Network Working Group                         Thomas D. Nadeau
Internet Draft                                Monique Morrow
Expires: July 2005                            George Swallow
                                              Cisco Systems, Inc.

                                              David Allan
                                              Nortel Networks

                                              Satoru Matsushima
                                              Japan Telecom


                                              January 2006


           OAM Requirements for MPLS Networks
        draft-ietf-mpls-oam-requirements-06.txt


Status of this Memo

   By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that
   any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is
   aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she
   becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of
   BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
   groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html

   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.


Abstract

   As transport of diverse traffic types such as voice, frame
   relay, and ATM over MPLS become more common, the ability to detect,
   handle and diagnose control and data plane defects becomes
   critical.

   Detection and specification of how to handle those defects is not
   only important because such defects may not only affect the



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 1]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   fundamental operation of an Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
   network, but also because they MAY impact service level specification
   commitments for customers of that network.

   This document describes requirements for user and data
   plane operations and management for MPLS.
   These requirements have been gathered
   from network operators who have extensive experience deploying
   MPLS networks, similarly some of these
   requirements have appeared in other documents. This draft specifies
   Operations and Management requirements for Multi-Protocol Label
   Switching, as well as for applications of Multi-Protocol Label
   Switching such as pseudowire voice and virtual private network
   services. Those interested in specific issues relating to
   instrumenting    MPLS for Operations
   and Management purposes are directed to the Multi-Protocol Label
   Switching Architecture specification.



    Abstract......................................................1
 1  Introduction..................................................2
 2  Document Conventions..........................................2
 2.1 Terminology..................................................2
 2.2 Acronyms.....................................................2
 3.  Motivations..................................................2
 4. Requirements..................................................2
 5  Security Considerations......................................26
 6  IANA considerations..........................................27
 7   References..................................................27
 7.1 Normative references........................................27
 7.2 Informative references......................................29
 8   Author's Addresses..........................................29
 9   Intellectual Property Notice................................30
 10   Full Copyright Statement...................................29



1. Introduction

   This document describes requirements for user and data
   plane operations and management (OAM) for Multi-Protocol
   Label Switching (MPLS). These requirements have been gathered
   from network operators who have extensive experience deploying
   MPLS networks. This draft specifies OAM requirements
   for MPLS, as well as for applications of MPLS.

   No specific mechanisms are proposed to address these



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 2]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   requirements at this time.  The goal of this draft is to
   identify a commonly applicable set of requirements for MPLS
   OAM at this time. Specifically, a set of requirements that apply
   to the most common set of MPLS networks deployed by service
   provider organizations today. These requirements can then be used
   as a base for network management tool development and to guide
   the evolution of currently specified tools, as well as the
   specification of OAM functions that are intrinsic to protocols
   used in MPLS networks.

   Comments should be made directly to the MPLS mailing list
   at mpls@lists.ietf.org.


2. Document Conventions

2.1 Terminology

   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 RFC 2119.

   Defect:   Any error condition that prevents an LSP
             functioning correctly. For example, loss of an
             IGP path will most likely also result in an LSP
             not being able to deliver traffic to its
             destination. Another example is the breakage of
             a TE tunnel.  These MAY be due to physical
             circuit failures or failure of switching nodes
             to operate as expected.

             Multi-vendor/multi-provider network operation typically
             requires agreed upon definitions of defects (when it is
             broken and when it is not) such that both recovery
             procedures and service level specification impacts can
             be specified.

   Head-end Label Switch Router (LSR): The beginning of a label
          switched path.

   Probe-based-detection: Active measurement using a tool such as
          LSP ping.

   Collecting traffic: Passive measurement of network traffic.

   Head-end Label Switching Router (LSR): The beginning of a label
          switched path. A head-end LSR is also referred to as
          an Ingress Label Switching Router.



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 3]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005




   Probe-based-detection: Active measurement using a tool such as
          LSP ping.

