Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (capwap)

Last Modified: 2006-07-17

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/capwap

Chair(s):

  • Margaret Wasserman <margaret@thingmagic.com>

  • Mahalingam Mani <mmani@avaya.com>

  • Dorothy Gellert <dorothy.gellert@nokia.com>

    Operations and Management Area Director(s):

  • Dan Romascanu <dromasca@avaya.com>
  • David Kessens <david.kessens@nokia.com>

    Operations and Management Area Advisor:

  • Dan Romascanu <dromasca@avaya.com>

    Technical Advisor(s):

  • Scott Kelly (security) <skelly@arubanetworks.com>
  • Bob O'Hara <bohara@airespace.com>
  • Charles Clancy (security) <clancy@ltsnet.net>

    Mailing Lists:

    General Discussion: capwap@frascone.com
    To Subscribe: http://lists.frascone.com/mailman/listinfo/capwap
    Archive: http://lists.frascone.com/pipermail/capwap

    Description of Working Group:

    The original CAPWAP WG charter included drafting a problem statement
    and a taxonomy of architectures. The new charter of the CAPWAP WG
    proposes building upon the original charter and developing a CAPWAP
    protocol to provide interoperability among WLAN backend architectures.
    The intent of the CAPWAP protocol is to facilitate control, management
    and provisioning of WLAN Termination Points (WTPs) specifying the
    services, functions and resources relating to 802.11 WLAN Termination
    Points in order to allow for interoperable implementations of WTPs
    and ACs.

    The revised CAPWAP WG will reference two classes of the Centralized
    WLAN Architecture family, namely the Local MAC and the Split MAC,
    as described in the CAPWAP Architecture Taxonomy draft. The protocol
    will define the CAPWAP control plane including the primitives to
    control data access. An effective Centralized CAPWAP Architecture
    impacts how WLAN data traffic is managed over the backend network.
    This implies the abilitiy to control how data is forwarded by
    negotiating existng data encapsulation mechanisms and specifying
    data payload formats in order to ensure interoperability between
    CAPWAP vendors. No other specifications of the CAPWAP data plane
    are within the scope of this charter.

    The CAPWAP WG will strive for extensibility in the protocol design
    to favor future applicability to other access technologies, especially
    IEEE 802.16. While accommodation of any access technology other than
    IEEE 802.11 is not required for successful completion, there are clear
    deployment advantages if a wide range of access technologies are
    accommodated.

    In summary, the primary goals of the group will be:

    1. Defining a set of Objectives based on the architecture taxonomy
    work that lists the requirements for an interoperable CAPWAP
    protocol. In addition, the WG will incorporate requirements
    derived from the inputs provided by Enterprise and (hotspot)
    Providers based on the WLAN deployment challenges addressed
    by CAPWAP architecture. This document will:

    a. include objectives to address problems described in the
    CAPWAP Problem statement document
    b. Describe each objective, its benefit to the protocol and
    how it satisfies the problem statement.
    c. Prioritize and classify the objectives into 3 categories:
    i. Mandatory and Accepted
    ii. Desirable
    iii. Rejected
    d. Undergo review in IEEE 802 as needed

    This should result in the first WG Last Call for Objectives draft.

    To avoid requirements bloat and stalemate, the WG has a
    hard deadline on the Objectives phase. The WG MUST reach WG
    consensus on the objectives draft by Feb 2005. This is for
    several reasons:
    * We must send this for review to IEEE at that time.
    * We must have a reasonably stable set of objectives
    so that candidate submissions are aware of the objectives
    to be met.

    The 2nd WG Last Call (in April) for the objectives draft is to
    ensure that the WG has consensus on any changes that may result
    from IEEE and expert review. So it is not the intention that
    the WG keeps adding new Objectives after Feb 2005.

    If the WG cannot reach consensus on the Objectives draft by the
    May 2005 milestone to the IESG, the WG will close.

    2. Evaluating a set of candidate proposals that include existing
    IETF protocols and any proposals leading to the selection of
    a protocol on which to base the CAPWAP standard.

    3. Developing a CAPWAP protocol standard that meets the Mandatory
    and Accepted objectives from the Evaluation draft and contains
    the minimal set of feature needed to control and provision
    WLAN Access Points. Specifically The CAPWAP protocol document
    will address the following considerations:
    a. Architecture
    b. Operations
    c. Security
    d. Network Management
    e. Scalability
    f. Performance

    4. A MIB Document to support the CAPWAP protocol.

    In addition, the CAPWAP WG will maintain its Liaison with the
    IEEE to ensure consistency of its work with the IEEE 802.11
    Standard.

    Deliverables:
    * Objectives/Criteria Document for CAPWAP protocol
    * Protocol evaluation and base protocol selection document
    * CAPWAP Protocol standard
    * MIB support standard

    Goals and Milestones:

    Done  Last call for problem statement draft.
    Done  Discuss last call comments for problem statement at IETF 59.
    Done  Last Call for architecture description document.
    Done  Submit problem statement to IESG for publication approval.
    Done  Architecture document to expert review.
    Done  Stable Architecture document for review/sync-up with IEEE 802
    Done  Discuss results of IEEE 802 review/sync-up
    Done  Issue first Internet-Draft of CAPWAP Objectives document
    Done  Submit CAPWAP Objectives to IEEE/IETF experts review
    Done  First WGLC for CAPWAP Objectives Draft
    Done  Deadline to submit candidate protocol proposals to the WG
    Done  Second WGLC for CAPWAP Objectives Draft
    Done  Issue first Internet-Draft of CAPWAP Evaluation draft
    Done  Submit CAPWAP Evaluation draft to IESG as Information RFC
    Done  Submit CAPWAP Objectives draft to IESG as Informational RFC
    Done  Issue first Internet Draft of CAPWAP protocol
    Jul 2006  Issue first Internet-Draft of CAPWAP MIB
    Aug 2006  WGLC for CAPWAP protocol
    Sep 2006  Submit CAPWAP protocol to IESG as Proposed Standard RFC
    Sep 2006  WGLC for CAPWAP MIB
    Sep 2006  Submit CAPWAP MIB to IESG as Proposed Standard RFC

    Internet-Drafts:

    Wireless LAN Control Protocol (WiCoP) (120492 bytes)
    SLAPP : Secure Light Access Point Protocol (155650 bytes)
    CAPWAP Protocol Specification (309921 bytes)

    Request For Comments:

    CAPWAP Problem Statement (RFC 3990) (11854 bytes)
    Architecture Taxonomy for Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points(CAPWAP) (RFC 4118) (93695 bytes)
    Evaluation of Candidate Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) Protocols (RFC 4565) (62929 bytes)
    Objectives for Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) (RFC 4564) (64576 bytes)
    IETF Secretariat - Please send questions, comments, and/or suggestions to ietf-web@ietf.org.

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