnabish, Sriganesh Kini,
Ramki Krishnan, Dirk Kutscher, Diego Lopez, Scott Mansfield, Pedro
Martinez-Julia, David E Mcdysan, Erik Nordmark, Carlos Pignataro,
Robert Raszuk, Bless Roland, Francisco Javier Ros Munoz, Yaakov
Stein, Dimitri Staessens, Eve Varma, Stuart Venters, Russ White and
Lee Young for their critical comments and discussions at the IETF 88,
IETF 89 and IETF 90 meetings and the SDNRG mailing list, which we
took into consideration while revising this document.
We would also like to thank (in alphabetical order) Spencer Dawkins
and Eliot Lear for their IRSG reviews which further refined this
document.
Finally we thank Nobo Akiya for his review on the section on BFD,
Julien Meuric for his review on the section of PCE, and Adrian Farrel
and Benoit Claise for their IESG reviews of this document.
Kostas Pentikousis is supported by [ALIEN], a research project
partially funded by the European Community under the Seventh
Framework Program (grant agreement no. 317880). The views expressed
here are those of the author only. The European Commission is not
liable for any use that may be made of the information in this
document.
8. IANA Considerations
This memo makes no requests to IANA.
9. Security Considerations
This document does not propose a new network architecture or protocol
and therefore does not have any impact on the security of the
Internet. That said, security is paramount in networking and thus it
should be given full consideration when designing a network
architecture or operational deployment. Security in SDN is discussed
in the literature, for example in [SDNSecurity][SDNSecServ] and
[SDNSecOF]. Security considerations regarding specific interfaces,
such as, for example, ForCES, I2RS, SNMP, or NETCONF are addressed in
their respective documents as well as [RFC7149].
10. Informative References
[A4D05] Greenberg, Albert, et al., "A clean slate 4D approach to
network control and management", ACM SIGCOMM Computer
Communication Review 35.5 (2005): 41-54 , 2005.
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[ALIEN] D. Parniewicz, R. Doriguzzi Corin, et al., "Design and
Implementation of an OpenFlow Hardware Abstraction Layer",
Proc. ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Distributed Cloud Computing
(DCC), Chicago, Illinois, USA, August 2014, pp. 71-76.
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[Beacon] Erickson, David., "The beacon openflow controller.", In
Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Hot
topics in software defined networking, pp. 13-18. ACM,
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[CAPBR] Eric A. Brewer, "Towards robust distributed systems.",
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[CAPFN] Panda, Aurojit, Colin Scott, Ali Ghodsi, Teemu Koponen,
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the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Hot topics in software
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[CAPGL] Seth Gilbert, and Nancy Ann Lynch., "Brewer's conjecture
and the feasibility of consistent, available, partition-
tolerant web services", ACM SIGACT News 33.2 (2002):
51-59. , 2002.
[CORBA] Object Management Group, "Common Object Request Broker
Architecture specification version 3.3", November 2012,
<http://www.omg.org/spec/CORBA/3.3/>.
[DIOPR] Denazis, Spyros, Kazuho Miki, John Vicente, and Andrew
Campbell., "Designing interfaces for open programmable
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[ESNet] Yu, James, and Imad Al Ajarmeh., "An empirical study of
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[FCAPS] International Telecommunication Union, "X.700: Management
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[I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture]
Atlas, A., Halpern, J., Hares, S., Ward, D., and T.
Nadeau, "An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing
System", draft-ietf-i2rs-architecture-05 (work in
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[I-D.ietf-i2rs-problem-statement]
Atlas, A., Nadeau, T., and D. Ward, "Interface to the
Routing System Problem Statement", draft-ietf-i2rs-
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[I-D.ietf-i2rs-rib-info-model]
Bahadur, N., Folkes, R., Kini, S., and J. Medved, "Routing
Information Base Info Model", draft-ietf-i2rs-rib-info-
model-03 (work in progress), May 2014.
[I-D.ietf-pce-stateful-pce]
Crabbe, E., Minei, I., Medved, J., and R. Varga, "PCEP
Extensions for Stateful PCE", draft-ietf-pce-stateful-
pce-09 (work in progress), June 2014.
[ITUATM] CCITT, Geneva, Switzerland, "CCITT Recommendation 1.361,
B-ISDN ATM Layer Specification", 1990.
[ITUSG11] Telecommunication Standardization sector of ITU, "ITU,
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studygroups/2013-2016/11/Pages/default.aspx>.
