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IETF RFC 4834
Requirements for Multicast in Layer 3 Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPNs)
Last modified on Saturday, April 14th, 2007
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Network Working Group T. Morin, Ed.
Request for Comments: 4834 France Telecom R&D
Category: Informational April 2007
Requirements for Multicast in Layer 3 Provider-Provisioned Virtual
Private Networks (PPVPNs)
 Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright © The IETF Trust (2007).
Abstract
This document presents a set of functional requirements for network
solutions that allow the deployment of IP multicast within Layer 3
(L3) Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPNs). It
specifies requirements both from the end user and service provider
standpoints. It is intended that potential solutions specifying the
support of IP multicast within such VPNs will use these requirements
as guidelines.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1. Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. General Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. Scaling vs. Optimizing Resource Utilization . . . . . . . 8
4. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1. Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1.1. Live Content Broadcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.2. Symmetric Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1.3. Data Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1.4. Generic Multicast VPN Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2. Scalability Orders of Magnitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2.1. Number of VPNs with Multicast Enabled . . . . . . . . 11
4.2.2. Number of Multicast VPNs per PE . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2.3. Number of CEs per Multicast VPN per PE . . . . . . . . 12
4.2.4. PEs per Multicast VPN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2.5. PEs with Multicast VRFs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2.6. Number of Streams Sourced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5. Requirements for Supporting IP Multicast within L3 PPVPNs . . 13
5.1. End User/Customer Standpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.1.1. Service Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.1.2. CE-PE Multicast Routing and Group Management
Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.1.3. Quality of Service (QoS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.1.4. Operations and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.1.5. Security Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.1.6. Extranet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.1.7. Internet Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.1.8. Carrier's Carrier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.1.9. Multi-Homing, Load Balancing, and Resiliency . . . . . 19
5.1.10. RP Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.1.11. Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.1.12. Minimum MTU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.2. Service Provider Standpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2.1. General Requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2.2. Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2.3. Resource Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.2.4. Tunneling Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.2.5. Control Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.2.6. Support of Inter-AS, Inter-Provider Deployments . . . 26
5.2.7. Quality-of-Service Differentiation . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.2.8. Infrastructure security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.2.9. Robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
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5.2.10. Operation, Administration, and Maintenance . . . . . . 28
5.2.11. Compatibility and Migration Issues . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.2.12. Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
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1. Introduction
Virtual Private Network (VPN) services satisfying the requirements
defined in [RFC 4031] are now being offered by many service providers
throughout the world. VPN services are popular because customers
need not be aware of the VPN technologies deployed in the provider
network. They scale well for the following reasons:
o because P routers (Provider Routers) need not be aware of VPN
service details
o because the addition of a new VPN member requires only limited
configuration effort
There is also a growing need for support of IP multicast-based
services. Efforts to provide efficient IP multicast routing
protocols and multicast group management have been made in
standardization bodies which has led, in particular, to the
definition of Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and Internet Group
Management Protocol (IGMP).
However, multicast traffic is not natively supported within existing
L3 PPVPN solutions. Deploying multicast over an L3VPN today, with
only currently standardized solutions, requires designing customized
solutions which will be inherently limited in terms of scalability,
operational efficiency, and bandwidth usage.
This document complements the generic L3VPN requirements [RFC 4031]
document, by specifying additional requirements specific to the
deployment within PPVPNs of services based on IP multicast. It
clarifies the needs of both VPN clients and providers and formulates
the problems that should be addressed by technical solutions with the
key objective being to remain solution agnostic. There is no intent
in this document to specify either solution-specific details or
application-specific requirements. Also, this document does NOT aim
at expressing multicast-related requirements that are not specific to
L3 PPVPNs.
It is expected that solutions that specify procedures and protocol
extensions for multicast in L3 PPVPNs SHOULD satisfy these
requirements.
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2. Conventions Used in This Document
2.1. Terminology
Although the reader is assumed to be familiar with the terminology
defined in [RFC 4031], [RFC 4364], [RFC 4601], and [RFC 4607], the
following glossary of terms may be worthwhile.
We also propose here generic terms for concepts that naturally appear
when multicast in VPNs is discussed.
ASM:
Any Source Multicast. One of the two multicast service models, in
which a terminal subscribes to a multicast group to receive data
sent to the group by any source.
Multicast-enabled VPN, multicast VPN, or mVPN:
A VPN that supports IP multicast capabilities, i.e., for which
some PE devices (if not all) are multicast-enabled and whose core
architecture supports multicast VPN routing and forwarding.
PPVPN:
Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private Network.
PE, CE:
"Provider Edge", "Customer Edge" (as defined in [RFC 4026]). As
suggested in [RFC 4026], we will use these notations to refer to
the equipments/routers/devices themselves. Thus, "PE" will refer
to the router on the provider's edge, which faces the "CE", the
router on the customer's edge.
VRF or VR:
By these terms, we refer to the entity defined in a PE dedicated
to a specific VPN instance. "VRF" refers to "VPN Routing and
Forwarding table" as defined in [RFC 4364], and "VR" to "Virtual
Router" as defined in [VRs] terminology.
MDTunnel:
Multicast Distribution Tunnel. The means by which the customer's
multicast traffic will be transported across the SP network. This
is meant in a generic way: such tunnels can be either point-to-
point or point-to-multipoint. Although this definition may seem
to assume that distribution tunnels are unidirectional, the
wording also encompasses bidirectional tunnels.
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S:
Denotes a multicast source.
G:
Denotes a multicast group.
Multicast channel:
In the multicast SSM model [RFC 4607], a "multicast channel"
designates traffic from a specific source S to a multicast group
G. Also denominated as "(S,G)".
SP:
Service provider.
SSM:
Source Specific Multicast. One of the two multicast service
models, where a terminal subscribes to a multicast group to
receive data sent to the group by a specific source.
RP:
Rendezvous Point (Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode
(PIM-SM) [RFC 4601]).
P2MP, MP2MP:
Designate "Point-to-Multipoint" and "Multipoint-to-Multipoint"
replication trees.
L3VPN, VPN:
Throughout this document, "L3VPN" or even just "VPN" will refer to
"Provider-Provisioned Layer 3 Virtual Private Network" (PP
L3VPNs), and will be preferred for readability.
Please refer to [RFC 4026] for details about terminology specifically
relevant to VPN aspects, and to [RFC 2432] for multicast performance
or quality of service (QoS)-related terms.
2.2. Conventions
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].
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3. Problem Statement
3.1. Motivations
More and more L3VPN customers use IP multicast services within their
private infrastructures. Naturally, they want to extend these
multicast services to remote sites that are connected via a VPN.
For instance, the customer could be a national TV channel with
several geographical locations that wants to broadcast a TV program
from a central point to several regional locations within its VPN.
A solution to support multicast traffic could consist of point-to-
point tunnels across the provider network and requires the PEs
(Provider Edge routers) to replicate traffic. This would obviously
be sub-optimal as it would place the replication burden on the PE and
hence would have very poor scaling characteristics. It would also
probably waste bandwidth and control plane resources in the
provider's network.
Thus, to provide multicast services for L3VPN networks in an
efficient manner (that is, with a scalable impact on signaling and
protocol state as well as bandwidth usage), in a large-scale
environment, new mechanisms are required to enhance existing L3VPN
solutions for proper support of multicast-based services.
