Data-Plane anchors in a control-/data-plane separated deyploment

Folks,

at IETF91 we received the valid comment to converge on a definition of the term 'anchor'.
In the FPSM discussion, we so far distinguished Data-Plane Anchor (DPA), traditionally a downlink encap function,
Data-Plane Node (DPN), which is more located in the access to terminate tunnels, and regular transport nodes.
Another comment was about a scenario where a single flow may traverse multiple DPAs on its way to the
MN.

I'd like to propose and discuss the following:
In a decentralized data-plane and a control-/data-plane separated deployment, I consider it a reasonable
assumption that each of the so far unambiguously named data-plane nodes can take the role of the other.
So, we may solely refer to a single type of function, e.g. Data-Plane Anchor (DPA), which receives policies
from the Control-Plane.

For a certain deployment, it's the Control-Plane that determines the role and associated policies for each involved
DPA.

Data-Plane nodes are agnostic to the role they play in mobility management.
Control-Plane determines the role of each DPA according to the preferred deployment and configures the
policies accordingly.

I think such assumption allows flexible deployment and eases description in our specifications.

I am not good in drawing ASCII, but I gave it a try (for downlink operation only).

Using PMIP6 terms, the middle-DPA in the figure below serves as kind of LMA, left DPA as MAG,
right DPA (one or multiple) may enforce per-host rules for traffic steering.

Would be happy to get your opinion on this proposal.

marco


               +--------------------------+
               |      Control-Plane       |
               +--------------------------+
                |             |         |
                |             |         |
                |             |         |
         \ /    V             V         V
+--+     -o-  +---+         +---+     +---+   +--+
|MN| ---- |---|DPA|<========|DPA|<----|DPA|<--|CN|
+--+      |   +---+         +---+     +---+   +--+
              Rules:       Rules:     Rules:
              Decap,       Encap,     host-route
              Forward      Forward,
                          qos

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