[ITUSG13] Telecommunication Standardization sector of ITU, "ITU,
Study group 13", 2013, <http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/
studygroups/2013-2016/13/Pages/default.aspx>.
[ITUSS7] Telecommunication Standardization sector of ITU, "ITU,
Q.700 : Introduction to CCITT Signalling System No. 7",
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[ITUY3300]
ITU-T Study Group 13, "Y.3300, Framework of software-
defined networking", June 2014, <http://www.itu.int/ITU-
T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=12168>.
[KANDOO] Hassas Yeganeh, Soheil, and Yashar Ganjali., "Kandoo: a
framework for efficient and scalable offloading of control
applications.", In Proceedings of the first workshop on
Hot topics in software defined networks, pp. 19-24. ACM
SIGCOMM, 2012. , 2012.
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[NFVArch] European Telecommunication Standards Institute, "Network
Functions Virtualisation (NFV): Architectural Framework;
White paper, ETSI GS 9 NFV 002, 2013", December 2013,
<http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/
NFV/001_099/003/01.01.01_60/gs_NFV003v010101p.pdf>.
[NOX] Gude, Natasha, Teemu Koponen, Justin Pettit, Ben Pfaff,
Martin Casado, Nick McKeown, and Scott Shenker., "NOX:
towards an operating system for networks.", ACM SIGCOMM
Computer Communication Review 38, no. 3 (2008): 105-110. ,
2008.
[NV09] Chowdhury, NM Mosharaf Kabir, and Raouf Boutaba, "Network
virtualization: state of the art and research challenges",
Communications Magazine, IEEE 47.7 (2009): 20-26 , 2009.
[OF-CONFIG]
Open Networking Foundation, "OpenFlow Management and
Configuration Protocol 1.1.1", March 2013,
<https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/
sdn-resources/onf-specifications/openflow-config/of-
config-1-1-1.pdf>.
[OF08] McKeown, Nick, et al., "OpenFlow: enabling innovation in
campus networks", ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication
Review 38.2 (2008): 69-74 , 2008.
[OFSIGC] McKeown, Nick, Tom Anderson, Hari Balakrishnan, Guru
Parulkar, Larry Peterson, Jennifer Rexford, Scott Shenker,
and Jonathan Turner., "OpenFlow: enabling innovation in
campus networks.", ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication
Review 38, no. 2 (2008): 69-74. , 1998.
[ONFArch] Open Networking Foundation, "SDN Architecture, Issue 1",
June 2014,
<https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/
sdn-resources/technical-reports/
TR_SDN_ARCH_1.0_06062014.pdf>.
[OpenFlow]
Open Networking Foundation, "The OpenFlow 1.4
Specification.", October 2013,
<https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/
sdn-resources/onf-specifications/openflow/openflow-spec-
v1.4.0.pdf>.
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Internet-Draft SDN Layers and Architecture Terminology October 2014
[P1520] Biswas, Jit, Aurel A. Lazar, J-F. Huard, Koonseng Lim,
Semir Mahjoub, L-F. Pau, Masaaki Suzuki, Soren
Torstensson, Weiguo Wang, and Stephen Weinstein., "The
IEEE P1520 standards initiative for programmable network
interfaces.", Communications Magazine, IEEE 36, no. 10
(1998): 64-70. , 1998.
[PENet] Hedstrom, Brian, Akshay Watwe, and Siddharth Sakthidharan,
"Protocol Efficiencies of NETCONF versus SNMP for
Configuration Management Functions", PhD dissertation,
Master's thesis, University of Colorado, 2011 , 2011.
[PNSurvey99]
Campbell, Andrew T., et al, "A survey of programmable
networks", ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 29.2
(1999): 7-23 , September 1992.
[Peregrine]
Chiueh, Tzi-cker, Cheng-Chun Tu, Yu-Cheng Wang, Pai-Wei
Wang, Kai-Wen Li, and Yu-Ming Huang., "Peregrine: An All-
Layer-2 Container Computer Network.", In Cloud Computing
(CLOUD), 2012 IEEE 5th International Conference on, pp.
686-693. IEEE, 2012 , 2012.
[PiNA] John Day, "Patterns in network architecture: a return to
fundamentals.", Prentice Hall (ISBN 0132252422). , 2007.
[RCP] Caesar, Matthew, Donald Caldwell, Nick Feamster, Jennifer
Rexford, Aman Shaikh, and Jacobus van der Merwe., "Design
and implementation of a routing control platform.", In
Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Symposium on
Networked Systems Design & Implementation-Volume 2, pp.
