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EVPN All Active Usage Enhancement
draft-eastlake-bess-enhance-evpn-all-active-12

Document Type Active Internet-Draft (individual)
Authors Donald E. Eastlake 3rd , Zhenbin Li , Shunwan Zhuang , Russ White
Last updated 2023-11-22
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draft-eastlake-bess-enhance-evpn-all-active-12
BESS Working Group                                           D. Eastlake
Internet-Draft                                    Futurewei Technologies
Intended status: Standards Track                                   Z. Li
Expires: 25 May 2024                                           S. Zhuang
                                                     Huawei Technologies
                                                                R. White
                                                        Juniper Networks
                                                        22 November 2023

                   EVPN All Active Usage Enhancement
             draft-eastlake-bess-enhance-evpn-all-active-12

Abstract

   A principal feature of EVPN is the ability to support multihoming
   from a customer equipment (CE) to multiple provider edge equipment
   (PE) active with all-active links.  This draft specifies an
   improvement to load balancing such links.

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
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   Drafts is at https://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
   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 25 May 2024.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2023 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://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 Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Terminology and Acronyms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Improved Load Balancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.1.  Problem 1: Traffic Bypassing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Problem 2: VID Encapsulation Confusion  . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community Attribute  . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.1.  Establishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.2.  Handling Link Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   A principal feature of EVPN (Ethernet VPN [rfc7432bis]) is the
   ability to support multihoming from a customer equipment (CE) to
   multiple provider edge equipments (PEs) with links used in an all-
   active redundancy mode.  That mode is where a device is multihomed to
   a group of two or more PEs and where all PEs in such redundancy group
   can forward traffic to/from the multihomed device or network for a
   given VLAN [RFC7209].  This draft specifies an improvement in load
   balancing such PE to CE all-active multi-homing links.

   In the case where a CE is multihomed to multiple PE nodes, using a
   Link Aggregation Group (LAG) with All-Active redundancy, it is
   possible that only a single PE learns a set of the MAC addresses
   associated with traffic transmitted by the CE.  This leads to a
   situation where remote PE nodes receive MAC/IP Advertisement routes
   for these addresses from a single PE, even though multiple PEs are
   connected to the multihomed segment.

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   To address this issue, EVPN introduces the concept of "aliasing",
   which is the ability of a PE to signal that it has reachability to an
   EVPN instance (EVI) on a given Ethernet segment (ES) even when it has
   learned no MAC addresses from that EVI/ES.  The Ethernet A-D per EVI
   route is used for this purpose.  A remote PE that receives a MAC/IP
   Advertisement route with a non-reserved ESI SHOULD consider the
   advertised MAC address to be reachable via all PEs that have
   advertised reachability to that MAC address's EVI/ES via the
   combination of an Ethernet A-D per EVI route for that EVI/ES (and
   Ethernet tag, if applicable) AND Ethernet A-D per ES routes for that
   ES with the "Single-Active" bit in the flags of the ESI Label
   extended community set to 0.

1.1.  Terminology and Acronyms

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   This document uses the following acronyms and terms:

   A-D  - Auto Discovery.

   All-Active Redundancy Mode  - When a device is multihomed to a group
      of two or more PEs and when all PEs in such redundancy group can
      forward traffic to/from the multihomed device or network for a
      given VLAN.

   CE  - Customer Edge equipment.

   ES  - Ethernet Segment.

   ESI  - Ethernet Segment Identifier.

   EVI  - EVPN Instance.

   EVPN  - Ethernet VPN [RFC7432].

   FRR  - Fast ReRoute.

   MAC  - Media Access Control.

   PE  - Provider Edge equipment.

   Single-Active Redundancy Mode  - When a device or a network is

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      multihomed to a group of two or more PEs and when only a single PE
      in such a redundancy group can forward traffic to/from the
      multihomed device or network for a given VLAN.

   VLAN  - Virtual Local Area Network.

   VPN  - Virtual Private Network.

