Optical Network Control: Architecture, Protocols, and Standards

5.3. Control Plane Aspects in IP Networks

Figure 5-10 illustrates a simple IP network. Here, the IP networking infrastructure consists of Local Area Networks (LANs; vertical and horizontal bars) interconnected by routers, whose task is to forward packets from a source end-system to a destination end-system. An end-system is typically a host attached to a LAN (routers can also be sources and destinations of IP packets, specifically those related to the control plane). An IP packet thus contains a source address and a destination address, among other information, as shown in Figure 5-11. Each router maintains a routing table (also called forwarding table) that lists the address of the next router (or end-system) corresponding to each known destination ...