<pre>Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                           D. King
Request for Comments: 7491                            Old Dog Consulting
Category: Informational                                        A. Farrel
ISSN: 2070-1721                                         Juniper Networks
                                                              March 2015


   <span class="h1">A PCE-Based Architecture for Application-Based Network Operations</span>

Abstract

   Services such as content distribution, distributed databases, or
   inter-data center connectivity place a set of new requirements on the
   operation of networks.  They need on-demand and application-specific
   reservation of network connectivity, reliability, and resources (such
   as bandwidth) in a variety of network applications (such as point-to-
   point connectivity, network virtualization, or mobile back-haul) and
   in a range of network technologies from packet (IP/MPLS) down to
   optical.  An environment that operates to meet these types of
   requirements is said to have Application-Based Network Operations
   (ABNO).  ABNO brings together many existing technologies and may be
   seen as the use of a toolbox of existing components enhanced with a
   few new elements.

   This document describes an architecture and framework for ABNO,
   showing how these components fit together.  It provides a cookbook of
   existing technologies to satisfy the architecture and meet the needs
   of the applications.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see <a href="./rfc5741#section-2">Section&nbsp;2 of RFC 5741</a>.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   <a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7491">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7491</a>.







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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/bcp/bcp78">BCP 78</a> and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (<a href="http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info">http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info</a>) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.





































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Table of Contents

   <a href="#section-1">1</a>. Introduction ....................................................<a href="#page-4">4</a>
      <a href="#section-1.1">1.1</a>. Scope ......................................................<a href="#page-5">5</a>
   <a href="#section-2">2</a>. Application-Based Network Operations (ABNO) .....................<a href="#page-6">6</a>
      <a href="#section-2.1">2.1</a>. Assumptions ................................................<a href="#page-6">6</a>
      <a href="#section-2.2">2.2</a>. Implementation of the Architecture .........................<a href="#page-6">6</a>
      <a href="#section-2.3">2.3</a>. Generic ABNO Architecture ..................................<a href="#page-7">7</a>
           <a href="#section-2.3.1">2.3.1</a>. ABNO Components .....................................<a href="#page-8">8</a>
           <a href="#section-2.3.2">2.3.2</a>. Functional Interfaces ..............................<a href="#page-15">15</a>
   <a href="#section-3">3</a>. ABNO Use Cases .................................................<a href="#page-24">24</a>
      <a href="#section-3.1">3.1</a>. Inter-AS Connectivity .....................................<a href="#page-24">24</a>
      <a href="#section-3.2">3.2</a>. Multi-Layer Networking ....................................<a href="#page-30">30</a>
           3.2.1. Data Center Interconnection across
                  Multi-Layer Networks ...............................<a href="#page-34">34</a>
      <a href="#section-3.3">3.3</a>. Make-before-Break .........................................<a href="#page-37">37</a>
           <a href="#section-3.3.1">3.3.1</a>. Make-before-Break for Reoptimization ...............<a href="#page-37">37</a>
           <a href="#section-3.3.2">3.3.2</a>. Make-before-Break for Restoration ..................<a href="#page-38">38</a>
           <a href="#section-3.3.3">3.3.3</a>. Make-before-Break for Path Test and Selection ......<a href="#page-40">40</a>
      <a href="#section-3.4">3.4</a>. Global Concurrent Optimization ............................<a href="#page-42">42</a>
           <a href="#section-3.4.1">3.4.1</a>. Use Case: GCO with MPLS LSPs .......................<a href="#page-43">43</a>
      <a href="#section-3.5">3.5</a>. Adaptive Network Management (ANM) .........................<a href="#page-45">45</a>
           <a href="#section-3.5.1">3.5.1</a>. ANM Trigger ........................................<a href="#page-46">46</a>
           <a href="#section-3.5.2">3.5.2</a>. Processing Request and GCO Computation .............<a href="#page-46">46</a>
           <a href="#section-3.5.3">3.5.3</a>. Automated Provisioning Process .....................<a href="#page-47">47</a>
      <a href="#section-3.6">3.6</a>. Pseudowire Operations and Management ......................<a href="#page-48">48</a>
           <a href="#section-3.6.1">3.6.1</a>. Multi-Segment Pseudowires ..........................<a href="#page-48">48</a>
           <a href="#section-3.6.2">3.6.2</a>. Path-Diverse Pseudowires ...........................<a href="#page-50">50</a>
           <a href="#section-3.6.3">3.6.3</a>. Path-Diverse Multi-Segment Pseudowires .............<a href="#page-51">51</a>
           <a href="#section-3.6.4">3.6.4</a>. Pseudowire Segment Protection ......................<a href="#page-52">52</a>
           <a href="#section-3.6.5">3.6.5</a>. Applicability of ABNO to Pseudowires ...............<a href="#page-52">52</a>
      <a href="#section-3.7">3.7</a>. Cross-Stratum Optimization (CSO) ..........................<a href="#page-53">53</a>
           <a href="#section-3.7.1">3.7.1</a>. Data Center Network Operation ......................<a href="#page-53">53</a>
           <a href="#section-3.7.2">3.7.2</a>. Application of the ABNO Architecture ...............<a href="#page-56">56</a>
      <a href="#section-3.8">3.8</a>. ALTO Server ...............................................<a href="#page-58">58</a>
      <a href="#section-3.9">3.9</a>. Other Potential Use Cases .................................<a href="#page-61">61</a>
           <a href="#section-3.9.1">3.9.1</a>. Traffic Grooming and Regrooming ....................<a href="#page-61">61</a>
           <a href="#section-3.9.2">3.9.2</a>. Bandwidth Scheduling ...............................<a href="#page-62">62</a>
   <a href="#section-4">4</a>. Survivability and Redundancy within the ABNO Architecture ......<a href="#page-62">62</a>
   <a href="#section-5">5</a>. Security Considerations ........................................<a href="#page-63">63</a>
   <a href="#section-6">6</a>. Manageability Considerations ...................................<a href="#page-63">63</a>
   <a href="#section-7">7</a>. Informative References .........................................<a href="#page-64">64</a>
   <a href="#appendix-A">Appendix A</a>. Undefined Interfaces ..................................<a href="#page-69">69</a>
   Acknowledgements ..................................................<a href="#page-70">70</a>
   Contributors ......................................................<a href="#page-71">71</a>
   Authors' Addresses ................................................<a href="#page-71">71</a>





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<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-1" href="#section-1">1</a>.  Introduction</span>

   Networks today integrate multiple technologies allowing network
   infrastructure to deliver a variety of services to support the
   different characteristics and demands of applications.  There is an
   increasing demand to make the network responsive to service requests
   issued directly from the application layer.  This differs from the
   established model where services in the network are delivered in
   response to management commands driven by a human user.

   These application-driven requests and the services they establish
   place a set of new requirements on the operation of networks.  They
   need on-demand and application-specific reservation of network
   connectivity, reliability, and resources (such as bandwidth) in a
   variety of network applications (such as point-to-point connectivity,
   network virtualization, or mobile back-haul) and in a range of
   network technologies from packet (IP/MPLS) down to optical.  An
   environment that operates to meet this type of application-aware
   requirement is said to have Application-Based Network Operations
   (ABNO).

   The Path Computation Element (PCE) [<a href="./rfc4655" title="&quot;A Path Computation Element (PCE)-Based Architecture&quot;">RFC4655</a>] was developed to provide
   path computation services for GMPLS- and MPLS-controlled networks.
   The applicability of PCEs can be extended to provide path computation
   and policy enforcement capabilities for ABNO platforms and services.

   ABNO can provide the following types of service to applications by
   coordinating the components that operate and manage the network:

   - Optimization of traffic flows between applications to create an
     overlay network for communication in use cases such as file
     sharing, data caching or mirroring, media streaming, or real-time
     communications described as Application-Layer Traffic Optimization
     (ALTO) [<a href="./rfc5693" title="&quot;Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Problem Statement&quot;">RFC5693</a>].

   - Remote control of network components allowing coordinated
     programming of network resources through such techniques as
     Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) [<a href="./rfc3746" title="&quot;Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) Framework&quot;">RFC3746</a>],
     OpenFlow [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>], and the Interface to the Routing System (I2RS)
     [<a href="#ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>], or through the control plane coordinated through the
     PCE Communication Protocol (PCEP) [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].

   - Interconnection of Content Delivery Networks (CDNi) [<a href="./rfc6707" title="&quot;Content Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Problem Statement&quot;">RFC6707</a>]
     through the establishment and resizing of connections between
     content distribution networks.  Similarly, ABNO can coordinate
     inter-data center connections.





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   - Network resource coordination to automate provisioning, and to
     facilitate traffic grooming and regrooming, bandwidth scheduling,
     and Global Concurrent Optimization using PCEP [<a href="./rfc5557" title="&quot;Path Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP) Requirements and Protocol Extensions in Support of Global Concurrent Optimization&quot;">RFC5557</a>].

   - Virtual Private Network (VPN) planning in support of deployment of
     new VPN customers and to facilitate inter-data center connectivity.

   This document outlines the architecture and use cases for ABNO, and
   shows how the ABNO architecture can be used for coordinating control
   system and application requests to compute paths, enforce policies,
   and manage network resources for the benefit of the applications that
   use the network.  The examination of the use cases shows the ABNO
   architecture as a toolkit comprising many existing components and
   protocols, and so this document looks like a cookbook.  ABNO is
   compatible with pre-existing Network Management System (NMS) and
   Operations Support System (OSS) deployments as well as with more
   recent developments in programmatic networks such as Software-Defined
   Networking (SDN).

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-1.1" href="#section-1.1">1.1</a>.  Scope</span>

   This document describes a toolkit.  It shows how existing functional
   components described in a large number of separate documents can be
   brought together within a single architecture to provide the function
   necessary for ABNO.

   In many cases, existing protocols are known to be good enough or
   almost good enough to satisfy the requirements of interfaces between
   the components.  In these cases, the protocols are called out as
   suitable candidates for use within an implementation of ABNO.

   In other cases, it is clear that further work will be required, and
   in those cases a pointer to ongoing work that may be of use is
   provided.  Where there is no current work that can be identified by
   the authors, a short description of the missing interface protocol is
   given in <a href="#appendix-A">Appendix A</a>.

   Thus, this document may be seen as providing an applicability
   statement for existing protocols, and guidance for developers of new
   protocols or protocol extensions.











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<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-2" href="#section-2">2</a>.  Application-Based Network Operations (ABNO)</span>

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.1" href="#section-2.1">2.1</a>.  Assumptions</span>

   The principal assumption underlying this document is that existing
   technologies should be used where they are adequate for the task.
   Furthermore, when an existing technology is almost sufficient, it is
   assumed to be preferable to make minor extensions rather than to
   invent a whole new technology.

   Note that this document describes an architecture.  Functional
   components are architectural concepts and have distinct and clear
   responsibilities.  Pairs of functional components interact over
   functional interfaces that are, themselves, architectural concepts.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.2" href="#section-2.2">2.2</a>.  Implementation of the Architecture</span>

   It needs to be strongly emphasized that this document describes a
   functional architecture.  It is not a software design.  Thus, it is
   not intended that this architecture constrain implementations.
   However, the separation of the ABNO functions into separate
   functional components with clear interfaces between them enables
   implementations to choose which features to include and allows
   different functions to be distributed across distinct processes or
   even processors.

   An implementation of this architecture may make several important
   decisions about the functional components:

   - Multiple functional components may be grouped together into one
     software component such that all of the functions are bundled and
     only the external interfaces are exposed.  This may have distinct
     advantages for fast paths within the software and can reduce
     interprocess communication overhead.

     For example, an Active, Stateful PCE could be implemented as a
     single server combining the ABNO components of the PCE, the Traffic
     Engineering Database, the Label Switched Path Database, and the
     Provisioning Manager (see <a href="#section-2.3">Section 2.3</a>).

   - The functional components could be distributed across separate
     processes, processors, or servers so that the interfaces are
     exposed as external protocols.








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     For example, the Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM)
     Handler (see <a href="#section-2.3.1.6">Section 2.3.1.6</a>) could be presented on a dedicated
     server in the network that consumes all status reports from the
     network, aggregates them, correlates them, and then dispatches
     notifications to other servers that need to understand what has
     happened.

   - There could be multiple instances of any or each of the components.
     That is, the function of a functional component could be
     partitioned across multiple software components with each
     responsible for handling a specific feature or a partition of the
     network.

     For example, there may be multiple Traffic Engineering Databases
     (see <a href="#section-2.3.1.8">Section 2.3.1.8</a>) in an implementation, with each holding the
     topology information of a separate network domain (such as a
     network layer or an Autonomous System).  Similarly, there could be
     multiple PCE instances, each processing a different Traffic
     Engineering Database, and potentially distributed on different
     servers under different management control.  As a final example,
     there could be multiple ABNO Controllers, each with capability to
     support different classes of application or application service.

   The purpose of the description of this architecture is to facilitate
   different implementations while offering interoperability between
   implementations of key components, and easy interaction with the
   applications and with the network devices.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3" href="#section-2.3">2.3</a>.  Generic ABNO Architecture</span>

   Figure 1 illustrates the ABNO architecture.  The components and
   functional interfaces are discussed in Sections <a href="#section-2.3.1">2.3.1</a> and <a href="#section-2.3.2">2.3.2</a>,
   respectively.  The use cases described in <a href="#section-3">Section 3</a> show how
   different components are used selectively to provide different
   services.  It is important to understand that the relationships and
   interfaces shown between components in this figure are illustrative
   of some of the common or likely interactions; however, this figure
   does not preclude other interfaces and relationships as necessary to
   realize specific functionality.












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    +----------------------------------------------------------------+
    |          OSS / NMS / Application Service Coordinator           |
    +-+---+---+----+-----------+---------------------------------+---+
      |   |   |    |           |                                 |
   ...|...|...|....|...........|.................................|......
   :  |   |   |    |      +----+----------------------+          |     :
   :  |   |   | +--+---+  |                           |      +---+---+ :
   :  |   |   | |Policy+--+     ABNO Controller       +------+       | :
   :  |   |   | |Agent |  |                           +--+   |  OAM  | :
   :  |   |   | +-+--+-+  +-+------------+----------+-+  |   |Handler| :
   :  |   |   |   |  |      |            |          |    |   |       | :
   :  |   | +-+---++ | +----+-+  +-------+-------+  |    |   +---+---+ :
   :  |   | |ALTO  | +-+ VNTM |--+               |  |    |       |     :
   :  |   | |Server|   +--+-+-+  |               |  | +--+---+   |     :
   :  |   | +--+---+      | |    |      PCE      |  | | I2RS |   |     :
   :  |   |    |  +-------+ |    |               |  | |Client|   |     :
   :  |   |    |  |         |    |               |  | +-+--+-+   |     :
   :  | +-+----+--+-+       |    |               |  |   |  |     |     :
   :  | | Databases +-------:----+               |  |   |  |     |     :
   :  | |   TED     |       |    +-+---+----+----+  |   |  |     |     :
   :  | |  LSP-DB   |       |      |   |    |       |   |  |     |     :
   :  | +-----+--+--+     +-+---------------+-------+-+ |  |     |     :
   :  |       |  |        |    Provisioning Manager   | |  |     |     :
   :  |       |  |        +-----------------+---+-----+ |  |     |     :
   ...|.......|..|.................|...|....|...|.......|..|.....|......
      |       |  |                 |   |    |   |       |  |     |
      |     +-+--+-----------------+--------+-----------+----+   |
      +----/               Client Network Layer               \--+
      |   +----------------------------------------------------+ |
      |      |                         |        |          |     |
     ++------+-------------------------+--------+----------+-----+-+
    /                      Server Network Layers                    \
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------+

                    Figure 1: Generic ABNO Architecture

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1" href="#section-2.3.1">2.3.1</a>.  ABNO Components</span>

   This section describes the functional components shown as boxes in
   Figure 1.  The interactions between those components, the functional
   interfaces, are described in <a href="#section-2.3.2">Section 2.3.2</a>.










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<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.1" href="#section-2.3.1.1">2.3.1.1</a>.  NMS and OSS</span>

   A Network Management System (NMS) or an Operations Support System
   (OSS) can be used to control, operate, and manage a network.  Within
   the ABNO architecture, an NMS or OSS may issue high-level service
   requests to the ABNO Controller.  It may also establish policies for
   the activities of the components within the architecture.

   The NMS and OSS can be consumers of network events reported through
   the OAM Handler and can act on these reports as well as displaying
   them to users and raising alarms.  The NMS and OSS can also access
   the Traffic Engineering Database (TED) and Label Switched Path
   Database (LSP-DB) to show the users the current state of the network.

   Lastly, the NMS and OSS may utilize a direct programmatic or
   configuration interface to interact with the network elements within
   the network.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.2" href="#section-2.3.1.2">2.3.1.2</a>.  Application Service Coordinator</span>

   In addition to the NMS and OSS, services in the ABNO architecture may
   be requested by or on behalf of applications.  In this context, the
   term "application" is very broad.  An application may be a program
   that runs on a host or server and that provides services to a user,
   such as a video conferencing application.  Alternatively, an
   application may be a software tool that a user uses to make requests
   to the network to set up specific services such as end-to-end
   connections or scheduled bandwidth reservations.  Finally, an
   application may be a sophisticated control system that is responsible
   for arranging the provision of a more complex network service such as
   a virtual private network.

