Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-mpls-extended-admin-group
draft-ietf-mpls-extended-admin-group
Network Working Group E. Osborne
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Standards Track May 29, 2014
Expires: November 30, 2014
Extended Administrative Groups in MPLS-TE
draft-ietf-mpls-extended-admin-group-07
Abstract
MPLS-TE advertises 32 administrative groups (commonly referred to as
"colors" or "link colors") using the Administrative Group sub-TLV.
This is defined for OSPFv2 (RFC3630), OSPFv3 (RFC5329) and ISIS
(RFC5305).
This document adds a sub-TLV to the IGP TE extensions, "Extended
Administrative Group". This sub-TLV provides for additional
administrative groups (link colors) beyond the current limit of 32.
Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on November 30, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Extended Administrative Groups sub-TLV . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Admin group numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3. Backward compatability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3.1. AG and EAG coexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3.2. Desire for unadvertised EAG bits . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
Do we need more than 32 bits?
The IGP extensions to support MPLS-TE (RFCs 3630 [RFC3630] and 5305
[RFC5305]) define a link TLV known as Administrative Group (AG) with
a limit of 32 AGs per link. The concept of Administrative Groups
comes from section 6.2 of RFC 2702 [RFC2702], which calls them
Resource Classes. RFCs 3630 [RFC3630] and 5305 [RFC5305] describe
the mechanics of the TLV and use the term Administrative Groups
(sometimes abbreviated herein as AGs), as does this document.
Networks have grown over time, and MPLS-TE has grown right along with
them. Administrative Groups are advertised as a fixed-length 32-bit
bitmask. This can be quite constraining, as it is possible to run
out of values rather quickly. One such use case is #5 in Section 6.2
of RFC 2702 [RFC2702], using AGs to constrain traffic within specific
topological regions of the network. A large network may well have
far more than 32 geographic regions. One particular operator builds
their network along the lines of this use case, using AGs to flag
network regions down to the metro scale, e.g. Seattle, San
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Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. MPLS-TE tunnels are then
specified with affinities to include or exclude specific metro
regions in their path calculation. Each metro region is given its
own bit in the AG bitmask. This means that 32 bits can only
(cleanly) represent 32 metro areas. It should be obvious that 32 may
not be enough even for a US-based network, nevermind a worldwide
network.
There may be some opportunity for color reuse; that is, bit 0x8 may
mean 'Seattle' or 'Prague' or 'Singapore' depending on the geography
in which it is used. In practice, coordinating this reuse is fraught
with peril and the reuse effectively becomes the limiting factor in
MPLS-TE deployment. With this example it is not possible to build an
LSP which avoids Seattle while including Prague, as it is the same AG
value.
This document provides Extended Administrative Groups (EAGs). The
number of EAGs has no fixed limit, it is constrained only by
protocol-specific restrictions such as LSA or MTU size. While an
operator may one day need to go beyond these protocol-specific
restrictions, allowing for an arbitrary number of EAGs should easily
provide the operator with hundreds or thousands of bit values, thus
no longer making the number of AGs an impediment to network growth.
EAG's intended use case is within a single domain. As such, this
document provides no support for signaling EAG. It provides no
analog to either the SESSION_ATTRIBUTE of C-Type 1 defined in
[RFC3209], nor the LSPA object of the Path Computation Element
Communication Protocol (PCEP) defined in [RFC5440]. Since this
specification provides no way of signaling an LSP's path requirements
in reference to the EAG, such constraints may only be applied at the
ingress.
2. Extended Administrative Groups sub-TLV
This document defines the Extended Administrative Group (EAG) sub-TLV
for both OSPF [RFC3630] and ISIS [RFC5305]. The EAG sub-TLV is used
in addition to the Administrative Groups when an operator wants to
make more than 32 colors available for advertisement in a network.
The EAG sub-TLV is optional. Coexistence of EAG and AG TLVs is
covered in Section 2.3.1 of this document.
This document uses the term 'colors' as a shorthand to refer to
particular bits with an AG or EAG. The examples in this document use
'red' to represent the least significant bit in the AG (red == 0x1),
'blue' to represent the second bit (blue == 0x2). To say that a link
has a given color or that the specified color is set on the link is
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to say that the corresponding bit or bits in the link's AG are set to
1.
2.1. Packet Format
The format of the Extended Administrative Groups sub-TLV is the same
for both OSPF and ISIS:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Extended Admin Group |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| ........... |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Extended Admin Group |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The Type of the sub-TLV for OSPF and ISIS is TBD. The Length is the
size of the Extended Admin Group (EAG) value in bytes. The EAG may
be of any non-zero length, but MUST be a multiple of 4 bytes. The
only limits on EAG size are those which are imposed by protocol-
specific or media-specific constraints (e.g. max packet length).
