BGP based SRv6 Routing Planes for DC network
draft-hss-srv6ops-srv6-routing-planes-00
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Srihari R. Sangli , Shraddha Hegde , Michal Styszynski | ||
| Last updated | 2026-03-02 | ||
| Replaces | draft-hss-bgp-srv6-routing-planes | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-hss-srv6ops-srv6-routing-planes-00
srv6ops S. Sangli
Internet-Draft S. Hegde
Intended status: Informational M. Styszynski
Expires: 1 September 2026 HPE
28 February 2026
BGP based SRv6 Routing Planes for DC network
draft-hss-srv6ops-srv6-routing-planes-00
Abstract
This document introduces a BGP-based multi-planar routing
architecture for modern data center networks, with a particular focus
on environments running AI/ML workloads that demand traffic
segregation. The proposed solution enables deterministic routing for
workloads with characteristics such as collective communication and
multi-tenancy. It allows the creation of multiple logical routing
planes over a shared physical infrastructure by defining planes
through three key elements: Constraints (e.g., fabric color
inclusion/exclusion) Calculation types (e.g., shortest path) and
Metric types (e.g., cost, delay, bandwidth).
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 1 September 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2026 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 (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
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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
2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. BGP based Routing Planes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. BGP Routing Planes applied to SRv6 network . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. BGP Procedures for building SRv6 Based Routing plane . . 7
5. Multi Tenancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Scaling across multiple data-centers . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7. Data Plane Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
Modern Data Center (DC) networks are typically built using Clos
topologies, which provide an n-hop path (commonly 3, 5, or 7 hops)
between ingress and egress with a minimal number of intermediate
nodes. This design offers straightforward scalability as traffic
demands increase. Several factors influence DC network buildout,
including traffic characteristics, AI workload requirements, data
generation rates, user distribution, and the placement of compute,
storage, and application resources. DC networks generally operate as
pure IP fabrics, using the BGP routing paradigm. Nodes (switches or
routers) establish single-hop eBGP sessions with their neighbors
[RFC7938].
When hosting AI workloads, DC networks are optimized to maximize
bandwidth usage and handle traffic with low entropy characteristics.
AI models have grown dramatically, with parameter counts reaching
billions or even trillions. This scale requires distributing
workloads across multiple datacenters, where inter-DC networks must
support mixed traffic types. Consequently, AI workloads share the
same physical infrastructure with other applications such as storage,
etc., each with distinct bandwidth and latency requirements.
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Logical routing planes provide strict separation between traffic
types while leveraging the same physical infrastructure. This
ensures predictable performance across different types of
applications. BGP is widely deployed in datacenters and often serves
as the routing protocol for interconnecting regional datacenters
located within close proximity (e.g., 100–120 km). While mechanisms
for logical routing planes have been defined for IGP protocols
[RFC9350], a comparable capability is required for BGP.
2. Requirements Language
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.
3. BGP based Routing Planes
+-----+
+-------------------------------| |------------------------------+
| +--------------------| Sn |-----------------+ |
| | +-------| |------+ | |
| | | +-----+ | | |
| | | . | | |
| | | . | | |
| | | . | | |
| | | +-----+ | | |
| +--------^------------^-------| |------^----------^----------+ |
| | | +----------^-------| S2 |------^--------+ | | |
| | | | | +-----| |----+ | | | | |
| | | | | | +-----+ | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | +-----+ | | | | | |
| | +------^-^----------^-^-----| |----^-^--------^-^--------+ | |
| | | | | +--------^-^-----| S1 |----^-^------+ | | | | |
| | | | | | | | +---| |--+ | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | +-----+ | | | | | | | | |
+-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+
| L1 | | L2 | ... | L4 | | L5 | | L6 | ... | L8 |
+-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+
|||| |||| |||| |||| |||| ||||
OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOO
Legend: S: Spine, L: Leaf, O: Compute Server NIC
Figure 1: Data Center Clos Network
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This document proposes a BGP-based multi-planar architecture that
enables the creation of multiple routing planes within a data center
fabric. The key characteristics are as follows:
* Routing Plane Definition:
Each routing plane is defined by a set of constraints, a calculation
type, and a metric type. These parameters, applied to the physical
topology of nodes and links, form a logical routing plane.
