From back-of-the-envelope calculations and design sketches,
we believe that separating the functionality of network control
and management into information dissemination and decision
planes is practical. Reducing the control plane to a waferthin
dissemination plane eases the creation of a network-wide
view and allows the design of the decision plane to be driven
by reliability and scalability requirements rather than the capabilities
of individual routers. The primary advantage of this
refactoring is that it provides a way for network operators to
directly express their intention for how the network should operate.
However, it also opens the door to future research on
how to better predict the behavior of the network when individual
mechanismssuch as routing, traffic engineering, packet
filters, etc. are composed together