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BGP Optimal Route Reflection (BGP-ORR)
draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-04

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9107.
Authors Robert Raszuk , Christian Cassar , Erik Aman , Bruno Decraene , Stephane Litkowski
Last updated 2012-12-04
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draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-04
IDR Working Group                                              R. Raszuk
Internet-Draft                                                   NTT MCL
Intended status: Standards Track                               C. Cassar
Expires: June 7, 2013                                      Cisco Systems
                                                                 E. Aman
                                                             TeliaSonera
                                                             B. Decraene
                                                          France Telecom
                                                            S. Litkowski
                                                                  Orange
                                                        December 4, 2012

                 BGP Optimal Route Reflection (BGP-ORR)
             draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-04

Abstract

   [RFC4456] asserts that, because the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP)
   cost to a given point in the network will vary across routers, "the
   route reflection approach may not yield the same route selection
   result as that of the full IBGP mesh approach."  One practical
   implication of this assertion is that the deployment of route
   reflection may thwart the ability to achieve hot potato routing.  Hot
   potato routing attempts to direct traffic to the closest AS egress
   point in cases where no higher priority policy dictates otherwise.
   As a consequence of the route reflection method, the choice of exit
   point for a route reflector and its clients will be the egress point
   closest to the route reflector - and not necessarily closest to the
   RR clients.

   Section 11 of [RFC4456] describes a deployment approach and a set of
   constraints which, if satsified, would result in the deployment of
   route reflection yielding the same results as the iBGP full mesh
   approach.  Such a deployment approach would make route reflection
   compatible with the application of hot potato routing policy.

   As networks evolved to accommodate architectural requirements of new
   services, tunneled (LSP/IP tunneling) networks with centralized route
   reflectors became commonplace.  This is one type of common deployment
   where it would be impractical to satisfy the constraints described in
   Section 11 of [RFC4456].  Yet, in such an environment, hot potato
   routing policy remains desirable.

   This document proposes two new solutions which can be deployed to
   facilitate the application of closest exit point policy centralized
   route reflection deployments.

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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
   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 June 7, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 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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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Proposed solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Best path selection for BGP hot potato routing  from
       customized IGP network position  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.1.  Client's perspective best path selection algorithm . . . .  8
       3.1.1.  Flat IGP network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       3.1.2.  Hierarchical IGP network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     3.2.  Aside: Configuration-based flexible route reflector
           placement  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     3.3.  Route reflector client grouping  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       3.3.1.  Route Reflector Client Group ID  . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     3.4.  Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     3.5.  Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   4.  Angular distance approximation for BGP warm potato  routing  . 13
     4.1.  Problem statement  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.2.  Proposed solution  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.3.  Centralized vs distributed route reflectors  . . . . . . . 16
   5.  Client's perspective policy based best path selection  . . . . 17
     5.1.  Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     5.2.  Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     5.3.  Avoiding routing loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   6.  Deployment considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   7.  Security considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   8.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   9.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
     10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
     10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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1.  Introduction

   There are three types of BGP deployments within Autonomous Systems
   today: full mesh, confederations and route reflection.

   BGP route reflection is the most popular way to distribute BGP routes
   between BGP speakers belonging to the same administrative domain.
   Traditionally route reflectors have been deployed in the forwarding
   path and carefully placed on the POP to core boundaries.  That model
   of BGP route reflector placement has started to evolve.  The
   placement of route reflectors outside the forwarding path was
   triggered by applications which required traffic to be tunneled from
   AS ingress PE to egress PE: for example L3VPN.

   This evolving model of intra-domain network design has enabled
   deployments of centralized route reflectors.  Initially this model
   was only employed for new address families e.g.  L3VPNs, L2VPNs etc

   With edge to edge MPLS or IP encapsulation also being used to carry
   internet traffic, this model has been gradually extended to other BGP
   address families including IPv4 and IPv6 Internet routing.  This is
   also applicable to new services achieved with BGP as control plane
   for example 6PE.

   Such centralized route reflectors can be placed on the POP to core
   boundaries, but they are often placed in arbitrary locations in the
   core of large networks.

   Such deployments suffer from a critical drawback in the context of
   best path selection.  A route reflector with knowledge of multiple
   paths for a given prefix will pick the best path and only advertise
   that best path to the the route reflector clients.  If the best path
   for a prefix is selected on the basis of an IGP tie break, the best
   path advertised from the route reflector to its clients will be the
   exit point closest to the route reflector.  But route reflector
   clients will be in a place in the network toplogy which is different
   from the route reflector.  In networks with centralized route
   reflectors, this difference will be even more acute.  It follows that
   the best path chosen by the route reflector is not necessarily the
   same as the path which would have been chosen by the client if the
   client considered the same set of candidate paths as the route
   reflector.  Furthermore, the path chosen by the client might have
   been a better path from that chosen by the route reflector for
   traffic entering the network at the client.  The path chosen by the
   client would have guaranteed the lowest cost and delay trajectory
   through the network.