* Fabric Colors, Metrics and Calculation-type:
Physical links can be tagged with Fabric Colors. Routing planes may
include or exclude specific colors, and/or be differentiated by
metric types such as cost, delay, or bandwidth. The calculation-type
refers to the consistent way for best path selection that is applied
within a routing plane. For example, all routers in a Routing Plane
apply same criteria expressed via BGP import policy for best path
computation.
* Expressing constraints:
The Routing Plane configuration in conjunction with BGP policy can
combine multiple characteristics (e.g., exclude a fabric color while
optimizing for delay) thereby providing flexibility.
* Pre-Built Configuration:
Routing planes are provisioned via configuration. The BGP routing
protocol builds routes and next-hops according to defined
constraints. Application traffic is mapped to one or the other
routing planes based on application intent.
* Application Intent Expression:
Application intent is conveyed using BGP extended color communities,
which are associated with prefix advertisements.
* Failure Handling:
In the event of link or node failures, a routing plane may become
partitioned. Traffic can fallback to alternate planes.
* Policy-Based Control:
Routing plane definitions are applied as import/export policies in
BGP advertisements. Importantly, this framework does not require new
BGP protocol extensions.
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Motivated by the deterministic path forwarding mechanism described in
[I-D.wang-idr-dpf], the approach outlined here provides a generic and
extensible framework for defining routing planes. The goal is to
demonstrate how routing planes can be constructed in SRv6 networks by
leveraging existing segment routing constructs.
4. BGP Routing Planes applied to SRv6 network
The following section describe the BGP Routing Plane solution applied
to SRv6 networks.
Figure 1 diagram illustrates a multi-planar data center fabric in
which nodes L1, L2, and spines S1, S2 belong to the Green routing
plane, while nodes L5, L6 and spines S3, S4 belong to the Blue
routing plane. Servers (e.g., Server1 and Server2) are dual-homed,
with connections to both planes.
The requirement is to construct distinct Green and Blue routing
planes across the fabric. Routing plane definitions can be
consistently applied across the network, ensuring that each plane
enforces its constraints and provides deterministic forwarding paths
for application traffic.
Routing Plane Definition:
To achieve routing planes for the fabric described in Figure 1, the
Routing plane definition is described below.
Green routing plane:
Calculation type: BGP Best path
Metric Type: standard metric
Set of constraints: Exclude Blue
Blue Routing Plane:
Calculation type: BGP Best path
Metric Type: standard metric
Set of constraints: Exclude Green
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Each node in the fabric is provisioned with SRv6 locators along with
the corresponding uN and uA SIDs derived from those locators. Nodes
that belong to the Green routing plane are additionally configured
with Green-specific locators, while nodes in the Blue routing plane
are provisioned with Blue-specific locators.
SRv6 block for the fabric 2100:db8::/32
L1 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0100::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
L2 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0200::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
L5 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0500::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
L6 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0600::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
S1 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0900::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
S2 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0a00::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
S3 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0b00::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
S4 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:0c00::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)
Green Routing Plane:
L1 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:1100::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Green Routing
Plane.
L2 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:1200::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Green Routing
Plane.
L5 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:1500::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Green Routing
Plane.
L6 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:1600::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)corresponding to Green Routing
Plane.
S1 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:1900::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Green Routing
Plane.
S2 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:1a00::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Green Routing
Plane.
Blue Routing Plane:
L1 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:2100::/48 associated with the uN
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instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Blue Routing
Plane.
L2 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:2200::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Blue Routing
Plane.
L5 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:2500::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD) corresponding to Blue Routing
Plane.
L6 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:2600::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)corresponding to Blue Routing
Plane.
S3 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:2b00::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)corresponding to Blue Routing
Plane.
S4 instantiates the SID 2100:db8:2c00::/48 associated with the uN
instruction (End with NEXT-CSID, PSP & USD)corresponding to Blue Routing
Plane.
