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rfc:rfc7921

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Atlas Request for Comments: 7921 Juniper Networks Category: Informational J. Halpern ISSN: 2070-1721 Ericsson

                                                              S. Hares
                                                                Huawei
                                                               D. Ward
                                                         Cisco Systems
                                                             T. Nadeau
                                                               Brocade
                                                             June 2016
      An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing System

Abstract

 This document describes the IETF architecture for a standard,
 programmatic interface for state transfer in and out of the Internet
 routing system.  It describes the high-level architecture, the
 building blocks of this high-level architecture, and their
 interfaces, with particular focus on those to be standardized as part
 of the Interface to the Routing System (I2RS).

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 Section 2 of RFC 7841.
 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/rfc7921.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 1] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2016 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.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 2] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

Table of Contents

 1. Introduction ....................................................4
    1.1. Drivers for the I2RS Architecture ..........................5
    1.2. Architectural Overview .....................................6
 2. Terminology ....................................................11
 3. Key Architectural Properties ...................................13
    3.1. Simplicity ................................................13
    3.2. Extensibility .............................................14
    3.3. Model-Driven Programmatic Interfaces ......................14
 4. Security Considerations ........................................15
    4.1. Identity and Authentication ...............................17
    4.2. Authorization .............................................18
    4.3. Client Redundancy .........................................19
    4.4. I2RS in Personal Devices ..................................19
 5. Network Applications and I2RS Client ...........................19
    5.1. Example Network Application: Topology Manager .............20
 6. I2RS Agent Role and Functionality ..............................20
    6.1. Relationship to Its Routing Element .......................20
    6.2. I2RS State Storage ........................................21
         6.2.1. I2RS Agent Failure .................................21
         6.2.2. Starting and Ending ................................22
         6.2.3. Reversion ..........................................23
    6.3. Interactions with Local Configuration .....................23
         6.3.1. Examples of Local Configuration vs. I2RS
                Ephemeral Configuration ............................24
    6.4. Routing Components and Associated I2RS Services ...........26
         6.4.1. Routing and Label Information Bases ................28
         6.4.2. IGPs, BGP, and Multicast Protocols .................28
         6.4.3. MPLS ...............................................29
         6.4.4. Policy and QoS Mechanisms ..........................29
         6.4.5. Information Modeling, Device Variation, and
                Information Relationships ..........................29
                6.4.5.1. Managing Variation: Object
                         Classes/Types and Inheritance .............29
                6.4.5.2. Managing Variation: Optionality ...........30
                6.4.5.3. Managing Variation: Templating ............31
                6.4.5.4. Object Relationships ......................31
                         6.4.5.4.1. Initialization .................31
                         6.4.5.4.2. Correlation Identification .....32
                         6.4.5.4.3. Object References ..............32
                         6.4.5.4.4. Active References ..............32
 7. I2RS Client Agent Interface ....................................32
    7.1. One Control and Data Exchange Protocol ....................32
    7.2. Communication Channels ....................................33
    7.3. Capability Negotiation ....................................33
    7.4. Scope Policy Specifications ...............................34
    7.5. Connectivity ..............................................34

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 3] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

    7.6. Notifications .............................................35
    7.7. Information Collection ....................................35
    7.8. Multi-headed Control ......................................36
    7.9. Transactions ..............................................36
 8. Operational and Manageability Considerations ...................37
 9. References .....................................................38
    9.1. Normative References ......................................38
    9.2. Informative References ....................................38
 Acknowledgements ..................................................39
 Authors' Addresses ................................................40

1. Introduction

 Routers that form the Internet routing infrastructure maintain state
 at various layers of detail and function.  For example, a typical
 router maintains a Routing Information Base (RIB) and implements
 routing protocols such as OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP to exchange
 reachability information, topology information, protocol state, and
 other information about the state of the network with other routers.
 Routers convert all of this information into forwarding entries,
 which are then used to forward packets and flows between network
 elements.  The forwarding plane and the specified forwarding entries
 then contain active state information that describes the expected and
 observed operational behavior of the router and that is also needed
 by the network applications.  Network-oriented applications require
 easy access to this information to learn the network topology, to
 verify that programmed state is installed in the forwarding plane, to
 measure the behavior of various flows, routes or forwarding entries,
 as well as to understand the configured and active states of the
 router.  Network-oriented applications also require easy access to an
 interface, which will allow them to program and control state related
 to forwarding.
 This document sets out an architecture for a common, standards-based
 interface to this information.  This Interface to the Routing System
 (I2RS) facilitates control and observation of the routing-related
 state (for example, a Routing Element RIB manager's state), as well
 as enabling network-oriented applications to be built on top of
 today's routed networks.  The I2RS is a programmatic asynchronous
 interface for transferring state into and out of the Internet routing
 system.  This I2RS architecture recognizes that the routing system
 and a router's Operating System (OS) provide useful mechanisms that
 applications could harness to accomplish application-level goals.
 These network-oriented applications can leverage the I2RS
 programmatic interface to create new ways to combine retrieving
 Internet routing data, analyzing this data, and setting state within
 routers.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 4] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 Fundamental to I2RS are clear data models that define the semantics
 of the information that can be written and read.  I2RS provides a way
 for applications to customize network behavior while leveraging the
 existing routing system as desired.  I2RS provides a framework for
 applications (including controller applications) to register and to
 request the appropriate information for each particular application.
 Although the I2RS architecture is general enough to support
 information and data models for a variety of data, and aspects of the
 I2RS solution may be useful in domains other than routing, I2RS and
 this document are specifically focused on an interface for routing
 data.
 Security is a concern for any new I2RS.  Section 4 provides an
 overview of the security considerations for the I2RS architecture.
 The detailed requirements for I2RS protocol security are contained in
 [I2RS-PROT-SEC], and the detailed security requirements for
 environment in which the I2RS protocol exists are contained in
 [I2RS-ENV-SEC].

1.1. Drivers for the I2RS Architecture

 There are four key drivers that shape the I2RS architecture.  First
 is the need for an interface that is programmatic and asynchronous
 and that offers fast, interactive access for atomic operations.
 Second is the access to structured information and state that is
 frequently not directly configurable or modeled in existing
 implementations or configuration protocols.  Third is the ability to
 subscribe to structured, filterable event notifications from the
 router.  Fourth, the operation of I2RS is to be data-model-driven to
 facilitate extensibility and provide standard data models to be used
 by network applications.
 I2RS is described as an asynchronous programmatic interface, the key
 properties of which are described in Section 5 of [RFC7920].
 The I2RS architecture facilitates obtaining information from the
 router.  The I2RS architecture provides the ability to not only read
 specific information, but also to subscribe to targeted information
 streams, filtered events, and thresholded events.
 Such an interface also facilitates the injection of ephemeral state
 into the routing system.  Ephemeral state on a router is the state
 that does not survive the reboot of a routing device or the reboot of
 the software handling the I2RS software on a routing device.  A non-
 routing protocol or application could inject state into a routing
 element via the state-insertion functionality of I2RS and that state
 could then be distributed in a routing or signaling protocol and/or

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 5] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 be used locally (e.g., to program the co-located forwarding plane).
 I2RS will only permit modification of state that would be possible to
 modify via Local Configuration; no direct manipulation of protocol-
 internal, dynamically determined data is envisioned.

1.2. Architectural Overview

 Figure 1 shows the basic architecture for I2RS between applications
 using I2RS, their associated I2RS clients, and I2RS agents.
 Applications access I2RS services through I2RS clients.  A single
 I2RS client can provide access to one or more applications.  This
 figure also shows the types of data models associated with the
 routing system (dynamic configuration, static configuration, Local
 Configuration, and routing and signaling configuration) that the I2RS
 agent data models may access or augment.
 Figure 1 is similar to Figure 1 in [RFC7920], but the figure in this
 document shows additional detail on how the applications utilize I2RS
 clients to interact with I2RS agents.  It also shows a logical view
 of the data models associated with the routing system rather than a
 functional view (RIB, Forwarding Information Base (FIB), topology,
 policy, routing/signaling protocols, etc.)
 In Figure 1, Clients A and B each provide access to a single
 application (Applications A and B, respectively), while Client P
 provides access to multiple applications.
 Applications can access I2RS services through local or remote
 clients.  A local client operates on the same physical box as the
 routing system.  In contrast, a remote client operates across the
 network.  In the figure, Applications A and B access I2RS services
 through local clients, while Applications C, D, and E access I2RS
 services through a remote client.  The details of how applications
 communicate with a remote client is out of scope for I2RS.
 An I2RS client can access one or more I2RS agents.  In Figure 1,
 Clients B and P access I2RS agents 1 and 2.  Likewise, an I2RS agent
 can provide service to one or more clients.  In this figure, I2RS
 agent 1 provides services to Clients A, B, and P while Agent 2
 provides services to only Clients B and P.
 I2RS agents and clients communicate with one another using an
 asynchronous protocol.  Therefore, a single client can post multiple
 simultaneous requests, either to a single agent or to multiple
 agents.  Furthermore, an agent can process multiple requests, either
 from a single client or from multiple clients, simultaneously.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 6] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 The I2RS agent provides read and write access to selected data on the
 routing element that are organized into I2RS services.  Section 4
 describes how access is mediated by authentication and access control
 mechanisms.  Figure 1 shows I2RS agents being able to write ephemeral
 static state (e.g., RIB entries) and to read from dynamic static
 (e.g., MPLS Label Switched Path Identifier (LSP-ID) or number of
 active BGP peers).
 In addition to read and write access, the I2RS agent allows clients
 to subscribe to different types of notifications about events
 affecting different object instances.  One example of a notification
 of such an event (which is unrelated to an object creation,
 modification or deletion) is when a next hop in the RIB is resolved
 in a way that allows it to be used by a RIB manager for installation
 in the forwarding plane as part of a particular route.  Please see
 Sections 7.6 and 7.7 for details.
 The scope of I2RS is to define the interactions between the I2RS
 agent and the I2RS client and the associated proper behavior of the
 I2RS agent and I2RS client.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 7] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