   For the sake of this architecture, all of these concepts of an
   application are grouped together and are shown as the Application
   Service Coordinator, since they are all in some way responsible for
   coordinating the activity of the network to provide services for use
   by applications.  In practice, the function of the Application
   Service Coordinator may be distributed across multiple applications
   or servers.

   The Application Service Coordinator communicates with the ABNO
   Controller to request operations on the network.









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<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.3" href="#section-2.3.1.3">2.3.1.3</a>.  ABNO Controller</span>

   The ABNO Controller is the main gateway to the network for the NMS,
   OSS, and Application Service Coordinator for the provision of
   advanced network coordination and functions.  The ABNO Controller
   governs the behavior of the network in response to changing network
   conditions and in accordance with application network requirements
   and policies.  It is the point of attachment, and it invokes the
   right components in the right order.

   The use cases in <a href="#section-3">Section 3</a> provide a clearer picture of how the ABNO
   Controller interacts with the other components in the ABNO
   architecture.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.4" href="#section-2.3.1.4">2.3.1.4</a>.  Policy Agent</span>

   Policy plays a very important role in the control and management of
   the network.  It is, therefore, significant in influencing how the
   key components of the ABNO architecture operate.

   Figure 1 shows the Policy Agent as a component that is configured by
   the NMS/OSS with the policies that it applies.  The Policy Agent is
   responsible for propagating those policies into the other components
   of the system.

   Simplicity in the figure necessitates leaving out many of the policy
   interactions that will take place.  Although the Policy Agent is only
   shown interacting with the ABNO Controller, the ALTO Server, and the
   Virtual Network Topology Manager (VNTM), it will also interact with a
   number of other components and the network elements themselves.  For
   example, the Path Computation Element (PCE) will be a Policy
   Enforcement Point (PEP) [<a href="./rfc2753" title="&quot;A Framework for Policy-based Admission Control&quot;">RFC2753</a>] as described in [<a href="./rfc5394" title="&quot;Policy-Enabled Path Computation Framework&quot;">RFC5394</a>], and the
   Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) Client will also be a PEP as
   noted in [<a href="#ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>].

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.5" href="#section-2.3.1.5">2.3.1.5</a>.  Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) Client</span>

   The Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) is described in
   [<a href="#ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>].  The interface provides a programmatic way to access
   (for read and write) the routing state and policy information on
   routers in the network.

   The I2RS Client is introduced in [<a href="#ref-I2RS-PS" title="&quot;Interface to the Routing System Problem Statement&quot;">I2RS-PS</a>].  Its purpose is to manage
   information requests across a number of routers (each of which runs
   an I2RS Agent) and coordinate setting or gathering state to/from
   those routers.





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<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.6" href="#section-2.3.1.6">2.3.1.6</a>.  OAM Handler</span>

   Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) plays a critical
   role in understanding how a network is operating, detecting faults,
   and taking the necessary action to react to problems in the network.

   Within the ABNO architecture, the OAM Handler is responsible for
   receiving notifications (often called alerts) from the network about
   potential problems, for correlating them, and for triggering other
   components of the system to take action to preserve or recover the
   services that were established by the ABNO Controller.  The OAM
   Handler also reports network problems and, in particular, service-
   affecting problems to the NMS, OSS, and Application Service
   Coordinator.

   Additionally, the OAM Handler interacts with the devices in the
   network to initiate OAM actions within the data plane, such as
   monitoring and testing.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.7" href="#section-2.3.1.7">2.3.1.7</a>.  Path Computation Element (PCE)</span>

   PCE is introduced in [<a href="./rfc4655" title="&quot;A Path Computation Element (PCE)-Based Architecture&quot;">RFC4655</a>].  It is a functional component that
   services requests to compute paths across a network graph.  In
   particular, it can generate traffic-engineered routes for MPLS-TE and
   GMPLS Label Switched Paths (LSPs).  The PCE may receive these
   requests from the ABNO Controller, from the Virtual Network Topology
   Manager, or from network elements themselves.

   The PCE operates on a view of the network topology stored in the
   Traffic Engineering Database (TED).  A more sophisticated computation
   may be provided by a Stateful PCE that enhances the TED with a
   database (the LSP-DB -- see <a href="#section-2.3.1.8.2">Section 2.3.1.8.2</a>) containing information
   about the LSPs that are provisioned and operational within the
   network as described in [<a href="./rfc4655" title="&quot;A Path Computation Element (PCE)-Based Architecture&quot;">RFC4655</a>] and [<a href="#ref-Stateful-PCE">Stateful-PCE</a>].

   Additional functionality in an Active PCE allows a functional
   component that includes a Stateful PCE to make provisioning requests
   to set up new services or to modify in-place services as described in
   [<a href="#ref-Stateful-PCE">Stateful-PCE</a>] and [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].  This function may directly access
   the network elements or may be channeled through the Provisioning
   Manager.

   Coordination between multiple PCEs operating on different TEDs can
   prove useful for performing path computation in multi-domain or
   multi-layer networks.  A domain in this case might be an Autonomous
   System (AS), thus enabling inter-AS path computation.





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   Since the PCE is a key component of the ABNO architecture, a better
   view of its role can be gained by examining the use cases described
   in <a href="#section-3">Section 3</a>.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.8" href="#section-2.3.1.8">2.3.1.8</a>.  Databases</span>

   The ABNO architecture includes a number of databases that contain
   information stored for use by the system.  The two main databases are
   the TED and the LSP Database (LSP-DB), but there may be a number of
   other databases used to contain information about topology (ALTO
   Server), policy (Policy Agent), services (ABNO Controller), etc.

   In the text that follows, specific key components that are consumers
   of the databases are highlighted.  It should be noted that the
   databases are available for inspection by any of the ABNO components.
   Updates to the databases should be handled with some care, since
   allowing multiple components to write to a database can be the cause
   of a number of contention and sequencing problems.

<span class="h6"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.8.1" href="#section-2.3.1.8.1">2.3.1.8.1</a>.  Traffic Engineering Database (TED)</span>

   The TED is a data store of topology information about a network that
   may be enhanced with capability data (such as metrics or bandwidth
   capacity) and active status information (such as up/down status or
   residual unreserved bandwidth).

   The TED may be built from information supplied by the network or from
   data (such as inventory details) sourced through the NMS/OSS.

   The principal use of the TED in the ABNO architecture is to provide
   the raw data on which the Path Computation Element operates.  But the
   TED may also be inspected by users at the NMS/OSS to view the current
   status of the network and may provide information to application
   services such as Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO)
   [<a href="./rfc5693" title="&quot;Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Problem Statement&quot;">RFC5693</a>].

<span class="h6"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.8.2" href="#section-2.3.1.8.2">2.3.1.8.2</a>.  LSP Database</span>

   The LSP-DB is a data store of information about LSPs that have been
   set up in the network or that could be established.  The information
   stored includes the paths and resource usage of the LSPs.

   The LSP-DB may be built from information generated locally.  For
   example, when LSPs are provisioned, the LSP-DB can be updated.  The
   database can also be constructed from information gathered from the
   network by polling or reading the state of LSPs that have already
   been set up.




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   The main use of the LSP-DB within the ABNO architecture is to enhance
   the planning and optimization of LSPs.  New LSPs can be established
   to be path-disjoint from other LSPs in order to offer protected
   services; LSPs can be rerouted in order to put them on more optimal
   paths or to make network resources available for other LSPs; LSPs can
   be rapidly repaired when a network failure is reported; LSPs can be
   moved onto other paths in order to avoid resources that have planned
   maintenance outages.  A Stateful PCE (see <a href="#section-2.3.1.7">Section 2.3.1.7</a>) is a
   primary consumer of the LSP-DB.

<span class="h6"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.8.3" href="#section-2.3.1.8.3">2.3.1.8.3</a>.  Shared Risk Link Group (SRLG) Databases</span>

   The TED may, itself, be supplemented by SRLG information that assigns
   to each network resource one or more identifiers that associate the
   resource with other resources in the same TED that share the same
   risk of failure.

   While this information can be highly useful, it may be supplemented
   by additional detailed information maintained in a separate database
   and indexed using the SRLG identifier from the TED.  Such a database
   can interpret SRLG information provided by other networks (such as
   server networks), can provide failure probabilities associated with
   each SRLG, can offer prioritization when SRLG-disjoint paths cannot
   be found, and can correlate SRLGs between different server networks
   or between different peer networks.

<span class="h6"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.8.4" href="#section-2.3.1.8.4">2.3.1.8.4</a>.  Other Databases</span>

   There may be other databases that are built within the ABNO system
   and that are referenced when operating the network.  These databases
   might include information about, for example, traffic flows and
   demands, predicted or scheduled traffic demands, link and node
   failure and repair history, network resources such as packet labels
   and physical labels (i.e., MPLS and GMPLS labels), etc.

   As mentioned in <a href="#section-2.3.1.8.1">Section 2.3.1.8.1</a>, the TED may be enhanced by
   inventory information.  It is quite likely in many networks that such
   an inventory is held in a separate database (the Inventory Database)
   that includes details of the manufacturer, model, installation date,
   etc.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.9" href="#section-2.3.1.9">2.3.1.9</a>.  ALTO Server</span>

   The ALTO Server provides network information to the application layer
   based on abstract maps of a network region.  This information
   provides a simplified view, but it is useful to steer application-
   layer traffic.  ALTO services enable service providers to share
   information about network locations and the costs of paths between



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   them.  The selection criteria to choose between two locations may
   depend on information such as maximum bandwidth, minimum cross-domain
   traffic, lower cost to the user, etc.

   The ALTO Server generates ALTO views to share information with the
   Application Service Coordinator so that it can better select paths in
   the network to carry application-layer traffic.  The ALTO views are
   computed based on information from the network databases, from
   policies configured by the Policy Agent, and through the algorithms
   used by the PCE.

   Specifically, the base ALTO protocol [<a href="./rfc7285" title="&quot;Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol&quot;">RFC7285</a>] defines a single-node
   abstract view of a network to the Application Service Coordinator.
   Such a view consists of two maps: a network map and a cost map.  A
   network map defines multiple Provider-defined Identifiers (PIDs),
   which represent entrance points to the network.  Each node in the
   application layer is known as an End Point (EP), and each EP is
   assigned to a PID, because PIDs are the entry points of the
   application in the network.  As defined in [<a href="./rfc7285" title="&quot;Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol&quot;">RFC7285</a>], a PID can
   denote a subnet, a set of subnets, a metropolitan area, a Point of
   Presence (PoP), etc.  Each such network region can be a single domain
   or multiple networks; it is just the view that the ALTO Server is
   exposing to the application layer.  A cost map provides costs between
   EPs and/or PIDs.  The criteria that the Application Service
   Coordinator uses to choose application routes between two locations
   may depend on attributes such as maximum bandwidth, minimum cross-
   domain traffic, lower cost to the user, etc.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.10" href="#section-2.3.1.10">2.3.1.10</a>.  Virtual Network Topology Manager (VNTM)</span>

   A Virtual Network Topology (VNT) is defined in [<a href="./rfc5212" title="&quot;Requirements for GMPLS-Based Multi- Region and Multi-Layer Networks (MRN/MLN)&quot;">RFC5212</a>] as a set of
   one or more LSPs in one or more lower-layer networks that provides
   information for efficient path handling in an upper-layer network.
   For instance, a set of LSPs in a wavelength division multiplexed
   (WDM) network can provide connectivity as virtual links in a higher-
   layer packet-switched network.

   The VNT enhances the physical/dedicated links that are available in
   the upper-layer network and is configured by setting up or tearing
   down the lower-layer LSPs and by advertising the changes into the
   higher-layer network.  The VNT can be adapted to traffic demands so
   that capacity in the higher-layer network can be created or released
   as needed.  Releasing unwanted VNT resources makes them available in
   the lower-layer network for other uses.







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   The creation of virtual topology for inclusion in a network is not a
   simple task.  Decisions must be made about which nodes in the upper
   layer it is best to connect, in which lower-layer network to
   provision LSPs to provide the connectivity, and how to route the LSPs
   in the lower-layer network.  Furthermore, some specific actions have
   to be taken to cause the lower-layer LSPs to be provisioned and the
   connectivity in the upper-layer network to be advertised.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5623">RFC5623</a>] describes how the VNTM may instantiate connections in the
   server layer in support of connectivity in the client layer.  Within
   the ABNO architecture, the creation of new connections may be
   delegated to the Provisioning Manager as discussed in
   <a href="#section-2.3.1.11">Section 2.3.1.11</a>.

   All of these actions and decisions are heavily influenced by policy,
   so the VNTM component that coordinates them takes input from the
   Policy Agent.  The VNTM is also closely associated with the PCE for
   the upper-layer network and each of the PCEs for the lower-layer
   networks.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.11" href="#section-2.3.1.11">2.3.1.11</a>.  Provisioning Manager</span>

   The Provisioning Manager is responsible for making or channeling
   requests for the establishment of LSPs.  This may be instructions to
   the control plane running in the networks or may involve the
   programming of individual network devices.  In the latter case, the
   Provisioning Manager may act as an OpenFlow Controller [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>].

   See <a href="#section-2.3.2.6">Section 2.3.2.6</a> for more details of the interactions between the
   Provisioning Manager and the network.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.1.12" href="#section-2.3.1.12">2.3.1.12</a>.  Client and Server Network Layers</span>

   The client and server networks are shown in Figure 1 as illustrative
   examples of the fact that the ABNO architecture may be used to
   coordinate services across multiple networks where lower-layer
   networks provide connectivity in upper-layer networks.

   <a href="#section-3.2">Section 3.2</a> describes a set of use cases for multi-layer networking.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2" href="#section-2.3.2">2.3.2</a>.  Functional Interfaces</span>

   This section describes the interfaces between functional components
   that might be externalized in an implementation allowing the
   components to be distributed across platforms.  Where existing
   protocols might provide all or most of the necessary capabilities,
   they are noted.  <a href="#appendix-A">Appendix A</a> notes the interfaces where more protocol
   specification may be needed.



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   As noted at the top of <a href="#section-2.3">Section 2.3</a>, it is important to understand
   that the relationships and interfaces shown between components in
   Figure 1 are illustrative of some of the common or likely
   interactions; however, this figure and the descriptions in the
   subsections below do not preclude other interfaces and relationships
   as necessary to realize specific functionality.  Thus, some of the
   interfaces described below might not be visible as specific
   relationships in Figure 1, but they can nevertheless exist.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.1" href="#section-2.3.2.1">2.3.2.1</a>.  Configuration and Programmatic Interfaces</span>

   The network devices may be configured or programmed directly from the
   NMS/OSS.  Many protocols already exist to perform these functions,
   including the following:

   - SNMP [<a href="./rfc3412" title="&quot;Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)&quot;">RFC3412</a>]

   - The Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>]

   - RESTCONF [<a href="#ref-RESTCONF" title="&quot;RESTCONF Protocol&quot;">RESTCONF</a>]

   - The General Switch Management Protocol (GSMP) [<a href="./rfc3292" title="&quot;General Switch Management Protocol (GSMP) V3&quot;">RFC3292</a>]

   - ForCES [<a href="./rfc5810" title="&quot;Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) Protocol Specification&quot;">RFC5810</a>]

   - OpenFlow [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>]

   - PCEP [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>]

   The TeleManagement Forum (TMF) Multi-Technology Operations Systems
   Interface (MTOSI) standard [<a href="#ref-TMF-MTOSI">TMF-MTOSI</a>] was developed to facilitate
   application-to-application interworking and provides network-level
   management capabilities to discover, configure, and activate
   resources.  Initially, the MTOSI information model was only capable
   of representing connection-oriented networks and resources.  In later
   releases, support was added for connectionless networks.  MTOSI is,
   from the NMS perspective, a north-bound interface and is based on
   SOAP web services.

   From the ABNO perspective, network configuration is a pass-through
   function.  It can be seen represented on the left-hand side of
   Figure 1.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.2" href="#section-2.3.2.2">2.3.2.2</a>.  TED Construction from the Networks</span>

   As described in <a href="#section-2.3.1.8">Section 2.3.1.8</a>, the TED provides details of the
   capabilities and state of the network for use by the ABNO system and
   the PCE in particular.



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   The TED can be constructed by participating in the IGP-TE protocols
   run by the networks (for example, OSPF-TE [<a href="./rfc3630" title="&quot;Traffic Engineering (TE) Extensions to OSPF Version 2&quot;">RFC3630</a>] and IS-IS TE
   [<a href="./rfc5305" title="&quot;IS-IS Extensions for Traffic Engineering&quot;">RFC5305</a>]).  Alternatively, the TED may be fed using link-state
   distribution extensions to BGP [<a href="#ref-BGP-LS" title="&quot;North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and TE Information using BGP&quot;">BGP-LS</a>].

