Cooperating Layered Architecture for Software-Defined Networking (CLAS)

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) advocates for the separation of the control plane from the data plane in the network nodes and its logical centralization on one or a set of control entities. Most of the network and/or service intelligence is moved to these control entities. Typically, such an entity is seen as a compendium of interacting control functions in a vertical, tightly integrated fashion. The relocation of the control functions from a number of distributed network nodes to a logical central entity conceptually places together a number of control capabilities with different purposes. As a consequence, the existing solutions do not provide a clear separation between transport control and services that rely upon transport capabilities. This document describes an approach called Cooperating Layered Architecture for Software-Defined Networking (CLAS), wherein the control functions associated with transport are differentiated from those related to services in such a way that they can be provided and maintained independently and can follow their own evolution path.