  • * * *
  • Application C * * Application D * * Application E *
  • * * *

^ ^ ^

               |--------------|   |    |--------------|
                              |   |    |
                              v   v    v
                            ***************
                            *  Client P   *
                            ***************
                                 ^     ^
                                 |     |-------------------------|
       ***********************   |      ***********************  |
       *    Application A    *   |      *    Application B    *  |
       *                     *   |      *                     *  |
       *  +----------------+ *   |      *  +----------------+ *  |
       *  |   Client A     | *   |      *  |   Client B     | *  |
       *  +----------------+ *   |      *  +----------------+ *  |
       ******* ^ *************   |      ***** ^ ****** ^ ******  |
               |                 |            |        |         |
               |   |-------------|            |        |   |-----|
               |   |   -----------------------|        |   |
               |   |   |                               |   |
  ************ v * v * v *********   ***************** v * v ********
  *  +---------------------+     *   *  +---------------------+     *
  *  |     Agent 1         |     *   *  |    Agent 2          |     *
  *  +---------------------+     *   *  +---------------------+     *
  *     ^        ^  ^   ^        *   *     ^        ^  ^   ^        *
  *     |        |  |   |        *   *     |        |  |   |        *
  *     v        |  |   v        *   *     v        |  |   v        *
  * +---------+  |  | +--------+ *   * +---------+  |  | +--------+ *
  * | Routing |  |  | | Local  | *   * | Routing |  |  | | Local  | *
  * |   and   |  |  | | Config | *   * |   and   |  |  | | Config | *
  * |Signaling|  |  | +--------+ *   * |Signaling|  |  | +--------+ *
  * +---------+  |  |         ^  *   * +---------+  |  |         ^  *
  *    ^         |  |         |  *   *    ^         |  |         |  *
  *    |    |----|  |         |  *   *    |    |----|  |         |  *
  *    v    |       v         v  *   *    v    |       v         v  *
  *  +----------+ +------------+ *   *  +----------+ +------------+ *
  *  |  Dynamic | |   Static   | *   *  |  Dynamic | |   Static   | *
  *  |  System  | |   System   | *   *  |  System  | |   System   | *
  *  |  State   | |   State    | *   *  |  State   | |   State    | *
  *  +----------+ +------------+ *   *  +----------+ +------------+ *
  *                              *   *                              *
  *  Routing Element 1           *   *  Routing Element 2           *
  ********************************   ********************************
           Figure 1: Architecture of I2RS Clients and Agents

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 8] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 Routing Element:  A Routing Element implements some subset of the
    routing system.  It does not need to have a forwarding plane
    associated with it.  Examples of Routing Elements can include:
  • A router with a forwarding plane and RIB Manager that runs

IS-IS, OSPF, BGP, PIM, etc.,

  • A BGP speaker acting as a Route Reflector,
  • A Label Switching Router (LSR) that implements RSVP-TE,

OSPF-TE, and the Path Computation Element (PCE) Communication

       Protocol (PCEP) and has a forwarding plane and associated RIB
       Manager, and
  • A server that runs IS-IS, OSPF, and BGP and uses Forwarding and

Control Element Separation (ForCES) to control a remote

       forwarding plane.
    A Routing Element may be locally managed, whether via command-line
    interface (CLI), SNMP, or the Network Configuration Protocol
    (NETCONF).
 Routing and Signaling:  This block represents that portion of the
    Routing Element that implements part of the Internet routing
    system.  It includes not merely standardized protocols (i.e.,
    IS-IS, OSPF, BGP, PIM, RSVP-TE, LDP, etc.), but also the RIB
    Manager layer.
 Local Configuration:  The black box behavior for interactions between
    the ephemeral state that I2RS installs into the routing element;
    Local Configuration is defined by this document and the behaviors
    specified by the I2RS protocol.
 Dynamic System State:  An I2RS agent needs access to state on a
    routing element beyond what is contained in the routing subsystem.
    Such state may include various counters, statistics, flow data,
    and local events.  This is the subset of operational state that is
    needed by network applications based on I2RS that is not contained
    in the routing and signaling information.  How this information is
    provided to the I2RS agent is out of scope, but the standardized
    information and data models for what is exposed are part of I2RS.
 Static System State:  An I2RS agent needs access to static state on a
    routing element beyond what is contained in the routing subsystem.
    An example of such state is specifying queueing behavior for an
    interface or traffic.  How the I2RS agent modifies or obtains this
    information is out of scope, but the standardized information and
    data models for what is exposed are part of I2RS.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 9] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 I2RS agent:  See the definition in Section 2.
 Application:  A network application that needs to observe the network
    or manipulate the network to achieve its service requirements.
 I2RS client:  See the definition in Section 2.
 As can be seen in Figure 1, an I2RS client can communicate with
 multiple I2RS agents.  Similarly, an I2RS agent may communicate with
 multiple I2RS clients -- whether to respond to their requests, to
 send notifications, etc.  Timely notifications are critical so that
 several simultaneously operating applications have up-to-date
 information on the state of the network.
 As can also be seen in Figure 1, an I2RS agent may communicate with
 multiple clients.  Each client may send the agent a variety of write
 operations.  In order to keep the protocol simple, two clients should
 not attempt to write (modify) the same piece of information on an
 I2RS agent.  This is considered an error.  However, such collisions
 may happen and Section 7.8 ("Multi-headed Control") describes how the
 I2RS agent resolves collision by first utilizing priority to resolve
 collisions and second by servicing the requests in a first-in, first-
 served basis.  The I2RS architecture includes this definition of
 behavior for this case simply for predictability, not because this is
 an intended result.  This predictability will simplify error handling
 and suppress oscillations.  If additional error cases beyond this
 simple treatment are required, these error cases should be resolved
 by the network applications and management systems.
 In contrast, although multiple I2RS clients may need to supply data
 into the same list (e.g., a prefix or filter list), this is not
 considered an error and must be correctly handled.  The nuances so
 that writers do not normally collide should be handled in the
 information models.
 The architectural goal for I2RS is that such errors should produce
 predictable behaviors and be reportable to interested clients.  The
 details of the associated policy is discussed in Section 7.8.  The
 same policy mechanism (simple priority per I2RS client) applies to
 interactions between the I2RS agent and the CLI/SNMP/NETCONF as
 described in Section 6.3.
 In addition, it must be noted that there may be indirect interactions
 between write operations.  A basic example of this is when two
 different but overlapping prefixes are written with different
 forwarding behavior.  Detection and avoidance of such interactions is
 outside the scope of the I2RS work and is left to agent design and
 implementation.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 10] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