   The ABNO system may maintain a single TED unified across multiple
   networks or may retain a separate TED for each network.

   Additionally, an ALTO Server [<a href="./rfc5693" title="&quot;Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Problem Statement&quot;">RFC5693</a>] may provide an abstracted
   topology from a network to build an application-level TED that can be
   used by a PCE to compute paths between servers and application-layer
   entities for the provision of application services.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.3" href="#section-2.3.2.3">2.3.2.3</a>.  TED Enhancement</span>

   The TED may be enhanced by inventory information supplied from the
   NMS/OSS.  This may supplement the data collected as described in
   <a href="#section-2.3.2.2">Section 2.3.2.2</a> with information that is not normally distributed
   within the network, such as node types and capabilities, or the
   characteristics of optical links.

   No protocol is currently identified for this interface, but the
   protocol developed or adopted to satisfy the requirements of the
   Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) [<a href="#ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>] may be a suitable
   candidate because it is required to be able to distribute bulk
   routing state information in a well-defined encoding language.
   Another candidate protocol may be NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] passing data
   encoded using YANG [<a href="./rfc6020" title="&quot;YANG - A Data Modeling Language for the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6020</a>].

   Note that, in general, any combination of protocol and encoding that
   is suitable for presenting the TED as described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.4">Section 2.3.2.4</a>
   will likely be suitable (or could be made suitable) for enabling
   write-access to the TED as described in this section.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.4" href="#section-2.3.2.4">2.3.2.4</a>.  TED Presentation</span>

   The TED may be presented north-bound from the ABNO system for use by
   an NMS/OSS or by the Application Service Coordinator.  This allows
   users and applications to get a view of the network topology and the
   status of the network resources.  It also allows planning and
   provisioning of application services.

   There are several protocols available for exporting the TED north-
   bound:

   - The ALTO protocol [<a href="./rfc7285" title="&quot;Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol&quot;">RFC7285</a>] is designed to distribute the
     abstracted topology used by an ALTO Server and may prove useful for
     exporting the TED.  The ALTO Server provides the cost between EPs



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     or between PIDs, so the application layer can select which is the
     most appropriate connection for the information exchange between
     its application end points.

   - The same protocol used to export topology information from the
     network can be used to export the topology from the TED [<a href="#ref-BGP-LS" title="&quot;North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and TE Information using BGP&quot;">BGP-LS</a>].

   - The I2RS [<a href="#ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>] will require a protocol that is capable of
     handling bulk routing information exchanges that would be suitable
     for exporting the TED.  In this case, it would make sense to have a
     standardized representation of the TED in a formal data modeling
     language such as YANG [<a href="./rfc6020" title="&quot;YANG - A Data Modeling Language for the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6020</a>] so that an existing protocol such
     as NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] or the Extensible Messaging and Presence
     Protocol (XMPP) [<a href="./rfc6120" title="&quot;Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core&quot;">RFC6120</a>] could be used.

   Note that export from the TED can be a full dump of the content
   (expressed in a suitable abstraction language) as described above, or
   it could be an aggregated or filtered set of data based on policies
   or specific requirements.  Thus, the relationships shown in Figure 1
   may be a little simplistic in that the ABNO Controller may also be
   involved in preparing and presenting the TED information over a
   north-bound interface.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.5" href="#section-2.3.2.5">2.3.2.5</a>.  Path Computation Requests from the Network</span>

   As originally specified in the PCE architecture [<a href="./rfc4655" title="&quot;A Path Computation Element (PCE)-Based Architecture&quot;">RFC4655</a>], network
   elements can make path computation requests to a PCE using PCEP
   [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>].  This facilitates the network setting up LSPs in response
   to simple connectivity requests, and it allows the network to
   reoptimize or repair LSPs.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.6" href="#section-2.3.2.6">2.3.2.6</a>.  Provisioning Manager Control of Networks</span>

   As described in <a href="#section-2.3.1.11">Section 2.3.1.11</a>, the Provisioning Manager makes or
   channels requests to provision resources in the network.  These
   operations can take place at two levels: there can be requests to
   program/configure specific resources in the data or forwarding
   planes, and there can be requests to trigger a set of actions to be
   programmed with the assistance of a control plane.












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   A number of protocols already exist to provision network resources,
   as follows:

   o  Program/configure specific network resources

      - ForCES [<a href="./rfc5810" title="&quot;Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) Protocol Specification&quot;">RFC5810</a>] defines a protocol for separation of the
        control element (the Provisioning Manager) from the forwarding
        elements in each node in the network.

      - The General Switch Management Protocol (GSMP) [<a href="./rfc3292" title="&quot;General Switch Management Protocol (GSMP) V3&quot;">RFC3292</a>] is an
        asymmetric protocol that allows one or more external switch
        controllers (such as the Provisioning Manager) to establish and
        maintain the state of a label switch such as an MPLS switch.

      - OpenFlow [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>] is a communications protocol that gives an
        OpenFlow Controller (such as the Provisioning Manager) access to
        the forwarding plane of a network switch or router in the
        network.

      - Historically, other configuration-based mechanisms have been
        used to set up the forwarding/switching state at individual
        nodes within networks.  Such mechanisms have ranged from
        non-standard command line interfaces (CLIs) to various
        standards-based options such as Transaction Language 1 (TL1)
        [<a href="#ref-TL1" title="&quot;Operations Application Messages - Language For Operations Application Messages&quot;">TL1</a>] and SNMP [<a href="./rfc3412" title="&quot;Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)&quot;">RFC3412</a>].  These mechanisms are not designed for
        rapid operation of a network and are not easily programmatic.
        They are not proposed for use by the Provisioning Manager as
        part of the ABNO architecture.

      - NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] provides a more active configuration protocol
        that may be suitable for bulk programming of network resources.
        Its use in this way is dependent on suitable YANG modules being
        defined for the necessary options.  Early work in the IETF's
        NETMOD working group is focused on a higher level of routing
        function more comparable with the function discussed in
        <a href="#section-2.3.2.8">Section 2.3.2.8</a>; see [<a href="#ref-YANG-Rtg" title="&quot;A YANG Data Model for Routing Management&quot;">YANG-Rtg</a>].

      - The [<a href="#ref-TMF-MTOSI">TMF-MTOSI</a>] specification provides provisioning, activation,
        deactivation, and release of resources via the Service
        Activation Interface (SAI).  The Common Communication Vehicle
        (CCV) is the middleware required to implement MTOSI.  The CCV is
        then used to provide middleware abstraction in combination with
        the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) to allow MTOSIs to
        be bound to different middleware technologies as needed.







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   o  Trigger actions through the control plane

      - LSPs can be requested using a management system interface to the
        head end of the LSP using tools such as CLIs, TL1 [<a href="#ref-TL1" title="&quot;Operations Application Messages - Language For Operations Application Messages&quot;">TL1</a>], or SNMP
        [<a href="./rfc3412" title="&quot;Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)&quot;">RFC3412</a>].  Configuration at this granularity is not as time-
        critical as when individual network resources are programmed,
        because the main task of programming end-to-end connectivity is
        devolved to the control plane.  Nevertheless, these mechanisms
        remain unsuitable for programmatic control of the network and
        are not proposed for use by the Provisioning Manager as part of
        the ABNO architecture.

      - As noted above, NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] provides a more active
        configuration protocol.  This may be particularly suitable for
        requesting the establishment of LSPs.  Work would be needed to
        complete a suitable YANG module.

      - The PCE Communication Protocol (PCEP) [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>] has been
        proposed as a suitable protocol for requesting the establishment
        of LSPs [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].  This works well, because the protocol
        elements necessary are exactly the same as those used to respond
        to a path computation request.

        The functional element that issues PCEP requests to establish
        LSPs is known as an "Active PCE"; however, it should be noted
        that the ABNO functional component responsible for requesting
        LSPs is the Provisioning Manager.  Other controllers like the
        VNTM and the ABNO Controller use the services of the
        Provisioning Manager to isolate the twin functions of computing
        and requesting paths from the provisioning mechanisms in place
        with any given network.

   Note that I2RS does not provide a mechanism for control of network
   resources at this level, as it is designed to provide control of
   routing state in routers, not forwarding state in the data plane.
















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<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.7" href="#section-2.3.2.7">2.3.2.7</a>.  Auditing the Network</span>

   Once resources have been provisioned or connections established in
   the network, it is important that the ABNO system can determine the
   state of the network.  Similarly, when provisioned resources are
   modified or taken out of service, the changes in the network need to
   be understood by the ABNO system.  This function falls into four
   categories:

   - Updates to the TED are gathered as described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.2">Section 2.3.2.2</a>.

   - Explicit notification of the successful establishment and the
     subsequent state of the LSP can be provided through extensions to
     PCEP as described in [<a href="#ref-Stateful-PCE">Stateful-PCE</a>] and [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].

   - OAM can be commissioned and the results inspected by the OAM
     Handler as described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.14">Section 2.3.2.14</a>.

   - A number of ABNO components may make inquiries and inspect network
     state through a variety of techniques, including I2RS, NETCONF, or
     SNMP.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.8" href="#section-2.3.2.8">2.3.2.8</a>.  Controlling the Routing System</span>

   As discussed in <a href="#section-2.3.1.5">Section 2.3.1.5</a>, the Interface to the Routing System
   (I2RS) provides a programmatic way to access (for read and write) the
   routing state and policy information on routers in the network.  The
   I2RS Client issues requests to routers in the network to establish or
   retrieve routing state.  Those requests utilize the I2RS protocol,
   which will be based on a combination of NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] and
   RESTCONF [<a href="#ref-RESTCONF" title="&quot;RESTCONF Protocol&quot;">RESTCONF</a>] with some additional features.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.9" href="#section-2.3.2.9">2.3.2.9</a>.  ABNO Controller Interface to PCE</span>

   The ABNO Controller needs to be able to consult the PCE to determine
   what services can be provisioned in the network.  There is no reason
   why this interface cannot be based on standard PCEP as defined in
   [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>].

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.10" href="#section-2.3.2.10">2.3.2.10</a>.  VNTM Interface to and from PCE</span>

   There are two interactions between the Virtual Network Topology
   Manager and the PCE:

   The first interaction is used when VNTM wants to determine what LSPs
   can be set up in a network: in this case, it uses the standard PCEP
   interface [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>] to make path computation requests.




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   The second interaction arises when a PCE determines that it cannot
   compute a requested path or notices that (according to some
   configured policy) a network is low on resources (for example, the
   capacity on some key link is nearly exhausted).  In this case, the
   PCE may notify the VNTM, which may (again according to policy) act to
   construct more virtual topology.  This second interface is not
   currently specified, although it may be that the protocol selected or
   designed to satisfy I2RS will provide suitable features (see
   <a href="#section-2.3.2.8">Section 2.3.2.8</a>); alternatively, an extension to the PCEP Notify
   message (PCNtf) [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>] could be made.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.11" href="#section-2.3.2.11">2.3.2.11</a>.  ABNO Control Interfaces</span>

   The north-bound interface from the ABNO Controller is used by the
   NMS, OSS, and Application Service Coordinator to request services in
   the network in support of applications.  The interface will also need
   to be able to report the asynchronous completion of service requests
   and convey changes in the status of services.

   This interface will also need strong capabilities for security,
   authentication, and policy.

   This interface is not currently specified.  It needs to be a
   transactional interface that supports the specification of abstract
   services with adequate flexibility to facilitate easy extension and
   yet be concise and easily parsable.

   It is possible that the protocol designed to satisfy I2RS will
   provide suitable features (see <a href="#section-2.3.2.8">Section 2.3.2.8</a>).

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.12" href="#section-2.3.2.12">2.3.2.12</a>.  ABNO Provisioning Requests</span>

   Under some circumstances, the ABNO Controller may make requests
   directly to the Provisioning Manager.  For example, if the
   Provisioning Manager is acting as an SDN Controller, then the ABNO
   Controller may use one of the APIs defined to allow requests to be
   made to the SDN Controller (such as the Floodlight REST API [<a href="#ref-Flood" title="&quot;Floodlight REST API&quot;">Flood</a>]).
   Alternatively, since the Provisioning Manager may also receive
   instructions from a Stateful PCE, the use of PCEP extensions might be
   appropriate in some cases [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].











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<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.13" href="#section-2.3.2.13">2.3.2.13</a>.  Policy Interfaces</span>

   As described in <a href="#section-2.3.1.4">Section 2.3.1.4</a> and throughout this document, policy
   forms a critical component of the ABNO architecture.  The role of
   policy will include enforcing the following rules and requirements:

   - Adding resources on demand should be gated by the authorized
     capability.

   - Client microflows should not trigger server-layer setup or
     allocation.

   - Accounting capabilities should be supported.

   - Security mechanisms for authorization of requests and capabilities
     are required.

   Other policy-related functionality in the system might include the
   policy behavior of the routing and forwarding system, such as:

   - ECMP behavior

   - Classification of packets onto LSPs or QoS categories.

   Various policy-capable architectures have been defined, including a
   framework for using policy with a PCE-enabled system [<a href="./rfc5394" title="&quot;Policy-Enabled Path Computation Framework&quot;">RFC5394</a>].
   However, the take-up of the IETF's Common Open Policy Service
   protocol (COPS) [<a href="./rfc2748" title="&quot;The COPS (Common Open Policy Service) Protocol&quot;">RFC2748</a>] has been poor.

   New work will be needed to define all of the policy interfaces within
   the ABNO architecture.  Work will also be needed to determine which
   are internal interfaces and which may be external and so in need of a
   protocol specification.  There is some discussion that the I2RS
   protocol may support the configuration and manipulation of policies.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-2.3.2.14" href="#section-2.3.2.14">2.3.2.14</a>.  OAM and Reporting</span>

   The OAM Handler must interact with the network to perform several
   actions:

   - Enabling OAM function within the network.

   - Performing proactive OAM operations in the network.

   - Receiving notifications of network events.






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   Any of the configuration and programmatic interfaces described in
   <a href="#section-2.3.2.1">Section 2.3.2.1</a> may serve this purpose.  NETCONF notifications are
   described in [<a href="./rfc5277" title="&quot;NETCONF Event Notifications&quot;">RFC5277</a>], and OpenFlow supports a number of
   asynchronous event notifications [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>].  Additionally, Syslog
   [<a href="./rfc5424" title="&quot;The Syslog Protocol&quot;">RFC5424</a>] is a protocol for reporting events from the network, and IP
   Flow Information Export (IPFIX) [<a href="./rfc7011" title="&quot;Specification of the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Protocol for the Exchange of Flow Information&quot;">RFC7011</a>] is designed to allow
   network statistics to be aggregated and reported.

   The OAM Handler also correlates events reported from the network and
   reports them onward to the ABNO Controller (which can apply the
   information to the recovery of services that it has provisioned) and
   to the NMS, OSS, and Application Service Coordinator.  The reporting
   mechanism used here can be essentially the same as the mechanism used
   when events are reported from the network; no new protocol is needed,
   although new data models may be required for technology-independent
   OAM reporting.

<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-3" href="#section-3">3</a>.  ABNO Use Cases</span>

   This section provides a number of examples of how the ABNO
   architecture can be applied to provide application-driven and
   NMS/OSS-driven network operations.  The purpose of these examples is
   to give some concrete material to demonstrate the architecture so
   that it may be more easily comprehended, and to illustrate that the
   application of the architecture is achieved by "profiling" and by
   selecting only the relevant components and interfaces.

   Similarly, it is not the intention that this section contain a
   complete list of all possible applications of ABNO.  The examples are
   intended to broadly cover a number of applications that are commonly
   discussed, but this does not preclude other use cases.

   The descriptions in this section are not fully detailed applicability
   statements for ABNO.  It is anticipated that such applicability
   statements, for the use cases described and for other use cases,
   could be suitable material for separate documents.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.1" href="#section-3.1">3.1</a>.  Inter-AS Connectivity</span>

   The following use case describes how the ABNO framework can be used
   to set up an end-to-end MPLS service across multiple Autonomous
   Systems (ASes).  Consider the simple network topology shown in
   Figure 2.  The three ASes (ASa, ASb, and ASc) are connected at AS
   Border Routers (ASBRs) a1, a2, b1 through b4, c1, and c2.  A source
   node (s) located in ASa is to be connected to a destination node (d)
   located in ASc.  The optimal path for the LSP from s to d must be
   computed, and then the network must be triggered to set up the LSP.




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          +--------------+ +-----------------+ +--------------+
          |ASa           | |       ASb       | |          ASc |
          |         +--+ | | +--+       +--+ | | +--+         |
          |         |a1|-|-|-|b1|       |b3|-|-|-|c1|         |
          | +-+     +--+ | | +--+       +--+ | | +--+     +-+ |
          | |s|          | |                 | |          |d| |
          | +-+     +--+ | | +--+       +--+ | | +--+     +-+ |
          |         |a2|-|-|-|b2|       |b4|-|-|-|c2|         |
          |         +--+ | | +--+       +--+ | | +--+         |
          |              | |                 | |              |
          +--------------+ +-----------------+ +--------------+

   Figure 2: Inter-AS Domain Topology with Hierarchical PCE (Parent PCE)

   The following steps are performed to deliver the service within the
   ABNO architecture:

   1. Request Management

      As shown in Figure 3, the NMS/OSS issues a request to the ABNO
      Controller for a path between s and d.  The ABNO Controller
      verifies that the NMS/OSS has sufficient rights to make the
      service request.

