Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Haas

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Haas
Request for Comments: 5813 IBM
Category: Standards Track March 2010
ISSN: 2070-1721

Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) MIB

Abstract

This memo defines a Management Information Base (MIB) module for use
with network management protocols in the Internet community. In
particular, it defines managed objects for the Forwarding and Control
Element Separation (ForCES) Network Element (NE).

Status of This Memo

This is an Internet Standards Track document.

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). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5813.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) 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

1. The Internet-Standard Management Framework ......................2
2. Introduction ....................................................2
3. Requirements Notation ...........................................3
4. ForCES MIB Overview .............................................3
5. ForCES MIB Definition ...........................................4
6. Associations Kept in the MIB ...................................13
7. Support for Multiple CEs and FEs ...............................14
8. Security Considerations ........................................14
9. IANA Considerations ............................................15
10. References ....................................................15
10.1. Normative References .....................................15
10.2. Informative References ...................................16
Appendix A. Acknowledgments ......................................17

1. The Internet-Standard Management Framework

For a detailed overview of the documents that describe the current
Internet-Standard Management Framework, please refer to section 7 of
[RFC3410].

Managed objects are accessed via a virtual information store, termed
the Management Information Base or MIB. MIB objects are generally
accessed through the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
Objects in the MIB are defined using the mechanisms defined in the
Structure of Management Information (SMI). This memo specifies a MIB
module that is compliant to the SMIv2, which is described in STD 58,
[RFC2578], STD 58, [RFC2579] and STD 58, [RFC2580].

2. Introduction

The ForCES MIB module is a read-only MIB module that captures
information related to the ForCES protocol ([RFC3654], [RFC3746],
[FORCES-APP], and [RFC5810]).

The ForCES MIB module does not include information that is specified
in other MIB modules, such as packet counters for interfaces, etc.

More specifically, the information in the ForCES MIB module relative
to associations (between Control Elements and Forwarding Elements)
that are in the UP state includes:

o identifiers of the elements in the association,

o configuration parameters of the association, and

o statistics of the association.

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3. Requirements Notation

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

4. ForCES MIB Overview

The MIB module contains the latest ForCES protocol version supported
by the Control Element (CE) (forcesLatestProtocolVersionSupported).
Note that the CE must also allow interaction with Forwarding Elements
(FEs) supporting earlier versions.

For each association identified by the pair CE ID and FE ID, the
following associated information is provided by the MIB module as an
entry (forcesAssociationEntry) in the association table
(forcesAssociationTable):

o Version number of the ForCES protocol running in this association
(forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion).

o Time when the association entered the UP state
(forcesAssociationTimeUp).

o Time when the association left the UP state
(forcesAssociationTimeDown). Note that this is only used for
notification purposes as the association is removed from the MIB
immediately after it leaves the UP state.

o Number of ForCES Heartbeat messages sent from the CE
(forcesAssociationHBMsgSent) and received by the CE
(forcesAssociationHBMsgReceived) since the association entered the
UP state.

o Number of operational ForCES messages sent from the CE
(forcesAssociationOperMsgSent) and received by the CE
(forcesAssociationOperMsgReceived) since the association entered
the UP state. Only messages other than Heartbeat, Association
Setup, Association Setup Response, and Association Teardown are
counted.

Finally, the MIB module defines the following notifications:

o Whenever an association enters the UP state, a notification
(forcesAssociationEntryUp) is issued containing the version of the
ForCES protocol running. CE ID and FE ID are concatenated to form
the table index, hence they appear in the OID of the ForCES-
protocol running-version object. Optionally, a notification

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(forcesAssociationEntryUpStats) can instead be issued with all
associated information for this association, except
forcesAssociationTimeDown.

o Whenever an association leaves the UP state, a notification
(forcesAssociationEntryDown) is issued containing the version of
the ForCES protocol running. Optionally, a notification
(forcesAssociationEntryDownStats) can instead be issued with all
associated information for this association. The reason is that
the association and all its associated information will be removed
from the MIB immediately after this notification has been issued.

5. ForCES MIB Definition

FORCES-MIB DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN

IMPORTS
MODULE-IDENTITY, OBJECT-TYPE, NOTIFICATION-TYPE,
mib-2, Integer32
FROM SNMPv2-SMI

TEXTUAL-CONVENTION, TimeStamp
FROM SNMPv2-TC

MODULE-COMPLIANCE, OBJECT-GROUP,
NOTIFICATION-GROUP
FROM SNMPv2-CONF

ZeroBasedCounter32
FROM RMON2-MIB;

forcesMib MODULE-IDENTITY
LAST-UPDATED "201003100000Z" -- March 10, 2010
ORGANIZATION "IETF Forwarding and Control Element
Separation (ForCES) Working Group"
CONTACT-INFO
"WG Charter:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/forces-charter.html

Mailing lists:
General Discussion: [email protected]
To Subscribe:
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/forces

Chairs: Patrick Droz
Email: [email protected]
Jamal Hadi Salim
Email: [email protected]

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RFC 5813 ForCES MIB March 2010

Editor: Robert Haas
IBM
Email: [email protected]"
DESCRIPTION
"This MIB module contains managed object definitions
for the ForCES Protocol.

Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified
as authors of the code. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with
or without modification, is permitted pursuant to, and
subject to the license terms contained in, the
Simplified BSD License set forth in Section 4.c of the
IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).

This version of this MIB module is part of RFC 5813;
see the RFC itself for full legal notices."
REVISION "201003100000Z" -- March 10, 2010
DESCRIPTION
"Initial version, published as RFC 5813."
::= { mib-2 187 }

--****************************************************************

forcesMibNotifications OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { forcesMib 0 }
forcesMibObjects OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { forcesMib 1 }
forcesMibConformance OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { forcesMib 2 }

ForcesID ::= TEXTUAL-CONVENTION
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The ForCES identifier is a 4-octet quantity."
SYNTAX OCTET STRING (SIZE (4))

ForcesProtocolVersion ::= TEXTUAL-CONVENTION
DISPLAY-HINT "d"
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"ForCES protocol version number.
The version numbers used are defined in the
specifications of the respective protocol:
1 - ForCESv1, RFC 5810."
SYNTAX Integer32 (1..255)

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-- Notifications

forcesAssociationEntryUp NOTIFICATION-TYPE
OBJECTS {
forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"This notification is generated as soon
as an association enters the UP state.
Note that these notifications are not
throttled as the CE itself should
throttle the setup of associations."
::= { forcesMibNotifications 1 }

forcesAssociationEntryDown NOTIFICATION-TYPE
OBJECTS {
forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"This notification is generated as soon
as an association leaves the UP state.
Note that these notifications are not
throttled as the CE itself should
throttle the setup of associations."
::= { forcesMibNotifications 2 }

forcesAssociationEntryUpStats NOTIFICATION-TYPE
OBJECTS {
forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion,
forcesAssociationTimeUp
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"This notification is generated as soon
as an association enters the UP state.
Note that these notifications are not
throttled as the CE itself should
throttle the setup of associations."
::= { forcesMibNotifications 3 }

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forcesAssociationEntryDownStats NOTIFICATION-TYPE
OBJECTS {
forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion,
forcesAssociationTimeUp,
forcesAssociationTimeDown,
forcesAssociationHBMsgSent,
forcesAssociationHBMsgReceived,
forcesAssociationOperMsgSent,
forcesAssociationOperMsgReceived,
forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"This notification is generated as soon
as an association leaves the UP state.
Note that these notifications are not
throttled as the CE itself should
throttle the setup of associations."
::= { forcesMibNotifications 4 }

-- Objects

forcesLatestProtocolVersionSupported OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ForcesProtocolVersion
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The ForCES protocol version supported by the CE.
The current protocol version is 1.
Note that the CE must also allow interaction
with FEs supporting earlier versions."
::= { forcesMibObjects 1 }

forcesAssociations OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { forcesMibObjects 2 }

forcesAssociationTable OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX SEQUENCE OF ForcesAssociationEntry
MAX-ACCESS not-accessible
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The (conceptual) table of associations."
::= { forcesAssociations 1 }

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forcesAssociationEntry OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ForcesAssociationEntry
MAX-ACCESS not-accessible
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A (conceptual) entry for one association."
INDEX { forcesAssociationCEID, forcesAssociationFEID }
::= { forcesAssociationTable 1 }

ForcesAssociationEntry ::= SEQUENCE {
forcesAssociationCEID ForcesID,
forcesAssociationFEID ForcesID,

forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion
ForcesProtocolVersion,

forcesAssociationTimeUp TimeStamp,
forcesAssociationTimeDown TimeStamp,

forcesAssociationHBMsgSent ZeroBasedCounter32,
forcesAssociationHBMsgReceived ZeroBasedCounter32,
forcesAssociationOperMsgSent ZeroBasedCounter32,
forcesAssociationOperMsgReceived ZeroBasedCounter32,
forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime TimeStamp
}

forcesAssociationCEID OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ForcesID
MAX-ACCESS not-accessible
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The ForCES ID of the CE."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 1 }

forcesAssociationFEID OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ForcesID
MAX-ACCESS not-accessible
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The ForCES ID of the FE."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 2 }