2. Terminology

 The following terminology is used in this document.
 agent or I2RS agent:   An I2RS agent provides the supported I2RS
    services from the local system's routing subsystems by interacting
    with the routing element to provide specified behavior.  The I2RS
    agent understands the I2RS protocol and can be contacted by I2RS
    clients.
 client or I2RS client:   A client implements the I2RS protocol, uses
    it to communicate with I2RS agents, and uses the I2RS services to
    accomplish a task.  It interacts with other elements of the
    policy, provisioning, and configuration system by means outside of
    the scope of the I2RS effort.  It interacts with the I2RS agents
    to collect information from the routing and forwarding system.
    Based on the information and the policy-oriented interactions, the
    I2RS client may also interact with I2RS agents to modify the state
    of their associated routing systems to achieve operational goals.
    An I2RS client can be seen as the part of an application that uses
    and supports I2RS and could be a software library.
 service or I2RS service:   For the purposes of I2RS, a service refers
    to a set of related state access functions together with the
    policies that control their usage.  The expectation is that a
    service will be represented by a data model.  For instance, 'RIB
    service' could be an example of a service that gives access to
    state held in a device's RIB.
 read scope:   The read scope of an I2RS client within an I2RS agent
    is the set of information that the I2RS client is authorized to
    read within the I2RS agent.  The read scope specifies the access
    restrictions to both see the existence of data and read the value
    of that data.
 notification scope:   The notification scope is the set of events and
    associated information that the I2RS client can request be pushed
    by the I2RS agent.  I2RS clients have the ability to register for
    specific events and information streams, but must be constrained
    by the access restrictions associated with their notification
    scope.
 write scope:   The write scope is the set of field values that the
    I2RS client is authorized to write (i.e., add, modify or delete).
    This access can restrict what data can be modified or created, and
    what specific value sets and ranges can be installed.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 11] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 scope:   When unspecified as either read scope, write scope, or
    notification scope, the term "scope" applies to the read scope,
    write scope, and notification scope.
 resources:   A resource is an I2RS-specific use of memory, storage,
    or execution that a client may consume due to its I2RS operations.
    The amount of each such resource that a client may consume in the
    context of a particular agent may be constrained based upon the
    client's security role.  An example of such a resource could
    include the number of notifications registered for.  These are not
    protocol-specific resources or network-specific resources.
 role or security role:   A security role specifies the scope,
    resources, priorities, etc., that a client or agent has.  If an
    identity has multiple roles in the security system, the identity
    is permitted to perform any operations any of those roles permit.
    Multiple identities may use the same security role.
 identity:   A client is associated with exactly one specific
    identity.  State can be attributed to a particular identity.  It
    is possible for multiple communication channels to use the same
    identity; in that case, the assumption is that the associated
    client is coordinating such communication.
 identity and scope:   A single identity can be associated with
    multiple roles.  Each role has its own scope, and an identity
    associated with multiple roles can use the combined scope of all
    its roles.  More formally, each identity has:
  • a read scope that is the logical OR of the read scopes

associated with its roles,

  • a write scope that is the logical OR of the write scopes

associated with its roles, and

  • a notification scope that is the logical OR of the notification

scopes associated with its roles.

 secondary identity:   An I2RS client may supply a secondary opaque
    identifier for a secondary identity that is not interpreted by the
    I2RS agent.  An example of the use of the secondary opaque
    identifier is when the I2RS client is a go-between for multiple
    applications and it is necessary to track which application has
    requested a particular operation.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 12] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 ephemeral data:   Ephemeral data is data that does not persist across
    a reboot (software or hardware) or a power on/off condition.
    Ephemeral data can be configured data or data recorded from
    operations of the router.  Ephemeral configuration data also has
    the property that a system cannot roll back to a previous
    ephemeral configuration state.
 group:   The NETCONF Access Control Model [RFC6536] uses the term
    "group" in terms of an administrative group that supports the
    well-established distinction between a root account and other
    types of less-privileged conceptual user accounts.  "Group" still
    refers to a single identity (e.g., root) that is shared by a group
    of users.
 routing system/subsystem:   A routing system or subsystem is a set of
    software and/or hardware that determines where packets are
    forwarded.  The I2RS agent is a component of a routing system.
    The term "packets" may be qualified to be layer 1 frames, layer 2
    frames, or layer 3 packets.  The phrase "Internet routing system"
    implies the packets that have IP as layer 3.  A routing
    "subsystem" indicates that the routing software/hardware is only
    the subsystem of another larger system.
 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].

3. Key Architectural Properties

 Several key architectural properties for the I2RS protocol are
 elucidated below (simplicity, extensibility, and model-driven
 programmatic interfaces).  However, some architectural properties
 such as performance and scaling are not described below because they
 are discussed in [RFC7920] and because they may vary based on the
 particular use cases.

3.1. Simplicity

 There have been many efforts over the years to improve access to the
 information available to the routing and forwarding system.  Making
 such information visible and usable to network management and
 applications has many well-understood benefits.  There are two
 related challenges in doing so.  First, the quantity and diversity of
 information potentially available is very large.  Second, the
 variation both in the structure of the data and in the kinds of
 operations required tends to introduce protocol complexity.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 13] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 While the types of operations contemplated here are complex in their
 nature, it is critical that I2RS be easily deployable and robust.
 Adding complexity beyond what is needed to satisfy well known and
 understood requirements would hinder the ease of implementation, the
 robustness of the protocol, and the deployability of the protocol.
 Overly complex data models tend to ossify information sets by
 attempting to describe and close off every possible option,
 complicating extensibility.
 Thus, one of the key aims for I2RS is to keep the protocol and
 modeling architecture simple.  So for each architectural component or
 aspect, we ask ourselves, "Do we need this complexity, or is the
 behavior merely nice to have?"  If we need the complexity, we should
 ask ourselves, "Is this the simplest way to provide this complexity
 in the I2RS external interface?"

3.2. Extensibility

 Extensibility of the protocol and data model is very important.  In
 particular, given the necessary scope limitations of the initial
 work, it is critical that the initial design include strong support
 for extensibility.
 The scope of I2RS work is being designed in phases to provide
 deliverable and deployable results at every phase.  Each phase will
 have a specific set of requirements, and the I2RS protocol and data
 models will progress toward these requirements.  Therefore, it is
 clearly desirable for the I2RS data models to be easily and highly
 extensible to represent additional aspects of the network elements or
 network systems.  It should be easy to integrate data models from
 I2RS with other data.  This reinforces the criticality of designing
 the data models to be highly extensible, preferably in a regular and
 simple fashion.
 The I2RS Working Group is defining operations for the I2RS protocol.
 It would be optimistic to assume that more and different ones may not
 be needed when the scope of I2RS increases.  Thus, it is important to
 consider extensibility not only of the underlying services' data
 models, but also of the primitives and protocol operations.

3.3. Model-Driven Programmatic Interfaces

 A critical component of I2RS is the standard information and data
 models with their associated semantics.  While many components of the
 routing system are standardized, associated data models for them are
 not yet available.  Instead, each router uses different information,
 different mechanisms, and different CLI, which makes a standard
 interface for use by applications extremely cumbersome to develop and

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 14] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 maintain.  Well-known data modeling languages exist and may be used
 for defining the data models for I2RS.
 There are several key benefits for I2RS in using model-driven
 architecture and protocol(s).  First, it allows for data-model-
 focused processing of management data that provides modular
 implementation in I2RS clients and I2RS agents.  The I2RS client only
 needs to implement the models the I2RS client is able to access.  The
 I2RS agent only needs to implement the data models the I2RS agent
 supports.
 Second, tools can automate checking and manipulating data; this is
 particularly valuable for both extensibility and for the ability to
 easily manipulate and check proprietary data models.
 The different services provided by I2RS can correspond to separate
 data models.  An I2RS agent may indicate which data models are
 supported.
 The purpose of the data model is to provide a definition of the
 information regarding the routing system that can be used in
 operational networks.  If routing information is being modeled for
 the first time, a logical information model may be standardized prior
 to creating the data model.

4. Security Considerations

 This I2RS architecture describes interfaces that clearly require
 serious consideration of security.  As an architecture, I2RS has been
 designed to reuse existing protocols that carry network management
 information.  Two of the existing protocols that are being reused for
 the I2RS protocol version 1 are NETCONF [RFC6241] and RESTCONF
 [RESTCONF].  Additional protocols may be reused in future versions of
 the I2RS protocol.
 The I2RS protocol design process will be to specify additional
 requirements (including security) for the existing protocols in order
 in order to support the I2RS architecture.  After an existing
 protocol (e.g., NETCONF or RESTCONF) has been altered to fit the I2RS
 requirements, then it will be reviewed to determine if it meets these
 requirements.  During this review of changes to existing protocols to
 serve the I2RS architecture, an in-depth security review of the
 revised protocol should be done.
 Due to the reuse strategy of the I2RS architecture, this security
 section describes the assumed security environment for I2RS with
 additional details on a) identity and authentication, b)
 authorization, and c) client redundancy.  Each protocol proposed for

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 15] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 inclusion as an I2RS protocol will need to be evaluated for the
 security constraints of the protocol.  The detailed requirements for
 the I2RS protocol and the I2RS security environment will be defined
 within these global security environments.
 The I2RS protocol security requirements for I2RS protocol version 1
 are contained in [I2RS-PROT-SEC], and the global I2RS security
 environment requirements are contained [I2RS-ENV-SEC].
 First, here is a brief description of the assumed security
 environment for I2RS.  The I2RS agent associated with a Routing
 Element is a trusted part of that Routing Element.  For example, it
 may be part of a vendor-distributed signed software image for the
 entire Routing Element, or it may be a trusted signed application
 that an operator has installed.  The I2RS agent is assumed to have a
 separate authentication and authorization channel by which it can
 validate both the identity and permissions associated with an I2RS
 client.  To support numerous and speedy interactions between the I2RS
 agent and I2RS client, it is assumed that the I2RS agent can also
 cache that particular I2RS clients are trusted and their associated
 authorized scope.  This implies that the permission information may
 be old either in a pull model until the I2RS agent re-requests it or
 in a push model until the authentication and authorization channel
 can notify the I2RS agent of changes.
 Mutual authentication between the I2RS client and I2RS agent is
 required.  An I2RS client must be able to trust that the I2RS agent
 is attached to the relevant Routing Element so that write/modify
 operations are correctly applied and so that information received
 from the I2RS agent can be trusted by the I2RS client.
 An I2RS client is not automatically trustworthy.  Each I2RS client is
 associated with an identity with a set of scope limitations.
 Applications using an I2RS client should be aware that the scope
 limitations of an I2RS client are based on its identity (see
 Section 4.1) and the assigned role that the identity has.  A role
 sets specific authorization limits on the actions that an I2RS client
 can successfully request of an I2RS agent (see Section 4.2).  For
 example, one I2RS client may only be able to read a static route
 table, but another client may be able add an ephemeral route to the
 static route table.
 If the I2RS client is acting as a broker for multiple applications,
 then managing the security, authentication, and authorization for
 that communication is out of scope; nothing prevents the broker from
 using the I2RS protocol and a separate authentication and
 authorization channel from being used.  Regardless of the mechanism,
 an I2RS client that is acting as a broker is responsible for

