Subject: WG Action: Rechartered Forwarding and Control Element Separation (forces)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 09:13:38 -0700

The Forwarding and Control Element Separation (forces) working group in
the Routing Area of the IETF has been rechartered. For additional
information please contact the Area Directors or the WG Chairs.

Forwarding and Control Element Separation (forces)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Active Working Group

Chairs:
  Damascane Joachimpillai <[email-masked]>
  Jamal Hadi Salim <[email-masked]>

Technical advisors:
  Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>

Assigned Area Director:
  Adrian Farrel <[email-masked]>

Mailing list
  Address: [email-masked]
  To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/forces
  Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/forces/

Charter of Working Group:

The ForCES working group has created a framework, requirements, a
solution protocol, a logical function block library, and other 
associated documents in support of Forwarding and Control Element 
Separation.

Drawing on the experience gained from developing the standards and from
many efforts using this architecture, the ForCES working group is now
working on a set of additions to the model, the protocol, and the
libraries.

The following 5 work items are the chartered tasks of this working group:

o Extensions to Model and Protocol

  This work is to address a set of extensions to the base model and
  protocol resulting in updates to RFCs 5810 and 5812. This effort will 
  produce 2 Standards Track documents (one for the model and another for 
  the protocol).

  The model extensions will:
  1. Allow compound metadata
  2. Allow optional default values for datatypes
  3. Allow optional access-type for datatypes inside complex components
  4. Define new base type: Bitmap
  5. Define new events to monitor states.

  The protocol extensions will:
  1. Support table range query
  2. Support table append
  3. Define additional return codes to reduce ambiguity
  4. Define data packing rule for bitmap datatype.

o Inter-FE Connectivity

  ForCES processing is often spread across multiple Forwarding Elements
  (FEs). The original framework identified the interface between FEs as 
  the "Fi" reference point. Protocol and Logical Function Block (LFB) 
  mechanisms to carry metadata across the Fi interface are needed.  This 
  effort will produce a standards track document defining the protocol 
  on the wire to address this need, and the LFBs used to represent the 
  Interfaces for sending and receiving such information. It is expected 
  that this work will draw heavily on existing protocol and LFB 
  definitions.

o Parallelization

  An FE can implement an LFB chain with parallelization, but the
  currently-defined mechanism has no means to represent when 
  synchronization is needed, or to allow the CE to specify where it 
  believes such parallelism is useful. This work item will produce a 
  single standards track document to improve the handling of this case.

o Subsidiary Management

  Deployment experience has demonstrated the value of using ForCES to
  control the Forwarding Element Manager (FEM) by creating an LFB to 
  represent its function using the same encoding rules as for any other 
  LFB. This allows it to be controlled by the same Control Element (CE). 
  This work item assumes the presence of an initially booted FE whose 
  configuration could then be updated at runtime via an FEM LFB for 
  runtime config purposes (e.g., by adding a new CE and its associated 
  IP address). This work item can also be useful in addressing control 
  of virtual FEs where individual FEM Managers can be addressed to 
  control the creation, configuration, and resource assignment of
  such virtual FEs within a physical FE. This work would result in a
  standards track LFB FEM library RFC.

In addition to the specific work items listed above, the working group
will allow discussions and review work of how to use ForCES to model 
topics of interest to Network Function Virtualization, I2RS, or 
OpenFlow. It is understood that the primary responsibility for such 
documents lives with other working groups, individual contributions, or 
other standards bodies.

Milestones:
  Done     - Submit requirements document to IESG
  Done     - Submit framework document to IESG
  Done     - Submit forwarding element functional model document to IESG
  Done     - Submit formal definition of controlled objects in 
             functional model
  Done     - Submit protocol selection/definition document to IESG
  Sep 2013 - Request for Publication of Standards Track document
             specifying model changes
  Sep 2013 - Request for Publication of Standards Track document
             specifying protocol changes
  Feb 2014 - Request for publication of Subsidiary management LFB
  Mar 2014 - Request for publication of Inter-FE LFB
  Mar 2014 - Request for publication of parallelization LFBs
  Apr 2014 - Recharter or shutdown