ADDING DEVICE-WIDE CAPABILITIES AND PARAMETERS TO SPLIT-ARCHITECTURE DEVICES

摘要

A network element and process determines and configures capabilities of network element components. The network element components include a set of control elements where the set of control elements determine capabilities of each of a set of forwarding elements. The method includes initiating communication with a forwarding element in the set of forwarding elements by a control element. The control element requests that the forwarding element to provide a set of logical function block identifiers of supported logical function blocks for the forwarding element. The set of logical function block identifiers is then received from the forwarding element in response to the request. The set of logical function block identifiers are matched with known forwarding element capabilities to determine capabilities of the forwarding element. A forwarding element capability model is then updated with the capabilities of the forwarding element.