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IETF RFC 7308
Last modified on Thursday, July 17th, 2014
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) E. Osborne
Request for Comments: 7308 July 2014
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721
Extended Administrative Groups in MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE)
 Abstract
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 (RFC 3630),
OSPFv3 (RFC 5329) and 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.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7308.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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RFC 7308 Extended Admin Groups July 2014
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Extended Administrative Groups Sub-TLV . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Admin Group Numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3. Backward Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
1. Introduction
Do we need more than 32 bits?
The IGP extensions to support MPLS-TE (RFCs 3630 [RFC 3630] and 5305
[RFC 5305]) 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 [RFC 2702], which calls them
Resource Classes. RFCs 3630 [RFC 3630] and 5305 [RFC 5305] 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 fixed-length 32-bit
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 [RFC 2702], 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
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, never mind a worldwide
network.
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RFC 7308 Extended Admin Groups July 2014
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 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 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
[RFC 3209] nor the LSP Attributes (LSPA) object of the Path
Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCEP), defined in
[RFC 5440]. 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
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 [RFC 2119].
2. Extended Administrative Groups Sub-TLV
This document defines the Extended Administrative Group (EAG) sub-TLV
for both OSPF [RFC 3630] and IS-IS [RFC 5305]. 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.
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RFC 7308 Extended Admin Groups July 2014
2.1. Packet Format
The format of the Extended Administrative Groups sub-TLV is the same
for both OSPF and 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 for IS-IS is 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 that 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 (least significant bit) to 31 (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 fifth byte of an 8-byte
EAG is referred to as bit 32.
2.3. Backward 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
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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RFC 7308 Extended Admin Groups July 2014
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 that do not support EAG to obtain some link
color information from the network, while also allowing 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 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, 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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RFC 7308 Extended Admin Groups July 2014
4. IANA Considerations
This document registers a sub-TLV allocation in both OSPF and ISIS.
For OSPF, the subregistry is the "Types for sub-TLVs of TE Link TLV
(Value 2)" in the "Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Traffic
Engineering TLVs" registry.
For IS-IS, it is "Sub-TLVs for TLV 22, 141, and 222" subregistry 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 the same
subregistry).
The assigned value from the OSPF registry is 26 and the assigned
value from the IS-IS registry is 14. The 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
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC 3209] 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.
[RFC 3630] Katz, D., Kompella, K., and D. Yeung, "Traffic Engineering
(TE) Extensions to OSPF Version 2", RFC 3630, September
2003.
[RFC 5305] Li, T. and H. Smit, "IS-IS Extensions for Traffic
Engineering", RFC 5305, October 2008.
[RFC 5440] Vasseur, JP., Ed., and JL. Le Roux, Ed., "Path Computation
Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)", RFC 5440,
March 2009.
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RFC 7308 Extended Admin Groups July 2014
6.2. Informative References
[RFC 2702] 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
Osborne Standards Track PAGE 7
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 14811 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, July 17th, 2014
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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