Terminology for describing network policy and services
draft-strassner-policy-terms-01

Abstract

Recent work in the IETF has led to multiple protocols which support the classification of packets for the purposes of treating certain classes or flows of packets in a particular way compared to other packets. The successful wide-scale deployment of these protocols depends on the ability to administer and distribute consistent policy information to the multiple devices in the network which perform the classification and packet conditioning or treatment. As a result, there is a clear need to develop a scalable framework for policy administration and distribution that will enable interoperability among multiple devices and device types that must work together to achieve a consistent implementation of policy. Unfortunately, terms like 'policy' and 'service' are not currently defined in sufficient detail as to enable the definition, specification, and implementation of policy servers and how policy is recognized and enforced at the device level. At present, both 'policy' and 'service' (as well as other related terms) are overloaded with multiple (often conflicting) meanings. This makes communication about policy in general and specifically policy-based networking cumbersome and difficult. This document defines a set of terms that the Internet community can use to exchange ideas on how policy creation, administration, management, and distribution could work among policy servers and multiple device types.

Authors

Ed J. Ellesson
John Strassner
Walter Weiss
Andrea Westerinen

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)