   Collecting traffic: Passive measurement of network traffic.


   propagation latency: delay added by the propagation of the packet
                        through the link (fixed value that depends on
                        the distance of the link and the propagation
                        speed).

   transmission latency: delay added by the transmission of the packey
                         over the link i.e. the time it takes put the
                         packet over the media (value that depends of
                         the link throughput and packet length).

   processing latency: delay added by all the operations related to the
                       switching of labeled packet (value is node
                       implementation specific and may are considered
                       as fixed and constant for a given equipment).

   queuing/buffering latency: delay caused by packet queuing (value is
                              variable since depending on the packet
                              arrival rate in addition to the
                              dependance on the packet length and the
                              link throughput).

   node latency: delay added by the network element resulting from of
                 the sum of the transmission, processing and queuing/
                 buffering latency

   one-hop delay: fixed delay experienced by a packet to reach the next
                  hop reesulting from the of the propagation latency,
                  the transmission latency and the processing latency.

   minimum path latency: sum of the one-hop delays experienced by the
                         packet when travelling from the ingress to the
                         egress LSR.

   variable path latency (jitter): sum of the delays caused by the
                                   queuing latency experienced by the
                                   packet at each node over the path.


2.2 Acronyms

   CE:   Customer Edge



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 4]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005




   SP:   Service Provider

   ECMP: Equal Cost Multipath

   LSP:  Label Switch Path

   LSR:  Label Switch Router

   OAM:  Operations and Management

   RSVP: Resource reSerVation Protocol

   LDP:  Label Distribution Protocol

   DoS:  Denial of service

3.  Motivations

   MPLS OAM has been tackled in numerous Internet drafts.
   However as of this writing, existing drafts focus on single
   provider solutions or focus on a single aspect of the MPLS
   architecture or application of MPLS. For example, the use
   of RSVP or LDP signaling and defects MAY be covered in some
   deployments, and a corresponding SNMP MIB module exists to
   manage this application; however, the handling of defects
   and specification of which types of defects are interesting
   to operational networks MAY not have been created in concert
   with those for other applications of MPLS such as L3 VPN.
   This leads to inconsistent and inefficient applicability
   across the MPLS architecture, and/or requires significant
   modifications to operational procedures and systems in order
   to provide consistent and useful OAM functionality which do
   not create inconsistencies with existing solutions. As MPLS
   has matured, relationships between providers has become more
   complex. Furthermore, the deployment of multiple concurrent
   applications of MPLS is common place, leading to a need to
   consider broader and more uniform solutions, rather than very
   specific ad hoc point solutions.

4. Requirements

   The following sections enumerate the OAM requirements
   gathered from service providers who have deployed MPLS
   and services based on MPLS networks. Each requirement is
   specified in detail to clarify its applicability.
   Although the requirements specified herein are defined by
   the IETF, they have been harmonized with requirements



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 5]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   gathered by other standards bodies such as the ITU [Y1710].


   4.1 Detection of Label Switch Path Defects

   The ability to detect defects in a broken Label Switch Path
   (LSP) SHOULD not require manual hop-by-hop troubleshooting of
   each LSR used to switch traffic for that LSP. For example,
   it is not desirable to manually visit each LSR along the data
   plane path used to transport an LSP; instead,this function
   SHOULD be automated and able to be performed at some operator
   specified frequency from the origination point of that LSP.
   This implies solutions that are interoperable as to allow for
   such automatic operation. Furthermore, the automation of path
   liveliness is desired in cases where large numbers of LSPs might
   be tested. For example, automated ingress LSR to egress LSR testing
   functionality is desired for some LSPs. The goal is to detect LSP
   path defects before customers do, and this requires detection of
   LSP defects in a "reasonable" amount of time. One useful
   definition of reasonable is both predictable and consistent.

