HotNets’04 offical copy, referred by local post
In current routers, … control and forwarding functions are colocatedand and highly integrated by static association of control and forwarding elements. … the SoftRouter architecture, … all control plane functions are implemented on general purpose servers called the control elements (CE), … (FE). A network element (NE) or a router is formed using dynamic building between the CEs and the FEs.