   Route reflector clients switch packets using routing information

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   learnt from route reflectors which are not on the forwarding path of
   the packet through the network even in the absence of end-to-end
   encapsulation.  In those cases the path chosen as best and propagated
   to the clients will often not be the optimal path chosen by the
   client given all available paths.

   Eliminating the IGP distance to the BGP nexthop as a tie breaker on
   centralized route reflectors does not address the issue.  Ignoring
   IGP distance to the BGP next hop results in the tie breaking
   procedure contributing the best path by differentiating between paths
   using attributes otherwise considered less important than IGP cost to
   the BGP nexthop.

   One possible valid solution or workaround to this problem requires
   sending all domain external paths from the RR to all its clients.
   This approach suffers the significant drawback of pushing a large
   amount of BGP state to all the edge routers.  In many networks, the
   number of EBGP peers over which full Internet routing information is
   received would correlate directly to the number of paths present in
   each ASBR.  This could easily result in tens of paths for each
   prefix.

   Notwithstanding this drawback, there are a number of reasons for
   sending more than just the single best path to the clients.  Improved
   path diversity at the edge is a requirement for fast connectivity
   restoration, and a requirement for effective BGP level load
   balancing.  Protocol extensions like add-paths
   [I-D.ietf-idr-add-paths] or [RFC6774] diverse-path allow for such
   improved path diversity and can be used to address the same problems
   addressed by the mechanisms proposed in this draft.

   In practical terms, add/diverse path deployments are expected to
   result in the distribution of 2, 3 or n (where n is a small number)
   'good' paths rather than all domain external paths.  While the route
   reflector chooses one set of n paths and distributes those same n
   paths to all its route reflector clients, those n paths may not be
   the right n paths for all clients.  In the context of the problem
   described above, those n paths will not necessarily include the
   closest egress point out of the network for each route reflector
   client.  The mechanisms proposed in this document are likely to be
   complementary to mechanisms aimed at improving path diversity.

2.  Proposed solutions

   This document proposes two simple solutions to the problem described
   above.  Both of these solutions make it possible for route reflector
   clients to direct traffic to their closest exit point in hot potato

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   routing deployments, without requiring further state to be pushed out
   to the edge.  These solutions are primarily applicable in deployments
   using centralized route reflectors, which are typically implemented
   in devices without a capable forwarding plane.

   The two alternatives are:

      "Best path selection for BGP hot potato routing from client's IGP
      network position"

      "Angular distance approximation for BGP warm potato routing"

   Both solutions rely upon all route reflectors learning all paths
   which are eligible for consideration for hot potato routing.  In
   order to satisfy this requirement, path diversity enhancing
   mechanisms such as add paths/diverse paths may need to be deployed
   between route reflectors.

   In both of these solutions the route reflector selects and
   distributes a route to each client based on what would be optimal
   from the client's perspective.  By optimal we refer in this document
   to the decision made during best path selection at the IGP metric to
   BGP next hop comparison step.  Clearly the overall path selection
   preference may be chosen based other policy step and provisions as
   defined in this document would not apply.

   In the respective solutions the choice is made either factoring in
   IGP costs or the configured angular distance to the next hop.  The
   route reflector makes different decisions for different clients only
   in the case where the tie breaker for path selection would have been
   the IGP distance to the BGP nexthop (as in hot potato routing).

   A significant advantage of this approach is that the RR clients do
   not need to run new software or hardware.

   Besides these solutions to manage hot potato routing, there are
   deployment scenarios where service providers want to have more
   control of traffic exiting the AS by assigning per client preference
   to gateways.

   This document proposes to introduce a solution to perform a policy
   based route-reflection to address those scenarios.  This solution has
   the same requirements (regarding path diversity) and advantages than
   the two IGP metric based solutions.

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3.  Best path selection for BGP hot potato routing  from customized IGP
    network position

   This section describes a method for calculating the order of
   preference of BGP paths from the point of view of each separate route
   reflector client.  More specifically, the route reflector will
   compute the IGP metric to the BGP nexthop from the position of the
   client to which the resulting path will be distributed, if the IGP
   metric is the tie breaker applied to a set of possible paths.  In the
   subsequent model authors will propose virtual reflector placement at
   operator's selected IGP location.

   In the case of a hierarchical IGP deployment where the client is in a
   different level in the hierarchy to the route reflector, the route
   reflector will compute IGP distance to the BGP nexthop from the Area
   Border Routers (ABR) leading to the client in lieu of the route
   reflector client itself, and use the shortest distance from these
   ABRs to the nexthop.  This provides an approximation to the desired
   functionality.  Rather than a client picking the closest path, the
   client would be picking the exit point closest to the client region
   as defined by area or level.  In cases where one or more nexthops are
   in the same region as the client, one of those nexthops would be
   preferred, with tie breaking within those nexthops performed from the
   route reflector's position in the network.