   Synchronization of detection time bounds by tools used to detect
   broken LSPs is required. Failure to specifying defect detection
   time bounds may result in an ambiguity in test results. If the
   time to detect is known, then automated responses can be specified
   both with respect to and with regard to resiliency and service
   level specification reporting. Further, if synchronization of
   detection time bounds is possible, an operational framework can be
   established that can guide the design and specification of MPLS
   applications.

   Although ICMP-based ping [RFC792] can be sent through an LSP, the
   use of this tool to verify the defect free operation of an LSP
   has the potential for returning erroneous results (both positive and
   negative). For example, failures may occur when
   inconsistencies exist within the IP or MPLS forwarding tables,
   in the MPLS control and data planes or LSP. Failures may also result
   from defects with the reply path (i.e., a reverse path does not
   exist) used to return a response to a test message. As an example
   of a false positive, consider the case where the MPLS data
   plane flows through a network node using a different output line
   card than the data plane uses to reach the next-hop neighbor. Also
   assume that although the control plane is functional, the data
   plane on the output line card where data traffic is programmed to
   exit the device is defective. Now, if an LSP is signaled using
   this node, any test based solely on the control plane's view of the
   world (i.e., ICMP-based) will return with a false positive result
   because although the control plane traffic at the node in the



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 6]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   example would be forwarded correctly, the actual data plane
   switching at the node in the example would misroute or drop any
   traffic transmitted onto that LSP.  An example of a false
   negative case would be when a functioning return path does not
   exist. In this case, neither a positive nor a negative reply
   will be received by the sender. Therefore any detection mechanisms
   that depend on receiving status via a return path SHOULD provide
   multiple return options with the expectation that one of them will
   not be impacted by the original defect.

   The OAM packet MUST follow exactly the customer data path in order
   to reflect path liveliness used by customer data. Particular cases
   of interest are forwarding mechanisms such as equal cost multipath
   (ECMP) scenarios within the operator's network whereby flows are
   load-shared across parallel (i.e., equal IGP cost) paths. Where
   the customer traffic MAY be spread over multiple paths, what is
   required is to be able to detect failures on any of the path
   permutations.  Where the spreading mechanism is payload specific,
   payloads need to have forwarding that is common with the traffic
   under test. Satisfying these requirements introduces complexity
   into ensuring that ECMP connectivity permutations are exercised,
   and that defect detection occurs in a reasonable amount of time.

  4.2 Diagnosis of a Broken Label Switch Path

   The ability to diagnose a broken LSP and to isolate the failed
   component (i.e., link or node) in the path is required. For
   example, note that specifying recovery actions for misbranching
   defects in an LDP network is a particularly difficult case.
   Diagnosis of defects and isolation of the failed component is
   best accomplished via a path trace function which can return the
   the entire list of LSRs and links used by a certain LSP (or at
   least the set of LSRs/links up to the location of the defect) is
   required. The tracing capability SHOULD include the ability to
   trace recursive paths, such as when nested LSPs are used. This
   path trace function MUST also be capable of diagnosing LSP
   mis-merging by permitting comparison of expected vs. actual
   forwarding behavior at any LSR in the path. The path trace
   capability SHOULD be capable of being executed from both the
   head-end Label Switch Router (LSR) and MAY permit downstream
   path components to be traced from an intermediate mid-point LSR.
   Additionally, the path trace function MUST have the ability to
   support equal cost multipath scenarios described above in
   section 4.1.

  4.3 Path characterization

   The path characterization function is the ability to reveal details



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 7]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   of LSR forwarding operations. These details can then be compared
   later during subsequent testing relevant to OAM functionality.
   This would include but is not limited to:

     - consistent use of pipe or uniform time to live (TTL) models by
       an LSR [RFC3443].
     - sufficient details that allow the test origin to
       excersize all path permutations related to load spreading
       (e.g. ECMP).
     - stack operations performed by the LSR, such as pushes, pops,
       and TTL propagation at penultimate hop LSRs.