3.2. General Requirements
This document sets out requirements for L3 provider-provisioned VPN
solutions designed to carry customers' multicast traffic. The main
requirement is that a solution SHOULD first satisfy the requirements
documented in [RFC 4031]: as far as possible, a multicast service
should have the same characteristics as the unicast equivalent,
including the same simplicity (technology unaware), the same quality
of service (if any), the same management (e.g., performance
monitoring), etc.
Moreover, it also has to be clear that a multicast VPN solution MUST
interoperate seamlessly with current unicast VPN solutions. It would
also make sense that multicast VPN solutions define themselves as
extensions to existing L3 provider-provisioned VPN solutions (such as
for instance, [RFC 4364] or [VRs]) and retain consistency with those,
although this is not a core requirement.
The requirements in this document are equally applicable to IPv4 and
IPv6, for both customer- and provider-related matters.
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3.3. Scaling vs. Optimizing Resource Utilization
When transporting multicast VPN traffic over a service provider
network, there intrinsically is tension between scalability and
resource optimization, since the latter is likely to require the
maintenance of control plane states related to replication trees in
the core network [RFC 3353].
Consequently, any deployment will require a trade-off to be made.
This document will express some requirements related to this trade-
off.
4. Use Cases
The goal of this section is to highlight how different applications
and network contexts may have a different impact on how a multicast
VPN solution is designed, deployed, and tuned. For this purpose, we
describe some typical use case scenarios and express expectations in
terms of deployment orders of magnitude.
Most of the content of these sections originates from a survey done
in summer 2005, among institutions and providers that expect to
deploy such solutions. The full survey text and raw results (13
responses) were published separately, and we only present here the
most relevant facts and expectations that the survey exposed.
For scalability figures, we considered that it was relevant to
highlight the highest expectations, those that are expected to have
the greatest impact on solution design. For balance, we do also
mention cases where such high expectations were expressed in only a
few answers.
4.1. Scenarios
We don't provide here an exhaustive set of scenarios that a multicast
VPN solution is expected to support -- no solution should restrict
the scope of multicast applications and deployments that can be done
over a multicast VPN.
Hence, we only give here a short list of scenarios that are expected
to have a large impact on the design of a multicast VPN solution.
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4.1.1. Live Content Broadcast
Under this label, we group all applications that distribute content
(audio, video, or other content) with the property that this content
is expected to be consulted at once ("live") by the receiver.
Typical applications are broadcast TV, production studio
connectivity, and distribution of market data feeds.
The characteristics of such applications are the following:
o one or few sources to many receivers
o sources are often in known locations; receivers are in less
predictable locations (this latter point may depend on
applications)
o in some cases, it is expected that the regularity of audience
patterns may help improve how the bandwidth/state trade-off is
handled
o the number of streams can be as high as hundreds, or even
thousands, of streams
o bandwidth will depend on the application, but may vary between a
few tens/hundreds of Kb/s (e.g., audio or low-quality video media)
and tens of Mb/s (high-quality video), with some demanding
professional applications requiring as much as hundreds of Mb/s.
o QoS requirements include, in many cases, a low multicast group
join delay
o QoS of these applications is likely to be impacted by packet loss
(some applications may be robust to low packet loss) and to have
low robustness against jitter
o delay sensitivity will depend on the application: some
applications are not so delay sensitive (e.g., broadcast TV),
whereas others may require very low delay (professional studio
applications)
o some of these applications may involve rapid changes in customer
multicast memberships as seen by the PE, but this will depend on
audience patterns and on the amount of provider equipments
deployed close to VPN customers
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4.1.2. Symmetric Applications
Some use cases exposed by the survey can be grouped under this label,
and include many-to-many applications such as conferencing and server
cluster monitoring.
They are characterized by the relatively high number of streams that
they can produce, which has a direct impact on scalability
expectations.
A sub-case of this scenario is the case of symmetric applications
with small groups, when the number of receivers is low compared to
the number of sites in the VPNs (e.g., video conferencing and
e-learning applications).
This latter case is expected to be an important input to solution
design, since it may significantly impact how the bandwidth/state is
managed.
Optimizing bandwidth may require introducing dedicated states in the
core network (typically as much as the number of groups) for the
following reasons:
o small groups, and low predictability of the location of
participants ("sparse groups")
o possibly significantly high bandwidth (a few Mb/s per participant)
Lastly, some of these applications may involve real-time interactions
and will be highly sensitive to packet loss, jitter, and delay.
4.1.3. Data Distribution
Some applications that are expected to be deployed on multicast VPNs
are non-real-time applications aimed at distributing data from few
sources to many receivers.
Such applications may be considered to have lower expectations than
their counterparts proposed in this document, since they would not
necessarily involve more data streams and are more likely to adapt to
the available bandwidth and to be robust to packet loss, jitter, and
delay.
One important property is that such applications may involve higher
bandwidths (hundreds of Mb/s).
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4.1.4. Generic Multicast VPN Offer
This ISP scenario is a deployment scenario where IP-multicast
connectivity is proposed for every VPN: if a customer requests a VPN,
then this VPN will support IP multicast by default. In this case,
the number of multicast VPNs equals the number of VPNs. This implies
a quite important scalability requirement (e.g., hundreds of PEs,
hundreds of VPNs per PE, with a potential increase by one order of
magnitude in the future).
The per-mVPN traffic behavior is not predictable because how the
service is used is completely up to the customer. This results in a
traffic mix of the scenarios mentioned in Section 4.1. QoS
requirements are similar to typical unicast scenarios, with the need
for different classes. Also, in such a context, a reasonably large
range of protocols should be made available to the customer for use
at the PE-CE level.
Also, in such a scenario, customers may want to deploy multicast
connectivity between two or more multicast VPNs as well as access to
Internet Multicast.
4.2. Scalability Orders of Magnitude
This section proposes orders of magnitude for different scalability
metrics relevant for multicast VPN issues. It should be noted that
the scalability figures proposed here relate to scalability
expectations of future deployments of multicast VPN solutions, as the
authors chose to not restrict the scope to only currently known
deployments.
4.2.1. Number of VPNs with Multicast Enabled
From the survey results, we see a broad range of expectations. There
are extreme answers: from 5 VPNs (1 answer) to 10k VPNs (1 answer),
but more typical answers are split between the low range of tens of
VPNs (7 answers) and the higher range of hundreds or thousands of
VPNs (2 + 4 answers).
A solution SHOULD support a number of multicast VPNs ranging from one
to several thousands.
A solution SHOULD NOT limit the proportion of multicast VPNs among
all (unicast) VPNs.
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4.2.2. Number of Multicast VPNs per PE
The majority of survey answers express a number of multicast VPNs per
PE of around tens (8 responses between 5 and 50); a significant
number of them (4) expect deployments with hundreds or thousands (1
response) of multicast VPNs per PE.
A solution SHOULD support a number of multicast VPNs per PE of
several hundreds, and may have to scale up to thousands of VPNs per
PE.
4.2.3. Number of CEs per Multicast VPN per PE
Survey responses span from 1 to 2000 CEs per multicast VPN per PE.
Most typical responses are between tens (6 answers) and hundreds (4
responses).
