The BGP-PCEP project in OpenDaylight implements two southbound plugins: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Linkstate Distribution to manage Layer 3 topology information, and Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) as a way to instantiate paths into the underlying network. Both protocols offer extensibility features to add new behaviors.
BGP is the routing protocol that makes the internet work. As per RFC, the primary function of BGP is to exchange network reachability information with other BGP systems.
PCEP is a TCP-based protocol defined by the IETF and it has the capability to remove the path computation function from network elements such as routers to an external entity known as the Path Computation Engine (PCE). A PCE is capable of computing network paths or routes for a given network. Using the PCEP protocol, a client known as Path Computation Client (PCC) can...