A new IETF working group has been formed in the Routing Area. For additional information please contact the Area Directors or the WG Chairs. Interface to the Routing System (i2rs) ------------------------------------------------ Current Status: Proposed Working Group Chairs: Alia Atlas <akatlas@juniper.net> Edward Crabbe <edc@google.com> Assigned Area Director: Adrian Farrel <adrian@olddog.co.uk> Mailing list Address: i2rs@ietf.org To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i2rs Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/i2rs/current/maillist.html Charter of Working Group: In an IP routed network, the routing system: - Distributes topology and other state (network metadata) - Uses this network metadata to determine the best paths to each given reachable destination attached to the network - Communicates these decisions to the forwarding plane of each forwarding device in the network. That is, the routing system is the collection of entities, protocols and processes that collectively build the forwarding tables that are exported into the entities that constitute the network's forwarding plane. While processes participating in the routing system are often colocated with the local forwarding elements, this isn't a necessary condition. Thus, the routing system includes control plane protocols and processes that compute routes and paths for data packets, wherever the processes implementing those protocols and processes may be running. I2RS facilitates real-time or event driven interaction with the routing system through a collection of protocol-based control or management interfaces. These allow information, policies, and operational parameters to be injected into and retrieved (as read or by notification) from the routing system while retaining data consistency and coherency across the routers and routing infrastructure, and among multiple interactions with the routing system. The I2RS interfaces will co-exist with existing configuration and management systems and interfaces. It is envisioned that users of the I2RS interfaces will be management applications, network controllers, and user applications that make specific demands on the network. The I2RS working group works to develop a high-level architecture that describes the basic building-blocks necessary to enable the specific use cases, and that will lead to an understanding of the abstract informational models and requirements for encodings and protocols for the I2RS interfaces. Small and well-scoped use cases are critical to constrain the scope of the work and achieve sufficient focus for the working group to deliver successful outcomes. Initial work within the working group will be limited to a single administrative domain. The working group is chartered to work on the following items: - High-level architecture for I2RS including considerations of policy and security. - Tightly scoped key use cases for operational use of I2RS as follows: o Interactions with the Routing Information Base (RIB). Allowing read and write access to the RIB, but no direct access to the Forwarding Information Base (FIB). o Control and analysis of the operation of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) including the setting and activation of policies related to the protocol. o Control, optimization, and choice of traffic exit points from networks based on more information than provided by the dynamic control plane. o Distributed reaction to network-based attacks through rapid modification of the control plane behavior to reroute traffic for one destination while leaving standard mechanisms (filters, metrics, and policy) in place for other routes. o Service layer routing to improve on existing hub-and-spoke traffic. o The ability to extract information about topology from the network. Injection and creation of topology will not be considered as an initial work item. Other use cases may be adopted by the working group only through rechartering. - Abstract information models consistent with the use cases. - Requirements for I2RS protocols and encoding languages. - An analysis of existing IETF and other protocols and encoding languages against the requirements. The working group is not currently chartered to develop protocols, encoding languages, or data models. The objective of this work effort is to arrive at common standards for these items, but these items are dependent on the progress of the topics listed above. Work for these items will be conducted in this working group only after a re-charter, and/or may be carried out in another working group with specific responsibility for the protocol or encoding language. Milestones: Jul 2013 - Request publication of an Informational document defining the problem statement Jul 2013 - Request publication of an Informational document defining the high-level architecture Aug 2013 - Request publication of Informational documents describing use cases Sep 2013 - Request publication of an Informational document defining the protocol requirements Sep 2013 - Request publication of an Informational document defining encoding language requirements Feb 2014 - Request publication of Standards Track documents specifying information models Feb 2014 - Request publication of an Informational document providing an analysis of existing IETF and other protocols and encoding languages against the requirements Feb 2014 - Consider re-chartering