A solution SHOULD support a number of CEs per multicast VPN per PE
going up to several hundreds (and may target the support of thousands
of CEs).
4.2.4. PEs per Multicast VPN
People who answered the survey typically expect deployments with the
number of PEs per multicast VPN in the range of hundreds of PEs (6
responses) or tens of PEs (4 responses). Two responses were in the
range of thousands (one mentioned a 10k figure).
A multicast VPN solution SHOULD support several hundreds of PEs per
multicast VPN, and MAY usefully scale up to thousands.
4.2.4.1. ... with Sources
The number of PEs (per VPN) that would be connected to sources seems
to be significantly lower than the number of PEs per VPN. This is
obviously related to the fact that many respondents mentioned
deployments related to content broadcast applications (one to many).
Typical numbers are tens (6 responses) or hundreds (4 responses) of
source-connected PEs. One respondent expected a higher number of
several thousands.
A solution SHOULD support hundreds of source-connected PEs per VPN,
and some deployment scenarios involving many-to-many applications may
require supporting a number of source-connected PEs equal to the
number of PEs (hundreds or thousands).
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4.2.4.2. ... with Receivers
The survey showed that the number of PEs with receivers is expected
to be of the same order of magnitude as the number of PEs in a
multicast VPN. This is consistent with the intrinsic nature of most
multicast applications, which have few source-only participants.
4.2.5. PEs with Multicast VRFs
A solution SHOULD scale up to thousands of PEs having multicast
service enabled.
4.2.6. Number of Streams Sourced
Survey responses led us to retain the following orders of magnitude
for the number of streams that a solution SHOULD support:
per VPN: hundreds or thousands of streams
per PE: hundreds of streams
5. Requirements for Supporting IP Multicast within L3 PPVPNs
Again, the aim of this document is not to specify solutions but to
give requirements for supporting IP multicast within L3 PPVPNs.
In order to list these requirements, we have taken the standpoint of
two different important entities: the end user (the customer using
the VPN) and the service provider.
In the rest of the document, by "a solution" or "a multicast VPN
solution", we mean a solution that allows multicast in an L3
provider-provisioned VPN, and which addresses the requirements listed
in this document.
5.1. End User/Customer Standpoint
5.1.1. Service Definition
As for unicast, the multicast service MUST be provider provisioned
and SHALL NOT require customer devices (CEs) to support any extra
features compared to those required for multicast in a non-VPN
context. Enabling a VPN for multicast support SHOULD be possible
with no impact (or very limited impact) on existing multicast
protocols possibly already deployed on the CE devices.
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5.1.2. CE-PE Multicast Routing and Group Management Protocols
Consequently to Section 5.1.1, multicast-related protocol exchanges
between a CE and its directly connected PE SHOULD happen via existing
multicast protocols.
Such protocols include: PIM-SM [RFC 4601], bidirectional-PIM
[BIDIR-PIM], PIM - Dense Mode (DM) [RFC 3973], and IGMPv3 [RFC 3376]
(this version implicitly supports hosts that only implement IGMPv1
[RFC 1112] or IGMPv2 [RFC 2236]).
Among those protocols, the support of PIM-SM (which includes the SSM
model) and either IGMPv3 (for IPv4 solutions) and/or Multicast
Listener Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2) [RFC 3810] (for IPv6 solutions)
is REQUIRED. Bidir-PIM support at the PE-CE interface is
RECOMMENDED. And considering deployments, PIM-DM is considered
OPTIONAL.
When a multicast VPN solution is built on a VPN solution supporting
IPv6 unicast, it MUST also support v6 variants of the above
protocols, including MLDv2, and PIM-SM IPv6-specific procedures. For
a multicast VPN solution built on a unicast VPN solution supporting
only IPv4, it is RECOMMENDED that the design favors the definition of
procedures and encodings that will provide an easy adaptation to
IPv6.
5.1.3. Quality of Service (QoS)
Firstly, general considerations regarding QoS in L3VPNs expressed in
Section 5.5 of [RFC 4031] are also relevant to this section.
QoS is measured in terms of delay, jitter, packet loss, and
availability. These metrics are already defined for the current
unicast PPVPN services and are included in Service Level Agreements
(SLAs). In some cases, the agreed SLA may be different between
unicast and multicast, and that will require differentiation
mechanisms in order to monitor both SLAs.
The level of availability for the multicast service SHOULD be on par
with what exists for unicast traffic. For instance, comparable
traffic protection mechanisms SHOULD be available for customer
multicast traffic when it is carried over the service provider's
network.
A multicast VPN solution SHALL allow a service provider to define at
least the same level of quality of service as exists for unicast, and
as exists for multicast in a non-VPN context. From this perspective,
the deployment of multicast-based services within an L3VPN
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environment SHALL benefit from Diffserv [RFC 2475] mechanisms that
include multicast traffic identification, classification, and marking
capabilities, as well as multicast traffic policing, scheduling, and
conditioning capabilities. Such capabilities MUST therefore be
supported by any participating device in the establishment and the
maintenance of the multicast distribution tunnel within the VPN.
As multicast is often used to deliver high-quality services such as
TV broadcast, a multicast VPN solution MAY provide additional
features to support high QoS such as bandwidth reservation and
admission control.
Also, considering that multicast reception is receiver-triggered,
group join delay (as defined in [RFC 2432]) is also considered one
important QoS parameter. It is thus RECOMMENDED that a multicast VPN
solution be designed appropriately in this regard.
The group leave delay (as defined in [RFC 2432]) may also be important
on the CE-PE link for some usage scenarios: in cases where the
typical bandwidth of multicast streams is close to the bandwidth of a
PE-CE link, it will be important to have the ability to stop the
emission of a stream on the PE-CE link as soon as it stops being
requested by the CE, to allow for fast switching between two
different high-throughput multicast streams. This implies that it
SHOULD be possible to tune the multicast routing or group management
protocols (e.g., IGMP/MLD or PIM) used on the PE-CE adjacency to
reduce the group leave delay to the minimum.
Lastly, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD as much as possible ensure
that client multicast traffic packets are neither lost nor
duplicated, even when changes occur in the way a client multicast
data stream is carried over the provider network. Packet loss issues
also have to be considered when a new source starts to send traffic
to a group: any receiver interested in receiving such traffic SHOULD
be serviced accordingly.
5.1.4. Operations and Management
The requirements and definitions for operations and management (OAM)
of L3VPNs that are defined in [RFC 4176] equally apply to multicast,
and are not extensively repeated in this document. This sub-section
mentions the most important guidelines and details points of
particular relevance in the context of multicast in L3VPNs.
A multicast VPN solution SHOULD allow a multicast VPN customer to
manage the capabilities and characteristics of their multicast VPN
services.
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A multicast VPN solution MUST support SLA monitoring capabilities,
which SHOULD rely upon techniques similar to those used for the
unicast service for the same monitoring purposes. Multicast SLA-
related metrics SHOULD be available through means similar to the ones
already used for unicast-related monitoring, such as Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) [RFC 3411] or IPFIX [IPFIX-PROT].
Multicast-specific characteristics that may be monitored include:
multicast statistics per stream, end-to-end delay, and group join/
leave delay (time to start/stop receiving a multicast group's traffic
across the VPN, as defined in [RFC 2432], Section 3).
