Up MEP vs.

Down MEP Overview

 Overview of Service OAM

• The IEEE defines in the 802.1ag spec as to What is a “Down”

MEP vs. “Up” MEP
• A Down MEP is defined as “A MEP residing in a Bridge that
receives CFM PDUs from, and transmits them towards the
direction of the LAN.”
• An Up MEP is defined as “A MEP residing in a Bridge that
transmits CFM PDUs towards, and receives them from the
direction of the Bridge Relay Entity.”
• The ITU has further defined and delineated where in a
Bridge the MEP’s are located.

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 Overview of Service OAM

• The ITU has defined that MEP’s will be created after what is
referred to as the Traffic Conditioning Point.
• The TrCP (as it is abbreviated) is defined as is an ETH flow point
which is capable of an ETH traffic conditioning function like
policing and shaping functions.
• The MEF uses its own terminology and refers to the TrCP as an
ESCP (Ethernet Subscriber Conditioning Function) but basically
defines it the same way.
• Here is the standard MEP/MIP diagram from the ITU with the
TrCP’s positioned in the traffic flow. Note Provider and Operator
MEP’s are Up MEP’s, the Link and Customer MEP’s are Down
MEP’s. The TrCP’s are represented by the black diamond:

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 Overview of Service OAM:
Customer (Green), Provider (Purple), Operator
(Pink/Orange) and Link OAM (Red)

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 Hard to follow?

• Here is a Top View way of seeing it:

• Here you see all the same flows, just lined up together. It
shows both Down and Up MEP’s (and MIP’s)
• In both cases of MEP’s, the creation of MEP’s happens after
traffic conditioning, but the direction of the MEP determines
if the OAM frame is created before the bridge/switch (Up) or
after (Down).
• Here is a functional Block Diagram of our MetroNID:

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MetroNID® Functional Block Diagram

PAA, OAM, Mgmt

Traffic Processing
PAA/OAM
& Mgmt
Policies Traffic
Permit (fwd)

Monitor
Filters H-QoS based
Client traffic on L2/3 CoS Forwarded traffic
(classify) Regulator
Shaper
Mapping & regulator sets
Drop (incl CoS)

Loopback /
Loopback Processing RFC-2544
Traffic
L1-4 Filters
Y.1731 LBR
Test Set Lbk Cmd

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 • Client Traffic comes in through the PHY layer, then gets processed
by the TrCP, then is forwarded.
• OAM frames are generated and forwarded after the TrCP.
• In our standard 1x1 mode, since our FPGA design is monolithic,
there is no physical distinction between Up and Down MEP’s,
since they are created in the same location.
• In Aggregation modes (2x1,3x1,4x1) and G.8032 ring mode, the Up
MEP is created prior to the bridging relay, conforming to the spec.
• When an OAM frame is returned to the NID, it is handled in the
reverse fashion and is handled before the bridging relay (Down) or
after (Up).

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 What about PM?

• All OAM frames (LBM, LTM, etc.) conform to this.

• This means that DMM frames are also sourced at these
locations. The only difference with Up vs. Down MEP’s for
PM would be the ability to time the bridge relay/switching
functions of a device.
• In summary, Accedian does conform completely to the
802.1ag and Y.1731 specs in regards to Up and Down MEP’s.

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Thank you