RFC 2129 (rfc2129) - Page 1 of 19

Toshiba's Flow Attribute Notification Protocol (FANP) Specification

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Network Working Group                                          K. Nagami
Request for Comments: 2129                                    Y. Katsube
Category: Informational                                     Y. Shobatake
                                                                 A. Mogi
                                                            S. Matsuzawa
                                                               T. Jinmei
                                                                H. Esaki
                                                      Toshiba R&D Center
                                                              April 1997


  Toshiba's Flow Attribute Notification Protocol (FANP) Specification

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
   this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

   This memo discusses Flow Attribute Notification Protocol (FANP),
   which is a protocol between neighbor nodes for the management of
   cut-through packet forwarding functionalities. In cut-through packet
   forwarding, a router doesn't have to perform conventional IP packet
   processing for received packets.  FANP indicates mapping information
   between a datalink connection and a packet flow to the neighbor node
   and helps a pair of nodes manage the mapping information.  By using
   FANP, routers (e.g., CSR; Cell Switch Router) can forward incoming
   packets based on their datalink-level connection identifiers,
   bypassing usual IP packet processing.  The design policy of the FANP
   is;

       (1)  soft-state cut-through path (Dedicated-VC) management
       (2)  protocol between neighbor nodes instead of end-to-end
       (3)  applicable to any connection oriented datalink platform

1.  Background

   Due to the scalability requirement, connection oriented (CO) datalink
   platforms, e.g., ATM and Frame Relay, are going to be used as well as
   connection less (CL) datalink platforms, e.g., Ethernet and FDDI.
   One of the important features of the CO datalink is the presence of a
   datalink-level connection identifier.  In the CO datalink, we can
   establish multiple virtual connections (VCs) with their VC
   identifiers among the nodes. When we aggregate packets that have the
   same direction (e.g., having the same destination IP address) into a
   single VC, we can forward the packets in the VC without IP



Nagami, et. al.              Informational
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