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forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ForcesProtocolVersion
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The current ForCES protocol version used in
this association.
The current protocol version is 1."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 3 }

forcesAssociationTimeUp OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX TimeStamp
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The value of sysUpTime at the time this
association entered the UP state.
If this association started prior to the last
initialization of the network subsystem, then
this object contains a zero value.
This object allows to uniquely identify
associations with the same CE and FE IDs."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 4 }

forcesAssociationTimeDown OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX TimeStamp
MAX-ACCESS accessible-for-notify
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The value of sysUpTime at the time this
association left the UP state."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 5 }

forcesAssociationHBMsgSent OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ZeroBasedCounter32
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A counter of how many Heartbeat messages have
been sent by the CE on this association
since the association entered the UP state.
Discontinuities in the value of this counter
can occur at reinitialization of the management
system, and at other times as indicated by the
value of forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 6 }

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forcesAssociationHBMsgReceived OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ZeroBasedCounter32
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A counter of how many Heartbeat messages
have been received by the CE on this association
since the association entered the UP state.
Discontinuities in the value of this counter
can occur at reinitialization of the management
system, and at other times as indicated by the
value of forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 7 }

forcesAssociationOperMsgSent OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ZeroBasedCounter32
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A counter of how many messages other than
Heartbeat (i.e., Config and Query)
have been sent by the CE on this association
since the association entered the UP state.
Discontinuities in the value of this counter
can occur at reinitialization of the management
system, and at other times as indicated by the
value of forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 8 }

forcesAssociationOperMsgReceived OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX ZeroBasedCounter32
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A counter of how many messages other than
Heartbeat (i.e., Config response, Query response,
event notification, and packet redirect)
have been received by the CE on this association
since the association entered the UP state.
Discontinuities in the value of this counter
can occur at reinitialization of the management
system, and at other times as indicated by the
value of forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 9 }

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forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX TimeStamp
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The value of sysUpTime on the most recent occasion
at which any one or more of this association's
counters suffered a discontinuity. The relevant
counters are the specific instances associated with
this association of any ZeroBasedCounter32 object
contained in the forcesAssociationTable. If no
such discontinuities have occurred since the last
reinitialization of the local management subsystem,
then this object contains a zero value."
::= { forcesAssociationEntry 10 }

-- Conformance

forcesMibCompliances OBJECT IDENTIFIER
::= { forcesMibConformance 1 }
forcesMibGroups OBJECT IDENTIFIER
::= { forcesMibConformance 2 }

-- Compliance statements

forcesMibCompliance MODULE-COMPLIANCE
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"The compliance statement for routers running
ForCES and implementing the ForCES MIB."
MODULE -- this module
MANDATORY-GROUPS { forcesMibGroup, forcesNotificationGroup }

GROUP forcesNotificationStatsGroup
DESCRIPTION
"Implementation of this group is recommended."

GROUP forcesStatsGroup
DESCRIPTION
"Implementation of this group is recommended."

::= { forcesMibCompliances 1 }

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-- Units of conformance

forcesNotificationGroup NOTIFICATION-GROUP
NOTIFICATIONS { forcesAssociationEntryUp,
forcesAssociationEntryDown
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A collection of notifications for signaling
important ForCES events."
::= { forcesMibGroups 1 }

forcesMibGroup OBJECT-GROUP
OBJECTS { forcesLatestProtocolVersionSupported,
forcesAssociationRunningProtocolVersion
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A collection of objects to support management
of ForCES routers."
::= { forcesMibGroups 2 }

forcesNotificationStatsGroup NOTIFICATION-GROUP
NOTIFICATIONS { forcesAssociationEntryUpStats,
forcesAssociationEntryDownStats
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A collection of optional notifications for
signaling important ForCES events including
statistics."
::= { forcesMibGroups 3 }

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forcesStatsGroup OBJECT-GROUP
OBJECTS { forcesAssociationTimeUp,
forcesAssociationTimeDown,
forcesAssociationHBMsgSent,
forcesAssociationHBMsgReceived,
forcesAssociationOperMsgSent,
forcesAssociationOperMsgReceived,
forcesAssociationCounterDiscontinuityTime
}
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A collection of optional objects to provide
extra information about the associations.
There is no protocol reason to keep such
information, but these objects can be very
useful in debugging connectivity problems."
::= { forcesMibGroups 4}

END

6. Associations Kept in the MIB

Associations enter the UP state as soon as the CE has sent to the FE
an Association Setup Response message containing a successful
Association Setup Result. Only associations that are UP are
reflected in this MIB module.