The monitoring of multicast-specific parameters and statistics MUST
include multicast traffic statistics: total/incoming/outgoing/dropped
traffic, by period of time. It MAY include IP Performance Metrics
related information (IPPM, [RFC 2330]) that is relevant to the
multicast traffic usage: such information includes the one-way packet
delay, the inter-packet delay variation, etc. See [MULTIMETRICS].
A generic discussion of SLAs is provided in [RFC 3809].
Apart from statistics on multicast traffic, customers of a multicast
VPN will need information concerning the status of their multicast
resource usage (multicast routing states and bandwidth). Indeed, as
mentioned in Section 5.2.5, for scalability purposes, a service
provider may limit the number (and/or throughput) of multicast
streams that are received/sent to/from a client site. In such a
case, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD allow customers to find out
their current resource usage (multicast routing states and
throughput), and to receive some kind of feedback if their usage
exceeds the agreed bounds. Whether this issue will be better handled
at the protocol level at the PE-CE interface or at the Service
Management Level interface [RFC 4176] is left for further discussion.
It is RECOMMENDED that any OAM mechanism designed to trigger alarms
in relation to performance or resource usage metrics integrate the
ability to limit the rate at which such alarms are generated (e.g.,
some form of a hysteresis mechanism based on low/high thresholds
defined for the metrics).
5.1.5. Security Requirements
Security is a key point for a customer who uses a VPN service. For
instance, the [RFC 4364] model offers some guarantees concerning the
security level of data transmission within the VPN.
A multicast VPN solution MUST provide an architecture with the same
level of security for both unicast and multicast traffic.
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Moreover, the activation of multicast features SHOULD be possible:
o per VRF / per VR
o per CE interface (when multiple CEs of a VPN are connected to a
common VRF/VR)
o per multicast group and/or per channel
o with a distinction between multicast reception and emission
A multicast VPN solution may choose to make the optimality/
scalability trade-off stated in Section 3.3 by sometimes distributing
multicast traffic of a client group to a larger set of PE routers
that may include PEs that are not part of the VPN. From a security
standpoint, this may be a problem for some VPN customers; thus, a
multicast VPN solution using such a scheme MAY offer ways to avoid
this for specific customers (and/or specific customer multicast
streams).
5.1.6. Extranet
In current PP L3VPN models, a customer site may be set up to be part
of multiple VPNs, and this should still be possible when a VPN is
multicast-enabled. In practice, it means that a VRF or VR can be
part of more than one VPN.
A multicast VPN solution MUST support such deployments.
For instance, it must be possible to configure a VRF so that an
enterprise site participating in a BGP/MPLS multicast-enabled VPN and
connected to that VRF can receive a multicast stream from (or
originate a multicast stream towards) another VPN that would be
associated to that VRF.
This means that a multicast VPN solution MUST offer means for a VRF
to be configured so that multicast connectivity can be set up for a
chosen set of extranet VPNs. More precisely, it MUST be possible to
configure a VRF so that:
o receivers behind attached CEs can receive multicast traffic
sourced in the configured set of extranet VPNs
o sources behind attached CEs can reach multicast traffic receivers
located in the configured set of extranet VPNs
o multicast reception and emission can be independently enabled for
each of the extranet VPNs
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Moreover, a solution MUST allow service providers to control an
extranet's multicast connectivity independently from the extranet's
unicast connectivity. More specifically:
o enabling unicast connectivity to another VPN MUST be possible
without activating multicast connectivity with that VPN
o enabling multicast connectivity with another VPN SHOULD NOT
require more than the strict minimal unicast routing. Sending
multicast to a VPN SHOULD NOT require having unicast routes to
that VPN; receiving multicast from a VPN SHOULD be possible with
nothing more than unicast routes to the relevant multicast sources
of that VPN
o when unicast routes from another VPN are imported into a VR/VRF,
for multicast Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF) resolution, this
SHOULD be possible without making those routes available for
unicast routing
Proper support for this feature SHOULD NOT require replicating
multicast traffic on a PE-CE link, whether it is a physical or
logical link.
5.1.7. Internet Multicast
Connectivity with Internet Multicast is a particular case of the
previous section, where sites attached to a VR/VRF would need to
receive/send multicast traffic from/to the Internet.
This should be considered OPTIONAL given the additional
considerations, such as security, needed to fulfill the requirements
for providing Internet Multicast.
5.1.8. Carrier's Carrier
Many L3 PPVPN solutions, such as [RFC 4364] and [VRs], define the
"Carrier's Carrier" model, where a "carrier's carrier" service
provider supports one or more customer ISPs, or "sub-carriers". A
multicast VPN solution SHOULD support the carrier's carrier model in
a scalable and efficient manner.
Ideally, the range of tunneling protocols available for the sub-
carrier ISP should be the same as those available for the carrier's
carrier ISP. This implies that the protocols that may be used at the
PE-CE level SHOULD NOT be restricted to protocols required as per
Section 5.1.2 and SHOULD include some of the protocols listed in
Section 5.2.4, such as for instance P2MP MPLS signaling protocols.
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In the context of MPLS-based L3VPN deployments, such as BGP/MPLS VPNs
[RFC 4364], this means that MPLS label distribution SHOULD happen at
the PE-CE level, giving the ability to the sub-carrier to use
multipoint LSPs as a tunneling mechanism.
5.1.9. Multi-Homing, Load Balancing, and Resiliency
A multicast VPN solution SHOULD be compatible with current solutions
that aim at improving the service robustness for customers such as
multi-homing, CE-PE link load balancing, and fail-over. A multicast
VPN solution SHOULD also be able to offer those same features for
multicast traffic.
Any solution SHOULD support redundant topology of CE-PE links. It
SHOULD minimize multicast traffic disruption and fail-over.
5.1.10. RP Engineering
When PIM-SM (or bidir-PIM) is used in ASM mode on the VPN customer
side, the RP function (or RP-address in the case of bidir-PIM) has to
be associated to a node running PIM, and configured on this node.
5.1.10.1. RP Outsourcing
In the case of PIM-SM in ASM mode, engineering of the RP function
requires the deployment of specific protocols and associated
configurations. A service provider may offer to manage customers'
multicast protocol operation on their behalf. This implies that it
is necessary to consider cases where a customer's RPs are outsourced
(e.g., on PEs). Consequently, a VPN solution MAY support the hosting
of the RP function in a VR or VRF.
5.1.10.2. RP Availability
Availability of the RP function (or address) is required for proper
operation of PIM-SM (ASM mode) and bidir-PIM. Loss of connectivity
to the RP from a receiver or source will impact the multicast
service. For this reason, different mechanisms exist, such as BSR
[PIM-BSR] or anycast-RP (Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP)-
based [RFC 3446] or PIM-based [RFC 4610]).
These protocols and procedures SHOULD work transparently through a
multicast VPN, and MAY if relevant, be implemented in a VRF/VR.