                                 +---------------------+
                                 |       NMS/OSS       |
                                 +----------+----------+
                                            |
                                            V
                  +--------+    +-----------+-------------+
                  | Policy +--&gt;-+     ABNO Controller     |
                  | Agent  |    |                         |
                  +--------+    +-------------------------+

                      Figure 3: ABNO Request Management

   2. Service Path Computation with Hierarchical PCE

      The ABNO Controller needs to determine an end-to-end path for the
      LSP.  Since the ASes will want to maintain a degree of
      confidentiality about their internal resources and topology, they
      will not share a TED and each will have its own PCE.  In such a
      situation, the Hierarchical PCE (H-PCE) architecture described in
      [<a href="./rfc6805" title="&quot;The Application of the Path Computation Element Architecture to the Determination of a Sequence of Domains in MPLS and GMPLS&quot;">RFC6805</a>] is applicable.

      As shown in Figure 4, the ABNO Controller sends a request to the
      parent PCE for an end-to-end path.  As described in [<a href="./rfc6805" title="&quot;The Application of the Path Computation Element Architecture to the Determination of a Sequence of Domains in MPLS and GMPLS&quot;">RFC6805</a>], the
      parent PCE consults its TED, which shows the connectivity between



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      ASes.  This helps it understand that the end-to-end path must
      cross each of ASa, ASb, and ASc, so it sends individual path
      computation requests to each of PCEs a, b, and c to determine the
      best options for crossing the ASes.

      Each child PCE applies policy to the requests it receives to
      determine whether the request is to be allowed and to select the
      types of network resources that can be used in the computation
      result.  For confidentiality reasons, each child PCE may supply
      its computation responses using a path key [<a href="./rfc5520" title="&quot;Preserving Topology Confidentiality in Inter-Domain Path Computation Using a Path-Key-Based Mechanism&quot;">RFC5520</a>] to hide the
      details of the path segment it has computed.

                           +-----------------+
                           | ABNO Controller |
                           +----+-------+----+
                                |       A
                                V       |
                             +--+-------+--+   +--------+
               +--------+    |             |   |        |
               | Policy +--&gt;-+ Parent PCE  +---+ AS TED |
               | Agent  |    |             |   |        |
               +--------+    +-+----+----+-+   +--------+
                              /     |     \
                             /      |      \
                      +-----+-+ +---+---+ +-+-----+
                      |       | |       | |       |
                      | PCE a | | PCE b | | PCE c |
                      |       | |       | |       |
                      +---+---+ +---+---+ +---+---+
                          |         |         |
                       +--+--+   +--+--+   +--+--+
                       | TEDa|   | TEDb|   | TEDc|
                       +-----+   +-----+   +-----+

           Figure 4: Path Computation Request with Hierarchical PCE

      The parent PCE collates the responses from the children and
      applies its own policy to stitch them together into the best
      end-to-end path, which it returns as a response to the ABNO
      Controller.











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   3. Provisioning the End-to-End LSP

      There are several options for how the end-to-end LSP gets
      provisioned in the ABNO architecture.  Some of these are described
      below.

      3a. Provisioning from the ABNO Controller with a Control Plane

          Figure 5 shows how the ABNO Controller makes a request through
          the Provisioning Manager to establish the end-to-end LSP.  As
          described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.6">Section 2.3.2.6</a>, these interactions can use the
          NETCONF protocol [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] or the extensions to PCEP described
          in [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].  In either case, the provisioning request
          is sent to the head-end Label Switching Router (LSR), and that
          LSR signals in the control plane (using a protocol such as
          RSVP-TE [<a href="./rfc3209" title="&quot;RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP Tunnels&quot;">RFC3209</a>]) to cause the LSP to be established.

                            +-----------------+
                            | ABNO Controller |
                            +--------+--------+
                                     |
                                     V
                              +------+-------+
                              | Provisioning |
                              | Manager      |
                              +------+-------+
                                     |
                                     V
                +--------------------+------------------------+
               /                  Network                      \
              +-------------------------------------------------+

                    Figure 5: Provisioning the End-to-End LSP

      3b. Provisioning through Programming Network Resources

          Another option is that the LSP is provisioned hop by hop from
          the Provisioning Manager using a mechanism such as ForCES
          [<a href="./rfc5810" title="&quot;Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) Protocol Specification&quot;">RFC5810</a>] or OpenFlow [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>] as described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.6">Section 2.3.2.6</a>.
          In this case, the picture is the same as that shown in
          Figure 5.  The interaction between the ABNO Controller and the
          Provisioning Manager will be PCEP or NETCONF as described in
          option 3a, and the Provisioning Manager will be responsible
          for fanning out the requests to the individual network
          elements.






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      3c. Provisioning with an Active Parent PCE

          The Active PCE is described in <a href="#section-2.3.1.7">Section 2.3.1.7</a>, based on the
          concepts expressed in [<a href="#ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>].  In this approach, the
          process described in option 3a is modified such that the PCE
          issues a direct PCEP command to the network, without a
          response being first returned to the ABNO Controller.

          This situation is shown in Figure 6 and could be modified so
          that the Provisioning Manager still programs the individual
          network elements as described in option 3b.

                  +-----------------+
                  | ABNO Controller |
                  +----+------------+
                       |
                       V
                    +--+----------+         +--------------+
      +--------+    |             |         | Provisioning |
      | Policy +--&gt;-+ Parent PCE  +----&gt;----+ Manager      |
      | Agent  |    |             |         |              |
      +--------+    +-+----+----+-+         +-----+--------+
                     /     |     \                |
                    /      |      \               |
             +-----+-+ +---+---+ +-+-----+        V
             |       | |       | |       |        |
             | PCE a | | PCE b | | PCE c |        |
             |       | |       | |       |        |
             +-------+ +-------+ +-------+        |
                                                  |
                 +--------------------------------+------------+
                /                  Network                      \
               +-------------------------------------------------+

               Figure 6: LSP Provisioning with an Active PCE

      3d. Provisioning with Active Child PCEs and Segment Stitching

          A mixture of the approaches described in options 3b and 3c can
          result in a combination of mechanisms to program the network
          to provide the end-to-end LSP.  Figure 7 shows how each child
          PCE can be an Active PCE responsible for setting up an edge-
          to-edge LSP segment across one of the ASes.  The ABNO
          Controller then uses the Provisioning Manager to program the
          inter-AS connections using ForCES or OpenFlow, and the LSP
          segments are stitched together following the ideas described
          in [<a href="./rfc5150" title="&quot;Label Switched Path Stitching with Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching Traffic Engineering (GMPLS TE)&quot;">RFC5150</a>].  Philosophers may debate whether the parent PCE




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          in this model is active (instructing the children to provision
          LSP segments) or passive (requesting path segments that the
          children provision).

                           +-----------------+
                           | ABNO Controller +--------&gt;--------+
                           +----+-------+----+                 |
                                |       A                      |
                                V       |                      |
                             +--+-------+--+                   |
               +--------+    |             |                   |
               | Policy +--&gt;-+ Parent PCE  |                   |
               | Agent  |    |             |                   |
               +--------+    ++-----+-----++                   |
                             /      |      \                   |
                            /       |       \                  |
                       +---+-+   +--+--+   +-+---+             |
                       |     |   |     |   |     |             |
                       |PCE a|   |PCE b|   |PCE c|             |
                       |     |   |     |   |     |             V
                       +--+--+   +--+--+   +---+-+             |
                          |         |          |               |
                          V         V          V               |
               +----------+-+ +------------+ +-+----------+    |
               |Provisioning| |Provisioning| |Provisioning|    |
               |Manager     | |Manager     | |Manager     |    |
               +-+----------+ +-----+------+ +-----+------+    |
                 |                  |              |           |
                 V                  V              V           |
              +--+-----+       +----+---+       +--+-----+     |
             /   AS a   \=====/   AS b   \=====/   AS c   \    |
            +------------+ A +------------+ A +------------+   |
                           |                |                  |
                     +-----+----------------+-----+            |
                     |    Provisioning Manager    +----&lt;-------+
                     +----------------------------+

      Figure 7: LSP Provisioning with Active Child PCEs and Stitching

   4. Verification of Service

      The ABNO Controller will need to ascertain that the end-to-end LSP
      has been set up as requested.  In the case of a control plane
      being used to establish the LSP, the head-end LSR may send a
      notification (perhaps using PCEP) to report successful setup, but
      to be sure that the LSP is up, the ABNO Controller will request
      the OAM Handler to perform Continuity Check OAM in the data plane
      and report back that the LSP is ready to carry traffic.



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   5. Notification of Service Fulfillment

      Finally, when the ABNO Controller is satisfied that the requested
      service is ready to carry traffic, it will notify the NMS/OSS.
      The delivery of the service may be further checked through
      auditing the network, as described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.7">Section 2.3.2.7</a>.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.2" href="#section-3.2">3.2</a>.  Multi-Layer Networking</span>

   Networks are typically constructed using multiple layers.  These
   layers represent separations of administrative regions or of
   technologies and may also represent a distinction between client and
   server networking roles.

   It is preferable to coordinate network resource control and
   utilization (i.e., consideration and control of multiple layers),
   rather than controlling and optimizing resources at each layer
   independently.  This facilitates network efficiency and network
   automation and may be defined as inter-layer traffic engineering.

   The PCE architecture supports inter-layer traffic engineering
   [<a href="./rfc5623" title="&quot;Framework for PCE-Based Inter-Layer MPLS and GMPLS Traffic Engineering&quot;">RFC5623</a>] and, in combination with the ABNO architecture, provides a
   suite of capabilities for network resource coordination across
   multiple layers.

   The following use case demonstrates ABNO used to coordinate
   allocation of server-layer network resources to create virtual
   topology in a client-layer network in order to satisfy a request for
   end-to-end client-layer connectivity.  Consider the simple multi-
   layer network in Figure 8.

      +--+   +--+   +--+                    +--+   +--+   +--+
      |P1|---|P2|---|P3|                    |P4|---|P5|---|P6|
      +--+   +--+   +--+                    +--+   +--+   +--+
                        \                  /
                         \                /
                          +--+  +--+  +--+
                          |L1|--|L2|--|L3|
                          +--+  +--+  +--+

                       Figure 8: Multi-Layer Network

   There are six packet-layer routers (P1 through P6) and three optical-
   layer lambda switches (L1 through L3).  There is connectivity in the
   packet layer between routers P1, P2, and P3, and also between routers
   P4, P5, and P6, but there is no packet-layer connectivity between
   these two islands of routers, perhaps because of a network failure or
   perhaps because all existing bandwidth between the islands has



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   already been used up.  However, there is connectivity in the optical
   layer between switches L1, L2, and L3, and the optical network is
   connected out to routers P3 and P4 (they have optical line cards).
   In this example, a packet-layer connection (an MPLS LSP) is desired
   between P1 and P6.

   In the ABNO architecture, the following steps are performed to
   deliver the service.

   1. Request Management

      As shown in Figure 9, the Application Service Coordinator issues a
      request for connectivity from P1 to P6 in the packet-layer
      network.  That is, the Application Service Coordinator requests an
      MPLS LSP with a specific bandwidth to carry traffic for its
      application.  The ABNO Controller verifies that the Application
      Service Coordinator has sufficient rights to make the service
      request.

                             +---------------------------+
                             |    Application Service    |
                             |        Coordinator        |
                             +-------------+-------------+
                                           |
                                           V
                   +------+   +------------+------------+
                   |Policy+-&gt;-+     ABNO Controller     |
                   |Agent |   |                         |
                   +------+   +-------------------------+

         Figure 9: Application Service Coordinator Request Management

   2. Service Path Computation in the Packet Layer

      The ABNO Controller sends a path computation request to the
      packet-layer PCE to compute a suitable path for the requested LSP,
      as shown in Figure 10.  The PCE uses the appropriate policy for
      the request and consults the TED for the packet layer.  It
      determines that no path is immediately available.












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                             +-----------------+
                             | ABNO Controller |
                             +----+------------+
                                  |
                                  V
                +--------+     +--+-----------+   +--------+
                | Policy +--&gt;--+ Packet-Layer +---+ Packet |
                | Agent  |     |      PCE     |   |   TED  |
                +--------+     +--------------+   +--------+

                     Figure 10: Path Computation Request

   3. Invocation of VNTM and Path Computation in the Optical Layer

      After the path computation failure in step 2, instead of notifying
      the ABNO Controller of the failure, the PCE invokes the VNTM to
      see whether it can create the necessary link in the virtual
      network topology to bridge the gap.

      As shown in Figure 11, the packet-layer PCE reports the
      connectivity problem to the VNTM, and the VNTM consults policy to
      determine what it is allowed to do.  Assuming that the policy
      allows it, the VNTM asks the optical-layer PCE to find a path
      across the optical network that could be provisioned to provide a
      virtual link for the packet layer.  In addressing this request,
      the optical-layer PCE consults a TED for the optical-layer
      network.

                                 +------+
                  +--------+     |      |     +--------------+
                  | Policy +--&gt;--+ VNTM +--&lt;--+ Packet-Layer |
                  | Agent  |     |      |     |      PCE     |
                  +--------+     +---+--+     +--------------+
                                     |
                                     V
                               +---------------+   +---------+
                               | Optical-Layer +---+ Optical |
                               |      PCE      |   |   TED   |
                               +---------------+   +---------+

       Figure 11: Invocation of VNTM and Optical-Layer Path Computation

   4. Provisioning in the Optical Layer

      Once a path has been found across the optical-layer network, it
      needs to be provisioned.  The options follow those in step 3 of
      <a href="#section-3.1">Section 3.1</a>.  That is, provisioning can be initiated by the
      optical-layer PCE or by its user, the VNTM.  The command can be



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      sent to the head end of the optical LSP (P3) so that the control
      plane (for example, GMPLS RSVP-TE [<a href="./rfc3473" title="&quot;Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Resource ReserVation Protocol- Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) Extensions&quot;">RFC3473</a>]) can be used to
      provision the LSP.  Alternatively, the network resources can be
      provisioned directly, using any of the mechanisms described in
      <a href="#section-2.3.2.6">Section 2.3.2.6</a>.

   5. Creation of Virtual Topology in the Packet Layer

      Once the LSP has been set up in the optical layer, it can be made
      available in the packet layer as a virtual link.  If the GMPLS
      signaling used the mechanisms described in [<a href="./rfc6107" title="&quot;Procedures for Dynamically Signaled Hierarchical Label Switched Paths&quot;">RFC6107</a>], this process
      can be automated within the control plane; otherwise, it may
      require a specific instruction to the head-end router of the
      optical LSP (for example, through I2RS).

      Once the virtual link is created as shown in Figure 12, it is
      advertised in the IGP for the packet-layer network, and the link
      will appear in the TED for the packet-layer network.

                     +--------+
                     | Packet |
                     |   TED  |
                     +------+-+
                            A
                            |
                           +--+                    +--+
                           |P3|....................|P4|
                           +--+                    +--+
                               \                  /
                                \                /
                                 +--+  +--+  +--+
                                 |L1|--|L2|--|L3|
                                 +--+  +--+  +--+

                Figure 12: Advertisement of a New Virtual Link

   6. Path Computation Completion and Provisioning in the Packet Layer

      Now there are sufficient resources in the packet-layer network.
      The PCE for the packet layer can complete its work, and the MPLS
      LSP can be provisioned as described in <a href="#section-3.1">Section 3.1</a>.

   7. Verification and Notification of Service Fulfillment

      As discussed in <a href="#section-3.1">Section 3.1</a>, the ABNO Controller will need to
      verify that the end-to-end LSP has been correctly established
      before reporting service fulfillment to the Application Service
      Coordinator.



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      Furthermore, it is highly likely that service verification will be
      necessary before the optical-layer LSP can be put into service as
      a virtual link.  Thus, the VNTM will need to coordinate with the
      OAM Handler to ensure that the LSP is ready for use.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.2.1" href="#section-3.2.1">3.2.1</a>.  Data Center Interconnection across Multi-Layer Networks</span>

   In order to support new and emerging cloud-based applications, such
   as real-time data backup, virtual machine migration, server
   clustering, or load reorganization, the dynamic provisioning and
   allocation of IT resources and the interconnection of multiple,
   remote Data Centers (DCs) is a growing requirement.

   These operations require traffic being delivered between data
   centers, and, typically, the connections providing such inter-DC
   connectivity are provisioned using static circuits or dedicated
   leased lines, leading to an inefficiency in terms of resource
   utilization.  Moreover, a basic requirement is that such a group of
   remote DCs can be operated logically as one.

