Overview of LMP
Link Management Protocol (LMP) is an important new protocol designed to ease the configuration and management of next-generation optical network devices. Such devices may be interconnected by thousands of data-bearing links, which are aggregated into a smaller number of traffic engineering (TE) links. LMP provides automatic configuration of such devices, negotiation of capabilities, and localization of faults.
The DC-LMP Features section below lists the most important functions provided by the DC-LMP software. For more information about the architecture and interfaces of the DC-LMP software, see the DC-LMP Architecture page. For a more detailed discussion of the LMP protocol, see the LMP Protocol page.

- optical network nodes
- photonic switches
- optical cross-connects
- WDM equipment

- optical network edge nodes
- OIF UNI network nodes (UNI-N)
- OIF UNI client nodes (UNI-C)
DC-LMP is designed for use in highly scaled devices, potentially requiring distribution and redundancy of software, and complements DC-MPLS to provide a complete control plane for optical devices.
DC-LMP Features
The following lists the features supported in the DC-LMP protocol product.
- All mandatory and optional elements of the LMP protocol
- Control channel establishment
- Capability configuration
- Control channel maintenance
- Link property correlation
- Link verification
- Fault localization
- OIF UNI neighbor discovery
- OIF UNI service discovery
- Support for IETF and OIF function
- LMP (draft-ietf-ccamp-lmp)
- OIF User Network Interface (UNI) 1.0 Signaling Specification (oif2000.125)
- SONET / SDH link verification extensions (draft-ietf-ccamp-lmp-test-sonet-sdh)
- Support for minimal system configuration
- Optional auto-discovery of neighbors
- Optional auto-discovery of TE link peers
- MIBs for management integration
with SNMP, CORBA or CMIP
- Full support for the LMP MIB (draft-ietf-ccamp-lmp-mib)
- The ifStackTable from the interfaces MIB (RFC 2863) or, if this is implemented elsewhere, notification to DC-LMP of the bundling of data links into TE links
- The UNI service discovery MIB, which we are working with the OIF to define
- The DC-LMP product MIB for configuring DC-LMP
- Integrated with DC-MPLS to provide a full control plane for optical devices
- Can be used with third-party MPLS or OSPF implementations
- Significant availability and fault tolerance advancements in management of configuration information possible with Configuration Safe Store
- Checkpointing & Rollback
- Failover Restoration
- Graceful Restart
- Hot Software Upgrade & Downgrade
- Error Handling
For more information about Data Connection's LMP product and expertise contact .
