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Use Cases for an Interface to IGP Protocol
draft-wu-i2rs-igp-usecases-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Nan Wu , Zhenbin Li , Susan Hares
Last updated 2014-07-04
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draft-wu-i2rs-igp-usecases-00
Network Working Group                                              N. Wu
Internet-Draft                                                     Z. Li
Intended status: Informational                                  S. Hares
Expires: January 5, 2015                             Huawei Technologies
                                                            July 4, 2014

               Use Cases for an Interface to IGP Protocol
                     draft-wu-i2rs-igp-usecases-00

Abstract

   A link-state routing protocol such as OSPF or IS-IS is an essential
   component for a routing system.  With substantial effort on the IGP
   protocols, the infrastructure of the network has achieved high
   reliability.  During past years they have been operated and
   maintained through typical CLI, SNMP and NETCONF.  As modern networks
   become larger and more complex, the IGP protocol may require a
   programmatic interface which is able to facilitate additional control
   and observation in such networks.

   Interface to the Routing System's (I2RS) is a standards-based
   interface which provides a programmatic way to control and observe
   the IGP protocol.  I2RS can be used to operate, maintain and monitor
   the routing-related state.  This document describes set of use cases
   for which I2RS can be used for IGP protocol.  It is intended to
   provide a base for the solution draft describing information models
   and a set of interfaces to the IGP protocol.

Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any

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   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 5, 2015.

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.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  IGP Network Planning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Router Identification Allocation  . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Domain Partition  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.3.  Route Manipulation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  IGP Path Engineering  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  LFA Pre-computation and Adjustment  . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.2.  Capacity Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.3.  Virtualized Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  IGP Events  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Topology Change Monitoring  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.2.  Performance Monitoring  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.3.  Protocol Statistics Monitoring  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   A link-state routing protocol such as OSPF[RFC2328] or IS-
   IS[ISO.10589.1992] is an essential component for a routing system.
   With substantial effort of IGP protocol, the infrastructure of
   network has achieved high levels of reliability.  During past years

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   they have been operated and maintained through typical CLI, SNMP and
   NETCONF.  As modern networks become larger and more complex, the IGP
   protocol may require a programmatic interface which is capable of
   facilitating additional control and observation in such networks.

   Interface to the Routing System's (I2RS) [I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture]
   architecture specifies common, standards-based programmatic
   interfaces which is an elegant way to control and observe the IGP
   protocol.  The I2RS interface can be used to operate, maintain and
   monitor the routing-related state.  The I2RS described here is aimed
   to co-exist with current control and diagnose mechanism such as CLI,
   SNMP and NETCONF instead of obseleting them.  Actually the I2RS can
   enhance these existing mechanism by defining a standardized set of
   programmatic interfaces to enable flexible manipulation, inquiry and
   analysis of the IGP protocol.  The use cases described in this
   document cover the following aspects of IGP: network planning, path
   engineering and tracking of protocol events.  The purpose here is to
   gain the rough consensus from the community that the I2RS IGP
   extensions fit within the overall I2RS architecture.  It is intended
   to provide a base for the solution draft describing information
   models and a set of interfaces to the IGP protocol.

2.  IGP Network Planning

   With the growing size of modern network, more and more nodes and
   links in network are deployed with IGP protocol.  A network
   containing 1000 IGP-enable nodes is not rare nowadays.  As the
   consequence of this network inflation, some drawbacks can be easily
   introduced into the network.  For example, link-state protocols
   depend on flooding mechanism to advertise link-state related
   information and keep the database updated.  Too many nodes can
   periodically produce large amounts of link-state information which
   can burden the forwarding plane and jeopardize the reliability of IGP
   adjacencies.  The number of adjacencies, links and routes involved
   into IGP network consumes forwarding and storage resources of the
   routing elements in the network.  The I2RS Clients may be connected
   to by applications wishing to use the I2RS Client-Agent protocol to
   deploy IGP protocol in an efficient, scalable and interoperable
   manner.