   In such environments, the data plane technology is operator and
   provider dependent.  Their customers may rent lambda switch capable
   (LSC), packet switch capable (PSC), or time division multiplexing
   (TDM) services, and the application and usage of the ABNO
   architecture and Controller enable the required dynamic end-to-end
   network service provisioning, regardless of underlying service and
   transport layers.

   Consequently, the interconnection of DCs may involve the operation,
   control, and management of heterogeneous environments: each DC site
   and the metro-core network segment used to interconnect them, with
   regard to not only the underlying data plane technology but also the
   control plane.  For example, each DC site or domain could be
   controlled locally in a centralized way (e.g., via OpenFlow [<a href="#ref-ONF" title="&quot;OpenFlow Switch Specification Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)&quot;">ONF</a>]),
   whereas the metro-core transport infrastructure is controlled by
   GMPLS.  Although OpenFlow is specially adapted to single-domain
   intra-DC networks (packet-level control, lots of routing exceptions),
   a standardized GMPLS-based architecture would enable dynamic optical
   resource allocation and restoration in multi-domain (e.g., multi-
   vendor) core networks interconnecting distributed data centers.











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   The application of an ABNO architecture and related procedures would
   involve the following aspects:

   1. Request from the Application Service Coordinator or NMS

      As shown in Figure 13, the ABNO Controller receives a request from
      the Application Service Coordinator or from the NMS, in order to
      create a new end-to-end connection between two end points.  The
      actual addressing of these end points is discussed in the next
      section.  The ABNO Controller asks the PCE for a path between
      these two end points, after considering any applicable policy as
      defined by the Policy Agent (see Figure 1).

                             +---------------------------+
                             |    Application Service    |
                             |     Coordinator or NMS    |
                             +-------------+-------------+
                                           |
                                           V
                   +------+   +------------+------------+
                   |Policy+-&gt;-+     ABNO Controller     |
                   |Agent |   |                         |
                   +------+   +-------------------------+

        Figure 13: Application Service Coordinator Request Management

   2. Address Mapping

      In order to compute an end-to-end path, the PCE needs to have a
      unified view of the overall topology, which means that it has to
      consider and identify the actual end points with regard to the
      client network addresses.  The ABNO Controller and/or the PCE may
      need to translate or map addresses from different address spaces.
      Depending on how the topology information is disseminated and
      gathered, there are two possible scenarios:

      2a. The Application Layer Knows the Client Network Layer

          Entities belonging to the application layer may have an
          interface with the TED or with an ALTO Server allowing those
          entities to map the high-level end points to network
          addresses.  The mechanism used to enable this address
          correlation is out of scope for this document but relies on
          direct interfaces to other ABNO components in addition to the
          interface to the ABNO Controller.






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          In this scenario, the request from the NMS or Application
          Service Coordinator contains addresses in the client-layer
          network.  Therefore, when the ABNO Controller requests the PCE
          to compute a path between two end points, the PCE is able to
          use the supplied addresses, compute the path, and continue the
          workflow in communication with the Provisioning Manager.

      2b. The Application Layer Does Not Know the Client Network Layer

          In this case, when the ABNO Controller receives a request from
          the NMS or Application Service Coordinator, the request
          contains only identifiers from the application-layer address
          space.  In order for the PCE to compute an end-to-end path,
          these identifiers must be converted to addresses in the
          client-layer network.  This translation can be performed by
          the ABNO Controller, which can access the TED and ALTO
          databases allowing the path computation request that it sends
          to the PCE to simply be contained within one network and TED.
          Alternatively, the computation request could use the
          application-layer identifiers, leaving the job of address
          mapping to the PCE.

          Note that in order to avoid any confusion both approaches in
          this scenario require clear identification of the address
          spaces that are in use.

   3. Provisioning Process

      Once the path has been obtained, the Provisioning Manager receives
      a high-level provisioning request to provision the service.
      Since, in the considered use case, the network elements are not
      necessarily configured using the same protocol, the end-to-end
      path is split into segments, and the ABNO Controller coordinates
      or orchestrates the establishment by adapting and/or translating
      the abstract provisioning request to concrete segment requests by
      means of a VNTM or PCE that issues the corresponding commands or
      instructions.  The provisioning may involve configuring the data
      plane elements directly or delegating the establishment of the
      underlying connection to a dedicated control plane instance
      responsible for that segment.











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      The Provisioning Manager could use a number of mechanisms to
      program the network elements, as shown in Figure 14.  It learns
      which technology is used for the actual provisioning at each
      segment by either manual configuration or discovery.

                                  +-----------------+
                                  | ABNO Controller |
                                  +-------+---------+
                                          |
                                          |
                                          V
                      +------+     +------+-------+
                      | VNTM +--&lt;--+     PCE      |
                      +---+--+     +------+-------+
                          |               |
                          V               V
                    +-----+---------------+------------+
                    |       Provisioning Manager       |
                    +----------------------------------+
                      |       |       |       |       |
                      V       |       V       |       V
                    OpenFlow  V    ForCES     V      PCEP
                           NETCONF          SNMP

                       Figure 14: Provisioning Process

   4. Verification and Notification of Service Fulfillment

      Once the end-to-end connectivity service has been provisioned, and
      after the verification of the correct operation of the service,
      the ABNO Controller needs to notify the Application Service
      Coordinator or NMS.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.3" href="#section-3.3">3.3</a>.  Make-before-Break</span>

   A number of different services depend on the establishment of a new
   LSP so that traffic supported by an existing LSP can be switched with
   little or no disruption.  This section describes those use cases,
   presents a generic model for make-before-break within the ABNO
   architecture, and shows how each use case can be supported by using
   elements of the generic model.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.3.1" href="#section-3.3.1">3.3.1</a>.  Make-before-Break for Reoptimization</span>

   Make-before-break is a mechanism supported in RSVP-TE signaling where
   a new LSP is set up before the LSP it replaces is torn down
   [<a href="./rfc3209" title="&quot;RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP Tunnels&quot;">RFC3209</a>].  This process has several benefits in situations such as
   reoptimization of in-service LSPs.



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   The process is simple, and the example shown in Figure 15 utilizes a
   Stateful PCE [<a href="#ref-Stateful-PCE">Stateful-PCE</a>] to monitor the network and take
   reoptimization actions when necessary.  In this process, a service
   request is made to the ABNO Controller by a requester such as the
   OSS.  The service request indicates that the LSP should be
   reoptimized under specific conditions according to policy.  This
   allows the ABNO Controller to manage the sequence and prioritization
   of reoptimizing multiple LSPs using elements of Global Concurrent
   Optimization (GCO) as described in <a href="#section-3.4">Section 3.4</a>, and applying policies
   across the network so that, for instance, LSPs for delay-sensitive
   services are reoptimized first.

   The ABNO Controller commissions the PCE to compute and set up the
   initial path.

   Over time, the PCE monitors the changes in the network as reflected
   in the TED, and according to the configured policy may compute and
   set up a replacement path, using make-before-break within the
   network.

   Once the new path has been set up and the network reports that it is
   being used correctly, the PCE tears down the old path and may report
   the reoptimization event to the ABNO Controller.

             +---------------------------------------------+
             | OSS / NMS / Application Service Coordinator |
             +----------------------+----------------------+
                                    |
                       +------------+------------+
                       |     ABNO Controller     |
                       +------------+------------+
                                    |
               +------+     +-------+-------+     +-----+
               |Policy+-----+      PCE      +-----+ TED |
               |Agent |     +-------+-------+     +-----+
               +------+             |
                                    |
             +----------------------+----------------------+
            /                    Network                    \
           +-------------------------------------------------+

                 Figure 15: The Make-before-Break Process

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.3.2" href="#section-3.3.2">3.3.2</a>.  Make-before-Break for Restoration</span>

   Make-before-break may also be used to repair a failed LSP where there
   is a desire to retain resources along some of the path, and where
   there is the potential for other LSPs to "steal" the resources if the



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   failed LSP is torn down first.  Unlike the example in <a href="#section-3.3.1">Section 3.3.1</a>,
   this case addresses a situation where the service is interrupted, but
   this interruption arises from the break in service introduced by the
   network failure.  Obviously, in the case of a point-to-multipoint
   LSP, the failure might only affect part of the tree and the
   disruption will only be to a subset of the destination leaves so that
   a make-before-break restoration approach will not cause disruption to
   the leaves that were not affected by the original failure.

   Figure 16 shows the components that interact for this use case.  A
   service request is made to the ABNO Controller by a requester such as
   the OSS.  The service request indicates that the LSP may be restored
   after failure and should attempt to reuse as much of the original
   path as possible.

   The ABNO Controller commissions the PCE to compute and set up the
   initial path.  The ABNO Controller also requests the OAM Handler to
   initiate OAM on the LSP and to monitor the results.

   At some point, the network reports a fault to the OAM Handler, which
   notifies the ABNO Controller.

   The ABNO Controller commissions the PCE to compute a new path,
   reusing as much of the original path as possible, and the PCE sets up
   the new LSP.

   Once the new path has been set up and the network reports that it is
   being used correctly, the ABNO Controller instructs the PCE to tear
   down the old path.

             +---------------------------------------------+
             | OSS / NMS / Application Service Coordinator |
             +----------------------+----------------------+
                                    |
                       +------------+------------+   +-------+
                       |     ABNO Controller     +---+  OAM  |
                       +------------+------------+   |Handler|
                                    |                +---+---+
                            +-------+-------+            |
                            |      PCE      |            |
                            +-------+-------+            |
                                    |                    |
             +----------------------+--------------------+-+
            /                    Network                    \
           +-------------------------------------------------+

           Figure 16: The Make-before-Break Restoration Process




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<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.3.3" href="#section-3.3.3">3.3.3</a>.  Make-before-Break for Path Test and Selection</span>

   In a more complicated use case, an LSP may be monitored for a number
   of attributes, such as delay and jitter.  When the LSP falls below a
   threshold, the traffic may be moved to another LSP that offers the
   desired (or at least a better) quality of service.  To achieve this,
   it is necessary to establish the new LSP and test it, and because the
   traffic must not be interrupted, make-before-break must be used.

   Moreover, it may be the case that no new LSP can provide the desired
   attributes and that a number of LSPs need to be tested so that the
   best can be selected.  Furthermore, even when the original LSP is set
   up, it could be desirable to test a number of LSPs before deciding
   which should be used to carry the traffic.

   Figure 17 shows the components that interact for this use case.
   Because multiple LSPs might exist at once, a distinct action is
   needed to coordinate which one carries the traffic, and this is the
   job of the I2RS Client acting under the control of the ABNO
   Controller.

   The OAM Handler is responsible for initiating tests on the LSPs and
   for reporting the results back to the ABNO Controller.  The OAM
   Handler can also check end-to-end connectivity test results across a
   multi-domain network even when each domain runs a different
   technology.  For example, an end-to-end path might be achieved by
   stitching together an MPLS segment, an Ethernet/VLAN segment, another
   IP segment, etc.

   Otherwise, the process is similar to that for reoptimization as
   discussed in <a href="#section-3.3.1">Section 3.3.1</a>.




















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             +---------------------------------------------+
             | OSS / NMS / Application Service Coordinator |
             +----------------------+----------------------+
                                    |
            +------+   +------------+------------+    +-------+
            |Policy+---+     ABNO Controller     +----+  OAM  |
            |Agent |   |                         +--+ |Handler|
            +------+   +------------+------------+  | +---+---+
                                    |               |     |
                            +-------+-------+    +--+---+ |
                            |      PCE      |    | I2RS | |
                            +-------+-------+    |Client| |
                                    |            +--+---+ |
                                    |               |     |
            +-----------------------+---------------+-----+-+
           /                     Network                     \
          +---------------------------------------------------+

     Figure 17: The Make-before-Break Path Test and Selection Process

   The pseudocode that follows gives an indication of the interactions
   between ABNO components.

      OSS requests quality-assured service

      :Label1

      DoWhile not enough LSPs (ABNO Controller)
        Instruct PCE to compute and provision the LSP (ABNO Controller)
        Create the LSP (PCE)
      EndDo

      :Label2

      DoFor each LSP (ABNO Controller)
        Test LSP (OAM Handler)
        Report results to ABNO Controller (OAM Handler)
      EndDo

      Evaluate results of all tests (ABNO Controller)
      Select preferred LSP and instruct I2RS Client (ABNO Controller)
      Put traffic on preferred LSP (I2RS Client)

      DoWhile too many LSPs (ABNO Controller)
        Instruct PCE to tear down unwanted LSP (ABNO Controller)
        Tear down unwanted LSP (PCE)
      EndDo




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      DoUntil trigger (OAM Handler, ABNO Controller, Policy Agent)
        keep sending traffic (Network)
        Test LSP (OAM Handler)
      EndDo

      If there is already a suitable LSP (ABNO Controller)
        GoTo Label2
      Else
        GoTo Label1
      EndIf

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.4" href="#section-3.4">3.4</a>.  Global Concurrent Optimization</span>

   Global Concurrent Optimization (GCO) is defined in [<a href="./rfc5557" title="&quot;Path Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP) Requirements and Protocol Extensions in Support of Global Concurrent Optimization&quot;">RFC5557</a>] and
   represents a key technology for maximizing network efficiency by
   computing a set of traffic-engineered paths concurrently.  A GCO path
   computation request will simultaneously consider the entire topology
   of the network, and the complete set of new LSPs together with their
   respective constraints.  Similarly, GCO may be applied to recompute
   the paths of a set of existing LSPs.

   GCO may be requested in a number of scenarios.  These include:

   o  Routing of new services where the PCE should consider other
      services or network topology.

   o  A reoptimization of existing services due to fragmented network
      resources or suboptimized placement of sequentially computed
      services.

   o  Recovery of connectivity for bulk services in the event of a
      catastrophic network failure.

   A service provider may also want to compute and deploy new bulk
   services based on a predicted traffic matrix.  The GCO functionality
   and capability to perform concurrent computation provide a
   significant network optimization advantage, thus utilizing network
   resources optimally and avoiding blocking.

   The following use case shows how the ABNO architecture and components
   are used to achieve concurrent optimization across a set of services.










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<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.4.1" href="#section-3.4.1">3.4.1</a>.  Use Case: GCO with MPLS LSPs</span>

   When considering the GCO path computation problem, we can split the
   GCO objective functions into three optimization categories:

   o  Minimize aggregate Bandwidth Consumption (MBC).

   o  Minimize the load of the Most Loaded Link (MLL).

   o  Minimize Cumulative Cost of a set of paths (MCC).

   This use case assumes that the GCO request will be offline and be
   initiated from an NMS/OSS; that is, it may take significant time to
   compute the service, and the paths reported in the response may want
   to be verified by the user before being provisioned within the
   network.

   1. Request Management

      The NMS/OSS issues a request for new service connectivity for bulk
      services.  The ABNO Controller verifies that the NMS/OSS has
      sufficient rights to make the service request and apply a GCO
      attribute with a request to Minimize aggregate Bandwidth
      Consumption (MBC), as shown in Figure 18.

                                 +---------------------+
                                 |       NMS/OSS       |
                                 +----------+----------+
                                            |
                                            V
                  +--------+    +-----------+-------------+
                  | Policy +--&gt;-+     ABNO Controller     |
                  | Agent  |    |                         |
                  +--------+    +-------------------------+

                  Figure 18: NMS Request to ABNO Controller

      1a. Each service request has a source, destination, and bandwidth
          request.  These service requests are sent to the ABNO
          Controller and categorized as GCO requests.  The PCE uses the
          appropriate policy for each request and consults the TED for
          the packet layer.









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   2. Service Path Computation in the Packet Layer

      To compute a set of services for the GCO application, PCEP
      supports synchronization vector (SVEC) lists for synchronized
      dependent path computations as defined in [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>] and described
      in [<a href="./rfc6007" title="&quot;Use of the Synchronization VECtor (SVEC) List for Synchronized Dependent Path Computations&quot;">RFC6007</a>].

      2a. The ABNO Controller sends the bulk service request to the
          GCO-capable packet-layer PCE using PCEP messaging.  The PCE
          uses the appropriate policy for the request and consults the
          TED for the packet layer, as shown in Figure 19.

                               +-----------------+
                               | ABNO Controller |
                               +----+------------+
                                    |
                                    V
                  +--------+     +--+-----------+   +--------+
                  |        |     |              |   |        |
                  | Policy +--&gt;--+ GCO-Capable  +---+ Packet |
                  | Agent  |     | Packet-Layer |   |  TED   |
                  |        |     |     PCE      |   |        |
                  +--------+     +--------------+   +--------+

             Figure 19: Path Computation Request from GCO-Capable PCE

      2b. Upon receipt of the bulk (GCO) service requests, the PCE
          applies the MBC objective function and computes the services
          concurrently.

      2c. Once the requested GCO service path computation completes, the
          PCE sends the resulting paths back to the ABNO Controller.
          The response includes a fully computed explicit path for each
          service (TE LSP).

