Moreover, a multicast VPN solution MAY improve the robustness of the
ASM multicast service regarding loss of connectivity to the RP, by
providing specific features that help:
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a) maintain ASM multicast service among all the sites within an MVPN
that maintain connectivity among themselves, even when the site(s)
hosting the RP lose their connectivity to the MVPN
b) maintain ASM multicast service within any site that loses
connectivity to the service provider
5.1.10.3. RP Location
In the case of PIM-SM, when a source starts to emit traffic toward a
group (in ASM mode), if sources and receivers are located in VPN
sites that are different than that of the RP, then traffic may
transiently flow twice through the SP network and the CE-PE link of
the RP (from source to RP, and then from RP to receivers). This
traffic peak, even short, may not be convenient depending on the
traffic and link bandwidth.
Thus, a VPN solution MAY provide features that solve or help mitigate
this potential issue.
5.1.11. Addressing
A multicast provider-provisioned L3VPN SHOULD NOT impose restrictions
on multicast group addresses used by VPN customers.
In particular, like unicast traffic, an overlap of multicast group
address sets used by different VPN customers MUST be supported.
The use of globally unique means of multicast-based service
identification at the scale of the domain where such services are
provided SHOULD be recommended. For IPv4 multicast, this implies the
use of the multicast administratively scoped range (239/8 as defined
by [RFC 2365]) for services that are to be used only inside the VPN,
and of either SSM-range addresses (232/8 as defined by [RFC 4607]) or
globally assigned group addresses (e.g., GLOP [RFC 3180], 233/8) for
services for which traffic may be transmitted outside the VPN.
5.1.12. Minimum MTU
For customers, it is often a serious issue whether or not transmitted
packets will be fragmented. In particular, some multicast
applications might have different requirements than those that make
use of unicast, and they may expect services that guarantee available
packet length not to be fragmented.
Therefore, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be designed with these
considerations in mind. In practice:
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o the encapsulation overhead of a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be
minimized, so that customer devices can be free of fragmentation
and reassembly activity as much as possible
o a multicast VPN solution SHOULD enable the service provider to
commit to a minimum path MTU usable by multicast VPN customers
o a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be compatible with path MTU
discovery mechanisms (see [RFC 1191] and [RFC 4459]), and particular
care SHOULD be given to means to help troubleshoot MTU issues
Moreover, since Ethernet LAN segments are often located at first and
last hops, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be designed to allow for a
minimum 1500-byte IP MTU for VPN customers multicast packet, when the
provider backbone design allows it.
5.2. Service Provider Standpoint
Note: To avoid repetition and confusion with terms used in solution
specifications, we introduced in Section 2.1 the term MDTunnel (for
Multicast Distribution Tunnel), which designates the data plane means
used by the service provider to forward customer multicast traffic
over the core network.
5.2.1. General Requirement
The deployment of a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be possible with no
(or very limited) impact on existing deployments of standardized
multicast-related protocols on P and PE routers.
5.2.2. Scalability
Some currently standardized and deployed L3VPN solutions have the
major advantage of being scalable in the core regarding the number of
customers and the number of customer routes. For instance, in the
[RFC 4364] and Virtual Router [VRs] models, a P router sees a number
of MPLS tunnels that is only linked to the number of PEs and not to
the number of VPNs, or customer sites.
As far as possible, this independence in the core, with respect to
the number of customers and to customer activity, is recommended.
Yet, it is recognized that in our context scalability and resource
usage optimality are competing goals, so this requirement may be
reduced to giving the possibility of bounding the quantity of states
that the service provider needs to maintain in the core for
MDTunnels, with a bound being independent of the multicast activity
of VPN customers.
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It is expected that multicast VPN solutions will use some kind of
point-to-multipoint technology to efficiently carry multicast VPN
traffic, and because such technologies require maintaining state
information, this will use resources in the control plane of P and PE
routers (memory and processing, and possibly address space).
Scalability is a key requirement for multicast VPN solutions.
Solutions MUST be designed to scale well with an increase in any of
the following:
o the number of PEs
o the number of customer VPNs (total and per PE)
o the number of PEs and sites in any VPN
o the number of client multicast channels (groups or source-groups)
Please consult Section 4.2 for typical orders of magnitude up to
which a multicast VPN solution is expected to scale.
Scalability of both performance and operation MUST be considered.
Key considerations SHOULD include:
o the processing resources required by the control plane
(neighborhood or session maintenance messages, keep-alives,
timers, etc.)
o the memory resources needed for the control plane
o the amount of protocol information transmitted to manage a
multicast VPN (e.g., signaling throughput)
o the amount of control plane processing required on PE and P
routers to add or remove a customer site (or a customer from a
multicast session)
o the number of multicast IP addresses used (if IP multicast in ASM
mode is proposed as a multicast distribution tunnel)
o other particular elements inherent to each solution that impact
scalability (e.g., if a solution uses some distribution tree
inside the core, topology of the tree and number of leaf nodes may
be some of them)
It is expected that the applicability of each solution will be
evaluated with regards to the aforementioned scalability criteria.
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These considerations naturally lead us to believe that proposed
solutions SHOULD offer the possibility of sharing such resources
between different multicast streams (between different VPNs, between
different multicast streams of the same or of different VPNs). This
means, for instance, if MDTunnels are trees, being able to share an
MDTunnel between several customers.
Those scalability issues are expected to be more significant on P
routers, but a multicast VPN solution SHOULD address both P and PE
routers as far as scalability is concerned.
5.2.3. Resource Optimization
5.2.3.1. General Goals
One of the aims of the use of multicast instead of unicast is
resource optimization in the network.
The two obvious suboptimal behaviors that a multicast VPN solution
would want to avoid are needless duplication (when the same data
travels twice or more on a link, e.g., when doing ingress PE
replication) and needless reception (e.g., a PE receiving traffic
that it does not need because there are no downstream receivers).
5.2.3.2. Trade-off and Tuning
As previously stated in this document, designing a scalable solution
that makes an optimal use of resources is considered difficult.
Thus, what is expected from a multicast VPN solution is that it
addresses the resource optimization issue while taking into account
the fact that some trade-off has to be made.
Moreover, it seems that a "one size fits all" trade-off probably does
not exist either. Thus, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD offer
service providers appropriate configuration settings that let them
tune the trade-off according to their particular constraints (network
topology, platforms, customer applications, level of service offered
etc.).
As an illustration, here are some example bounds of the trade-off
space:
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Bandwidth optimization: setting up optimized core MDTunnels whose
topology (PIM or P2MP LSP trees, etc.) precisely follows a
customer's multicast routing changes. This requires managing a
large amount of state in the core, and also quick reactions of the
core to customer multicast routing changes. This approach can be
advantageous in terms of bandwidth, but it is poor in terms of
state management.
State optimization: setting up MDTunnels that aggregate multiple
customer multicast streams (all or some of them, across different
VPNs or not). This will have better scalability properties, but
at the expense of bandwidth since some MDTunnel leaves will very
likely receive traffic they don't need, and because increased
constraints will make it harder to find optimal MDTunnels.
5.2.3.3. Traffic Engineering
If the VPN service provides traffic engineering (TE) features for the
connection used between PEs for unicast traffic in the VPN service,
the solution SHOULD provide equivalent features for multicast
traffic.
A solution SHOULD offer means to support key TE objectives as defined
in [RFC 3272], for the multicast service.
A solution MAY also usefully support means to address multicast-
specific traffic engineering issues: it is known that bandwidth
resource optimization in the point-to-multipoint case is an NP-hard
problem, and that techniques used for unicast TE may not be
applicable to multicast traffic.
