data/control plane

Hello,

very often I encounter such terms as "data plane", "control plane", "management plane". Are these Ethernet specific terms or used everywhere in telecommunications domain? And the important question - what exactly do they mean, what entities they are supposed to distinguish?

Thanks.

Reply to
Mark
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it appears on various bits of datacomms kit - routers for example.

the idea is you have 2 types of traffic - data (lots of it, simple forwarding, so good for hardware optimisation)

- control (low volume, but there to manage the data, messy complex protocols, so often dealt with in software)

so you have 2 parts of the system, interacting but designed in different ways, and possibly implemented as partly separate sections.

separate management plane isnt something i see very much since i think of it as part of the control plane.

The concept possibly was imported for other telecomms equipment - voice switches typically have a "voice" link and separate control plumbing. And this is common in protocols - eg in ISDN where calls and signalling are in different channels.

And the important question - what exactly do

Reply to
Stephen

Thanks for the explanation, Stephen.

Reply to
Mark

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