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   3. The concurrently computed solution received from the PCE is sent
      back to the NMS/OSS by the ABNO Controller as a PCEP response, as
      shown in Figure 20.  The NMS/OSS user can then check the candidate
      paths and either provision the new services or save the solution
      for deployment in the future.

                         +---------------------+
                         |       NMS/OSS       |
                         +----------+----------+
                                    ^
                                    |
                         +----------+----------+
                         |    ABNO Controller  |
                         |                     |
                         +---------------------+

               Figure 20: ABNO Sends Solution to the NMS/OSS

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.5" href="#section-3.5">3.5</a>.  Adaptive Network Management (ANM)</span>

   The ABNO architecture provides the capability for reactive network
   control of resources relying on classification, profiling, and
   prediction based on current demands and resource utilization.
   Server-layer transport network resources, such as Optical Transport
   Network (OTN) time-slicing [<a href="#ref-G.709" title="&quot;Interface for the optical transport network&quot;">G.709</a>], or the fine granularity grid of
   wavelengths with variable spectral bandwidth (flexi-grid) [<a href="#ref-G.694.1" title="&quot;Spectral grids for WDM applications: DWDM frequency grid&quot;">G.694.1</a>],
   can be manipulated to meet current and projected demands in a model
   called Elastic Optical Networks (EON) [<a href="#ref-EON" title="&quot;Elastic optical networking: a new dawn for the optical layer?&quot;">EON</a>].

   EON provides spectrum-efficient and scalable transport by introducing
   flexible granular traffic grooming in the optical frequency domain.
   This is achieved using arbitrary contiguous concatenation of the
   optical spectrum that allows the creation of custom-sized bandwidth.
   This bandwidth is defined in slots of 12.5 GHz.

   Adaptive Network Management (ANM) with EON allows appropriately sized
   optical bandwidth to be allocated to an end-to-end optical path.  In
   flexi-grid, the allocation is performed according to the traffic
   volume, optical modulation format, and associated reach, or following
   user requests, and can be achieved in a highly spectrum-efficient and
   scalable manner.  Similarly, OTN provides for flexible and granular
   provisioning of bandwidth on top of Wavelength Switched Optical
   Networks (WSONs).

   To efficiently use optical resources, a system is required that can
   monitor network resources and decide the optimal network
   configuration based on the status, bandwidth availability, and user
   service.  We call this ANM.



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<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.5.1" href="#section-3.5.1">3.5.1</a>.  ANM Trigger</span>

   There are different reasons to trigger an adaptive network management
   process; these include:

   o  Measurement: Traffic measurements can be used in order to cause
      spectrum allocations that fit the traffic needs as efficiently as
      possible.  This function may be influenced by measuring the IP
      router traffic flows, by examining traffic engineering or link
      state databases, by usage thresholds for critical links in the
      network, or by requests from external entities.  Nowadays, network
      operators have active monitoring probes in the network that store
      their results in the OSS.  The OSS or OAM Handler components
      activate this measurement-based trigger, so the ABNO Controller
      would not be directly involved in this case.

   o  Human: Operators may request ABNO to run an adaptive network
      planning process via an NMS.

   o  Periodic: An adaptive network planning process can be run
      periodically to find an optimum configuration.

   An ABNO Controller would receive a request from an OSS or NMS to run
   an adaptive network manager process.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.5.2" href="#section-3.5.2">3.5.2</a>.  Processing Request and GCO Computation</span>

   Based on the human or periodic trigger requests described in the
   previous section, the OSS or NMS will send a request to the ABNO
   Controller to perform EON-based GCO.  The ABNO Controller will select
   a set of services to be reoptimized and choose an objective function
   that will deliver the best use of network resources.  In making these
   choices, the ABNO Controller is guided by network-wide policy on the
   use of resources, the definition of optimization, and the level of
   perturbation to existing services that is tolerable.

   This request for GCO is passed to the PCE, along the lines of the
   description in <a href="#section-3.4">Section 3.4</a>.  The PCE can then consider the end-to-end
   paths and every channel's optimal spectrum assignment in order to
   satisfy traffic demands and optimize the optical spectrum consumption
   within the network.

   The PCE will operate on the TED but is likely to also be stateful so
   that it knows which LSPs correspond to which waveband allocations on
   which links in the network.  Once the PCE arrives at an answer, it
   returns a set of potential paths to the ABNO Controller, which passes
   them on to the NMS or OSS to supervise/select the subsequent path
   setup/modification process.



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   This exchange is shown in Figure 21.  Note that the figure does not
   show the interactions used by the OSS/NMS for establishing or
   modifying LSPs in the network.

                           +---------------------------+
                           |        OSS or NMS         |
                           +-----------+---+-----------+
                                       |   ^
                                       V   |
                 +------+   +----------+---+----------+
                 |Policy+-&gt;-+     ABNO Controller     |
                 |Agent |   |                         |
                 +------+   +----------+---+----------+
                                       |   ^
                                       V   |
                                 +-----+---+----+
                                 +      PCE     |
                                 +--------------+

      Figure 21: Adaptive Network Management with Human Intervention

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.5.3" href="#section-3.5.3">3.5.3</a>.  Automated Provisioning Process</span>

   Although most network operations are supervised by the operator,
   there are some actions that may not require supervision, like a
   simple modification of a modulation format in a Bit-rate Variable
   Transponder (BVT) (to increase the optical spectrum efficiency or
   reduce energy consumption).  In this process, where human
   intervention is not required, the PCE sends the Provisioning Manager
   a new configuration to configure the network elements, as shown in
   Figure 22.




















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                         +------------------------+
                         |       OSS or NMS       |
                         +-----------+------------+
                                     |
                                     V
               +------+   +----------+------------+
               |Policy+-&gt;-+     ABNO Controller   |
               |Agent |   |                       |
               +------+   +----------+------------+
                                     |
                                     V
                              +------+------+
                              +     PCE     |
                              +------+------+
                                     |
                                     V
                     +----------------------------------+
                     |       Provisioning Manager       |
                     +----------------------------------+

     Figure 22: Adaptive Network Management without Human Intervention

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.6" href="#section-3.6">3.6</a>.  Pseudowire Operations and Management</span>

   Pseudowires in an MPLS network [<a href="./rfc3985" title="&quot;Pseudo Wire Emulation Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Architecture&quot;">RFC3985</a>] operate as a form of layered
   network over the connectivity provided by the MPLS network.  The
   pseudowires are carried by LSPs operating as transport tunnels, and
   planning is necessary to determine how those tunnels are placed in
   the network and which tunnels are used by any pseudowire.

   This section considers four use cases: multi-segment pseudowires,
   path-diverse pseudowires, path-diverse multi-segment pseudowires, and
   pseudowire segment protection.  <a href="#section-3.6.5">Section 3.6.5</a> describes the
   applicability of the ABNO architecture to these four use cases.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.6.1" href="#section-3.6.1">3.6.1</a>.  Multi-Segment Pseudowires</span>

   [<a id="ref-RFC5254">RFC5254</a>] describes the architecture for multi-segment pseudowires.
   An end-to-end service, as shown in Figure 23, can consist of a series
   of stitched segments shown in the figure as AC, PW1, PW2, PW3, and
   AC.  Each pseudowire segment is stitched at a "stitching Provider
   Edge" (S-PE): for example, PW1 is stitched to PW2 at S-PE1.  Each
   access circuit (AC) is stitched to a pseudowire segment at a
   "terminating PE" (T-PE): for example, PW1 is stitched to the AC at
   T-PE1.






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   Each pseudowire segment is carried across the MPLS network in an LSP
   operating as a transport tunnel: for example, PW1 is carried in LSP1.
   The LSPs between PE nodes may traverse different MPLS networks with
   the PEs as border nodes, or the PEs may lie within the network such
   that each LSP spans only part of the network.

              -----         -----         -----         -----
     ---     |T-PE1|  LSP1 |S-PE1|  LSP2 |S-PE3|  LSP3 |T-PE2|    +---+
    |   | AC |     |=======|     |=======|     |=======|     | AC |   |
    |CE1|----|........PW1........|..PW2........|..PW3........|----|CE2|
    |   |    |     |=======|     |=======|     |=======|     |    |   |
     ---     |     |       |     |       |     |       |     |    +---+
              -----         -----         -----         -----

                    Figure 23: Multi-Segment Pseudowire

   While the topology shown in Figure 23 is easy to navigate, the
   reality of a deployed network can be considerably more complex.  The
   topology in Figure 24 shows a small mesh of PEs.  The links between
   the PEs are not physical links but represent the potential of MPLS
   LSPs between the PEs.

   When establishing the end-to-end service between Customer Edge nodes
   (CEs) CE1 and CE2, some choice must be made about which PEs to use.
   In other words, a path computation must be made to determine the
   pseudowire segment "hops", and then the necessary LSP tunnels must be
   established to carry the pseudowire segments that will be stitched
   together.

   Of course, each LSP may itself require a path computation decision to
   route it through the MPLS network between PEs.

   The choice of path for the multi-segment pseudowire will depend on
   such issues as:

   - MPLS connectivity

   - MPLS bandwidth availability

   - pseudowire stitching capability and capacity at PEs

   - policy and confidentiality considerations for use of PEs









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                                   -----
                                  |S-PE5|
                                  /-----\
     ---      -----         -----/       \-----         -----      ---
    |CE1|----|T-PE1|-------|S-PE1|-------|S-PE3|-------|T-PE2|----|CE2|
     ---      -----\        -----\        -----        /-----      ---
                    \         |   -------   |         /
                     \      -----        \-----      /
                      -----|S-PE2|-------|S-PE4|-----
                            -----         -----

           Figure 24: Multi-Segment Pseudowire Network Topology

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.6.2" href="#section-3.6.2">3.6.2</a>.  Path-Diverse Pseudowires</span>

   The connectivity service provided by a pseudowire may need to be
   resilient to failure.  In many cases, this function is provided by
   provisioning a pair of pseudowires carried by path-diverse LSPs
   across the network, as shown in Figure 25 (the terminology is
   inherited directly from [<a href="./rfc3985" title="&quot;Pseudo Wire Emulation Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Architecture&quot;">RFC3985</a>]).  Clearly, in this case, the
   challenge is to keep the two LSPs (LSP1 and LSP2) disjoint within the
   MPLS network.  This problem is not different from the normal MPLS
   path-diversity problem.

                  -------                         -------
                 |  PE1  |          LSP1         |  PE2  |
            AC   |       |=======================|       |   AC
             ----...................PW1...................----
     --- -  /    |       |=======================|       |    \  -----
    |     |/     |       |                       |       |     \|     |
    | CE1 +      |       |      MPLS Network     |       |      + CE2 |
    |     |\     |       |                       |       |     /|     |
     --- -  \    |       |=======================|       |    /  -----
             ----...................PW2...................----
            AC   |       |=======================|       |   AC
                 |       |          LSP2         |       |
                  -------                         -------

                    Figure 25: Path-Diverse Pseudowires

   The path-diverse pseudowire is developed in Figure 26 by the
   "dual-homing" of each CE through more than one PE.  The requirement
   for LSP path diversity is exactly the same, but it is complicated by
   the LSPs having distinct end points.  In this case, the head-end
   router (e.g., PE1) cannot be relied upon to maintain the path
   diversity through the signaling protocol because it is aware of the
   path of only one of the LSPs.  Thus, some form of coordinated path
   computation approach is needed.



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                  -------                         -------
                 |  PE1  |          LSP1         |  PE2  |
             AC  |       |=======================|       |  AC
              ---...................PW1...................---
             /   |       |=======================|       |   \
     -----  /    |       |                       |       |    \  -----
    |     |/      -------                         -------      \|     |
    | CE1 +                     MPLS Network                    + CE2 |
    |     |\      -------                         -------      /|     |
     -----  \    |  PE3  |                       |  PE4  |    /  -----
             \   |       |=======================|       |   /
              ---...................PW2...................---
             AC  |       |=======================|       |  AC
                 |       |          LSP2         |       |
                  -------                         -------

           Figure 26: Path-Diverse Pseudowires with Disjoint PEs

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.6.3" href="#section-3.6.3">3.6.3</a>.  Path-Diverse Multi-Segment Pseudowires</span>

   Figure 27 shows how the services in the previous two sections may be
   combined to offer end-to-end diverse paths in a multi-segment
   environment.  To offer end-to-end resilience to failure, two entirely
   diverse, end-to-end multi-segment pseudowires may be needed.

                                   -----                -----
                                  |S-PE5|--------------|T-PE4|
                                  /-----\               ----- \
              -----         -----/       \-----         -----  \ ---
             |T-PE1|-------|S-PE1|-------|S-PE3|-------|T-PE2|--|CE2|
       ---  / -----\        -----\        -----        /-----    ---
      |CE1|&lt;        -------   |   -------   |         /
       ---  \ -----        \-----        \-----      /
             |T-PE3|-------|S-PE2|-------|S-PE4|-----
              -----         -----         -----

     Figure 27: Path-Diverse Multi-Segment Pseudowire Network Topology

   Just as in any diverse-path computation, the selection of the first
   path needs to be made with awareness of the fact that a second, fully
   diverse path is also needed.  If a sequential computation was applied
   to the topology in Figure 27, the first path CE1,T-PE1,S-PE1,
   S-PE3,T-PE2,CE2 would make it impossible to find a second path that
   was fully diverse from the first.







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   But the problem is complicated by the multi-layer nature of the
   network.  It is not enough that the PEs are chosen to be diverse
   because the LSP tunnels between them might share links within the
   MPLS network.  Thus, a multi-layer planning solution is needed to
   achieve the desired level of service.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.6.4" href="#section-3.6.4">3.6.4</a>.  Pseudowire Segment Protection</span>

   An alternative to the end-to-end pseudowire protection service
   enabled by the mechanism described in <a href="#section-3.6.3">Section 3.6.3</a> can be achieved
   by protecting individual pseudowire segments or PEs.  For example, in
   Figure 27, the pseudowire between S-PE1 and S-PE5 may be protected by
   a pair of stitched segments running between S-PE1 and S-PE5, and
   between S-PE5 and S-PE3.  This is shown in detail in Figure 28.

             -------              -------              -------
            | S-PE1 |    LSP1    | S-PE5 |    LSP3    | S-PE3 |
            |       |============|       |============|       |
            |   .........PW1..................PW3..........   | Outgoing
   Incoming |  :    |============|       |============|    :  | Segment
   Segment  |  :    |             -------             |    :..........
    ...........:    |                                 |    :  |
            |  :    |                                 |    :  |
            |  :    |=================================|    :  |
            |   .........PW2...............................   |
            |       |=================================|       |
            |       |    LSP2                         |       |
             -------                                   -------

    Figure 28: Fragment of a Segment-Protected Multi-Segment Pseudowire

   The determination of pseudowire protection segments requires
   coordination and planning, and just as in <a href="#section-3.6.5">Section 3.6.5</a>, this
   planning must be cognizant of the paths taken by LSPs through the
   underlying MPLS networks.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.6.5" href="#section-3.6.5">3.6.5</a>.  Applicability of ABNO to Pseudowires</span>

   The ABNO architecture lends itself well to the planning and control
   of pseudowires in the use cases described above.  The user or
   application needs a single point at which it requests services: the
   ABNO Controller.  The ABNO Controller can ask a PCE to draw on the
   topology of pseudowire stitching-capable PEs as well as additional
   information regarding PE capabilities, such as load on PEs and
   administrative policies, and the PCE can use a series of TEDs or
   other PCEs for the underlying MPLS networks to determine the paths of
   the LSP tunnels.  At the time of this writing, PCEP does not support




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   path computation requests and responses concerning pseudowires, but
   the concepts are very similar to existing uses and the necessary
   extensions would be very small.

   Once the paths have been computed, a number of different provisioning
   systems can be used to instantiate the LSPs and provision the
   pseudowires under the control of the Provisioning Manager.  The ABNO
   Controller will use the I2RS Client to instruct the network devices
   about what traffic should be placed on which pseudowires and, in
   conjunction with the OAM Handler, can ensure that failure events are
   handled correctly, that service quality levels are appropriate, and
   that service protection levels are maintained.

   In many respects, the pseudowire network forms an overlay network
   (with its own TED and provisioning mechanisms) carried by underlying
   packet networks.  Further client networks (the pseudowire payloads)
   may be carried by the pseudowire network.  Thus, the problem space
   being addressed by ABNO in this case is a classic multi-layer
   network.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.7" href="#section-3.7">3.7</a>.  Cross-Stratum Optimization (CSO)</span>

   Considering the term "stratum" to broadly differentiate the layers of
   most concern to the application and to the network in general, the
   need for Cross-Stratum Optimization (CSO) arises when the application
   stratum and network stratum need to be coordinated to achieve
   operational efficiency as well as resource optimization in both
   application and network strata.

   Data center-based applications can provide a wide variety of services
   such as video gaming, cloud computing, and grid applications.  High-
   bandwidth video applications are also emerging, such as remote
   medical surgery, live concerts, and sporting events.