2.  Improved Load Balancing

   Consider the example in Figure 1.  CE1 is multihomed to PE1 and PE2.
   CE1 typically uses a hash algorithm to determine whether to send a
   particular traffic to PE1 or to PE2.  Thus, if such traffic from CE1
   is only sent to PE1, then PE1 will learn CE1's MAC address(es) and
   that PE2 will not.

   PE3 and PE4 can do aliasing [rfc7432bis] because PE1 and PE2 will be
   advertising the same ESI.  Thus PE3 and PE4 will expect that a MAC
   address reachable from PE1 will also be reachable from PE2.  This
   aliasing will cause PE3 and PE4 to load balance to CE1's MAC(s),
   sending some traffic to PE1 and some to PE2.

                                  .........
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
               | PE1 MAC  +------+       +------+ PE3      |
               | Learning |      .       .      |          |
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
              /     ^            .       .            |     \
         +---+      |            . EVPN  .            |     +---+
         |CE1|      |            . MPLS  .            |     |CE2|
         +---+      |            .       .            |     +---+
              \     |            .       .            |    /
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
               | PE2      |      .       .      | PE4      |
               |          +------+       +------+          |
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
                                 .........

                        Figure 1: Current Situation

   There are two problems associated with this situation that are
   described in the subsections below.  Section 3 describes the
   mechanism to address these problems.

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2.1.  Problem 1: Traffic Bypassing

   Since PE2 has not learning CE1's MAC(s), the MAC lookup at PE2 will
   find that MAC address associated with PE1.  PE2 will then tunnel the
   traffic to PE1.

   As an enhancement that solves this problem, PE1 can send MAC
   address(es) with VLAN and ESI information.  PE2 will then receive the
   MAC address(es) and VLAN that PE1 associates with the ESI and PE2 can
   use this to update its forwarding tables (see Figure 2).  As a
   result, when traffic addressed to a CE1 MAC arrives at PE2, it can
   send it on the appropriate local interface and VLAN.  This avoids the
   unnecessary extra hop through PE1 for such traffic arriving at PE2.

                                  .........
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
               | PE1 MAC  +------+       +------+ PE3      |
               | Learning |      .       .      |          |
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
              /     ^            .       .            |     \
         +---+      |            . EVPN  .            |     +---+
         |CE1|    Sy|nc          . MPLS  .            |     |CE2|
         +---+      |            .       .            |     +---+
              \     v            .       .            |    /
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
               | PE2      |      .       .      | PE4      |
               |          +------+       +------+          |
               +----------+      .       .      +----------+
                                 .........

                         Figure 2: With Enhancement

2.2.  Problem 2: VID Encapsulation Confusion

   If CE1 is connected through a VLAN and has only one VLAN under the
   EVPN instance of PE2, the unicast traffic can be directly sent to the
   appropriate interface and encapsulated with the appropriate VID and
   forwarded to CE1.

   However, there may be multiple ways for CE1 to connect to PE1 and
   PE2, including Ethernet Tag, Ethernet Tag termination, and Q-in-Q.
   PE2 cannot always obtain the appropriate VLANs and in such cases PE2
   is missing the information needed to forward the unicast traffic to
   CE1 directly.

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3.  VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community Attribute

   This document defines a new BGP extended community attribute called
   the VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community attribute as shown in Figure 3.

      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
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |       0x06    | Sub-Type=TBA  |    Flags      |   Reserved    |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |            S-VLAN             |            C-VLAN             |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

            Figure 3: VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community Attribute

   Where:

   0x06:  EVPN Extended Community Type field.

   Sub-Type:  Sub-Type field indicating that the extended community
      attribute is a VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community attribute, and the
      value is TBA as assigned by the IANA.

   Flags:  8 bits of identification information.  Bit 0 set to 0
      indicates that the action is redirected to the VLANs in this
      community.

   Reserved:  Not used.  MUST be sent as zero and ignored on receipt.

