Subject: WG Action: General Switch Management Protocol (gsmp)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 10:23:44 -0500

A new working group has been formed in the Routing Area of the
IETF. Please contact the chair or Area Directors for additional
information.

General Switch Management Protocol (gsmp)
-----------------------------------------
 
 Current Status: Active Working Group
 
 Chair(s):
     Avri Doria <[email-masked]>
 
 Routing Area Director(s): 
     Rob Coltun  <[email-masked]>
 
 Routing Area Advisor: 
     Rob Coltun  <[email-masked]>
 
 Mailing Lists: 
     General Discussion:[email-masked]
     To Subscribe:      [email-masked]
         In Body:       subscribe (unsubscribe)
     Archive:           ftp://www.revnetworks.com/pub/mailing-lists/gsmp-archive
 
Description of Working Group:
 
The General Switch Management Protocol(GSMP)has been available
to the IETF community for several years as an informational
RFC.  As several vendors are beginning to deploy GSMP, there
is now a need to standardise the protocol.

GSMP provides an interface that allows a router to control a
label switch.  The GSMP interface provides the commands
necessary for: switch configuration control and reporting,
port management, connection control, QoS and traffic
engineering control and the reporting of statistics and
asynchronous events.

The working group is responsible for standardising the GSMP
protocol itself, as well as for defining an encapsulation for
running GSMP over IP. The current GSMP V2 set of message types
will be expanded to include support for various types of label
switches including ATM and Frame Relay.  The working group
will refine the support for QoS and traffic engineering in
GSMP based on the diffserv and intserv architectures and will
co-ordinate the work with these WGs where appropriate.

Finally, since GSMP can be used as an adjunct to the MPLS
protocol, the group will co-ordinate with the MPLS group to
make sure that the primitives required by a MPLS controller
are available in the protocol.
 
 Goals and Milestones: 
 
   Feb 99       Produce a version of the GSMP which has the consensus required 
                for entry onto the standards track.                            

   Apr 99       Define an IP encapsulation for GSMP messages                   

   Apr 99       Extend GSMP message types to allow support of non-ATM Label 
                Switch devices                                                 

   Aug 99       Refine the support for QoS models in GSMP                      

   Nov 99       Define an approved GSMP MIB                                    

   Nov 99       Define approved mechanisms for security and authentication in 
                GSMP