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This document describes procedures for building inter-area point-tomultipoint (P2MP) segmented service label switched paths (LSPs) by partitioning such LSPs into intra-area segments and using BGP as the inter-area routing and Label Distribution Protocol (LDP). Within each IGP area, the intra-area segments are either carried over intraarea P2MP LSPs, using P2MP LSP hierarchy, or instantiated using ingress replication. The intra-area P2MP LSPs may be signaled using P2MP RSVP-TE or P2MP multipoint LDP (mLDP). If ingress replication is used within an IGP area, then (multipoint-to-point) LDP LSPs or (point-to-point) RSVP-TE LSPs may be used in the IGP area. The applications/services that use such inter-area service LSPs may be BGP Multicast VPN, Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) multicast, or global table multicast over MPLS.

There is an emerging demand for solutions that provide redundancy and load-sharing across wired and cellular links from a single Service Provider, so that a single subscriber is provided with bonded access to heterogeneous connections at the same time.

The fifth generation (5G) wireless networks are expected to offer high capacity and accommodate numerous over-the-top (OTT) applications, relying on users' Internet connectiv-ity, thus involving different stakeholders, i.e., network service providers (NSPs) and OTT service providers (OSPs). For the efficient management of OTT application flows, the implementation of service functions and their interconnection in service chains, namely the network service chaining (NSC), should consider the OSPs' performance goals and user management strategies. However, in current wireless network deployments, the NSPs have full control of NSC. Considering that user satisfaction from the offered services is common interest for both types of stakeholders, the OSPs need to participate in NSC and apply QoS and user prioritization policies to NSC resource management, which involves users connected in different network points, in a distributed manner. In this article, we describe 5G network management architectures and propose virtualization components that enable OSP-oriented NSC. We also outline the arising issues for OSPs in NSC and we introduce a distributed prioritization NSC management scheme for OTT application flows, based on matching theory. The evaluation results indicate the performance gains in OSPs' service levels that stem from the proposed scheme, demonstrating the benefits of introducing prioritization in NSC deployment.

The label advertising behavior of an LDP speaker for a given Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC) is governed by the FEC type and not necessarily by the LDP session's negotiated label advertisement mode. This document updates RFC 5036 to make that fact clear. It also updates RFCs 3212, 4447, 5918, 6388, and 7140 by specifying the label advertisement mode for all currently defined LDP FEC types.