Guidelines for the Use of the "OAM" Acronym in the IETF

Abstract

At first glance, the acronym "OAM" seems to be well-known and wellunderstood. Looking at the acronym a bit more closely reveals a set of recurring problems that are revisited time and again. This document provides a definition of the acronym "OAM" (Operations, Administration, and Maintenance) for use in all future IETF documents that refer to OAM. There are other definitions and acronyms that will be discussed while exploring the definition of the constituent parts of the "OAM" term. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6291. Andersson, et al.

Network Service Header (NSH)

“…O bit: Setting this bit indicates an OAM packet (see [RFC6291] Service Index (SI): Provides location within the SFP. The initial Classifier for a given SFP SHOULD set the SI to 255; however, the control plane MAY configure the initial value of the SI as appropriate (i.e., taking into account the length of the SFP).…”

Network Management Framework for MPLS-based Transport Networks

“…o Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM): For the MPLS-TP effort the term OAM means the set of tools that consist of "operation" activities that are undertaken to keep the network up and running, "administration" activities that keep track of resources in the network and how they are used, and "maintenance" activities that facilitate repairs and upgrades. For a complete expansion of the acronym, see "The OAM Acronym Soup" [15].…”

“…o Operations System (OS): A system that performs the functions that support processing of information related to operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) (see "The OAM Acronym Soup" [15]) for the networks, including surveillance and testing functions to support customer access maintenance. See ITU-T M.3010 [11].…”

Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL): Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) Support

“…BFD is a widely deployed OAM [RFC6291] mechanism in IP and MPLS networks, using UDP and ACH encapsulation, respectively. This document describes a TRILL encapsulation for BFD packets for networks that forward based on the TRILL Header.…”