Guidelines for the Use of the "OAM" Acronym in the IETF
RFC 6291
Document | Type |
RFC - Best Current Practice
(June 2011; No errata)
Also known as BCP 161
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Authors | Huub van Helvoort , Dan Romascanu , Ron Bonica , Scott Mansfield , Loa Andersson | ||
Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
Replaces | draft-andersson-mpls-tp-oam-def | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | WG Document | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 6291 (Best Current Practice) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Adrian Farrel | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) L. Andersson Request for Comments: 6291 Ericsson BCP: 161 H. van Helvoort Category: Best Current Practice Huawei Technologies ISSN: 2070-1721 R. Bonica Juniper Networks D. Romascanu Avaya S. Mansfield Ericsson June 2011 Guidelines for the Use of the "OAM" Acronym in the IETF Abstract At first glance, the acronym "OAM" seems to be well-known and well- understood. Looking at the acronym a bit more closely reveals a set of recurring problems that are revisited time and again. This document provides a definition of the acronym "OAM" (Operations, Administration, and Maintenance) for use in all future IETF documents that refer to OAM. There are other definitions and acronyms that will be discussed while exploring the definition of the constituent parts of the "OAM" term. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6291. Andersson, et al. Best Current Practice [Page 1] RFC 6291 OAM Terminology June 2011 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2011 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. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Pre-Existing Uses of OAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1. Uses of OAM in Other SDOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.1. The "O" in OAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.2. The "A" in OAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.3. The "M" in OAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2. Uses of OAM in the IETF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. Recommendations on the Use of the "OAM" Acronym . . . . . . . . 5 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Andersson, et al. Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 6291 OAM Terminology June 2011 1. Introduction The main purpose of this document is to provide a definition of the acronym "OAM" (Operations, Administration, and Maintenance) for use in all future IETF documents that refer to OAM. The acronym "OAM" is frequently used in the data and telecommunication industry. One would assume that something that is so widely used is very clearly defined. However, a closer look reveals some points that need to be clarified. If such an important piece of our technology is so poorly defined, or if there are dialects of the technology with different understandings of such a key concept, this will eventually cause problems. Trying to understand the use of an acronym that is as "content-rich" as OAM reveals two levels of complexity. First, each letter in the acronym represents an integrated piece of functionality. Second, the acronym, as such, represents something that is more than just the sum of its parts. There is also the issue of how each piece of the acronym is defined. This document provides an analysis of what each initial of theShow full document text