2.1.  Router Identification Allocation

   IGP routers are identified by one identification (router-id or
   system-id) which MUST be unique for each router in the AS.  It is
   increasingly common to observe that many subtle issues are introduced
   because of this identification conflict.  Since this identification
   is inherited from interface IP address or configured manually, it is

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   prone to conflict with another router located in remote network
   segment.

   The I2RS MAY help to alleviate this situation by introducing certain
   application which is responsible for allocating identification.
   Though the mechanism used to allocate unique identification is out of
   the scope of this document.

2.2.  Domain Partition

   As stated above, huge network is harder to operate and maintain, what
   is more, is susceptible to topology turbulence which can degrade the
   quality of service provided by IGP protocol.  Link-state
   protocols(OSPF or IS-IS) introduce routing hierarchy to solve this
   kind of problems.  Some devices have limited CPU or storage resources
   and cannot hold all link-state information.  These devices may need
   to be transferred to a limited IGP domain which holds part of the
   link-state information.

   The I2RS may guide this partition process after considering different
   conditions including the number of routers, adjacency, links and
   routes, CPU and storage resource of corresponding routers and also
   their geography location.

2.3.  Route Manipulation

   Searching entries in the Routing Information Base(RIB) is a
   fundamental operation in routing system.  In order to speed up the
   searching process and saving storage resources, the RIB may contain
   only part of the routing table entries provided the network
   reachability is not compromised.  The reduction of the routing table
   is achieved via route manipulation.  The interface addresses of a
   router can be suppressed for sake of less entries or secure entries.
   The policy SHOULD be deployed carefully to summarize and filter those
   routing information crossing the domain border through the way of
   generation or redistribution.

   The I2RS SHOULD facilitate reduction by allowing offline calculation
   to determine how to partition IGPs and where to place ABR and ASBRs.
   The I2RS cycle of the query of IGP information (see above) followed
   by downloading of a new temporary topologies.

3.  IGP Path Engineering

   Link-state protocol like IGP depend on Shortest Path First(SPF)
   algorithm to calculate its path to destinations.  These SPF paths can
   dynamically adapt to the topology change from time to time without
   external involvement.  Though this traditional mechanism works just

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   fine, there are scenarios in which external engagement needs to be
   involved into the decision process to fulfill special purpose.

3.1.  LFA Pre-computation and Adjustment

   Loop-Free Alternates(LFA)[RFC5286] is deployed in pure IP and MPLS/
   LDP networks to provide single-point-failure protection for unicast
   traffic.  The goal of this technology is to reduce the packet loss
   that happens while routers converge after a topology change due to a
   failure.  [I-D.ietf-rtgwg-lfa-manageability] provides operational
   feedback on LFA, highlights some limitations, and proposes a set of
   refinements to address those limitations.  It also proposes required
   management specifications.  In most of circumstances, operators will
   not be satisfied to know only the protection for links and prefixes.
   What they really hope is the overall protection for the whole
   network, especially for those high-value-added business.  If lack of
   protection or protection coverage is not good enough, the operator
   may hope there are some ways to identify those weak points and the
   method to fix them up.

   The I2RS MAY help to achieve the operator's hope by resorting to
   certain allowing applications to pre-computes the LFA backup of all
   links and prefixes in the network and calculating the protection
   coverage and recognizing optimization.  Then an I2RS Client can
   deploy these new topology adjustments by sending the appropriate
   changes to the I2RS Agent that it will install in the routing place.
   The I2RS Agent can notify the I2RS Client (and the application) of
   the results of operation to provide a real-time feedback.

   As showed below, traffic from Node-S to Node-D needs to pass Node-E.
   Under the circumstance of Link-SE's failure, the traffic can not be
   protected by Node-N since the metrics do not meet the demand of
   Inequality 1 from [RFC5286].  With the help from I2RS, the operator
   can identify this weakness and may change the metric of Link-ND to
   gain LFA backup.