2.2. Admin group numbering
By convention, the existing Administrative Group sub-TLVs are
numbered 0 (LSB) to 31 (MSB). The EAG values are a superset of AG.
That is, bits 0-31 in the EAG have the same meaning and MUST have the
same values as an AG flooded for the same link. If an EAG's length
is more than 4 bytes, numbering for these additional bytes picks up
where the previous byte left off. For example, the least significant
bit in the 5th byte of an 8-byte EAG is referred to as bit 32.
2.3. Backward compatability
There are two questions to consider for backward compatibility with
existing AG implementations - how do AG and EAG coexist, and what
happens if a node has matching criteria for unadvertised EAG bits?
2.3.1. AG and EAG coexistence
If a node advertises EAG it MAY also advertise AG.
If a node advertises both AG and EAG then the first 32 bits of the
EAG MUST be identical to the advertised AG.
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If both an AG and EAG are present, a receiving node MUST use the AG
as the first 32 bits (0-31) of administrative color and use the EAG
for bits 32 and higher if present.
A receiving node that notices that the AG differs from the first 32
bits of the EAG, SHOULD report this mismatch to the operator.
This process allows nodes which do not support EAG to obtain some
link color information from the network, but also allow for an
eventual migration away from AG.
2.3.2. Desire for unadvertised EAG bits
The existing AG sub-TLV is optional; thus a node may be configured
with a preference to include red or exclude blue, and be faced with a
link that is not advertising a value for either blue or red. What
does an implementation do in this case? It shouldn't assume that red
is set, but it is also arguably incorrect to assume that red is NOT
set, as a bit must first exist before it can be set to 0.
Practically speaking this has not been an issue for deployments, as
many implementations always advertise the AG bits, often with a
default value of 0x00000000. However, this issue may be of more
concern once EAGs are added to the network. EAGs may exist on some
nodes but not others, and the EAG length may be longer for some links
than for others.
To allow for maximum interoperability, an implementation SHOULD treat
desired but unadvertised EAG bits as if they were set to 0. Consider
the case where a node wants to only use links where the 127th bit of
an EAG is set to 1. If a link is only advertising 64 EAG bits, the
setting of the 127th EAG bit is not known - that is, it is neither
explicitly 0 nor 1. The node that wants the 127th EAG bit to be 1
will not use this link when implementing the recommended behavior, as
the assumption is than the unadvertised 127th bit is set to 0.
That said, each implementation makes its own choices based on
necessary constraints, and there might be reasons to provide other
strategies for handling this case. A strategy that deviates from the
behavior this document recommends SHOULD be configurable to use the
recommended behavior, in order to provide maximum interoperability.
3. Security Considerations
This extension adds no new security considerations.
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4. IANA Considerations
This document requests a sub-TLV allocation in both OSPF and ISIS.
For OSPF, the name space is "Types for sub-TLVs of TE Link TLV (Value
2)" in the "Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Traffic Engineering
TLVs".
For ISIS, it is "Sub-TLVs for TLV 22, 141, and 222" in the "IS-IS TLV
Codepoints" registry. For IS-IS the value should be marked 'y' for
Sub-TLVs 22, 141 and 222; this is identical to the allocation for the
Administrative Group sub-TLV (value 3).
In both registries the first free value should be assigned. As of
this writing, that's 26 in the OSPF registry and 14 in the IS-IS
registry. The Sub-TLV should be called "Extended Administrative
Group".
5. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Santiago Alvarez, Rohit Gupta, Liem Nguyen, Tarek Saad,
Robert Sawaya, Andy Malis, Les Ginsberg and Adrian Farrel for their
review and comments.
6. References
6.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3209] Awduche, D., Berger, L., Gan, D., Li, T., Srinivasan, V.,
and G. Swallow, "RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP
Tunnels", RFC 3209, December 2001.
[RFC3630] Katz, D., Kompella, K., and D. Yeung, "Traffic Engineering
(TE) Extensions to OSPF Version 2", RFC 3630, September
2003.
[RFC5305] Li, T. and H. Smit, "IS-IS Extensions for Traffic
Engineering", RFC 5305, October 2008.
[RFC5440] Vasseur, JP. and JL. Le Roux, "Path Computation Element
(PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)", RFC 5440, March
2009.
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6.2. Informative References
[RFC2702] Awduche, D., Malcolm, J., Agogbua, J., O'Dell, M., and J.
McManus, "Requirements for Traffic Engineering Over MPLS",
RFC 2702, September 1999.
Author's Address
Eric Osborne
Email: eric.osborne@notcom.com
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