Subject: Protocol Action: General Switch Management Protocol V3 to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 11:13:04 -0500

The IESG has approved publication of the following Internet-Drafts:

 o General Switch Management Protocol V3 <draft-ietf-gsmp-11.txt> as a
   Proposed Standard.

 o GSMP Packet Encapsulations for ATM, Ethernet and TCP
   <draft-ietf-gsmp-encaps-05.txt> as a Proposed Standard.

 o General Switch Management Protocol Applicability
   <draft-ietf-gsmp-applicability-02.txt> as an Informational RFC.

These documents are the product of the General Switch Management
Protocol Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Bert Wijnen and
Scott Bradner.

Technical Summary
 
The General Switch Management Protocol (GSMP) is a general purpose protocol
 to control a label switch. GSMP allows a controller to establish and
 release connections across the switch; add and delete leaves on a multicast
 connection; manage switch ports; request configuration information; request
 and delete reservation of switch resources; and request statistics. It also
 allows the switch to inform the controller of asynchronous events such as a
 link going down. The GSMP protocol is asymmetric, the controller being the
 master and the switch being the slave. Multiple switches may be controlled
 by a single controller using multiple instantiations of the protocol over
 separate control connections. Also a switch may be controlled by more than
 one controller by using the technique of partitioning, i.e., a "physical"
 switch that is partitioned into several virtual switches.

 The document "General Switch Management Protocol V3" describes the protocol
 itself, the document "GSMP Packet Encapsulations for ATM, Ethernet and TCP"
 specifies the encapsulation of GSMP packets in ATM, Ethernet and TCP, and
 the document "General Switch Management Protocol Applicability" provides an
 overview of the GSMP protocol and includes information relating to its
 deployment in a IP network in an MPLS environment.

Working Group Summary

 The documents represent the consensus of the Working Group.

Protocol Quality

These documents were reviewed for the IESG by Scott Bradner.