Also, it has been identified that managing the trade-off between
resource usage and scalability may incur uselessly sending traffic to
some PEs participating in a multicast VPN. For this reason, a
multicast VPN solution MAY permit that the bandwidth/state tuning
take into account the relative cost or availability of bandwidth
toward each PE.
5.2.4. Tunneling Requirements
5.2.4.1. Tunneling Technologies
Following the principle of separation between the control plane and
the forwarding plane, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be designed so
that control and forwarding planes are not interdependent: the
control plane SHALL NOT depend on which forwarding plane is used (and
vice versa), and the choice of forwarding plane SHOULD NOT be limited
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by the design of the solution. Also, the solution SHOULD NOT be tied
to a specific tunneling technology.
In a multicast VPN solution extending a unicast L3 PPVPN solution,
consistency in the tunneling technology has to be favored: such a
solution SHOULD allow the use of the same tunneling technology for
multicast as for unicast. Deployment consistency, ease of operation,
and potential migrations are the main motivations behind this
requirement.
For MDTunnels, a solution SHOULD be able to use a range of tunneling
technologies, including point-to-point and point-to-multipoint, such
as:
o Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) [RFC 2784] (including GRE in
multicast IP trees),
o MPLS [RFC 3031] (including P2P or MP2P tunnels, and multipoint
tunnels signaled with MPLS P2MP extensions to the Resource
Reservation Protocol (RSVP) [P2MP-RSVP-TE] or Label Distribution
Protocol (LDP) [P2MP-LDP-REQS] [P2MP-LDP]),
o Layer-2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) (including L2TP for multicast
[RFC 4045]),
o IPsec [RFC 4031]
o IP-in-IP [RFC 2003], etc.
Naturally, it is RECOMMENDED that a solution is built so that it can
leverage the point-to-multipoint variants of these techniques. These
variants allow for packet replications to happen along a tree in the
provider core network, and they may help improve bandwidth efficiency
in a multicast VPN context.
5.2.4.2. MTU and Fragmentation
A solution SHOULD support a method that provides the minimum MTU of
the MDTunnel (e.g., to discover MTU, to communicate MTU via
signaling, etc.) so that:
o fragmentation inside the MDTunnel does not happen, even when
allowed by the underlying tunneling technology
o proper troubleshooting can be performed if packets that are too
big for the MDTunnel happen to be encapsulated in the MDTunnel
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5.2.5. Control Mechanisms
The solution MUST provide some mechanisms to control the sources
within a VPN. This control includes the number of sources that are
entitled to send traffic on the VPN, and/or the total bit rate of all
the sources.
At the reception level, the solution MUST also provide mechanisms to
control the number of multicast groups or channels VPN users are
entitled to subscribe to and/or the total bit rate represented by the
corresponding multicast traffic.
All these mechanisms MUST be configurable by the service provider in
order to control the amount of multicast traffic and state within a
VPN.
Moreover, it MAY be desirable to be able to impose some bound on the
quantity of state used by a VPN in the core network for its multicast
traffic, whether on each P or PE router, or globally. The motivation
is that it may be needed to avoid out-of-resources situations (e.g.,
out of memory to maintain PIM state if IP multicast is used in the
core for multicast VPN traffic, or out of memory to maintain RSVP
state if MPLS P2MP is used, etc.).
5.2.6. Support of Inter-AS, Inter-Provider Deployments
A solution MUST support inter-AS (Autonomous System) multicast VPNs,
and SHOULD support inter-provider multicast VPNs. Considerations
about coexistence with unicast inter-AS VPN Options A, B, and C (as
described in Section 10 of [RFC 4364]) are strongly encouraged.
A multicast VPN solution SHOULD provide inter-AS mechanisms requiring
the least possible coordination between providers, and keep the need
for detailed knowledge of providers' networks to a minimum -- all
this being in comparison with corresponding unicast VPN options.
o Within each service provider, the service provider SHOULD be able
on its own to pick the most appropriate tunneling mechanism to
carry (multicast) traffic among PEs (just like what is done today
for unicast)
o If a solution does require a single tunnel to span P routers in
multiple ASs, the solution SHOULD provide mechanisms to ensure
that the inter-provider coordination to set up such a tunnel is
minimized
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Moreover, such support SHOULD be possible without compromising other
requirements expressed in this requirement document, and SHALL NOT
incur penalties on scalability and bandwidth-related efficiency.
5.2.7. Quality-of-Service Differentiation
A multicast VPN solution SHOULD give a VPN service provider the
ability to offer, guarantee and enforce differentiated levels of QoS
for its different customers.
5.2.8. Infrastructure security
The solution SHOULD provide the same level of security for the
service provider as what currently exists for unicast VPNs (for
instance, as developed in the Security sections of [RFC 4364] and
[VRs]). For instance, traffic segregation and intrinsic protection
against DoS (Denial of Service) and DDoS (Distributed Denial of
Service) attacks of the BGP/MPLS VPN solution must be supported by
the multicast solution.
Moreover, since multicast traffic and routing are intrinsically
dynamic (receiver-initiated), some mechanism SHOULD be proposed so
that the frequency of changes in the way client traffic is carried
over the core can be bounded and not tightly coupled to dynamic
changes of multicast traffic in the customer network. For example,
multicast route dampening functions would be one possible mechanism.
Network devices that participate in the deployment and the
maintenance of a given L3VPN MAY represent a superset of the
participating devices that are also involved in the establishment and
maintenance of the multicast distribution tunnels. As such, the
activation of IP multicast capabilities within a VPN SHOULD be
device-specific, not only to make sure that only the relevant devices
will be multicast-enabled, but also to make sure that multicast
(routing) information will be disseminated to the multicast-enabled
devices only, hence limiting the risk of multicast-inferred DOS
attacks.
Traffic of a multicast channel for which there are no members in a
given multicast VPN MUST NOT be propagated within the multicast VPN,
most particularly if the traffic comes from another VPN or from the
Internet.
Security considerations are particularly important for inter-AS and
inter-provider deployments. In such cases, it is RECOMMENDED that a
multicast VPN solution support means to ensure the integrity and
authenticity of multicast-related exchanges across inter-AS or inter-
provider borders. It is RECOMMENDED that corresponding procedures
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require the least possible coordination between providers; more
precisely, when specific configurations or cryptographic keys have to
be deployed, this shall be limited to ASBRs (Autonomous System Border
Routers) or a subset of them, and optionally BGP Route Reflectors (or
a subset of them).
Lastly, control mechanisms described in Section 5.2.5 are also to be
considered from this infrastructure security point of view.
5.2.9. Robustness
Resiliency is also crucial to infrastructure security; thus, a
multicast VPN solution SHOULD either avoid single points of failures
or propose some technical solution making it possible to implement a
fail-over mechanism.
As an illustration, one can consider the case of a solution that
would use PIM-SM as a means to set up MDTunnels. In such a case, the
PIM RP might be a single point of failure. Such a solution SHOULD be
compatible with a solution implementing RP resiliency, such as
anycast-RP [RFC 4610] or BSR [PIM-BSR].
5.2.10. Operation, Administration, and Maintenance
The operation of a multicast VPN solution SHALL be as light as
possible, and providing automatic configuration and discovery SHOULD
be a priority when designing a multicast VPN solution. Particularly,
the operational burden of setting up multicast on a PE or for a VR/
VRF SHOULD be as low as possible.