   S-VLAN:  Outer VLAN information.  MUST NOT be 0 or 0xFFFF.  If it is
      one of those values, which are not valid VLAN IDs, the attribute
      is ignored.

   C-VLAN:  Inner VLAN information.  When 0, it means there is no
      C-VLAN.  MUST NOT be 0xFFFF, which is not a valid VLAN ID.  If it
      is that illegal value, the attribute is ignored.

4.  Operation

   Operation with the solution specified in Section 3 and the topology
   shown in Figure 2 is described below.

4.1.  Establishment

   1.  PE1 learns MAC addresses from CE1, advertises them to PE2,
       carries the ESI value as ES1 and the next hop as PE1, and carries
       the VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community attributes.

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   2.  PE2 receives the MAC route advertised by PE1 and finds the
       interface that connects to CE1 locally according to the ESI
       value.  At the same time, PE2 fills in the VLAN information
       according to the VLAN-Redirect-Extended Community attributes.

   3.  At the same time, PE2 generates a fast reroute (FRR) entry
       according to the next hop information (PE1) of the MAC route,
       that is, a MAC address entry on PE2, where the primary path
       points to the CE1 link and the standby path points to PE1.

   4.  PE2 also sends the MAC as a local MAC route to PE1.

   5.  PE1 receives the MAC route advertised by PE2 and generates the
       FRR entry with the MAC route learned by CE1, that is, the MAC
       address entry on PE1, with the primary path pointing to the CE1
       link and the secondary path pointing to PE2.

4.2.  Handling Link Failure

   1.  When the link between PE1 and CE1 fails, PE1 withdraws the MAC
       address that PE1 advertised to PE2.

   2.  PE2 receives the MAC withdrawal from PE1, does not delete the MAC
       immediately, but starts an aging timer, and does not withdraw the
       MAC address that PE1 advertised to PE2.

   3.  When the aging timer expires, if PE2 cannot receive the traffic
       from CE1, then PE2 withdraws the MAC address that was advertised
       to PE2 by PE1 and deletes the MAC entry.  If PE2 can communicate
       directly with CE1, it just eliminates the FRR standby path to
       PE1.

5.  IANA Considerations

   IANA is requested to assign a new EVPN Extended Community SubType as
   follows:

    +================+==================================+============+
    | Sub-Type Value |               Name               | Reference  |
    +================+==================================+============+
    |      TBA       | VLAN-Redirect Extended Community | [this doc] |
    +----------------+----------------------------------+------------+

                                 Table 1

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6.  Security Considerations

   TBD

   For general EVPN Security Considerations, see [rfc7432bis].

7.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC7432]  Sajassi, A., Ed., Aggarwal, R., Bitar, N., Isaac, A.,
              Uttaro, J., Drake, J., and W. Henderickx, "BGP MPLS-Based
              Ethernet VPN", RFC 7432, DOI 10.17487/RFC7432, February
              2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7432>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

8.  Informative References

   [RFC7209]  Sajassi, A., Aggarwal, R., Uttaro, J., Bitar, N.,
              Henderickx, W., and A. Isaac, "Requirements for Ethernet
              VPN (EVPN)", RFC 7209, DOI 10.17487/RFC7209, May 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7209>.

Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank the following for their comments and
   review of this document:

   TBD

Authors' Addresses

   Donald Eastlake
   Futurewei Technologies
   2386 Panoramic Circle
   Apopka, FL 32703
   United States of America
   Phone: +1-508-333-2270
   Email: d3e3e3@gmail.com, donald.eastlake@futurewei.com

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   Zhenbin Li
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Blduilding, No.156 Beiqing Rdoad
   Beijing
   100095
   China
   Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com

   Shunwan Zhuang
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Blduilding, No.156 Beiqing Rdoad
   Beijing
   100095
   China
   Email: zhuangshunwan@huawei.com

   Russ White
   Juniper Networks
   Email: russ@riw.us

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