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                                +----+         \
                 ---|           | E  |          \\
                  / |        ---+----+--          \|
                //       ----           ----     --|
               /     ----                   ----
                 ----    10                  10 ----
         +----+--                                   --+----+
         | S  |                                       | D  |
         +----+--                                   --+----+
                 ----                        50 ----
                     ----10                 ----
                         ----           ----
                             ---+----+--
                                | N  |
                                +----+

            Figure 1: LFA pre-computation and no backup available

3.2.  Capacity Planning

   It is increasingly common to see Equal-Cost-Multipath(ECMP) is used
   the networks of SP, Enterprise and Data Center to make efficient use
   the network bandwidth.  The traffic is spread across as many ECMP
   paths as possible allowing growth (or shrinkage) without a physical
   capacity adjustment

   The I2RS programmatic interface SHOULD allow the balancing of both
   ECMP traffic flows and end-to-end traffic flows in the IGP.  The I2RS
   SHOULD support monitoring of the dynamic traffic flow in the network,
   and the query of the maximum capacity of the network.  After some
   offline optimization occurs, the I2RS can be used to spread ECMP
   paths through the topology or aggregate traffic onto a single path so
   the rest of the devices may power off saving power (and money.  One
   important thing to note here, topology changes triggered by capacity
   adjustment MAY cause transient forwarding loops of which MUST be
   taken care.  And the specific solution for this issue is out of the
   scope of this document.

   As pictured below, traffic from Node-A to Node-B is widely spread
   among all links and nodes between them.  This can increase the whole
   capacity of this network.  When the traffic decreased, the operator
   can use I2RS to adjust the metric of Link-AB to less than the current
   one then the traffic will be summarized on the Link-AB.  As a result
   of this change, Node-C, Node-D and their links can be power off or
   used for other purpose.

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                          +----+
                          | D  |
                       ---+----+--
               10  ----           ---- 10
               ----                   ----
           ----                           ----
   +----+--                 20                --+----+
   | A  +---------------------------------------+ B  |
   +----+--                                   --+----+
           ----                           ----
               ----                   ----
                   ----           ----
               10      ---+----+--     10
                          |  C |
                          +----+

   Figure 2: Capacity planning through topology adjustment

3.3.  Virtualized Network

   As the central controlled network introduced, there will propose the
   partial deployment scenarios.  That is, part of the existing network
   will be converted to be controlled in the central control mode.  The
   application scenario is shown in the following figure:

                  +------------------------------+
                  |    Central Control Domain    |
                  |         +----------+         |
                  |         |          |         |
                  |         |   IGP    |         |
                  |         |Controller|         |
                  |         |          |         |
                  |         +----------+         |
                  |         /          \         |
                  |        /            \        |
                  |       /              \       |
   +-----------+  | +--------+        +--------+ |  +-----------+
   |Traditional|  | | NODE 1 |        | NODE n | |  |Traditional|
   |           |  | |        | ...... |        | |  |           |
   |   NODE    |----|  IGP   |        |  IGP   |----|   NODE    |
   |           |  | | CLIENT |        | CLIENT | |  |           |
   +-----------+  | +--------+        +--------+ |  +-----------+
                  |                              |
                  +------------------------------+

       Figure 3: Partial Deployment of Central Controlled Network

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   In this scenario, it is not necessary for the traditional nodes to
   learn the detailed topology information of the central control
   domain.  The information flooded between the central control domain
   and the traditional nodes can be reduced.  The central control domain
   can only advertise virtual links which connect the edge nodes in the
   domain that the traditional node can be aware of.  The process can
   change the route choice of the traditional nodes, reduce the pressure
   of the traditional nodes for flooding and improve convergence
   performance.

   The I2RS programmatic interface MAY help implementation of the
   virtualized network based on the possible policy.  That is, the
   controller can apply the policy defined by the applications to
   determine whether the virtual link will be advertised to the outside
   network nodes and what metric is advertised for the virtual link.
   The I2RS Client can notify the I2RS Agent the determined result for
   the virtualized link to be flooded.