Also, as far as possible, the design of a solution SHOULD carefully
consider the number of protocols within the core network: if any
additional protocols are introduced compared with the unicast VPN
service, the balance between their advantage and operational burden
SHOULD be examined thoroughly.
Moreover, monitoring of multicast-specific parameters and statistics
SHOULD be offered to the service provider, following the requirements
expressed in [RFC 4176].
Most notably, the provider SHOULD have access to:
o Multicast traffic statistics (incoming/outgoing/dropped/total
traffic conveyed, by period of time)
o Information about client multicast resource usage (multicast
routing state and bandwidth usage)
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o Alarms when limits are reached on such resources
o The IPPM (IP Performance Metrics [RFC 2330])-related information
that is relevant to the multicast traffic usage: such information
includes the one-way packet delay, the inter-packet delay
variation, etc.
o Statistics on decisions related to how client traffic is carried
on distribution tunnels (e.g., "traffic switched onto a multicast
tree dedicated to such groups or channels")
o Statistics on parameters that could help the provider to evaluate
its optimality/state trade-off
This information SHOULD be made available through standardized SMIv2
[RFC 2578] Management Information Base (MIB) modules to be used with
SNMP [RFC 3411], or through IPFIX [IPFIX-PROT]. For instance, in the
context of BGP/MPLS VPNs [RFC 4364], multicast extensions to MIBs
defined in [RFC 4382] SHOULD be proposed, with proper integration with
[RFC 3811], [RFC 3812], [RFC 3813], and [RFC 3814] when applicable.
Mechanisms similar to those described in Section 5.2.12 SHOULD also
exist for proactive monitoring of the MDTunnels.
Proposed OAM mechanisms and procedures for multicast VPNs SHOULD be
scalable with respect to the parameters mentioned in Section 5.2.2.
In particular, it is RECOMMENDED that particular attention is given
to the impact of monitoring mechanisms on performances and QoS.
Moreover, it is RECOMMENDED that any OAM mechanism designed to
trigger alarms in relation to performance or resource usage metrics
integrate the ability to limit the rate at which such alarms are
generated (e.g., some form of a hysteresis mechanism based on low/
high thresholds defined for the metrics).
5.2.11. Compatibility and Migration Issues
It is a requirement that unicast and multicast services MUST be able
to coexist within the same VPN.
Likewise, a multicast VPN solution SHOULD be designed so that its
activation in devices that participate in the deployment and
maintenance of a multicast VPN SHOULD be as smooth as possible, i.e.,
without affecting the overall quality of the services that are
already supported by the underlying infrastructure.
A multicast VPN solution SHOULD prevent compatibility and migration
issues, for instance, by focusing on providing mechanisms
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facilitating forward compatibility. Most notably, a solution
supporting only a subset of the requirements expressed in this
document SHOULD be designed to allow compatibility to be introduced
in further revisions.
It SHOULD be an aim of any multicast VPN solution to offer as much
backward compatibility as possible. Ideally, a solution would have
the ability to offer multicast VPN services across a network
containing some legacy routers that do not support any multicast VPN-
specific features.
In any case, a solution SHOULD state a migration policy from possibly
existing deployments.
5.2.12. Troubleshooting
A multicast VPN solution that dynamically adapts the way some client
multicast traffic is carried over the provider's network may incur
the disadvantage of being hard to troubleshoot. In such a case, to
help diagnose multicast network issues, a multicast VPN solution
SHOULD provide monitoring information describing how client traffic
is carried over the network (e.g., if a solution uses multicast-based
MDTunnels, which provider multicast group is used for a given client
multicast stream). A solution MAY also provide configuration options
to avoid any dynamic changes, for multicast traffic of a particular
VPN or a particular multicast stream.
Moreover, a solution MAY provide mechanisms that allow network
operators to check that all VPN sites that advertised interest in a
particular customer multicast stream are properly associated with the
corresponding MDTunnel. Providing operators with means to check the
proper setup and operation of MDTunnels MAY also be provided (e.g.,
when P2MP MPLS is used for MDTunnels, troubleshooting functionalities
SHOULD integrate mechanisms compliant with [RFC 4687], such as LSP
Ping [RFC 4379][LSP-PING]). Depending on the implementation, such
verification could be initiated by a source-PE or a receiver-PE.
6. Security Considerations
This document does not by itself raise any particular security issue.
A set of security issues has been identified that MUST be addressed
when considering the design and deployment of multicast-enabled L3
PPVPNs. Such issues have been described in Section 5.1.5 and
Section 5.2.8.
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RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
7. Contributors
The main contributors to this document are listed below, in
alphabetical order:
o Christian Jacquenet
France Telecom
3, avenue Francois Chateau
CS 36901 35069 RENNES Cedex, France
Email: christian.jacquenet@orange-ftgroup.com
o Yuji Kamite
NTT Communications Corporation
Tokyo Opera City Tower 3-20-2 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo 163-1421, Japan
Email: y.kamite@ntt.com
o Jean-Louis Le Roux
France Telecom R&D
2, avenue Pierre-Marzin
22307 Lannion Cedex, France
Email: jeanlouis.leroux@orange-ftgroup.com
o Nicolai Leymann
Deutsch Telecom
Engineering Networks, Products & Services
Goslarer Ufer 3510589 Berlin, Germany
Email: nicolai.leymann@t-systems.com
o Renaud Moignard
France Telecom R&D
2, avenue Pierre-Marzin
22307 Lannion Cedex, France
Email: renaud.moignard@orange-ftgroup.com
o Thomas Morin
France Telecom R&D
2, avenue Pierre-Marzin
22307 Lannion Cedex, France
Email: thomas.morin@orange-ftgroup.com
8. Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank, in rough chronological order,
Vincent Parfait, Zubair Ahmad, Elodie Hemon-Larreur, Sebastien Loye,
Rahul Aggarwal, Hitoshi Fukuda, Luyuan Fang, Adrian Farrel, Daniel
King, Yiqun Cai, Ronald Bonica, Len Nieman, Satoru Matsushima,
Netzahualcoyotl Ornelas, Yakov Rekhter, Marshall Eubanks, Pekka
Morin Informational PAGE 31
RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
Savola, Benjamin Niven-Jenkins, and Thomas Nadeau, for their review,
valuable input, and feedback.
We also thank the people who kindly answered the survey, and Daniel
King, who took care of gathering and anonymizing its results.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC 4031] Carugi, M. and D. McDysan, "Service Requirements for
Layer 3 Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private
Networks (PPVPNs)", RFC 4031, April 2005.
[RFC 4026] Andersson, L. and T. Madsen, "Provider-Provisioned
Virtual Private Network (VPN) Terminology",
RFC 4026, March 2005.
[RFC 4601] Fenner, B., Handley, M., Holbrook, H., and I.
Kouvelas, "Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse
Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification (Revised)",
RFC 4601, August 2006.
[RFC 4607] Holbrook, H. and B. Cain, "Source-Specific Multicast
for IP", RFC 4607, August 2006.
[RFC 3376] Cain, B., Deering, S., Kouvelas, I., Fenner, B., and
A. Thyagarajan, "Internet Group Management Protocol,
Version 3", RFC 3376, October 2002.