   4.4 Service Level Agreement Measurement

   Mechanisms are required to measure the diverse aspects of Service
   Level Agreements which include:
     - defect free forwarding. The service is considered to be
       available and the other aspects of performance measurement
       listed below have meaning, or the service is unavailable and
       other aspects of performance measurement do not.
     - latency - amount of time required for traffic to transit
       the network
     - packet loss
     - jitter - measurement of latency variation

   Such measurements can be made independently of the user traffic
   or via a hybrid of user traffic measurement and OAM probing.

   At least one mechanism is required to measure the number
   of OAM packets. In addition, the ability to measure the qualitative
   aspects of LSPs such as jitter, delay, latency and loss MUST
   be available in order to determine whether or not the traffic for
   a specific LSP are traveling within the operator-specified
   tollerances.

   Any method considered SHOULD be capable of measuring the latency
   of an LSP with minimal impact on network resources.  See section
   2.1 for definitions of the various qualitative aspects of LSPs.


   4.5 Frequency of OAM Execution

   The operator MUST have the flexibility to configure OAM
   parameters insofaras to meet their specific operational
   requirements.

   This includes the frequency of the execution of any OAM



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 8]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   functions. The capability to synchronize OAM operations is required
   as to to permit consistent measurement of service level agreements.
   To elaborate, there are defect conditions such as misbranching or
   misdirection of traffic for which probe-based detection mechanisms
   that incur significant mismatches in the probe rate MAY result in
   flapping.  This can be addressed either by synchronizing the rate
   or having the probes self-identify their probe rate.

   One observation would be that wide-spread deployment of MPLS, common
   implementation of monitoring tools and the need for
   inter-carrier synchronization of defect and service level
   specification handling will drive specification of OAM parameters
   to commonly agreed on values and such values will have to be
   harmonized with the surrounding technologies (e.g. SONET/SDH,
   ATM etc.) in order to be useful. This will become particularly
   important as networks scale and misconfiguration can result in
   churn, alarm flapping etc.


  4.6 Alarm Suppression, Aggregation and Layer Coordination

   Network elements MUST provide alarm suppression functionality that
   prevents the generation of superfluous generation of alarms by
   simply discarding them (or not generating them in the first place),
   or by aggregating them together, and thereby greatly reducing the
   number of notifications emitted.  When viewed in conjuction with
   requirement 4.7 below, this typically requires fault notification
   to the LSP egress that
   MAY have specific time constraints if the application using the LSP
   independently implements path continuity testing (for example ATM
   I.610 Continuity check (CC)[I610]).  These constraints apply to
   LSPs that are monitored. The nature of MPLS applications allows
   for the possibility to have multiple MPLS applications attempt to
   respond to defects simultaneously. For example, layer-3 MPLS VPNs
   that utilize Traffic Engineered tunnels, where a failure occurs on
   the LSP carrying the Traffic Engineered tunnel. This failure would
   affect he VPN traffic that uses the tunnel's LSP. Mechanisms are
   required to coordinate network response to defects.


   4.7 Support for OAM Interworking for Fault Notification

   An LSR supporting the interworking of one or more networking
   technologies over MPLS MUST be able to translate an MPLS defect
   into the native technology's error condition. For example, errors
   occurring over a MPLS transport LSP that supports an emulated
   ATM VC MUST translate errors into native ATM OAM Alarm Indication
   Signal (AIS) cells at the termination points of the LSP. The



MPLS Working Group            Expires January 2006           [Page 9]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   mechanism SHOULD consider possible bounded detection time
   parameters, e.g., a "hold off" function before reacting as to
   synchronize with the OAM functions.
   One goal would be alarm suppression by the upper layer using
   the LSP. As observed in section 4.5, this requires that MPLS
   perform detection in a bounded timeframe in order to initiate
   alarm suppression prior to the upper layer independently
   detecting the defect.

