Transcript Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) BOF

Forwarding and Control Element
Separation (ForCES) Overview &
Requirements Update
Todd A. Anderson
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IP Forwarding & Control Separation
Standardize the interaction between IP control (slow
path) and forwarding (fast path) elements
Control Element
• CPU & memory intensive
CONTROL ELEMENT
protocols and algorithms
• Slow timescale – many
packets/operation
Forwarding Elements
• Throughput oriented
• Fast timescale –
packet-by-packet
operations
• Provide a variety of
functionality
(Routing Protocols,
Admission Control, Mgmt
Agents, etc.)
ForCES
FORWARDING ELEMENTS
FORWARDING
ELEMENT
(ASIC, NP, etc.)
FORWARDING
ELEMENT
(ASIC, NP, etc.)
(ASIC, NP, etc.)
(Distributed) Network Element
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Why do it?



Rapid innovation – by allowing the control and
forwarding planes to evolve independently.
Building blocks approach – by allowing network
elements to be built from emerging network
processors and third-party signaling, routing, and
other software.
Scalability – by allowing additional forwarding
capacity to be added to a network element w/o the
addition of another point of management.
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Architectural Overview
Network Element
Control Element
Which FEs do I control?
Interconnect
REQUIREMENTS
1. Variety of interconnects
2. Auto-membership &
topology discovery
3. Inter-FE forwarding
4. Single “box”
5. Scalable: 1-10s of FEs
6. CE-FE protocol
Forwarding
Element 1
Forwarding
Element 2
Which CE controls me?
Which CE controls me?
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Modeling Overview
Network Element
Given:
CE
FEs have a variety of
functionality
Problem:
How does the CE control
the FE if it doesn’t know
what it can do?
Interconnect
Requirement:
FE
?
?
?
…
?
Define a functional model
by which FEs can describe
their functionality
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Protocol Overview
Network Element
CE
Interconnect
Ingress Filter Forwarder
FE
REQUIREMENTS
1. Port configuration
1a. Packet redirection
2. Filter installation
3. Forward table install
4. QoS configuration
5. Secure communication
6. Event notification
7. Statistics gathering
Egress
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Mailing List/Web site
Mailing list:
• [email protected]
• To subscribe: [email protected]
– In body of message “subscribe forces <your name>”
Web site
• http://www.sstanamera.com/~forces
Drafts
• draft-anderson-forces-req-01.txt
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