[RFC 3810] Vida, R. and L. Costa, "Multicast Listener Discovery
Version 2 (MLDv2) for IPv6", RFC 3810, June 2004.
[RFC 4176] El Mghazli, Y., Nadeau, T., Boucadair, M., Chan, K.,
and A. Gonguet, "Framework for Layer 3 Virtual
Private Networks (L3VPN) Operations and Management",
RFC 4176, October 2005.
[RFC 3973] Adams, A., Nicholas, J., and W. Siadak, "Protocol
Independent Multicast - Dense Mode (PIM-DM):
Protocol Specification (Revised)", RFC 3973,
January 2005.
Morin Informational PAGE 32
RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
9.2. Informative References
[RFC 4364] Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual
Private Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, February 2006.
[VRs] Ould-Brahim, H., "Network based IP VPN Architecture
Using Virtual Routers", Work in Progress,
March 2006.
[RFC 2432] Dubray, K., "Terminology for IP Multicast
Benchmarking", RFC 2432, October 1998.
[RFC 3031] Rosen, E., Viswanathan, A., and R. Callon,
"Multiprotocol Label Switching Architecture",
RFC 3031, January 2001.
[RFC 1112] Deering, S., "Host extensions for IP multicasting",
STD 5, RFC 1112, August 1989.
[RFC 2236] Fenner, W., "Internet Group Management Protocol,
Version 2", RFC 2236, November 1997.
[P2MP-RSVP-TE] Aggarwal, R., "Extensions to RSVP-TE for Point-to-
Multipoint TE LSPs", Work in Progress, August 2006.
[PIM-BSR] Bhaskar, N., "Bootstrap Router (BSR) Mechanism for
PIM", Work in Progress, June 2006.
[RFC 4610] Farinacci, D. and Y. Cai, "Anycast-RP Using Protocol
Independent Multicast (PIM)", RFC 4610, August 2006.
[RFC 3446] Kim, D., Meyer, D., Kilmer, H., and D. Farinacci,
"Anycast Rendevous Point (RP) mechanism using
Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and Multicast
Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP)", RFC 3446,
January 2003.
[P2MP-LDP] Minei, I., "Label Distribution Protocol Extensions
for Point-to-Multipoint and Multipoint-to-Multipoint
Label Switched Paths", Work in Progress,
October 2006.
[P2MP-LDP-REQS] Roux, J., "Requirements for point-to-multipoint
extensions to the Label Distribution Protocol",
Work in Progress, June 2006.
Morin Informational PAGE 33
RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
[RFC 4687] Yasukawa, S., Farrel, A., King, D., and T. Nadeau,
"Operations and Management (OAM) Requirements for
Point-to-Multipoint MPLS Networks", RFC 4687,
September 2006.
[BIDIR-PIM] Handley, M., "Bi-directional Protocol Independent
Multicast (BIDIR-PIM)", Work in Progress,
October 2005.
[RFC 2003] Perkins, C., "IP Encapsulation within IP", RFC 2003,
October 1996.
[RFC 3353] Ooms, D., Sales, B., Livens, W., Acharya, A.,
Griffoul, F., and F. Ansari, "Overview of IP
Multicast in a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
Environment", RFC 3353, August 2002.
[RFC 3272] Awduche, D., Chiu, A., Elwalid, A., Widjaja, I., and
X. Xiao, "Overview and Principles of Internet
Traffic Engineering", RFC 3272, May 2002.
[RFC 2784] Farinacci, D., Li, T., Hanks, S., Meyer, D., and P.
Traina, "Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)",
RFC 2784, March 2000.
[IPFIX-PROT] Claise, B., "Specification of the IPFIX Protocol for
the Exchange", Work in Progress, November 2006.
[RFC 4045] Bourdon, G., "Extensions to Support Efficient
Carrying of Multicast Traffic in Layer-2 Tunneling
Protocol (L2TP)", RFC 4045, April 2005.
[RFC 3809] Nagarajan, A., "Generic Requirements for Provider-
Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPN)",
RFC 3809, June 2004.
[RFC 3811] Nadeau, T. and J. Cucchiara, "Definitions of Textual
Conventions (TCs) for Multiprotocol Label Switching
(MPLS) Management", RFC 3811, June 2004.
[RFC 3812] Srinivasan, C., Viswanathan, A., and T. Nadeau,
"Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Traffic
Engineering (TE) Management Information Base (MIB)",
RFC 3812, June 2004.
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RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
[RFC 3813] Srinivasan, C., Viswanathan, A., and T. Nadeau,
"Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label
Switching Router (LSR) Management Information Base
(MIB)", RFC 3813, June 2004.
[RFC 3814] Nadeau, T., Srinivasan, C., and A. Viswanathan,
"Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Forwarding
Equivalence Class To Next Hop Label Forwarding Entry
(FEC-To-NHLFE) Management Information Base (MIB)",
RFC 3814, June 2004.
[RFC 2365] Meyer, D., "Administratively Scoped IP Multicast",
BCP 23, RFC 2365, July 1998.
[RFC 2330] Paxson, V., Almes, G., Mahdavi, J., and M. Mathis,
"Framework for IP Performance Metrics", RFC 2330,
May 1998.
[MULTIMETRICS] Stephan, E., "IP Performance Metrics (IPPM) for
spatial and multicast", Work in Progress,
October 2006.
[RFC 2475] Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang,
Z., and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for
Differentiated Services", RFC 2475, December 1998.
[RFC 3180] Meyer, D. and P. Lothberg, "GLOP Addressing in
233/8", BCP 53, RFC 3180, September 2001.
[RFC 3411] Harrington, D., Presuhn, R., and B. Wijnen, "An
Architecture for Describing Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Frameworks",
STD 62, RFC 3411, December 2002.
[RFC 2578] McCloghrie, K., Ed., Perkins, D., Ed., and J.
Schoenwaelder, Ed., "Structure of Management
Information Version 2 (SMIv2)", STD 58, RFC 2578,
April 1999.
[RFC 1191] Mogul, J. and S. Deering, "Path MTU discovery",
RFC 1191, November 1990.
[RFC 4382] Nadeau, T. and H. van der Linde, "MPLS/BGP Layer 3
Virtual Private Network (VPN) Management Information
Base", RFC 4382, February 2006.
Morin Informational PAGE 35
RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
[RFC 4379] Kompella, K. and G. Swallow, "Detecting Multi-
Protocol Label Switched (MPLS) Data Plane Failures",
RFC 4379, February 2006.
[LSP-PING] Farrel, A. and S. Yasukawa, "Detecting Data Plane
Failures in Point-to-Multipoint Multiprotocol",
Work in Progress, September 2006.
[RFC 4459] Savola, P., "MTU and Fragmentation Issues with In-
the-Network Tunneling", RFC 4459, April 2006.
Author's Address
Thomas Morin (editor)
France Telecom R&D
2, avenue Pierre Marzin
Lannion 22307
France
EMail: thomas.morin@orange-ftgroup.com
Morin Informational PAGE 36
RFC 4834 L3VPN Mcast Reqs April 2007
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contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
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Requirements for Multicast in Layer 3 Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPNs)
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 80341 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Saturday, April 14th, 2007
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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