Figure 2: SRv6 SID
The BGP sessions in the Green routing plane are associated with Green
admin-group [RFC5305] and the BGP sessions in the Blue routing plane
are associated with Blue admin-group.
4.1. BGP Procedures for building SRv6 Based Routing plane
The network is provisioned with initial configurations as described
in [SRv6-sids]. This configuration is performed once per routing
plane and does not require modification based on changing traffic
demands.
* Locator Advertisements:
Green locators are advertised as standard IPv6 prefixes (AFI-2, SAFI-
1) and are tagged with the extended color community [RFC4360]
corresponding to Green.
Blue locators are advertised similarly, with the extended color
community corresponding to Blue.
* BGP Policy Mapping:
Each node is configured with BGP policies that map incoming extended
color communities to the appropriate routing plane. When a policy
maps to a routing plane definition, the routing plane’s
characteristics are applied to the incoming advertisement to
determine acceptance or rejection.
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A locator advertisement tagged for the Green plane is accepted only
if received on a BGP session associated with the Green admin-group.
Similarly, a locator advertisement tagged for the Blue plane is
accepted only if received on a BGP session associated with the Blue
admin-group.
Once the control plane has been established for multiple routing
planes, collective communications can leverage the data plane
mechanisms described in the Section 7 to forward traffic across the
appropriate planes. BGP Routing Planes solution builds deterministic
paths inside a fabric purely based on routing. It does not require
any controller based or out-of-band path calculation, path
provisioning etc.
collective1 uses Blue routing plane :
Srv6 encapsulated data packet loadbalanced across L5 & L6:
assuming destination prefix is associated with L5/L6
2100:db8:2500
2100:db8:2600
collective2 uses Green routing plane
Srv6 encapsulated data packet loadbalanced across L1 & L2:
assuming destination prefix is associated with L1/L2
2100:db8:1100
2100:db8:1200
Figure 3: BGP Routing based deterministic paths
5. Multi Tenancy
Cloud providers often face the requirement of supporting multiple
customer AI/ML workloads simultaneously within the same data center.
To ensure isolation, customer traffic must be carried on separate
paths, preventing one workload from impacting another.
This separation can be achieved by constructing source-routed paths
within the routing planes, using mechanisms described in
[I-D.filsfils-srv6ops-srv6-ai-backend]. For example:
A source-routed path for Customer A, Collective Type 1 may be built
using uA and uN SIDs defined for the Blue routing plane on node S3.
A source-routed path for Customer B, Collective Type 1 may be built
using uA and uN SIDs defined for the Blue routing plane on node S4.
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This approach ensures that each customer’s workload traffic remains
isolated within its designated routing plane, while still leveraging
the shared physical infrastructure and this is possible only with
source based routing.
Such source routing based solutions MUST require controller or any
out-of-band mechanisms. With this, one can learn the fabric network
topology, the details of the hosts network attachment. It is also
very essential to collect the current operational state of the nodes
and the links etc. for providing input to the soruce based path
computation.
Source Routed path for customer A collective1 uses Blue routing plane S3:
2100:db8:2b00:2500
Source Routed path for customer B collective1 uses Blue routing plane S4:
2100:db8:2C00:2600
Source Routed path for customer A collective2 uses Green routing plane S1:
2100:db8:1900:2100
Source Routed path for customer B collective2 uses Green routing plane S2:
2100:db8:1a00:2200
Figure 4: Source routed paths
6. Scaling across multiple data-centers
AI/ML training models continue to grow in size and complexity, often
requiring deployment across multiple datacenters. In such scenarios,
the Data Center Interconnect (DCI) network must be designed to
optimize for the lowest delay metric, ensuring efficient distribution
of workloads.
Operators may deploy either IGP or BGP for DCI routing; in many
cases, BGP is preferred due to its flexibility and widespread use.
The mechanism for advertising delay metrics in BGP is defined in
[I-D.ietf-idr-bgp-generic-metric]. Delay values may be configured
statically or measured dynamically using protocols such as TWAMP
[RFC5357].
To construct a routing plane based on delay:
* The metric-type in the routing plane definition Section 4 is set to
delay.
When multiple BGP advertisements exist for the same prefix, best path
selection is performed using the delay metric carried in the generic-
metric attribute.