   This use case for the ABNO architecture is mainly concerned with data
   center applications that make substantial bandwidth demands either in
   aggregate or individually.  In addition, these applications may need
   specific bounds on QoS-related parameters such as latency and jitter.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.7.1" href="#section-3.7.1">3.7.1</a>.  Data Center Network Operation</span>

   Data centers come in a wide variety of sizes and configurations, but
   all contain compute servers, storage, and application control.  Data
   centers offer application services to end-users, such as video
   gaming, cloud computing, and others.  Since the data centers used to
   provide application services may be distributed around a network, the
   decisions about the control and management of application services,
   such as where to instantiate another service instance or to which



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   data center a new client is assigned, can have a significant impact
   on the state of the network.  Conversely, the capabilities and state
   of the network can have a major impact on application performance.

   These decisions are typically made by applications with very little
   or no information concerning the underlying network.  Hence, such
   decisions may be suboptimal from the application's point of view or
   considering network resource utilization and quality of service.

   Cross-Stratum Optimization is the process of optimizing both the
   application experience and the network utilization by coordinating
   decisions in the application stratum and the network stratum.
   Application resources can be roughly categorized into computing
   resources (i.e., servers of various types and granularities, such as
   Virtual Machines (VMs), memory, and storage) and content (e.g.,
   video, audio, databases, and large data sets).  By "network stratum"
   we mean the IP layer and below (e.g., MPLS, Synchronous Digital
   Hierarchy (SDH), OTN, WDM).  The network stratum has resources that
   include routers, switches, and links.  We are particularly interested
   in further unleashing the potential presented by MPLS and GMPLS
   control planes at the lower network layers in response to the high
   aggregate or individual demands from the application layer.

   This use case demonstrates that the ABNO architecture can allow
   cross-stratum application/network optimization for the data center
   use case.  Other forms of Cross-Stratum Optimization (for example,
   for peer-to-peer applications) are out of scope.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.7.1.1" href="#section-3.7.1.1">3.7.1.1</a>.  Virtual Machine Migration</span>

   A key enabler for data center cost savings, consolidation,
   flexibility, and application scalability has been the technology of
   compute virtualization provided through Virtual Machines (VMs).  To
   the software application, a VM looks like a dedicated processor with
   dedicated memory and a dedicated operating system.

   VMs not only offer a unit of compute power but also provide an
   "application environment" that can be replicated, backed up, and
   moved.  Different VM configurations may be offered that are optimized
   for different types of processing (e.g., memory intensive, throughput
   intensive).










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   VMs may be moved between compute resources in a data center and could
   be moved between data centers.  VM migration serves to balance load
   across data center resources and has several modes:

     (i) scheduled vs. dynamic;

    (ii) bulk vs. sequential;

   (iii) point-to-point vs. point-to-multipoint

   While VM migration may solve problems of load or planned maintenance
   within a data center, it can also be effective to reduce network load
   around the data center.  But the act of migrating VMs, especially
   between data centers, can impact the network and other services that
   are offered.

   For certain applications such as disaster recovery, bulk migration is
   required on the fly, which may necessitate concurrent computation and
   path setup dynamically.

   Thus, application stratum operations must also take into account the
   situation in the network stratum, even as the application stratum
   actions may be driven by the status of the network stratum.

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.7.1.2" href="#section-3.7.1.2">3.7.1.2</a>.  Load Balancing</span>

   Application servers may be instantiated in many data centers located
   in different parts of the network.  When an end-user makes an
   application request, a decision has to be made about which data
   center should host the processing and storage required to meet the
   request.  One of the major drivers for operating multiple data
   centers (rather than one very large data center) is so that the
   application will run on a machine that is closer to the end-users and
   thus improve the user experience by reducing network latency.
   However, if the network is congested or the data center is
   overloaded, this strategy can backfire.

   Thus, the key factors to be considered in choosing the server on
   which to instantiate a VM for an application include:

   - The utilization of the servers in the data center

   - The network load conditions within a data center

   - The network load conditions between data centers

   - The network conditions between the end-user and data center




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   Again, the choices made in the application stratum need to consider
   the situation in the network stratum.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.7.2" href="#section-3.7.2">3.7.2</a>.  Application of the ABNO Architecture</span>

   This section shows how the ABNO architecture is applicable to the
   cross-stratum data center issues described in <a href="#section-3.7.1">Section 3.7.1</a>.

   Figure 29 shows a diagram of an example data center-based
   application.  A carrier network provides access for an end-user
   through PE4.  Three data centers (DC1, DC2, and DC3) are accessed
   through different parts of the network via PE1, PE2, and PE3.

   The Application Service Coordinator receives information from the
   end-user about the desired services and converts this information to
   service requests that it passes to the ABNO Controller.  The
   end-users may already know which data center they wish to use, or the
   Application Service Coordinator may be able to make this
   determination; otherwise, the task of selecting the data center must
   be performed by the ABNO Controller, and this may utilize a further
   database (see <a href="#section-2.3.1.8">Section 2.3.1.8</a>) to contain information about server
   loads and other data center parameters.

   The ABNO Controller examines the network resources using information
   gathered from the other ABNO components and uses those components to
   configure the network to support the end-user's needs.

























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   +----------+    +---------------------------------+
   | End-User |---&gt;| Application Service Coordinator |
   +----------+    +---------------------------------+
         |                          |
         |                          v
         |                 +-----------------+
         |                 | ABNO Controller |
         |                 +-----------------+
         |                          |
         |                          v
         |               +---------------------+       +--------------+
         |               |Other ABNO Components|       | o o o   DC 1 |
         |               +---------------------+       |  \|/         |
         |                          |            ------|---O          |
         |                          v           |      |              |
         |            --------------------------|--    +--------------+
         |           / Carrier Network      PE1 |  \
         |          /      .....................O   \   +--------------+
         |         |      .                          |  | o o o   DC 2 |
         |         | PE4 .                      PE2  |  |  \|/         |
          ---------|----O........................O---|--|---O          |
                   |     .                           |  |              |
                   |      .                    PE3   |  +--------------+
                    \      .....................O   /
                     \                          |  /   +--------------+
                      --------------------------|--    | o o o   DC 3 |
                                                |      |  \|/         |
                                                 ------|---O          |
                                                       |              |
                                                       +--------------+

            Figure 29: The ABNO Architecture in the Context of
                Cross-Stratum Optimization for Data Centers

<span class="h5"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.7.2.1" href="#section-3.7.2.1">3.7.2.1</a>.  Deployed Applications, Services, and Products</span>

   The ABNO Controller will need to utilize a number of components to
   realize the CSO functions described in <a href="#section-3.7.1">Section 3.7.1</a>.

   The ALTO Server provides information about topological proximity and
   appropriate geographical location to servers with respect to the
   underlying networks.  This information can be used to optimize the
   selection of peer location, which will help reduce the path of IP
   traffic or can contain it within specific service providers'
   networks.  ALTO in conjunction with the ABNO Controller and the
   Application Service Coordinator can address general problems such as
   the selection of application servers based on resource availability
   and usage of the underlying networks.



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   The ABNO Controller can also formulate a view of current network load
   from the TED and from the OAM Handler (for example, by running
   diagnostic tools that measure latency, jitter, and packet loss).
   This view obviously influences not just how paths from the end-user
   to the data center are provisioned but can also guide the selection
   of which data center should provide the service and possibly even the
   points of attachment to be used by the end-user and to reach the
   chosen data center.  A view of how the PCE can fit in with CSO is
   provided in [<a href="#ref-CSO-PCE" title="&quot;Cross Stratum Optimization enabled Path Computation&quot;">CSO-PCE</a>], on which the content of Figure 29 is based.

   As already discussed, the combination of the ABNO Controller and the
   Application Service Coordinator will need to be able to select (and
   possibly migrate) the location of the VM that provides the service
   for the end-user.  Since a common technique used to direct the
   end-user to the correct VM/server is to employ DNS redirection, an
   important capability of the ABNO Controller will be the ability to
   program the DNS servers accordingly.

   Furthermore, as already noted in other sections of this document, the
   ABNO Controller can coordinate the placement of traffic within the
   network to achieve load balancing and to provide resilience to
   failures.  These features can be used in conjunction with the
   functions discussed above, to ensure that the placement of new VMs,
   the traffic that they generate, and the load caused by VM migration
   can be carried by the network and do not disrupt existing services.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.8" href="#section-3.8">3.8</a>.  ALTO Server</span>

   The ABNO architecture allows use cases with joint network and
   application-layer optimization.  In such a use case, an application
   is presented with an abstract network topology containing only
   information relevant to the application.  The application computes
   its application-layer routing according to its application objective.
   The application may interact with the ABNO Controller to set up
   explicit LSPs to support its application-layer routing.

   The following steps are performed to illustrate such a use case.

   1. Application Request of Application-Layer Topology

      Consider the network shown in Figure 30.  The network consists of
      five nodes and six links.

      The application, which has end points hosted at N0, N1, and N2,
      requests network topology so that it can compute its application-
      layer routing, for example, to maximize the throughput of content
      replication among end points at the three sites.




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                 +----+       L0 Wt=10 BW=50       +----+
                 | N0 |............................| N3 |
                 +----+                            +----+
                   |   \    L4                        |
                   |    \   Wt=7                      |
                   |     \  BW=40                     |
                   |      \                           |
             L1    |       +----+                     |
             Wt=10 |       | N4 |               L2    |
             BW=45 |       +----+               Wt=12 |
                   |      /                     BW=30 |
                   |     /  L5                        |
                   |    /   Wt=10                     |
                   |   /    BW=45                     |
                 +----+                            +----+
                 | N1 |............................| N2 |
                 +----+       L3 Wt=15 BW=35       +----+

                      Figure 30: Raw Network Topology

      The request arrives at the ABNO Controller, which forwards the
      request to the ALTO Server component.  The ALTO Server consults
      the Policy Agent, the TED, and the PCE to return an abstract,
      application-layer topology.

      For example, the policy may specify that the bandwidth exposed to
      an application may not exceed 40 Mbps.  The network has
      precomputed that the route from N0 to N2 should use the path
      N0-&gt;N3-&gt;N2, according to goals such as GCO (see <a href="#section-3.4">Section 3.4</a>).  The
      ALTO Server can then produce a reduced topology for the
      application, such as the topology shown in Figure 31.




















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                      +----+
                      | N0 |............
                      +----+            \
                        |   \            \
                        |    \            \
                        |     \            \
                        |      |            \   AL0M2
                  L1    |      | AL4M5       \  Wt=22
                  Wt=10 |      | Wt=17        \ BW=30
                  BW=40 |      | BW=40         \
                        |      |                \
                        |     /                  \
                        |    /                    \
                        |   /                      \
                      +----+                        +----+
                      | N1 |........................| N2 |
                      +----+   L3 Wt=15 BW=35       +----+

           Figure 31: Reduced Graph for a Particular Application

      The ALTO Server uses the topology and existing routing to compute
      an abstract network map consisting of three PIDs.  The pair-wise
      bandwidth as well as shared bottlenecks will be computed from the
      internal network topology and reflected in cost maps.

   2. Application Computes Application Overlay

      Using the abstract topology, the application computes an
      application-layer routing.  For concreteness, the application may
      compute a spanning tree to maximize the total bandwidth from N0 to
      N2.  Figure 32 shows an example of application-layer routing,
      using a route of N0-&gt;N1-&gt;N2 for 35 Mbps and N0-&gt;N2 for 30 Mbps,
      for a total of 65 Mbps.


















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               +----+
               | N0 |----------------------------------+
               +----+        AL0M2 BW=30               |
                 |                                     |
                 |                                     |
                 |                                     |
                 |                                     |
                 | L1                                  |
                 |                                     |
                 | BW=35                               |
                 |                                     |
                 |                                     |
                 |                                     |
                 V                                     V
               +----+        L3 BW=35                +----+
               | N1 |...............................&gt;| N2 |
               +----+                                +----+

                Figure 32: Application-Layer Spanning Tree

   3. Application Path Set Up by the ABNO Controller

      The application may submit its application routes to the ABNO
      Controller to set up explicit LSPs to support its operation.  The
      ABNO Controller consults the ALTO maps to map the application-
      layer routing back to internal network topology and then instructs
      the Provisioning Manager to set up the paths.  The ABNO Controller
      may re-trigger GCO to reoptimize network traffic engineering.

<span class="h3"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.9" href="#section-3.9">3.9</a>.  Other Potential Use Cases</span>

   This section serves as a placeholder for other potential use cases
   that might get documented in future documents.

<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.9.1" href="#section-3.9.1">3.9.1</a>.  Traffic Grooming and Regrooming</span>

   This use case could cover the following scenarios:

   - Nested LSPs

   - Packet Classification (IP flows into LSPs at edge routers)

   - Bucket Stuffing

   - IP Flows into ECMP Hash Bucket






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<span class="h4"><a class="selflink" id="section-3.9.2" href="#section-3.9.2">3.9.2</a>.  Bandwidth Scheduling</span>

   Bandwidth scheduling consists of configuring LSPs based on a given
   time schedule.  This can be used to support maintenance or
   operational schedules or to adjust network capacity based on traffic
   pattern detection.

   The ABNO framework provides the components to enable bandwidth
   scheduling solutions.

<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-4" href="#section-4">4</a>.  Survivability and Redundancy within the ABNO Architecture</span>

   The ABNO architecture described in this document is presented in
   terms of functional units.  Each unit could be implemented separately
   or bundled with other units into single programs or products.
   Furthermore, each implemented unit or bundle could be deployed on a
   separate device (for example, a network server) or on a separate
   virtual machine (for example, in a data center), or groups of
   programs could be deployed on the same processor.  From the point of
   view of the architectural model, these implementation and deployment
   choices are entirely unimportant.

   Similarly, the realization of a functional component of the ABNO
   architecture could be supported by more than one instance of an
   implementation, or by different instances of different
   implementations that provide the same or similar function.  For
   example, the PCE component might have multiple instantiations for
   sharing the processing load of a large number of computation
   requests, and different instances might have different algorithmic
   capabilities so that one instance might serve parallel computation
   requests for disjoint paths, while another instance might have the
   capability to compute optimal point-to-multipoint paths.

   This ability to have multiple instances of ABNO components also
   enables resiliency within the model, since in the event of the
   failure of one instance of one component (because of software
   failure, hardware failure, or connectivity problems) other instances
   can take over.  In some circumstances, synchronization between
   instances of components may be needed in order to facilitate seamless
   resiliency.

   How these features are achieved in an ABNO implementation or
   deployment is outside the scope of this document.








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<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-5" href="#section-5">5</a>.  Security Considerations</span>

   The ABNO architecture describes a network system, and security must
   play an important part.

   The first consideration is that the external protocols (those shown
   as entering or leaving the big box in Figure 1) must be appropriately
   secured.  This security will include authentication and authorization
   to control access to the different functions that the ABNO system can
   perform, to enable different policies based on identity, and to
   manage the control of the network devices.

   Secondly, the internal protocols that are used between ABNO
   components must also have appropriate security, particularly when the
   components are implemented on separate network nodes.

   Considering that the ABNO system contains a lot of data about the
   network, the services carried by the network, and the services
   delivered to customers, access to information held in the system must
   be carefully managed.  Since such access will be largely through the
   external protocols, the policy-based controls enabled by
   authentication will be powerful.  But it should also be noted that
   any data sent from the databases in the ABNO system can reveal
   details of the network and should, therefore, be considered as a
   candidate for encryption.  Furthermore, since ABNO components can
   access the information stored in the database, care is required to
   ensure that all such components are genuine and to consider
   encrypting data that flows between components when they are
   implemented at remote nodes.

   The conclusion is that all protocols used to realize the ABNO
   architecture should have rich security features.

<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-6" href="#section-6">6</a>.  Manageability Considerations</span>

   The whole of the ABNO architecture is essentially about managing the
   network.  In this respect, there is very little extra to say.  ABNO
   provides a mechanism to gather and collate information about the
   network, reporting it to management applications, storing it for
   future inspection, and triggering actions according to configured
   policies.










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   The ABNO system will, itself, need monitoring and management.  This
   can be seen as falling into several categories:

   - Management of external protocols

   - Management of internal protocols

   - Management and monitoring of ABNO components

   - Configuration of policy to be applied across the ABNO system

<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="section-7" href="#section-7">7</a>.  Informative References</span>

   [<a id="ref-BGP-LS">BGP-LS</a>]   Gredler, H., Medved, J., Previdi, S., Farrel, A., and S.
              Ray, "North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and TE
              Information using BGP", Work in Progress, <a href="./draft-ietf-idr-ls-distribution-10">draft-ietf-idr-</a>
              <a href="./draft-ietf-idr-ls-distribution-10">ls-distribution-10</a>, January 2015.

   [<a id="ref-CSO-PCE">CSO-PCE</a>]  Dhody, D., Lee, Y., Contreras, LM., Gonzalez de Dios, O.,
              and N. Ciulli, "Cross Stratum Optimization enabled Path
              Computation", Work in Progress, <a href="./draft-dhody-pce-cso-enabled-path-computation-07">draft-dhody-pce-cso-</a>
              <a href="./draft-dhody-pce-cso-enabled-path-computation-07">enabled-path-computation-07</a>, January 2015.