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 16] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 determining that applications using it are trusted and permitted to
 make the particular requests.
 Different levels of integrity, confidentiality, and replay protection
 are relevant for different aspects of I2RS.  The primary
 communication channel that is used for client authentication and then
 used by the client to write data requires integrity, confidentiality
 and replay protection.  Appropriate selection of a default required
 transport protocol is the preferred way of meeting these
 requirements.
 Other communications via I2RS may not require integrity,
 confidentiality, and replay protection.  For instance, if an I2RS
 client subscribes to an information stream of prefix announcements
 from OSPF, those may require integrity but probably not
 confidentiality or replay protection.  Similarly, an information
 stream of interface statistics may not even require guaranteed
 delivery.  In Section 7.2, additional logins regarding multiple
 communication channels and their use is provided.  From the security
 perspective, it is critical to realize that an I2RS agent may open a
 new communication channel based upon information provided by an I2RS
 client (as described in Section 7.2).  For example, an I2RS client
 may request notifications of certain events, and the agent will open
 a communication channel to report such events.  Therefore, to avoid
 an indirect attack, such a request must be done in the context of an
 authenticated and authorized client whose communications cannot have
 been altered.

4.1. Identity and Authentication

 As discussed above, all control exchanges between the I2RS client and
 agent should be authenticated and integrity-protected (such that the
 contents cannot be changed without detection).  Further, manipulation
 of the system must be accurately attributable.  In an ideal
 architecture, even information collection and notification should be
 protected; this may be subject to engineering trade-offs during the
 design.
 I2RS clients may be operating on behalf of other applications.  While
 those applications' identities are not needed for authentication or
 authorization, each application should have a unique opaque
 identifier that can be provided by the I2RS client to the I2RS agent
 for purposes of tracking attribution of operations to an application
 identifier (and from that to the application's identity).  This
 tracking of operations to an application supports I2RS functionality
 for tracing actions (to aid troubleshooting in routers) and logging
 of network changes.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 17] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

4.2. Authorization

 All operations using I2RS, both observation and manipulation, should
 be subject to appropriate authorization controls.  Such authorization
 is based on the identity and assigned role of the I2RS client
 performing the operations and the I2RS agent in the network element.
 Multiple identities may use the same role(s).  As noted in the
 definitions of "identity" and "role" above, if multiple roles are
 associated with an identity then the identity is authorized to
 perform any operation authorized by any of its roles.
 I2RS agents, in performing information collection and manipulation,
 will be acting on behalf of the I2RS clients.  As such, each
 operation authorization will be based on the lower of the two
 permissions of the agent itself and of the authenticated client.  The
 mechanism by which this authorization is applied within the device is
 outside of the scope of I2RS.
 The appropriate or necessary level of granularity for scope can
 depend upon the particular I2RS service and the implementation's
 granularity.  An approach to a similar access control problem is
 defined in the NETCONF Access Control Model (NACM) [RFC6536]; it
 allows arbitrary access to be specified for a data node instance
 identifier while defining meaningful manipulable defaults.  The
 identity within NACM [RFC6536] can be specified as either a user name
 or a group user name (e.g., Root), and this name is linked a scope
 policy that is contained in a set of access control rules.
 Similarly, it is expected the I2RS identity links to one role that
 has a scope policy specified by a set of access control rules.  This
 scope policy can be provided via Local Configuration, exposed as an
 I2RS service for manipulation by authorized clients, or via some
 other method (e.g., Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting
 (AAA) service)
 While the I2RS agent allows access based on the I2RS client's scope
 policy, this does not mean the access is required to arrive on a
 particular transport connection or from a particular I2RS client by
 the I2RS architecture.  The operator-applied scope policy may or may
 not restrict the transport connection or the identities that can
 access a local I2RS agent.
 When an I2RS client is authenticated, its identity is provided to the
 I2RS agent, and this identity links to a role that links to the scope
 policy.  Multiple identities may belong to the same role; for
 example, such a role might be an Internal-Routes-Monitor that allows
 reading of the portion of the I2RS RIB associated with IP prefixes
 used for internal device addresses in the AS.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 18] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

4.3. Client Redundancy

 I2RS must support client redundancy.  At the simplest, this can be
 handled by having a primary and a backup network application that
 both use the same client identity and can successfully authenticate
 as such.  Since I2RS does not require a continuous transport
 connection and supports multiple transport sessions, this can provide
 some basic redundancy.  However, it does not address the need for
 troubleshooting and logging of network changes to be informed about
 which network application is actually active.  At a minimum, basic
 transport information about each connection and time can be logged
 with the identity.

4.4. I2RS in Personal Devices

 If an I2RS agent or I2RS client is tightly correlated with a person
 (such as if an I2RS agent is running on someone's phone to control
 tethering), then this usage can raise privacy issues, over and above
 the security issues that normally need to be handled in I2RS.  One
 example of an I2RS interaction that could raise privacy issues is if
 the I2RS interaction enabled easier location tracking of a person's
 phone.  The I2RS protocol and data models should consider if privacy
 issues can arise when clients or agents are used for such use cases.

5. Network Applications and I2RS Client

 I2RS is expected to be used by network-oriented applications in
 different architectures.  While the interface between a network-
 oriented application and the I2RS client is outside the scope of
 I2RS, considering the different architectures is important to
 sufficiently specify I2RS.
 In the simplest architecture of direct access, a network-oriented
 application has an I2RS client as a library or driver for
 communication with routing elements.
 In the broker architecture, multiple network-oriented applications
 communicate in an unspecified fashion to a broker application that
 contains an I2RS client.  That broker application requires additional
 functionality for authentication and authorization of the network-
 oriented applications; such functionality is out of scope for I2RS,
 but similar considerations to those described in Section 4.2 do
 apply.  As discussed in Section 4.1, the broker I2RS client should
 determine distinct opaque identifiers for each network-oriented
 application that is using it.  The broker I2RS client can pass along
 the appropriate value as a secondary identifier, which can be used
 for tracking attribution of operations.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 19] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 In a third architecture, a routing element or network-oriented
 application that uses an I2RS client to access services on a
 different routing element may also contain an I2RS agent to provide
 services to other network-oriented applications.  However, where the
 needed information and data models for those services differs from
 that of a conventional routing element, those models are, at least
 initially, out of scope for I2RS.  The following section describes an
 example of such a network application.

5.1. Example Network Application: Topology Manager

 A Topology Manager includes an I2RS client that uses the I2RS data
 models and protocol to collect information about the state of the
 network by communicating directly with one or more I2RS agents.  From
 these I2RS agents, the Topology Manager collects routing
 configuration and operational data, such as interface and Label
 Switched Path (LSP) information.  In addition, the Topology Manager
 may collect link-state data in several ways -- via I2RS models, by
 peering with BGP-LS [RFC7752], or by listening into the IGP.
 The set of functionality and collected information that is the
 Topology Manager may be embedded as a component of a larger
 application, such as a path computation application.  As a stand-
 alone application, the Topology Manager could be useful to other
 network applications by providing a coherent picture of the network
 state accessible via another interface.  That interface might use the
 same I2RS protocol and could provide a topology service using
 extensions to the I2RS data models.

6. I2RS Agent Role and Functionality

 The I2RS agent is part of a routing element.  As such, it has
 relationships with that routing element as a whole and with various
 components of that routing element.

6.1. Relationship to Its Routing Element

 A Routing Element may be implemented with a wide variety of different
 architectures: an integrated router, a split architecture,
 distributed architecture, etc.  The architecture does not need to
 affect the general I2RS agent behavior.
 For scalability and generality, the I2RS agent may be responsible for
 collecting and delivering large amounts of data from various parts of
 the routing element.  Those parts may or may not actually be part of
 a single physical device.  Thus, for scalability and robustness, it
 is important that the architecture allow for a distributed set of
 reporting components providing collected data from the I2RS agent

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 20] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 back to the relevant I2RS clients.  There may be multiple I2RS agents
 within the same router.  In such a case, they must have non-
 overlapping sets of information that they manipulate.
 To facilitate operations, deployment, and troubleshooting, it is
 important that traceability of the requests received by I2RS agent's
 and actions taken be supported via a common data model.