15-28. USENIX Association, 2005. , 2005.
[REST] Fielding, Roy, "Fielding Dissertation: Chapter 5:
Representational State Transfer (REST).", 2000.
[RFC0826] Plummer, D., "Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol: Or
converting network protocol addresses to 48.bit Ethernet
address for transmission on Ethernet hardware", STD 37,
RFC 826, November 1982.
[RFC1953] Newman, P., Edwards, W., Hinden, R., Hoffman, E., Ching
Liaw, F., Lyon, T., and G. Minshall, "Ipsilon Flow
Management Protocol Specification for IPv4 Version 1.0",
RFC 1953, May 1996.
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Internet-Draft SDN Layers and Architecture Terminology October 2014
[RFC2297] Newman, P., Edwards, W., Hinden, R., Hoffman, E., Liaw,
F., Lyon, T., and G. Minshall, "Ipsilon's General Switch
Management Protocol Specification Version 2.0", RFC 2297,
March 1998.
[RFC2578] McCloghrie, K., Ed., Perkins, D., Ed., and J.
Schoenwaelder, Ed., "Structure of Management Information
Version 2 (SMIv2)", STD 58, RFC 2578, April 1999.
[RFC3411] Harrington, D., Presuhn, R., and B. Wijnen, "An
Architecture for Describing Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP) Management Frameworks", STD 62, RFC 3411,
December 2002.
[RFC3412] Case, J., Harrington, D., Presuhn, R., and B. Wijnen,
"Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP)", STD 62, RFC 3412, December
2002.
[RFC3414] Blumenthal, U. and B. Wijnen, "User-based Security Model
(USM) for version 3 of the Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMPv3)", STD 62, RFC 3414, December 2002.
[RFC3417] Presuhn, R., "Transport Mappings for the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP)", STD 62, RFC 3417, December
2002.
[RFC3418] Presuhn, R., "Management Information Base (MIB) for the
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)", STD 62, RFC
3418, December 2002.
[RFC3535] Schoenwaelder, J., "Overview of the 2002 IAB Network
Management Workshop", RFC 3535, May 2003.
[RFC3746] Yang, L., Dantu, R., Anderson, T., and R. Gopal,
"Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES)
Framework", RFC 3746, April 2004.
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.
[RFC4655] Farrel, A., Vasseur, J., and J. Ash, "A Path Computation
Element (PCE)-Based Architecture", RFC 4655, August 2006.
[RFC5424] Gerhards, R., "The Syslog Protocol", RFC 5424, March 2009.
Haleplidis, et al. Expires April 25, 2015 [Page 29]
Internet-Draft SDN Layers and Architecture Terminology October 2014
[RFC5440] Vasseur, JP. and JL. Le Roux, "Path Computation Element
(PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)", RFC 5440, March
2009.
[RFC5531] Thurlow, R., "RPC: Remote Procedure Call Protocol
Specification Version 2", RFC 5531, May 2009.
[RFC5743] Falk, A., "Definition of an Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF) Document Stream", RFC 5743, December 2009.
[RFC5810] Doria, A., Hadi Salim, J., Haas, R., Khosravi, H., Wang,
W., Dong, L., Gopal, R., and J. Halpern, "Forwarding and
Control Element Separation (ForCES) Protocol
Specification", RFC 5810, March 2010.
[RFC5812] Halpern, J. and J. Hadi Salim, "Forwarding and Control
Element Separation (ForCES) Forwarding Element Model", RFC
5812, March 2010.
[RFC5880] Katz, D. and D. Ward, "Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
(BFD)", RFC 5880, June 2010.
[RFC6020] Bjorklund, M., "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for the
Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC 6020,
October 2010.
[RFC6241] Enns, R., Bjorklund, M., Schoenwaelder, J., and A.
Bierman, "Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC
6241, June 2011.
[RFC6632] Ersue, M. and B. Claise, "An Overview of the IETF Network
Management Standards", RFC 6632, June 2012.
[RFC7011] Claise, B., Trammell, B., and P. Aitken, "Specification of
the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Protocol for the
Exchange of Flow Information", STD 77, RFC 7011, September
2013.
[RFC7047] Pfaff, B. and B. Davie, "The Open vSwitch Database
Management Protocol", RFC 7047, December 2013.
[RFC7149] Boucadair, M. and C. Jacquenet, "Software-Defined
Networking: A Perspective from within a Service Provider
Environment", RFC 7149, March 2014.
[RFC7276] Mizrahi, T., Sprecher, N., Bellagamba, E., and Y.
