This document specifies the Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) protocol. The ForCES protocol is used for communications between Control Elements(CEs) and Forwarding Elements (FEs) in a ForCES Network Element (ForCES NE). This specification is intended to meet the ForCES protocol requirements defined in RFC 3654. Besides the ForCES protocol@ this specification also defines the requirements for the Transport Mapping Layer (TML).