6.2. I2RS State Storage

 State modification requests are sent to the I2RS agent in a routing
 element by I2RS clients.  The I2RS agent is responsible for applying
 these changes to the system, subject to the authorization discussed
 above.  The I2RS agent will retain knowledge of the changes it has
 applied, and the client on whose behalf it applied the changes.  The
 I2RS agent will also store active subscriptions.  These sets of data
 form the I2RS datastore.  This data is retained by the agent until
 the state is removed by the client, it is overridden by some other
 operation such as CLI, or the device reboots.  Meaningful logging of
 the application and removal of changes are recommended.  I2RS-applied
 changes to the routing element state will not be retained across
 routing element reboot.  The I2RS datastore is not preserved across
 routing element reboots; thus, the I2RS agent will not attempt to
 reapply such changes after a reboot.

6.2.1. I2RS Agent Failure

 It is expected that an I2RS agent may fail independently of the
 associated routing element.  This could happen because I2RS is
 disabled on the routing element or because the I2RS agent, which may
 be a separate process or even running on a separate processor,
 experiences an unexpected failure.  Just as routing state learned
 from a failed source is removed, the ephemeral I2RS state will
 usually be removed shortly after the failure is detected or as part
 of a graceful shutdown process.  To handle these two types of
 failures, the I2RS agent MUST support two different notifications: a
 notification for the I2RS agent terminating gracefully, and a
 notification for the I2RS agent starting up after an unexpected
 failure.  The two notifications are described below followed by a
 description of their use in unexpected failures and graceful
 shutdowns.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 21] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 NOTIFICATION_I2RS_AGENT_TERMINATING:   This notification reports that
    the associated I2RS agent is shutting down gracefully and that
    I2RS ephemeral state will be removed.  It can optionally include a
    timestamp indicating when the I2RS agent will shut down.  Use of
    this timestamp assumes that time synchronization has been done,
    and the timestamp should not have granularity finer than one
    second because better accuracy of shutdown time is not guaranteed.
 NOTIFICATION_I2RS_AGENT_STARTING:   This notification signals to the
    I2RS client(s) that the associated I2RS agent has started.  It
    includes an agent-boot-count that indicates how many times the
    I2RS agent has restarted since the associated routing element
    restarted.  The agent-boot-count allows an I2RS client to
    determine if the I2RS agent has restarted.  (Note: This
    notification will be sent by the I2RS agent to I2RS clients that
    are known by the I2RS agent after a reboot.  How the I2RS agent
    retains the knowledge of these I2RS clients is out of scope of
    this architecture.)
 There are two different failure types that are possible, and each has
 different behavior.
 Unexpected failure:   In this case, the I2RS agent has unexpectedly
    crashed and thus cannot notify its clients of anything.  Since
    I2RS does not require a persistent connection between the I2RS
    client and I2RS agent, it is necessary to have a mechanism for the
    I2RS agent to notify I2RS clients that had subscriptions or
    written ephemeral state; such I2RS clients should be cached by the
    I2RS agent's system in persistent storage.  When the I2RS agent
    starts, it should send a NOTIFICATION_I2RS_AGENT_STARTING to each
    cached I2RS client.
 Graceful shutdowns:   In this case, the I2RS agent can do specific
    limited work as part of the process of being disabled.  The I2RS
    agent must send a NOTIFICATION_I2RS_AGENT_TERMINATING to all its
    cached I2RS clients.  If the I2RS agent restarts after a graceful
    termination, it will send a NOTIFICATION_I2RS_AGENT_STARTING to
    each cached I2RS client.

6.2.2. Starting and Ending

 When an I2RS client applies changes via the I2RS protocol, those
 changes are applied and left until removed or the routing element
 reboots.  The network application may make decisions about what to
 request via I2RS based upon a variety of conditions that imply
 different start times and stop times.  That complexity is managed by
 the network application and is not handled by I2RS.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 22] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

6.2.3. Reversion

 An I2RS agent may decide that some state should no longer be applied.
 An I2RS client may instruct an agent to remove state it has applied.
 In all such cases, the state will revert to what it would have been
 without the I2RS client-agent interaction; that state is generally
 whatever was specified via the CLI, NETCONF, SNMP, etc., I2RS agents
 will not store multiple alternative states, nor try to determine
 which one among such a plurality it should fall back to.  Thus, the
 model followed is not like the RIB, where multiple routes are stored
 at different preferences.  (For I2RS state in the presence of two
 I2RS clients, please see Sections 1.2 and 7.8)
 An I2RS client may register for notifications, subject to its
 notification scope, regarding state modification or removal by a
 particular I2RS client.

6.3. Interactions with Local Configuration

 Changes may originate from either Local Configuration or from I2RS.
 The modifications and data stored by I2RS are separate from the local
 device configuration, but conflicts between the two must be resolved
 in a deterministic manner that respects operator-applied policy.  The
 deterministic manner is the result of general I2RS rules, system
 rules, knobs adjusted by operator-applied policy, and the rules
 associated with the YANG data model (often in "MUST" and "WHEN"
 clauses for dependencies).
 The operator-applied policy knobs can determine whether the Local
 Configuration overrides a particular I2RS client's request or vice
 versa.  Normally, most devices will have an operator-applied policy
 that will prioritize the I2RS client's ephemeral configuration
 changes so that ephemeral data overrides the Local Configuration.
 These operator-applied policy knobs can be implemented in many ways.
 One way is for the routing element to configure a priority on the
 Local Configuration and a priority on the I2RS client's write of the
 ephemeral configuration.  The I2RS mechanism would compare the I2RS
 client's priority to write with that priority assigned to the Local
 Configuration in order to determine whether Local Configuration or
 I2RS client's write of ephemeral data wins.
 To make sure the I2RS client's requests are what the operator
 desires, the I2RS data modules have a general rule that, by default,
 the Local Configuration always wins over the I2RS ephemeral
 configuration.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 23] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 The reason for this general rule is if there is no operator-applied
 policy to turn on I2RS ephemeral overwrites of Local Configuration,
 then the I2RS overwrites should not occur.  This general rule allows
 the I2RS agents to be installed in routing systems and the
 communication tested between I2RS clients and I2RS agents without the
 I2RS agent overwriting configuration state.  For more details, see
 the examples below.
 In the case when the I2RS ephemeral state always wins for a data
 model, if there is an I2RS ephemeral state value, it is installed
 instead of the Local Configuration state value.  The Local
 Configuration information is stored so that if/when an I2RS client
 removes I2RS ephemeral state, the Local Configuration state can be
 restored.
 When the Local Configuration always wins, some communication between
 that subsystem and the I2RS agent is still necessary.  As an I2RS
 agent connects to the routing subsystem, the I2RS agent must also
 communicate with the Local Configuration to exchange model
 information so the I2RS agent knows the details of each specific
 device configuration change that the I2RS agent is permitted to
 modify.  In addition, when the system determines that a client's I2RS
 state is preempted, the I2RS agent must notify the affected I2RS
 clients; how the system determines this is implementation dependent.
 It is critical that policy based upon the source is used because the
 resolution cannot be time based.  Simply allowing the most recent
 state to prevail could cause race conditions where the final state is
 not repeatably deterministic.