Associations are removed from the MIB module as soon as they leave
the UP state, i.e., if the CE has not received any message (Heartbeat
or other protocol message) from the FE within a given time period or
if an Association Teardown message has been sent by the CE.

Statistics counters are initialized to zero when the association is
created. If the same association goes down and comes back up, the
counters will reset and the discontinuity can be discovered by
checking the discontinuity timestamp. In addition, the time-up
timestamp in the association allows to distinguish new associations
from past ones with the same index. Note that the optional down
notification contains the statistics with the final values of the
statistics counters.

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7. Support for Multiple CEs and FEs

An NE consists of one or more FEs and one or more CEs. Where there
is a single CE, that CE will have knowledge of all the associations
in the NE and so can provide the information necessary to support the
managed objects defined in this MIB module. Where there is more than
one CE, information about the associations may be distributed among
the CEs. Whether each CE implements the managed objects for the
associations of which it is aware or whether the CEs cooperate to
present the appearance of a single set of managed objects for all the
associations in the NE is outside the scope of this document.

8. Security Considerations

There are no management objects defined in this MIB module that have
a MAX-ACCESS clause of read-write and/or read-create. So, if this
MIB module is implemented correctly, then there is no risk that an
intruder can alter or create any management objects of this MIB
module via direct SNMP SET operations.

Some of the readable objects in this MIB module (i.e., objects with a
MAX-ACCESS other than not-accessible) may be considered sensitive or
vulnerable in some network environments. It is thus important to
control even GET and/or NOTIFY access to these objects and possibly
to even encrypt the values of these objects when sending them over
the network via SNMP. These are the tables and objects and their
sensitivity/vulnerability:

o Objects in the forcesMibGroup are protocol versions. They are
neither sensitive nor vulnerable.

o Objects in the forcesStatsGroup are statistics. They are neither
sensitive nor vulnerable.

SNMP versions prior to SNMPv3 did not include adequate security.
Even if the network itself is secure (for example by using IPsec),
even then, there is no control as to who on the secure network is
allowed to access and GET/SET (read/change/create/delete) the objects
in this MIB module.

It is RECOMMENDED that implementers consider the security features as
provided by the SNMPv3 framework (see [RFC3410], section 8),
including full support for the SNMPv3 cryptographic mechanisms (for
authentication and privacy).

Further, deployment of SNMP versions prior to SNMPv3 is NOT
RECOMMENDED. Instead, it is RECOMMENDED to deploy SNMPv3 and to
enable cryptographic security. It is then a customer/operator

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responsibility to ensure that the SNMP entity giving access to an
instance of this MIB module is properly configured to give access to
the objects only to those principals (users) that have legitimate
rights to indeed GET or SET (change/create/delete) them.

9. IANA Considerations

The MIB module in this document uses the following IANA-assigned
OBJECT IDENTIFIER values recorded in the SMI Numbers registry:

Descriptor OBJECT IDENTIFIER value
---------- -----------------------

forcesMIB { mib-2 187 }

10. References

10.1. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

[RFC2578] McCloghrie, K., Ed., Perkins, D., Ed., and J.
Schoenwaelder, Ed., "Structure of Management Information
Version 2 (SMIv2)", STD 58, RFC 2578, April 1999.

[RFC2579] McCloghrie, K., Ed., Perkins, D., Ed., and J.
Schoenwaelder, Ed., "Textual Conventions for SMIv2",
STD 58, RFC 2579, April 1999.

[RFC2580] McCloghrie, K., Perkins, D., and J. Schoenwaelder,
"Conformance Statements for SMIv2", STD 58, RFC 2580,
April 1999.

[RFC5810] 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", RFC 5810, March 2010.

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10.2. Informative References

[FORCES-APP]
Crouch, A., Khosravi, H., Doria, A., Wang, X., and K.
Ogawa, "ForCES Applicability Statement", Work in Progress,
February 2010.

[RFC3410] Case, J., Mundy, R., Partain, D., and B. Stewart,
"Introduction and Applicability Statements for
Internet-Standard Management Framework", RFC 3410,
December 2002.

[RFC3654] Khosravi, H. and T. Anderson, "Requirements for Separation
of IP Control and Forwarding", RFC 3654, November 2003.

[RFC3746] Yang, L., Dantu, R., Anderson, T., and R. Gopal,
"Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES)
Framework", RFC 3746, April 2004.

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Appendix A. Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Spencer
Dawkins, Jinrong Fenggen, John Flick, Xiaoyi Guo, Joel Halpern, Tom
Petch, Jamal Hadi Salim, and Bert Wijnen.

Author's Address

Robert Haas
IBM
Saeumerstrasse 4
Rueschlikon 8803
CH

EMail: [email protected]
URI: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~rha

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