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This framework is generic and extensible, allowing operators to
define multi-planar networks using a variety of metric types (e.g.,
cost, bandwidth, delay) and constraints, depending on operational
requirements.
7. Data Plane Considerations
Traffic in data center and interconnect networks typically consists
of two patterns: bandwidth-intensive “elephant flows” and short-lived
“mice flows.” These traffic patterns exhibit low entropy, and because
AI computations are highly sensitive to latency, any congestion in
the network can significantly degrade performance. Coping with
congestion requires a combination of strategies: avoidance,
detection, notification, and reaction.
* Congestion Avoidance:
Mechanisms such as strategic traffic segregation via routing planes
and packet spraying across available links are employed to reduce the
likelihood of congestion:
* Congestion Detection and Notification:
Techniques like Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) and latency
measurements can be scoped to individual routing planes. This allows
congestion signals to be delivered to the sender with plane-specific
granularity.
* Congestion Reaction:
Within a routing plane, BGP can select multiple paths to a
destination, designating one or more as primary and others as backup.
Backup paths can be pre-programmed, enabling traffic to switch at
millisecond granularity when congestion occurs.
* Policy Enforcement:
Routing plane policies can reflect customer intent. For example,
links experiencing quality degradation may be excluded, and traffic
can be redirected to an alternate routing plane designated as backup.
The traffic can be classified based on DSCP marking to distinguish
the collectives it belongs to.
8. IANA Considerations
TBD
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9. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Jeffrey Haas, Zhaohui(Jeffrey) Zhang,
Kevin Wang and Ron Bonica for their valuable feedback.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Ed., Li, T., Ed., and S. Hares, Ed., "A
Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4271, January 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4271>.
[RFC9350] Psenak, P., Ed., Hegde, S., Filsfils, C., Talaulikar, K.,
and A. Gulko, "IGP Flexible Algorithm", RFC 9350,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9350, February 2023,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9350>.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.filsfils-srv6ops-srv6-ai-backend]
Filsfils, C., Martin, C., Pillai, K., Camarillo, P.,
Abdelsalam, A., Tantsura, J., and K. Patel, "SRv6 for
Deterministic Path Placement in AI Backends", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-filsfils-srv6ops-srv6-ai-
backend-02, 18 August 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-filsfils-
srv6ops-srv6-ai-backend-02>.
[I-D.ietf-idr-bgp-generic-metric]
Sangli, S. R., Hegde, S., Das, R., Decraene, B., Wen, B.,
Kozak, M., Dong, J., Jalil, L., and K. Talaulikar,
"Accumulated Metric in NHC attribute", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-idr-bgp-generic-metric-02, 6
January 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-idr-bgp-generic-metric-02>.
[I-D.wang-idr-dpf]
Wang, K., Styszynski, M., Lin, W., Subramaniam, M., Kampa,
T., and D. Singh, "BGP Deterministic Path Forwarding
(DPF)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-wang-idr-
dpf-00, 1 December 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-wang-idr-dpf-
00>.
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[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>.
[RFC4360] Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, DOI 10.17487/RFC4360,
February 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4360>.
[RFC5305] Li, T. and H. Smit, "IS-IS Extensions for Traffic
Engineering", RFC 5305, DOI 10.17487/RFC5305, October
2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5305>.
[RFC5357] Hedayat, K., Krzanowski, R., Morton, A., Yum, K., and J.
Babiarz, "A Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP)",
RFC 5357, DOI 10.17487/RFC5357, October 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5357>.
[RFC7938] Lapukhov, P., Premji, A., and J. Mitchell, Ed., "Use of
BGP for Routing in Large-Scale Data Centers", RFC 7938,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7938, August 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7938>.
[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>.
Authors' Addresses
Srihari Sangli
HPE
Mahadevapura
Bangalore, KA 560048
India
Email: srihari.sangli@hpe.com
Shraddha Hegde
HPE
Mahadevapura
Bangalore, KA 560048
India
Email: shraddha.hegde@hpe.com
Michal Styszynski
HPE
France
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Email: mlstyszynski@juniper.net
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