6.3.1. Examples of Local Configuration vs. I2RS Ephemeral Configuration

 A set of examples is useful in order to illustrated these
 architecture principles.  Assume there are three routers: Router A,
 Router B, and Router C.  There are two operator-applied policy knobs
 that these three routers must have regarding ephemeral state.
 o  Policy Knob 1: Ephemeral configuration overwrites Local
    Configuration.
 o  Policy Knob 2: Update of Local Configuration value supersedes and
    overwrites the ephemeral configuration.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 24] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 For Policy Knob 1, the routers with an I2RS agent receiving a write
 for an ephemeral entry in a data model must consider the following:
 1.  Does the operator policy allow the ephemeral configuration
     changes to have priority over existing Local Configuration?
 2.  Does the YANG data model have any rules associated with the
     ephemeral configuration (such as the "MUST" or "WHEN" rule)?
 For this example, there is no "MUST" or "WHEN" rule in the data being
 written.
 The policy settings are:
             Policy Knob 1           Policy Knob 2
             ===================     ==================
 Router A    ephemeral has           ephemeral has
             priority                priority
 Router B    Local Configuration     Local Configuration
             has priority            has priority
 Router C    ephemeral has           Local Configuration
             priority                has priority
 Router A has the normal operator policy in Policy Knob 1 and Policy
 Knob 2 that prioritizes ephemeral configuration over Local
 Configuration in the I2RS agent.  An I2RS client sends a write to an
 ephemeral configuration value via an I2RS agent in Router A.  The
 I2RS agent overwrites the configuration value in the intended
 configuration, and the I2RS agent returns an acknowledgement of the
 write.  If the Local Configuration value changes, Router A stays with
 the ephemeral configuration written by the I2RS client.
 Router B's operator has no desire to allow ephemeral writes to
 overwrite Local Configuration even though it has installed an I2RS
 agent.  Router B's policy prioritizes the Local Configuration over
 the ephemeral write.  When the I2RS agent on Router B receives a
 write from an I2RS client, the I2RS agent will check the operator
 Policy Knob 1 and return a response to the I2RS client indicating the
 operator policy did not allow the overwriting of the Local
 Configuration.
 The Router B case demonstrates why the I2RS architecture sets the
 default to the Local Configuration wins.  Since I2RS functionality is
 new, the operator must enable it.  Otherwise, the I2RS ephemeral
 functionality is off.  Router B's operators can install the I2RS code
 and test responses without engaging the I2RS overwrite function.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 25] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 Router C's operator sets Policy Knob 1 for the I2RS clients to
 overwrite existing Local Configuration and Policy Knob 2 for the
 Local Configuration changes to update ephemeral state.  To understand
 why an operator might set the policy knobs this way, consider that
 Router C is under the control of an operator that has a back-end
 system that re-writes the Local Configuration of all systems at 11
 p.m. each night.  Any ephemeral change to the network is only
 supposed to last until 11 p.m. when the next Local Configuration
 changes are rolled out from the back-end system.  The I2RS client
 writes the ephemeral state during the day, and the I2RS agent on
 Router C updates the value.  At 11 p.m., the back-end configuration
 system updates the Local Configuration via NETCONF, and the I2RS
 agent is notified that the Local Configuration updated this value.
 The I2RS agent notifies the I2RS client that the value has been
 overwritten by the Local Configuration.  The I2RS client in this use
 case is a part of an application that tracks any ephemeral state
 changes to make sure all ephemeral changes are included in the next
 configuration run.

6.4. Routing Components and Associated I2RS Services

 For simplicity, each logical protocol or set of functionality that
 can be compactly described in a separable information and data model
 is considered as a separate I2RS service.  A routing element need not
 implement all routing components described nor provide the associated
 I2RS services.  I2RS services should include a capability model so
 that peers can determine which parts of the service are supported.
 Each I2RS service requires an information model that describes at
 least the following: data that can be read, data that can be written,
 notifications that can be subscribed to, and the capability model
 mentioned above.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 26] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 The initial services included in the I2RS architecture are as
 follows.
  • *
  • I2RS Protocol * * * * Dynamic *
  • * * Interfaces * * Data & *
  • +——–+ +——-+ * * * * Statistics *
  • | Client | | Agent | * * * +——–+ +——-+ * * * *
  • * * * * * Policy * * Base QoS * * Templates * * Templates * * +——–+ * * * * * * * BGP | BGP-LS | * * PIM *
  • +——–+ * * *
  • * * MPLS +———+ +—–+ * * | RSVP-TE | | LDP | *
  • IGPs +——+ +——+ * * +———+ +—–+ *
  • +——–+ | OSPF | |IS-IS | * * +——–+ *
  • | Common | +——+ +——+ * * | Common | *
  • +——–+ * * +——–+ *
  • *
  • *
  • RIB Manager *
  • +——————-+ +—————+ +————+ *
  • | Unicast/multicast | | Policy-Based | | RIB Policy | *
  • | RIBs & LIBs | | Routing | | Controls | *
  • | route instances | | (ACLs, etc) | +————+ *
  • +——————-+ +—————+ *
  • *
                  Figure 2: Anticipated I2RS Services
 There are relationships between different I2RS services -- whether
 those be the need for the RIB to refer to specific interfaces, the
 desire to refer to common complex types (e.g., links, nodes, IP
 addresses), or the ability to refer to implementation-specific
 functionality (e.g., pre-defined templates to be applied to
 interfaces or for QoS behaviors that traffic is directed into).
 Section 6.4.5 discusses information modeling constructs and the range
 of relationship types that are applicable.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 27] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

6.4.1. Routing and Label Information Bases

 Routing elements may maintain one or more information bases.
 Examples include Routing Information Bases such as IPv4/IPv6 Unicast
 or IPv4/IPv6 Multicast.  Another such example includes the MPLS Label
 Information Bases, per platform, per interface, or per context.  This
 functionality, exposed via an I2RS service, must interact smoothly
 with the same mechanisms that the routing element already uses to
 handle RIB input from multiple sources.  Conceptually, this can be
 handled by having the I2RS agent communicate with a RIB Manager as a
 separate routing source.
 The point-to-multipoint state added to the RIB does not need to match
 to well-known multicast protocol installed state.  The I2RS agent can
 create arbitrary replication state in the RIB, subject to the
 advertised capabilities of the routing element.

6.4.2. IGPs, BGP, and Multicast Protocols

 A separate I2RS service can expose each routing protocol on the
 device.  Such I2RS services may include a number of different kinds
 of operations:
 o  reading the various internal RIB(s) of the routing protocol is
    often helpful for understanding the state of the network.
    Directly writing to these protocol-specific RIBs or databases is
    out of scope for I2RS.
 o  reading the various pieces of policy information the particular
    protocol instance is using to drive its operations.
 o  writing policy information such as interface attributes that are
    specific to the routing protocol or BGP policy that may indirectly
    manipulate attributes of routes carried in BGP.
 o  writing routes or prefixes to be advertised via the protocol.
 o  joining/removing interfaces from the multicast trees.
 o  subscribing to an information stream of route changes.
 o  receiving notifications about peers coming up or going down.
 For example, the interaction with OSPF might include modifying the
 local routing element's link metrics, announcing a locally attached
 prefix, or reading some of the OSPF link-state database.  However,
 direct modification of the link-state database must not be allowed in
 order to preserve network state consistency.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 28] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

6.4.3. MPLS

 I2RS services will be needed to expose the protocols that create
 transport LSPs (e.g., LDP and RSVP-TE) as well as protocols (e.g.,
 BGP, LDP) that provide MPLS-based services (e.g., pseudowires,
 L3VPNs, L2VPNs, etc).  This should include all local information
 about LSPs originating in, transiting, or terminating in this Routing
 Element.

6.4.4. Policy and QoS Mechanisms

 Many network elements have separate policy and QoS mechanisms,
 including knobs that affect local path computation and queue control
 capabilities.  These capabilities vary widely across implementations,
 and I2RS cannot model the full range of information collection or
 manipulation of these attributes.  A core set does need to be
 included in the I2RS information models and supported in the expected
 interfaces between the I2RS agent and the network element, in order
 to provide basic capabilities and the hooks for future extensibility.
 By taking advantage of extensibility and subclassing, information
 models can specify use of a basic model that can be replaced by a
 more detailed model.

6.4.5. Information Modeling, Device Variation, and Information

      Relationships
 I2RS depends heavily on information models of the relevant aspects of
 the Routing Elements to be manipulated.  These models drive the data
 models and protocol operations for I2RS.  It is important that these
 information models deal well with a wide variety of actual
 implementations of Routing Elements, as seen between different
 products and different vendors.  There are three ways that I2RS
 information models can address these variations: class or type
 inheritance, optional features, and templating.

6.4.5.1. Managing Variation: Object Classes/Types and Inheritance

 Information modeled by I2RS from a Routing Element can be described
 in terms of classes or types or object.  Different valid inheritance
 definitions can apply.  What is appropriate for I2RS to use is not
 determined in this architecture; for simplicity, "class" and
 "subclass" will be used as the example terminology.  This I2RS
 architecture does require the ability to address variation in Routing
 Elements by allowing information models to define parent or base
 classes and subclasses.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 29] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 The base or parent class defines the common aspects that all Routing
 Elements are expected to support.  Individual subclasses can
 represent variations and additional capabilities.  When applicable,
 there may be several levels of refinement.  The I2RS protocol can
 then provide mechanisms to allow an I2RS client to determine which
 classes a given I2RS agent has available.  I2RS clients that only
 want basic capabilities can operate purely in terms of base or parent
 classes, while a client needing more details or features can work
 with the supported subclass(es).
 As part of I2RS information modeling, clear rules should be specified
 for how the parent class and subclass can relate; for example, what
 changes can a subclass make to its parent?  The description of such
 rules should be done so that it can apply across data modeling tools
 until the I2RS data modeling language is selected.

