The Link Management Protocol (LMP) has been developed as part of the Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) protocol suite to manage Traffic Engineering (TE) links. The GMPLS control plane (routing and signaling) uses TE links for establishing Label Switched Paths (LSPs). This memo describes the relationship of the LMP procedures to 'discovery' as defined in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and on-going ITU-T work. This document provides an overview of LMP in the context of the ITU-T Automatically Switched Optical Networks (ASON) and transport network terminology and relates it to the ITU-T discovery work to promote a common understanding for progressing the work of IETF and ITU-T.