Term Discussion in-band/out-of-band control plane/data plane

[ssteinbuss]

To come up with a joint understanding of in-band and out-of-band here a proposal by Bernd Fondermann

• Commonalities: Both term pairs…

  • represent the split of a previously joint, combined flow of information into two separate parts
  • have a background in technology
  • have some overlap, but put different emphasis

• in-band/out-of-band

  • origins: selection of radio frequencies (“bands”) for primary/secondary communication
  • the split is motivated mainly by isolation & break-out reasons
  • “in-band”: the same “frequency”, “connection” or “means of communication” is used for all transfers
  • “out-of-band”: for a selected subset of communication, a different, dedicated band is selected
    • example: main process is using HTTP, user identity verification subprocess uses SMTP (email)

• control plane/data plane:

  • origins: in a networking device…
  • the control plane is optimized for customizability and security. it controls the data plane.
  • the data plane is optimized for speed, throughput and bandwidth. it handles the data payloads.
  • the split is motivated mainly by “separation of concerns”
  • “control plane”: controls what happens on the data plane
  • “data plane”: agnostic of control logic, only used for payload transfers