6.4.5.2. Managing Variation: Optionality

 I2RS information models must be clear about what aspects are
 optional.  For instance, must an instance of a class always contain a
 particular data field X?  If so, must the client provide a value for
 X when creating the object or is there a well-defined default value?
 From the Routing Element perspective, in the above example, each
 information model should provide information regarding the following
 questions:
 o  Is X required for the data field to be accepted and applied?
 o  If X is optional, then how does "X" as an optional portion of the
    data field interact with the required aspects of the data field?
 o  Does the data field have defaults for the mandatory portion of the
    field and the optional portions of the field?
 o  Is X required to be within a particular set of values (e.g.,
    range, length of strings)?
 The information model needs to be clear about what read or write
 values are set by the client and what responses or actions are
 required by the agent.  It is important to indicate what is required
 or optional in client values and agent responses/actions.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 30] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

6.4.5.3. Managing Variation: Templating

 A template is a collection of information to address a problem; it
 cuts across the notions of class and object instances.  A template
 provides a set of defined values for a set of information fields and
 can specify a set of values that must be provided to complete the
 template.  Further, a flexible template scheme may allow some of the
 defined values to be overwritten.
 For instance, assigning traffic to a particular service class might
 be done by specifying a template queueing with a parameter to
 indicate Gold, Silver, or Best Effort.  The details of how that is
 carried out are not modeled.  This does assume that the necessary
 templates are made available on the Routing Element via some
 mechanism other than I2RS.  The idea is that by providing suitable
 templates for tasks that need to be accomplished, with templates
 implemented differently for different kinds of Routing Elements, the
 client can easily interact with the Routing Element without concern
 for the variations that are handled by values included in the
 template.
 If implementation variation can be exposed in other ways, templates
 may not be needed.  However, templates themselves could be objects
 referenced in the protocol messages, with Routing Elements being
 configured with the proper templates to complete the operation.  This
 is a topic for further discussion.

6.4.5.4. Object Relationships

 Objects (in a Routing Element or otherwise) do not exist in
 isolation.  They are related to each other.  One of the important
 things a class definition does is represent the relationships between
 instances of different classes.  These relationships can be very
 simple or quite complicated.  The following sections list the
 information relationships that the information models need to
 support.

6.4.5.4.1. Initialization

 The simplest relationship is that one object instance is initialized
 by copying another.  For example, one may have an object instance
 that represents the default setup for a tunnel, and all new tunnels
 have fields copied from there if they are not set as part of
 establishment.  This is closely related to the templates discussed
 above, but not identical.  Since the relationship is only momentary,
 it is often not formally represented in modeling but only captured in
 the semantic description of the default object.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 31] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

6.4.5.4.2. Correlation Identification

 Often, it suffices to indicate in one object that it is related to a
 second object, without having a strong binding between the two.  So
 an identifier is used to represent the relationship.  This can be
 used to allow for late binding or a weak binding that does not even
 need to exist.  A policy name in an object might indicate that if a
 policy by that name exists, it is to be applied under some
 circumstance.  In modeling, this is often represented by the type of
 the value.

6.4.5.4.3. Object References

 Sometimes the relationship between objects is stronger.  A valid ARP
 entry has to point to the active interface over which it was derived.
 This is the classic meaning of an object reference in programming.
 It can be used for relationships like containment or dependence.
 This is usually represented by an explicit modeling link.

6.4.5.4.4. Active References

 There is an even stronger form of coupling between objects if changes
 in one of the two objects are always to be reflected in the state of
 the other.  For example, if a tunnel has an MTU (maximum transmit
 unit), and link MTU changes need to immediately propagate to the
 tunnel MTU, then the tunnel is actively coupled to the link
 interface.  This kind of active state coupling implies some sort of
 internal bookkeeping to ensure consistency, often conceptualized as a
 subscription model across objects.

7. I2RS Client Agent Interface

7.1. One Control and Data Exchange Protocol

 This I2RS architecture assumes a data-model-driven protocol where the
 data models are defined in YANG 1.1 [YANG1.1] and associated YANG
 based model documents [RFC6991], [RFC7223], [RFC7224], [RFC7277],
 [RFC7317].  Two of the protocols to be expanded to support the I2RS
 protocol are NETCONF [RFC6241] and RESTCONF [RESTCONF].  This helps
 meet the goal of simplicity and thereby enhances deployability.  The
 I2RS protocol may need to use several underlying transports (TCP,
 SCTP (Stream Control Transport Protocol), DCCP (Datagram Congestion
 Control Protocol)), with suitable authentication and integrity-
 protection mechanisms.  These different transports can support
 different types of communication (e.g., control, reading,
 notifications, and information collection) and different sets of

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 32] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 data.  Whatever transport is used for the data exchange, it must also
 support suitable congestion-control mechanisms.  The transports
 chosen should be operator and implementor friendly to ease adoption.
 Each version of the I2RS protocol will specify the following: a)
 which transports may be used by the I2RS protocol, b) which
 transports are mandatory to implement, and c) which transports are
 optional to implement.

7.2. Communication Channels

 Multiple communication channels and multiple types of communication
 channels are required.  There may be a range of requirements (e.g.,
 confidentiality, reliability), and to support the scaling, there may
 need to be channels originating from multiple subcomponents of a
 routing element and/or to multiple parts of an I2RS client.  All such
 communication channels will use the same higher-layer I2RS protocol
 (which combines secure transport and I2RS contextual information).
 The use of additional channels for communication will be coordinated
 between the I2RS client and the I2RS agent using this protocol.
 I2RS protocol communication may be delivered in-band via the routing
 system's data plane.  I2RS protocol communication might be delivered
 out-of-band via a management interface.  Depending on what operations
 are requested, it is possible for the I2RS protocol communication to
 cause the in-band communication channels to stop working; this could
 cause the I2RS agent to become unreachable across that communication
 channel.

7.3. Capability Negotiation

 The support for different protocol capabilities and I2RS services
 will vary across I2RS clients and Routing Elements supporting I2RS
 agents.  Since each I2RS service is required to include a capability
 model (see Section 6.4), negotiation at the protocol level can be
 restricted to protocol specifics and which I2RS services are
 supported.
 Capability negotiation (such as which transports are supported beyond
 the minimum required to implement) will clearly be necessary.  It is
 important that such negotiations be kept simple and robust, as such
 mechanisms are often a source of difficulty in implementation and
 deployment.
 The protocol capability negotiation can be segmented into the basic
 version negotiation (required to ensure basic communication), and the
 more complex capability exchange that can take place within the base
 protocol mechanisms.  In particular, the more complex protocol and

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 33] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 mechanism negotiation can be addressed by defining information models
 for both the I2RS agent and the I2RS client.  These information
 models can describe the various capability options.  This can then
 represent and be used to communicate important information about the
 agent and the capabilities thereof.

7.4. Scope Policy Specifications

 As Sections 4.1 and 4.2 describe, each I2RS client will have a unique
 identity and may have a secondary identity (see Section 2) to aid in
 troubleshooting.  As Section 4 indicates, all authentication and
 authorization mechanisms are based on the primary identity, which
 links to a role with scope policy for reading data, for writing data,
 and for limiting the resources that can be consumed.  The
 specifications for data scope policy (for read, write, or resources
 consumption) need to specify the data being controlled by the policy,
 and acceptable ranges of values for the data.

7.5. Connectivity

 An I2RS client may or may not maintain an active communication
 channel with an I2RS agent.  Therefore, an I2RS agent may need to
 open a communication channel to the client to communicate previously
 requested information.  The lack of an active communication channel
 does not imply that the associated I2RS client is non-functional.
 When communication is required, the I2RS agent or I2RS client can
 open a new communication channel.
 State held by an I2RS agent that is owned by an I2RS client should
 not be removed or cleaned up when a client is no longer
 communicating, even if the agent cannot successfully open a new
 communication channel to the client.
 For many applications, it may be desirable to clean up state if a
 network application dies before removing the state it has created.
 Typically, this is dealt with in terms of network application
 redundancy.  If stronger mechanisms are desired, mechanisms outside
 of I2RS may allow a supervisory network application to monitor I2RS
 clients and, based on policy known to the supervisor, clean up state
 if applications die.  More complex mechanisms instantiated in the
 I2RS agent would add complications to the I2RS protocol and are thus
 left for future work.
 Some examples of such a mechanism include the following.  In one
 option, the client could request state cleanup if a particular
 transport session is terminated.  The second is to allow state
 expiration, expressed as a policy associated with the I2RS client's

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 34] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 role.  The state expiration could occur after there has been no
 successful communication channel to or from the I2RS client for the
 policy-specified duration.

7.6. Notifications

 As with any policy system interacting with the network, the I2RS
 client needs to be able to receive notifications of changes in
 network state.  Notifications here refer to changes that are
 unanticipated, represent events outside the control of the systems
 (such as interface failures on controlled devices), or are
 sufficiently sparse as to be anomalous in some fashion.  A
 notification may also be due to a regular event.
 Such events may be of interest to multiple I2RS clients controlling
 data handled by an I2RS agent and to multiple other I2RS clients that
 are collecting information without exerting control.  The
 architecture therefore requires that it be practical for I2RS clients
 to register for a range of notifications and for the I2RS agents to
 send notifications to a number of clients.  The I2RS client should be
 able to filter the specific notifications that will be received; the
 specific types of events and filtering operations can vary by
 information model and need to be specified as part of the information
 model.
 The I2RS information model needs to include representation of these
 events.  As discussed earlier, the capability information in the
 model will allow I2RS clients to understand which events a given I2RS
 agent is capable of generating.
 For performance and scaling by the I2RS client and general
 information confidentiality, an I2RS client needs to be able to
 register for just the events it is interested in.  It is also
 possible that I2RS might provide a stream of notifications via a
 publish/subscribe mechanism that is not amenable to having the I2RS
 agent do the filtering.