   [<a id="ref-EON">EON</a>]      Gerstel, O., Jinno, M., Lord, A., and S.J.B. Yoo, "Elastic
              optical networking: a new dawn for the optical layer?",
              IEEE Communications Magazine, Volume 50, Issue 2,
              ISSN 0163-6804, February 2012.

   [<a id="ref-Flood">Flood</a>]    Project Floodlight, "Floodlight REST API",
              &lt;<a href="http://www.projectfloodlight.org">http://www.projectfloodlight.org</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-G.694.1">G.694.1</a>]  ITU-T Recommendation G.694.1, "Spectral grids for WDM
              applications: DWDM frequency grid", February 2012.

   [<a id="ref-G.709">G.709</a>]    ITU-T Recommendation G.709, "Interface for the optical
              transport network", February 2012.

   [<a id="ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>]
              Atlas, A., Halpern, J., Hares, S., Ward, D., and T.
              Nadeau, "An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing
              System", Work in Progress, <a href="./draft-ietf-i2rs-architecture-09">draft-ietf-i2rs-</a>
              <a href="./draft-ietf-i2rs-architecture-09">architecture-09</a>, March 2015.

   [<a id="ref-I2RS-PS">I2RS-PS</a>]  Atlas, A., Ed., Nadeau, T., Ed., and D. Ward, "Interface
              to the Routing System Problem Statement", Work in
              Progress, <a href="./draft-ietf-i2rs-problem-statement-06">draft-ietf-i2rs-problem-statement-06</a>,
              January 2015.




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   [<a id="ref-ONF">ONF</a>]      Open Networking Foundation, "OpenFlow Switch Specification
              Version 1.4.0 (Wire Protocol 0x05)", October 2013.

   [<a id="ref-PCE-Init-LSP">PCE-Init-LSP</a>]
              Crabbe, E., Minei, I., Sivabalan, S., and R. Varga, "PCEP
              Extensions for PCE-initiated LSP Setup in a Stateful PCE
              Model", Work in Progress, <a href="./draft-ietf-pce-pce-initiated-lsp-03">draft-ietf-pce-pce-initiated-</a>
              <a href="./draft-ietf-pce-pce-initiated-lsp-03">lsp-03</a>, March 2015.

   [<a id="ref-RESTCONF">RESTCONF</a>] Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., and K. Watsen, "RESTCONF
              Protocol", Work in Progress, <a href="./draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-04">draft-ietf-netconf-</a>
              <a href="./draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-04">restconf-04</a>, January 2015.

   [<a id="ref-RFC2748">RFC2748</a>]  Durham, D., Ed., Boyle, J., Cohen, R., Herzog, S., Rajan,
              R., and A. Sastry, "The COPS (Common Open Policy Service)
              Protocol", <a href="./rfc2748">RFC 2748</a>, January 2000,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2748">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2748</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC2753">RFC2753</a>]  Yavatkar, R., Pendarakis, D., and R. Guerin, "A Framework
              for Policy-based Admission Control", <a href="./rfc2753">RFC 2753</a>,
              January 2000, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2753">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2753</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC3209">RFC3209</a>]  Awduche, D., Berger, L., Gan, D., Li, T., Srinivasan, V.,
              and G. Swallow, "RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP
              Tunnels", <a href="./rfc3209">RFC 3209</a>, December 2001,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3209">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3209</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC3292">RFC3292</a>]  Doria, A., Hellstrand, F., Sundell, K., and T. Worster,
              "General Switch Management Protocol (GSMP) V3", <a href="./rfc3292">RFC 3292</a>,
              June 2002, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3292">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3292</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC3412">RFC3412</a>]  Case, J., Harrington, D., Presuhn, R., and B. Wijnen,
              "Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network
              Management Protocol (SNMP)", STD 62, <a href="./rfc3412">RFC 3412</a>,
              December 2002, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3412">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3412</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC3473">RFC3473</a>]  Berger, L., Ed., "Generalized Multi-Protocol Label
              Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Resource ReserVation Protocol-
              Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) Extensions", <a href="./rfc3473">RFC 3473</a>,
              January 2003, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3473">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3473</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC3630">RFC3630</a>]  Katz, D., Kompella, K., and D. Yeung, "Traffic Engineering
              (TE) Extensions to OSPF Version 2", <a href="./rfc3630">RFC 3630</a>,
              September 2003, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3630">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3630</a>&gt;.







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   [<a id="ref-RFC3746">RFC3746</a>]  Yang, L., Dantu, R., Anderson, T., and R. Gopal,
              "Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES)
              Framework", <a href="./rfc3746">RFC 3746</a>, April 2004,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3746">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3746</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC3985">RFC3985</a>]  Bryant, S., Ed., and P. Pate, Ed., "Pseudo Wire Emulation
              Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Architecture", <a href="./rfc3985">RFC 3985</a>, March 2005,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3985">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3985</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC4655">RFC4655</a>]  Farrel, A., Vasseur, J.-P., and J. Ash, "A Path
              Computation Element (PCE)-Based Architecture", <a href="./rfc4655">RFC 4655</a>,
              August 2006, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4655">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4655</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5150">RFC5150</a>]  Ayyangar, A., Kompella, K., Vasseur, JP., and A. Farrel,
              "Label Switched Path Stitching with Generalized
              Multiprotocol Label Switching Traffic Engineering (GMPLS
              TE)", <a href="./rfc5150">RFC 5150</a>, February 2008,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5150">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5150</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5212">RFC5212</a>]  Shiomoto, K., Papadimitriou, D., Le Roux, JL., Vigoureux,
              M., and D. Brungard, "Requirements for GMPLS-Based Multi-
              Region and Multi-Layer Networks (MRN/MLN)", <a href="./rfc5212">RFC 5212</a>,
              July 2008, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5212">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5212</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5254">RFC5254</a>]  Bitar, N., Ed., Bocci, M., Ed., and L. Martini, Ed.,
              "Requirements for Multi-Segment Pseudowire Emulation Edge-
              to-Edge (PWE3)", <a href="./rfc5254">RFC 5254</a>, October 2008,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5254">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5254</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5277">RFC5277</a>]  Chisholm, S. and H. Trevino, "NETCONF Event
              Notifications", <a href="./rfc5277">RFC 5277</a>, July 2008,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5277">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5277</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5305">RFC5305</a>]  Li, T. and H. Smit, "IS-IS Extensions for Traffic
              Engineering", <a href="./rfc5305">RFC 5305</a>, October 2008,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5305">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5305</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5394">RFC5394</a>]  Bryskin, I., Papadimitriou, D., Berger, L., and J. Ash,
              "Policy-Enabled Path Computation Framework", <a href="./rfc5394">RFC 5394</a>,
              December 2008, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5394">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5394</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5424">RFC5424</a>]  Gerhards, R., "The Syslog Protocol", <a href="./rfc5424">RFC 5424</a>, March 2009,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5424">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5424</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5440">RFC5440</a>]  Vasseur, JP., Ed., and JL. Le Roux, Ed., "Path Computation
              Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)", <a href="./rfc5440">RFC 5440</a>,
              March 2009, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5440">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5440</a>&gt;.




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   [<a id="ref-RFC5520">RFC5520</a>]  Bradford, R., Ed., Vasseur, JP., and A. Farrel,
              "Preserving Topology Confidentiality in Inter-Domain Path
              Computation Using a Path-Key-Based Mechanism", <a href="./rfc5520">RFC 5520</a>,
              April 2009, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5520">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5520</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5557">RFC5557</a>]  Lee, Y., Le Roux, JL., King, D., and E. Oki, "Path
              Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP)
              Requirements and Protocol Extensions in Support of Global
              Concurrent Optimization", <a href="./rfc5557">RFC 5557</a>, July 2009,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5557">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5557</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5623">RFC5623</a>]  Oki, E., Takeda, T., Le Roux, JL., and A. Farrel,
              "Framework for PCE-Based Inter-Layer MPLS and GMPLS
              Traffic Engineering", <a href="./rfc5623">RFC 5623</a>, September 2009,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5623">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5623</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5693">RFC5693</a>]  Seedorf, J. and E. Burger, "Application-Layer Traffic
              Optimization (ALTO) Problem Statement", <a href="./rfc5693">RFC 5693</a>,
              October 2009, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5693">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5693</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC5810">RFC5810</a>]  Doria, A., Ed., Hadi Salim, J., Ed., Haas, R., Ed.,
              Khosravi, H., Ed., Wang, W., Ed., Dong, L., Gopal, R., and
              J.  Halpern, "Forwarding and Control Element Separation
              (ForCES) Protocol Specification", <a href="./rfc5810">RFC 5810</a>, March 2010,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5810">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5810</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC6007">RFC6007</a>]  Nishioka, I. and D. King, "Use of the Synchronization
              VECtor (SVEC) List for Synchronized Dependent Path
              Computations", <a href="./rfc6007">RFC 6007</a>, September 2010,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6007">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6007</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC6020">RFC6020</a>]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for
              the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", <a href="./rfc6020">RFC 6020</a>,
              October 2010, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6020">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6020</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC6107">RFC6107</a>]  Shiomoto, K., Ed., and A. Farrel, Ed., "Procedures for
              Dynamically Signaled Hierarchical Label Switched Paths",
              <a href="./rfc6107">RFC 6107</a>, February 2011,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6107">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6107</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC6120">RFC6120</a>]  Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
              Protocol (XMPP): Core", <a href="./rfc6120">RFC 6120</a>, March 2011,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6120">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6120</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC6241">RFC6241</a>]  Enns, R., Ed., Bjorklund, M., Ed., Schoenwaelder, J., Ed.,
              and A. Bierman, Ed., "Network Configuration Protocol
              (NETCONF)", <a href="./rfc6241">RFC 6241</a>, June 2011,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6241">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6241</a>&gt;.



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   [<a id="ref-RFC6707">RFC6707</a>]  Niven-Jenkins, B., Le Faucheur, F., and N. Bitar, "Content
              Distribution Network Interconnection (CDNI) Problem
              Statement", <a href="./rfc6707">RFC 6707</a>, September 2012,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6707">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6707</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC6805">RFC6805</a>]  King, D., Ed., and A. Farrel, Ed., "The Application of the
              Path Computation Element Architecture to the Determination
              of a Sequence of Domains in MPLS and GMPLS", <a href="./rfc6805">RFC 6805</a>,
              November 2012, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6805">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6805</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC7011">RFC7011</a>]  Claise, B., Ed., Trammell, B., Ed., and P. Aitken,
              "Specification of the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
              Protocol for the Exchange of Flow Information", STD 77,
              <a href="./rfc7011">RFC 7011</a>, September 2013,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7011">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7011</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC7285">RFC7285</a>]  Alimi, R., Ed., Penno, R., Ed., Yang, Y., Ed., Kiesel, S.,
              Previdi, S., Roome, W., Shalunov, S., and R. Woundy,
              "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol",
              <a href="./rfc7285">RFC 7285</a>, September 2014,
              &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7285">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7285</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-RFC7297">RFC7297</a>]  Boucadair, M., Jacquenet, C., and N. Wang, "IP
              Connectivity Provisioning Profile (CPP)", <a href="./rfc7297">RFC 7297</a>,
              July 2014, &lt;<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7297">http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7297</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-Stateful-PCE">Stateful-PCE</a>]
              Crabbe, E., Minei, I., Medved, J., and R. Varga, "PCEP
              Extensions for Stateful PCE", Work in Progress,
              <a href="./draft-ietf-pce-stateful-pce-10">draft-ietf-pce-stateful-pce-10</a>, October 2014.

   [<a id="ref-TL1">TL1</a>]      Telcorida, "Operations Application Messages - Language For
              Operations Application Messages", GR-831, November 1996.

   [<a id="ref-TMF-MTOSI">TMF-MTOSI</a>]
              TeleManagement Forum, "Multi-Technology Operations Systems
              Interface (MTOSI)",
              &lt;<a href="https://www.tmforum.org/MTOSI/2319/home.html">https://www.tmforum.org/MTOSI/2319/home.html</a>&gt;.

   [<a id="ref-YANG-Rtg">YANG-Rtg</a>] Lhotka, L. and A. Lindem, "A YANG Data Model for Routing
              Management", Work in Progress, <a href="./draft-ietf-netmod-routing-cfg-17">draft-ietf-netmod-routing-</a>
              <a href="./draft-ietf-netmod-routing-cfg-17">cfg-17</a>, March 2015.









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<span class="h2"><a class="selflink" id="appendix-A" href="#appendix-A">Appendix A</a>.  Undefined Interfaces</span>

   This appendix provides a brief list of interfaces that are not yet
   defined at the time of this writing.  Interfaces where there is a
   choice of existing protocols are not listed.

   o  An interface for adding additional information to the Traffic
      Engineering Database is described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.3">Section 2.3.2.3</a>.  No protocol
      is currently identified for this interface, but candidates
      include:

      - The protocol developed or adopted to satisfy the requirements of
        I2RS [<a href="#ref-I2RS-Arch">I2RS-Arch</a>]

      - NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>]

   o  The protocol to be used by the Interface to the Routing System is
      described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.8">Section 2.3.2.8</a>.  The I2RS working group has
      determined that this protocol will be based on a combination of
      NETCONF [<a href="./rfc6241" title="&quot;Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)&quot;">RFC6241</a>] and RESTCONF [<a href="#ref-RESTCONF" title="&quot;RESTCONF Protocol&quot;">RESTCONF</a>] with further additions
      and modifications as deemed necessary to deliver the desired
      function.  The details of the protocol are still to be determined.

   o  As described in <a href="#section-2.3.2.10">Section 2.3.2.10</a>, the Virtual Network Topology
      Manager needs an interface that can be used by a PCE or the ABNO
      Controller to inform it that a client layer needs more virtual
      topology.  It is possible that the protocol identified for use
      with I2RS will satisfy this requirement, or this could be achieved
      using extensions to the PCEP Notify message (PCNtf).

   o  The north-bound interface from the ABNO Controller is used by the
      NMS, OSS, and Application Service Coordinator to request services
      in the network in support of applications as described in
      <a href="#section-2.3.2.11">Section 2.3.2.11</a>.

      - It is possible that the protocol selected or designed to satisfy
        I2RS will address the requirement.

      - A potential approach for this type of interface is described in
        [<a href="./rfc7297" title="&quot;IP Connectivity Provisioning Profile (CPP)&quot;">RFC7297</a>] for a simple use case.

   o  As noted in <a href="#section-2.3.2.14">Section 2.3.2.14</a>, there may be layer-independent data
      models for offering common interfaces to control, configure, and
      report OAM.







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   o  As noted in <a href="#section-3.6">Section 3.6</a>, the ABNO model could be applied to
      placing multi-segment pseudowires in a network topology made up of
      S-PEs and MPLS tunnels.  The current definition of PCEP [<a href="./rfc5440" title="&quot;Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)&quot;">RFC5440</a>]
      and associated extensions that are works in progress do not
      include all of the details to request such paths, so some work
      might be necessary, although the general concepts will be easily
      reusable.  Indeed, such work may be necessary for the wider
      applicability of PCEs in many networking scenarios.

Acknowledgements

   Thanks for discussions and review are due to Ken Gray, Jan Medved,
   Nitin Bahadur, Diego Caviglia, Joel Halpern, Brian Field, Ori
   Gerstel, Daniele Ceccarelli, Cyril Margaria, Jonathan Hardwick, Nico
   Wauters, Tom Taylor, Qin Wu, and Luis Contreras.  Thanks to George
   Swallow for suggesting the existence of the SRLG database.  Tomonori
   Takeda and Julien Meuric provided valuable comments as part of their
   Routing Directorate reviews.  Tina Tsou provided comments as part of
   her Operational Directorate review.

   This work received funding from the European Union's Seventh
   Framework Programme for research, technological development, and
   demonstration, through the PACE project under grant agreement
   number 619712 and through the IDEALIST project under grant agreement
   number 317999.


























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Contributors

   Quintin Zhao
   Huawei Technologies
   125 Nagog Technology Park
   Acton, MA  01719
   United States
   EMail: qzhao@huawei.com

   Victor Lopez
   Telefonica I+D
   EMail: vlopez@tid.es

   Ramon Casellas
   CTTC
   EMail: ramon.casellas@cttc.es

   Yuji Kamite
   NTT Communications Corporation
   EMail: y.kamite@ntt.com

   Yosuke Tanaka
   NTT Communications Corporation
   EMail: yosuke.tanaka@ntt.com

   Young Lee
   Huawei Technologies
   EMail: leeyoung@huawei.com

   Y. Richard Yang
   Yale University
   EMail: yry@cs.yale.edu

Authors' Addresses

   Daniel King
   Old Dog Consulting

   EMail: daniel@olddog.co.uk


   Adrian Farrel
   Juniper Networks

   EMail: adrian@olddog.co.uk






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