Weingarten, "An Overview of Operations, Administration,
and Maintenance (OAM) Tools", RFC 7276, June 2014.
Haleplidis, et al. Expires April 25, 2015 [Page 30]
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[RINA] John Day, Ibrahim Matta, and Karim Mattar., "Networking is
IPC: a guiding principle to a better internet.", In
Proceedings of the 2008 ACM CoNEXT Conference, p. 67. ACM,
2008. , 2008.
[RouteFlow]
Nascimento, Marcelo R., Christian E. Rothenberg, Marcos R.
Salvador, Carlos NA Correa, Sidney C. de Lucena, and
Mauricio F. Magalhaes., "Virtual routers as a service: the
routeflow approach leveraging software-defined networks.",
In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on
Future Internet Technologies, pp. 34-37. ACM, 2011. ,
2011.
[SDNACS] Diego Kreutz, Fernando M. V. Ramos, Paulo Verissimo,
Christian Esteve Rothenberg, Siamak Azodolmolky, Steve
Uhlig, "Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive
Survey.", arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.0440 , 2014.
[SDNHistory]
Feamster, Nick, Jennifer Rexford, and Ellen Zegura., "The
Road to SDN", ACM Queue11, no. 12 (2013): 20. , 2013.
[SDNNFV] Haleplidis, Evangelos, Jamal Hadi Salim, Spyros Denazis,
and Odysseas Koufopavlou., "Towards a Network Abstraction
Model for SDN.", Journal of Network and Systems Management
(2014): 1-19. Special Issue on Management of Software
Defined Networks, Springer , 2014.
[SDNSecOF]
Kloti, Rowan, Vasileios Kotronis, and Paul Smith.,
"Openflow: A security analysis.", Proceedings Workshop on
Secure Network Protocols (NPSec). IEEE (2013). , 2013,
<http://www.csg.ethz.ch/people/vkotroni/openflow_sec>.
[SDNSecServ]
Sandra Scott-Hayward, Gemma O'Callaghan, and Sakir Sezer.,
"SDN security: A survey.", In Future Networks and Services
(SDN4FNS), 2013 IEEE SDN for, pp. 1-7. IEEE, 2013. , 2013.
[SDNSecurity]
Diego Kreutz, Fernando Ramos, and Paulo Verissimo.,
"Towards secure and dependable software-defined
networks.", In Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCOMM
workshop on Hot topics in software defined networking, pp.
55-60. ACM, 2013. , 2013.
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[SDNSurvey]
Bruno Astuto A. Nunes, Marc Mendonca, Xuan-Nam Nguyen,
Katia Obraczka, and Thierry Turletti, "A Survey of
Software-Defined Networking: Past, Present, and Future of
Programmable Networks", IEEE Communications Surveys and
Tutorials DOI:10.1109/SURV.2014.012214.00180 , 2014.
[SLTSDN] Yosr Jarraya, Taous Madi, and Mourad Debbabi, "A Survey
and a Layered Taxonomy of Software-Defined Networking", To
be published in Communications Surveys and Tutorials, IEEE
Issue: 99 , 2014.
[SoftRouter]
Lakshman, T. V., T. Nandagopal, R. Ramjee, K. Sabnani, and
T. Woo., "The softrouter architecture.", In Proc. ACM
SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networking. 2004. ,
2004.
[Tempest] Rooney, Sean, Jacobus E. van der Merwe, Simon A. Crosby,
and Ian M. Leslie., "The Tempest: a framework for safe,
resource assured, programmable networks.", Communications
Magazine, IEEE 36, no. 10 (1998): 42-53 , 1998.
Authors' Addresses
Evangelos Haleplidis (editor)
University of Patras
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Patras 26500
Greece
Email: ehalep@ece.upatras.gr
Kostas Pentikousis (editor)
EICT GmbH
Torgauer Strasse 12-15
10829 Berlin
Germany
Email: k.pentikousis@eict.de
Haleplidis, et al. Expires April 25, 2015 [Page 32]
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Spyros Denazis
University of Patras
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Patras 26500
Greece
Email: sdena@upatras.gr
Jamal Hadi Salim
Mojatatu Networks
Suite 400, 303 Moodie Dr.
Ottawa, Ontario K2H 9R4
Canada
Email: hadi@mojatatu.com
David Meyer
Brocade
Email: dmm@1-4-5.net
Odysseas Koufopavlou
University of Patras
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Patras 26500
Greece
Email: odysseas@ece.upatras.gr
Haleplidis, et al. Expires April 25, 2015 [Page 33]