7.7. Information Collection

 One of the other important aspects of I2RS is that it is intended to
 simplify collecting information about the state of network elements.
 This includes both getting a snapshot of a large amount of data about
 the current state of the network element and subscribing to a feed of
 the ongoing changes to the set of data or a subset thereof.  This is
 considered architecturally separate from notifications due to the
 differences in information rate and total volume.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 35] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

7.8. Multi-headed Control

 As described earlier, an I2RS agent interacts with multiple I2RS
 clients who are actively controlling the network element.  From an
 architecture and design perspective, the assumption is that by means
 outside of this system, the data to be manipulated within the network
 element is appropriately partitioned so that any given piece of
 information is only being manipulated by a single I2RS client.
 Nonetheless, unexpected interactions happen, and two (or more) I2RS
 clients may attempt to manipulate the same piece of data.  This is
 considered an error case.  This architecture does not attempt to
 determine what the right state of data should be when such a
 collision happens.  Rather, the architecture mandates that there be
 decidable means by which I2RS agents handle the collisions.  The
 mechanism for ensuring predictability is to have a simple priority
 associated with each I2RS client, and the highest priority change
 remains in effect.  In the case of priority ties, the first I2RS
 client whose attribution is associated with the data will keep
 control.
 In order for this approach to multi-headed control to be useful for
 I2RS clients, it is necessary that an I2RS client can register to
 receive notifications about changes made to writeable data, whose
 state is of specific interest to that I2RS client.  This is included
 in the I2RS event mechanisms.  This also needs to apply to changes
 made by CLI/NETCONF/SNMP within the write scope of the I2RS agent, as
 the same priority mechanism (even if it is "CLI always wins") applies
 there.  The I2RS client may then respond to the situation as it sees
 fit.

7.9. Transactions

 In the interest of simplicity, the I2RS architecture does not include
 multi-message atomicity and rollback mechanisms.  Rather, it includes
 a small range of error handling for a set of operations included in a
 single message.  An I2RS client may indicate one of the following
 three methods of error handling for a given message with multiple
 operations that it sends to an I2RS agent:
 Perform all or none:  This traditional SNMP semantic indicates that
    the I2RS agent will keep enough state when handling a single
    message to roll back the operations within that message.  Either
    all the operations will succeed, or none of them will be applied,
    and an error message will report the single failure that caused
    them not to be applied.  This is useful when there are, for
    example, mutual dependencies across operations in the message.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 36] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 Perform until error:  In this case, the operations in the message are
    applied in the specified order.  When an error occurs, no further
    operations are applied, and an error is returned indicating the
    failure.  This is useful if there are dependencies among the
    operations and they can be topologically sorted.
 Perform all storing errors:  In this case, the I2RS agent will
    attempt to perform all the operations in the message and will
    return error indications for each one that fails.  This is useful
    when there is no dependency across the operation or when the I2RS
    client would prefer to sort out the effect of errors on its own.
 In the interest of robustness and clarity of protocol state, the
 protocol will include an explicit reply to modification or write
 operations even when they fully succeed.

8. Operational and Manageability Considerations

 In order to facilitate troubleshooting of routing elements
 implementing I2RS agents, the routing elements should provide for a
 mechanism to show actively provisioned I2RS state and other I2RS
 agent internal information.  Note that this information may contain
 highly sensitive material subject to the security considerations of
 any data models implemented by that agent and thus must be protected
 according to those considerations.  Preferably, this mechanism should
 use a different privileged means other than simply connecting as an
 I2RS client to learn the data.  Using a different mechanism should
 improve traceability and failure management.
 Manageability plays a key aspect in I2RS.  Some initial examples
 include:
 Resource Limitations:   Using I2RS, applications can consume
    resources, whether those be operations in a time frame, entries in
    the RIB, stored operations to be triggered, etc.  The ability to
    set resource limits based upon authorization is important.
 Configuration Interactions:   The interaction of state installed via
    I2RS and via a router's configuration needs to be clearly defined.
    As described in this architecture, a simple priority that is
    configured is used to provide sufficient policy flexibility.
 Traceability of Interactions:   The ability to trace the interactions
    of the requests received by the I2RS agent's and actions taken by
    the I2RS agents is needed so that operations can monitor I2RS
    agents during deployment, and troubleshoot software or network
    problems.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 37] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 Notification Subscription Service:  The ability for an I2RS client to
    subscribe to a notification stream pushed from the I2RS agent
    (rather than having I2RS client poll the I2RS agent) provides a
    more scalable notification handling for the I2RS agent-client
    interactions.

9. References

9.1. Normative References

 [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
            Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
 [RFC7920]  Atlas, A., Ed., Nadeau, T., Ed., and D. Ward, "Problem
            Statement for the Interface to the Routing System",
            RFC 7920, DOI 10.17487/RFC7920, June 2016,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7920>.

9.2. Informative References

 [I2RS-ENV-SEC]
            Migault, D., Ed., Halpern, J., and S. Hares, "I2RS
            Environment Security Requirements", Work in Progress,
            draft-ietf-i2rs-security-environment-reqs-01, April 2016.
 [I2RS-PROT-SEC]
            Hares, S., Migault, D., and J. Halpern, "I2RS Security
            Related Requirements", Work in Progress, draft-ietf-i2rs-
            protocol-security-requirements-06, May 2016.
 [RESTCONF] Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., and K. Watsen, "RESTCONF
            Protocol", Work in Progress, draft-ietf-netconf-
            restconf-14, June 2016.
 [RFC6241]  Enns, R., Ed., Bjorklund, M., Ed., Schoenwaelder, J., Ed.,
            and A. Bierman, Ed., "Network Configuration Protocol
            (NETCONF)", RFC 6241, DOI 10.17487/RFC6241, June 2011,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6241>.
 [RFC6536]  Bierman, A. and M. Bjorklund, "Network Configuration
            Protocol (NETCONF) Access Control Model", RFC 6536,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC6536, March 2012,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6536>.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 38] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

 [RFC6991]  Schoenwaelder, J., Ed., "Common YANG Data Types",
            RFC 6991, DOI 10.17487/RFC6991, July 2013,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6991>.
 [RFC7223]  Bjorklund, M., "A YANG Data Model for Interface
            Management", RFC 7223, DOI 10.17487/RFC7223, May 2014,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7223>.
 [RFC7224]  Bjorklund, M., "IANA Interface Type YANG Module",
            RFC 7224, DOI 10.17487/RFC7224, May 2014,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7224>.
 [RFC7277]  Bjorklund, M., "A YANG Data Model for IP Management",
            RFC 7277, DOI 10.17487/RFC7277, June 2014,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7277>.
 [RFC7317]  Bierman, A. and M. Bjorklund, "A YANG Data Model for
            System Management", RFC 7317, DOI 10.17487/RFC7317, August
            2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7317>.
 [RFC7752]  Gredler, H., Ed., Medved, J., Previdi, S., Farrel, A., and
            S. Ray, "North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and
            Traffic Engineering (TE) Information Using BGP", RFC 7752,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC7752, March 2016,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7752>.
 [YANG1.1]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "The YANG 1.1 Data Modeling Language",
            Work in Progress, draft-ietf-netmod-rfc6020bis-14, June
            2016.

Acknowledgements

 Significant portions of this draft came from "Interface to the
 Routing System Framework" (February 2013) and "A Policy Framework for
 the Interface to the Routing System" (February 2013).
 The authors would like to thank Nitin Bahadur, Shane Amante, Ed
 Crabbe, Ken Gray, Carlos Pignataro, Wes George, Ron Bonica, Joe
 Clarke, Juergen Schoenwalder, Jeff Haas, Jamal Hadi Salim, Scott
 Brim, Thomas Narten, Dean Bogdanovic, Tom Petch, Robert Raszuk,
 Sriganesh Kini, John Mattsson, Nancy Cam-Winget, DaCheng Zhang, Qin
 Wu, Ahmed Abro, Salman Asadullah, Eric Yu, Deborah Brungard, Russ
 Housley, Russ White, Charlie Kaufman, Benoit Claise, Spencer Dawkins,
 and Stephen Farrell for their suggestions and review.

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 39] RFC 7921 I2RS Architecture June 2016

Authors' Addresses

 Alia Atlas
 Juniper Networks
 10 Technology Park Drive
 Westford, MA  01886
 United States
 Email: akatlas@juniper.net
 Joel Halpern
 Ericsson
 Email: Joel.Halpern@ericsson.com
 Susan Hares
 Huawei
 7453 Hickory Hill
 Saline, MI  48176
 United States
 Phone: +1 734-604-0332
 Email: shares@ndzh.com
 Dave Ward
 Cisco Systems
 Tasman Drive
 San Jose, CA  95134
 United States
 Email: wardd@cisco.com
 Thomas D. Nadeau
 Brocade
 Email: tnadeau@lucidvision.com

Atlas, et al. Informational [Page 40]

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