   4.8 Error Detection and Recovery.

   Recovery from a fault by a network element can be facilitated by
   MPLS OAM procedures. These procesures will detect a broader range
   of defects than that of simple link and node failures.
   Since MPLS LSPs may span multiple routing areas and service provider
   domains, fault recovery and error detection should be possible
   in these configuration as well as in the more simplifed
   single-area/domain configurations.

   Recovery from faults SHOULD be automatic. It is a requirement that
   faults SHOULD be detected (and possibly corrected) by the network
   operator prior to customers of the service in question detecting
   them.


   4.9 Standard Management Interfaces

   The wide-spread deployment of MPLS requires common information
   modeling of management and control of OAM functionality. This is
   reflected in the the integration of standard MPLS-related MIBs
   (e.g. [RFC3813][RFC3812][RFC3814]) for fault, statistics and
   configuration management. These standard interfaces provide
   operators with common programmatic interface access to
   operations and management functions and their status.

   4.10  Detection of Denial of Service Attacks

   The ability to detect denial of service (DoS) attacks against the
   data or control planes MUST be part of any security management
   related to MPLS OAM tools or techniques.

   4.11 Per-LSP Accounting Requirements

   In an MPLS network, service providers (SPs) can measure traffic
   from an LSR to the egress of the network using some MPLS related
   MIBs, for example. This means that it is a reasonable to know how
   much traffic is traveling from where to where (i.e., a traffic
   matrix) by analyzing the flow of traffic. Therefore, traffic



MPLS Working Group           Expires January 2006           [Page 10]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



   accounting in an MPLS network can be summarized as the following
   three items.

     (1) Collecting information to design network

         Providers and their customers MAY need to verify high-level
         service level specifications, either to continuously
         optimize their networks, or to offer guaranteed bandwidth
         services. Therefore, traffic accounting to monitor MPLS
         applications is required.

     (2) Providing a Service Level Specification

         For the purpose of optimized network design, a service
         provider may offer the traffic informationr. Optimizing
         network design needs this information.

     (3) Inter-AS environment

         Service providers that offer inter-AS services require
         accounting of those services.

     These three motivations need to satisfy the following.

        - In (1) and (2), collection of information on a per-LSP
          basis is a minimum level of granularity of collecting
          accounting information at both of ingress and egress
          of an LSP.

        - In (3), SP's ASBR carry out interconnection functions as an
          intermediate LSR. Therefore, identifying a pair of ingress
          and egress LSRs using each LSP is needed to determine the
          cost of the service that a customer is using.

    4.11.1 Requirements

     Accounting on a per-LSP basis encompasses the following set of
     functions:

      (1) At an ingress LSR accounting of traffic through LSPs
          beginning at each egress in question.

      (2) At an intermediate LSR, accounting of traffic through
          LSPs for each pair of ingress to egress.

      (3) At egress LSR, accounting of traffic through LSPs
          for each ingress.




MPLS Working Group           Expires January 2006           [Page 11]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



      (4) All LSRs that contain LSPs that are being measuremented
          need to have a common key to distinguish each LSP.
          The key MUST be unique to each LSP, and its mapping to
          LSP SHOULD be provided from whether manual or automatic
          configuration.

       In the case of non-merged LSPs, this can be achieved by
       simply reading traffic counters for the label stack associated
       with the LSP at any LSR along its path. However, in order to
       measure merged LSPs, an LSR MUST have a means to distinguish
       the source of each flow so as to disambiguate the statistics.

     4.11.2 Scalability

     It is not realistic to perform the just described operations by
     LSRs in a network on all LSPs that exist in a network.
     At a minimum, per-LSP based accounting SHOULD be performed on the
     edges of the network -- at the edges of both LSPs and the MPLS
     domain.

5. Security Considerations

   Provisions to any of the tools designed to satisfy the requirements
   described herin are required to prevent their unauthorized use.
   Likewise, these tools MUST provide a means by which an operator
   can prevent denial of service attacks if those tools are used in
   such an attack.