4.  IGP Events

   As stated in [I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture], it is practical for I2RS
   Clients to register for a range of notifications, and for the I2RS
   Agents to send notifications to a number of Clients.  The I2RS
   Clients SHOULD use publish/subscribe mechanism to filter those events
   it is interested in.  As regard for IGP protocol, these events MAY
   include topology changes, performance status and protocol statistics
   which are critical to operate and maintain IGP network with
   efficiency and scalability.

4.1.  Topology Change Monitoring

   Network topology information is the basis for further operating and
   maintaining.  It is very important and can be used in many scenarios.
   Link-state protocol such as IGP is the recommended way to collect
   topology information.

   Since many factors such as the status of interface, adjacency, node
   and etc can trigger the change of topology, the topology notification
   is reported to I2RS Clients at times.  Considering lots of nodes and
   links in the network, these topology events can be massive.  The I2RS
   SHOULD use the subscription mechanism to filter its interested events
   and use the publish mechanism to control the pace these events are
   notified.  This precaution can protect the I2RS Client or even
   applications who depend on topology data from being drowned by
   massive duplicate events.

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4.2.  Performance Monitoring

   Since IGP protocol is essential to the whole network, the I2RS
   Clients SHOULD monitor about the protocol's running status before
   forwarding is impacted.  Performance data can be collected through
   collecting static configuration and observing dynamic status.  Static
   data includes the number of instances, interfaces, nodes in the
   network and etc.  Dynamic data includes adjacency status, the number
   of entries in link-state database and in the routing table, the
   calculation status, the overload status, the graceful switch status
   and etc.

   The I2RS Clients SHOULD subscribe to the I2RS Agent's notification of
   critical node events.  For example, link-state database or routing
   table is under the status of overflow or the overflow status is
   released, the calculation continues for a long time, the system is
   under graceful reboot and etc.

4.3.  Protocol Statistics Monitoring

   IGP protocol contains many useful statistics which can help to do
   trouble-shooting and maintain it.  These statistics can be used by
   I2RS Clients to support diagnosing or analyzing tasks.  For example,
   through subscribing packet dropped statistics, the I2RS Clients can
   figure it out the reason why some adjacencies do not succeed in
   connecting.  Through subscribing the error statistics, the I2RS
   Clients can find out some link-state updating because of
   authentication or checksum failure, which can further help to
   diagnose a configuration mistake or a subtle security attack
   happened.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document includes no request to IANA.

6.  Security Considerations

   This document does not introduce any further security issues other
   than those discussed in [I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture].

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

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   [I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture]
              Atlas, A., Halpern, J., Hares, S., Ward, D., and T.
              Nadeau, "An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing
              System", draft-ietf-i2rs-architecture-04 (work in
              progress), June 2014.

   [ISO.10589.1992]
              International Organization for Standardization,
              "Intermediate system to intermediate system intra-domain-
              routing routine information exchange protocol for use in
              conjunction with the protocol for providing the
              connectionless-mode Network Service (ISO 8473)", ISO
              Standard 10589, 1992.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2328]  Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", STD 54, RFC 2328, April 1998.

7.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-rtgwg-lfa-manageability]
              Litkowski, S., Decraene, B., Filsfils, C., Raza, K.,
              Horneffer, M., and p. psarkar@juniper.net, "Operational
              management of Loop Free Alternates", draft-ietf-rtgwg-lfa-
              manageability-03 (work in progress), February 2014.

   [RFC5286]  Atlas, A. and A. Zinin, "Basic Specification for IP Fast
              Reroute: Loop-Free Alternates", RFC 5286, September 2008.

Authors' Addresses

   Nan Wu
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Bld., No.156 Beiqing Rd.
   Beijing  100095
   China

   Email: eric.wu@huawei.com

   Zhenbin Li
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Bld., No.156 Beiqing Rd.
   Beijing  100095
   China

   Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com

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   Susan Hares
   Huawei Technologies
   7453 Hickory Hill
   Saline, CA  48176
   USA

   Email: shares@ndzh.com

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