The Soft Shutting Down state in the NFM-T is an administrative maintenance state where services stay up but no new traffic can be routed over the TE-link. This state is used to prepare a TE-link for maintenance or decommissioning without affecting the existing services. The NFM-T sets the TE-link to Soft Shutting Down state by sending a Notify message with the Administrative State Change flag to the head-end node of the TE-link. The head-end node then stops accepting new LSP requests over the TE-link and sends a PathErr message with the Administrative State Change flag to all the tail-end nodes of the LSPs in the TE-link. The tail-end nodes then stop sending new traffic over the LSPs and send a ResvErr message with the Administrative State Change flag to all the intermediate nodes of the LSPs. The intermediate nodes then update their routing tables and stop forwarding new traffic over the LSPs. The existing traffic, however, continues to flow over the LSPs until they are manually deleted or rerouted by the NFM-T. References : Nokia GMPLS-controlled Optical Networks Course | Nokia, Nokia Advanced Optical Network Management with NFM-T Course | Nokia