Subject: WG Review: Interface to the Routing System (i2rs)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:43:17 -0800

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Routing Area. The IESG
has not made any determination yet. The following draft charter was
submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send
your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg at ietf.org) by 2013-01-22.

Interface to the Routing System (i2rs)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Proposed Working Group

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

Mailing list
  Address: [email-masked]
  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:

Working Group Name:
        Interfaces to the Routing System (I2RS)

IETF Area:
        Routing Area

Chair(s):
        TBD
Routing Area Director(s):
        Adrian Farrel
Routing Area Advisor:
        Adrian Farrel
Operations Area Advisor:
        TBD

Mailing Lists:
        General Discussion: [email-masked]
        To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i2rs
        Archive:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/i2rs/current/maillist.html

Description 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 path 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 fowarding 
 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 that compute 
 routes and paths for data packets, wherever the processes implementing 
 those protocols 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 framework and
 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 and framework 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 quickly
      modification of the control plane behavior to reroute traffic for 
      one destination while leaving a 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.

Goals and Milestones:

Jul 2013: Request publication of an Informational document defining the
          problem statement
Jul 2013: Request publication of an Informational document defining the
          highlevel architecture and framework
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
Nov 2013: Request publication of Standards Track documents specifying
          information models
Nov 2013: Request publication of an Informational document providing an
          analysis of existing IETF and other protocols and encoding 
          languages against the requirements
Dec 2013: Consider re-chartering