   LSP mis-merging has security implications beyond that of simply
   being a network defect. LSP mis-merging can happen due to a number
   of potential sources of failure, some of which (due to MPLS label
   stacking) are new to  MPLS.

   The performance of diagnostic functions and path characterization
   involve extracting a significant amount of information about
   network construction which the network operator MAY consider
   private.

6. IANA Considerations

   This document creates no new requirements on IANA namespaces
   [RFC2434].

7. References

7.1 Informative References

   [RFC3812]     Srinivasan, C., Viswanathan, A. and T.



MPLS Working Group           Expires January 2006           [Page 12]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



                 Nadeau, "MPLS Traffic Engineering Management
                 Information Base Using SMIv2", RFC3812, June 2004.

   [RFC3813]     Srinivasan, C., Viswanathan, A. and T.
                 Nadeau, "MPLS Label Switch Router Management
                 Information Base Using SMIv2", RFC3813, June 2004.

   [RFC3814]     Nadeau, T., Srinivasan, C., and A.
                 Viswanathan, "Multiprotocol Label Switching
                 (MPLS) FEC-To-NHLFE (FTN) Management
                 Information Base", RFC3814, June 2004.

   [Y1710]       ITU-T Recommendation Y.1710, "Requirements for
                  OAM Functionality In MPLS Networks"


   [I610]      ITU-T Recommendation I.610, "B-ISDN operations and
               maintenance principles and functions", February 1999


   [RFC2434] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing
             an IANA Considerations section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC
             2434, October 1998.

   [RFC792]  Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", RFC792,
             September 1981.

   [RFC3443] Agarwal, P, Akyol, B., "Time To Live (TTL) Processing in
             Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Networks.", RFC3443,
             January 2003.


8. Authors' Addresses

   Thomas D. Nadeau
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   300 Beaver Brook Road
   Boxboro, MA 01719
   Phone: +1-978-936-1470
   Email: tnadeau@cisco.com

   Monique Jeanne Morrow
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   Glatt-Com, 2nd Floor
   CH-8301
   Switzerland
   Voice:  (0)1 878-9412
   Email: mmorrow@cisco.com



MPLS Working Group           Expires January 2006           [Page 13]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005




   George Swallow
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   300 Beaver Brook Road
   Boxboro, MA 01719
   Voice: +1-978-936-1398
   Email: swallow@cisco.com

   David Allan
   Nortel Networks
   3500 Carling Ave.
   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
   Voice: 1-613-763-6362
   Email: dallan@nortelnetworks.com

   Satoru Matsushima
   Japan Telecom
   4-7-1, Hatchobori, Chuo-ku
   Tokyo, 104-8508 Japan
   Phone: +81-3-5540-8214
   Email: satoru@ft.solteria.net

9. Intellectual Property Statement

   The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
   Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
   pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
   might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
   made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information
   on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
   found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
   assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
   attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
   such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
   specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
   http://www.ietf.org/ipr.

   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
   copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
   rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
   this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-
   ipr@ietf.org.

10.  Full Copyright Statement




MPLS Working Group           Expires January 2006           [Page 14]


Internet Draft             MPLS OAM Requirements            July 2005



    Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  This document is
    subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP
    78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their
    rights.

    This document and the information contained herein are provided
    on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE
    REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND
    THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES,
    EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT
    THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR
    ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
    PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

11.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

12. Acknowledgment

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.

   The authors wish to acknowledge and thank the following
   individuals for their valuable comments to this document:
   Adrian Smith, British Telecom; Chou Lan Pok, SBC; Mr.
   Ikejiri, NTT Communications and Mr.Kumaki of KDDI.
   Hari Rakotoranto, Miya Khono, Cisco Systems; Luyuan Fang, AT&T;
   Danny McPherson, TCB; Dr.Ken Nagami, Ikuo Nakagawa, Intec Netcore,
   and David Meyer.





















MPLS Working Group           Expires January 2006           [Page 15]