wdiff rfc7308.original rfc7308.txt

Network Working Group
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) E. Osborne
Internet-Draft
Intended status:
Request for Comments: 7308 July 2014
Category: Standards Track May 29, 2014
Expires: November 30, 2014
ISSN: 2070-1721

Extended Administrative Groups in MPLS-TE
draft-ietf-mpls-extended-admin-group-07 MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE)

Abstract

MPLS-TE

MPLS Traffic Engineering (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), (RFC 3630),
OSPFv3 (RFC5329) (RFC 5329) and ISIS
(RFC5305). IS-IS (RFC 5305).

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

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This Internet-Draft will expire on November 30, 2014.
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7308.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Extended Administrative Groups sub-TLV Sub-TLV . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Admin group numbering Group Numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3. Backward compatability Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3.1. AG and EAG coexistence Coexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3.2. Desire for unadvertised Unadvertised EAG bits 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 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.
bitmasks. 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. e.g., Seattle, San
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 never mind 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 example, it is not possible to build an
LSP which a
Label Switched Path (LSP) that 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 Link State Advertisement (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 an EAG. It provides no
analog to either the SESSION_ATTRIBUTE of C-Type 1 defined in
[RFC3209],
[RFC3209] nor the LSPA LSP Attributes (LSPA) object of the Path
Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP) (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.

1.1. Requirements Language

2. Extended Administrative Groups sub-TLV Sub-TLV

This document defines the Extended Administrative Group (EAG) sub-TLV
for both OSPF [RFC3630] and ISIS IS-IS [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
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: IS-IS:

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 is 26 and ISIS for IS-IS is TBD. 14. The
Length is the size of the Extended Admin Group (EAG) value in bytes.
The EAG may be of any non-zero length, but it MUST be a multiple of 4
bytes. The only limits on EAG size are those which that are imposed by protocol-
specific
protocol-specific or media-specific constraints (e.g. (e.g., max packet
length).

2.2. Admin group numbering Group Numbering

By convention, the existing Administrative Group sub-TLVs are
numbered 0 (LSB) (least significant bit) to 31 (MSB). (most significant bit). 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 fifth byte of an 8-byte
EAG is referred to as bit 32.

2.3. Backward compatability Compatibility

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 Coexistence

If a node advertises EAG EAG, it MAY also advertise AG.

If a node advertises both AG and EAG EAG, then the first 32 bits of the
EAG MUST be identical to the advertised AG.

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 higher, if present.

A receiving node that notices that the AG differs from the first 32
bits of the EAG, EAG SHOULD report this mismatch to the operator.

This process allows nodes which that do not support EAG to obtain some link
color information from the network, but while also allow allowing for an
eventual migration away from AG.

2.3.2. Desire for unadvertised Unadvertised EAG bits Bits

The existing AG sub-TLV is optional; thus a node may be configured
with a preference to include red or exclude blue, blue and may 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 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.

4. IANA Considerations

This document requests registers a sub-TLV allocation in both OSPF and ISIS.

For OSPF, the name space subregistry is the "Types for sub-TLVs of TE Link TLV
(Value 2)" in the "Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Traffic
Engineering
TLVs". TLVs" registry.

For ISIS, IS-IS, it is "Sub-TLVs for TLV 22, 141, and 222" subregistry in
the "IS-IS TLV Codepoints" registry. For IS-IS 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 3 in the first free same
subregistry).

The assigned value should be assigned. As of
this writing, that's 26 in from the OSPF registry is 26 and 14 in the assigned
value from the IS-IS
registry. registry is 14. The Sub-TLV should be sub-TLV is 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. JP., Ed., and JL. Le Roux, Ed., "Path Computation
Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)", RFC 5440,
March 2009.

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:

EMail: eric.osborne@notcom.com