   It is assumed that reachability through a set of ABRs is always
   advertised through identical prefixes from those ABRs.  If a nexthop
   is reachable through multiple ABRs but the ABRs advertise
   reachability through prefixes of different length, then only the ABR
   advertising the longest prefix will be considered as a viable path to
   the nexthop.

   BGP best path selection and its distribution has a natural
   consequence of limiting the amount of state in the network.  That is
   not in itself a drawback.  BGP speakers will rarely need to receive
   all available BGP paths.  In network deployments with multiple
   upstream peerings or with very dense peering schemes, the number of
   available BGP paths for a given BGP prefix can be high.  Real network
   deployments with the number of paths for a prefix ranging from 10s to
   100s have been observed.  It would be wasteful to propagate all of
   those paths to all clients, such that each client can select paths
   according to the position of the nexthop relative to the client.

   Whenever a BGP route reflector would need to decide what path or
   paths need to be selected for advertisement to one of its clients,
   the route reflector would need to virtually position itself in its
   client IGP network location in order to choose the right set of paths
   based on the IGP metric to the next hops from the client's

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   perspective.

   This technique applies in deployments with or without diverse paths
   or the various path selection modes contemplated in add-paths.

   In the network architectures consisting of more then single pair of
   route reflectors it is required that all reflectors are fully meshed
   and have ability to learn and maintain all external BGP paths.  In
   the event of constructing a hierarchy of reflectors to relax the full
   RR mesh requirements ORR should not be run between such route
   reflectors.

3.1.  Client's perspective best path selection algorithm

   For each centralized route reflector the proposal assumes that the
   route reflector participates in a common IGP with its clients.  There
   are two scenarios to consider - flat versus hierarchical IGP network.

3.1.1.  Flat IGP network

      Reflectors run SPF from the client IGP node point of view such
      that the cost of BGP nexthops from the client can be determined if
      necessary.  For the purpose of BGP path selection the interesting
      product of this calculation is the ability to determine the IGP
      distance from a client to a BGP next hop.  This distance to a
      nexthop would be interesting in cases where that next hop is for a
      path which is contending with otherwise equally preferred paths.
      This approach works in tunneled as well as conventional hop-by-hop
      IP forwarding cores.

      When the path selection tie breaker for a prefix is the IGP metric
      to the BGP nexthops of the contending paths, then the route
      reflector will determine the order of preference of the contending
      paths by considering the distance from the client to the path
      nexthops in order to decide what path/s to advertise to a client
      (or group of clients where feasible).  It should be noted that an
      operator may wish to provide a distance tolerance value, such that
      beyond a certain granularity, differences between IGP metric are
      invisible to the path selection algorithm.  This will allow a
      route reflector some leeway in selecting between paths such that
      rather than pick one path over another on the basis of a
      difference in distance which is operationally irrelevant, the
      route reflector can choose to optimize for update generation
      grouping.  Furthermore, this tolerance will reduce the likelihood
      of generation of BGP updates when the IGP topology changes in a
      way which is not operationally relevant.  In the case that a path
      is selected from a set for a given prefix while ignoring
      differences in distance within the tolerance figure, then that

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      same path must always be preferred for all clients where the paths
      are within the tolerance figure

3.1.2.  Hierarchical IGP network

   Hierarchy introduces two challenges:

      The first challenge is that the RR IGP view may differ from a
      client IGP view by virtue of one or the other having a summarized
      view versus the other.  Summarization, by its nature, loses
      information.  Consider the example where a client within a PoP
      sees two prefixes with two metrics for two egress points within
      the PoP, but where the RR only sees a single summary covering
      reachability to both nexthops as injected by the ABR.  For
      clarification purposes in the case of ISIS by ABR we refer to
      L1/L2 node.  However it needs to be observed that inter area
      networks running LDP are required to disable summarisation of all
      FEC advertised in LDP (typically all loopbacks) unless [RFC5283]
      is deployed.  Such deployments are not likely to suffer
      summarization difficulties.

      The second challenge is that in cases where the client is in a
      different level of hierarchy from the RR, the RR can not build a
      Shortest Path First (SPF) tree with the client node as root,
      simply because the topology derived by the IGP will not include
      the client node.  It will instead only include reachability to the
      client from one or more ABRs.  In order to overcome this problem,
      the RR could compute an SPF tree from the ABRs in the area.  The
      RR would then determine the shortest distance from a client which
      lives behind the ABRs, to a nexthop, by adding the advertised
      distances from an ABR to the client and the distance from the ABR
      to a nexthop, for each ABR, and picking the minimum.  This assumes
      that IGP metrics on links are symmetric; i.e. that the distance
      from the ABR to the client or nexthop is equal to the distance
      from the client or nexthop to the ABR.

      There are cases where the above approach does not help.  If RR is
      trying to arbitrate amongst a set of paths for a client which is
      in the same hierarchy as some of those paths, and in a different
      hierarchy to the RR, the opaqueness of the region containing the
      client at the RR defeats the selection process.  It is impossible
      to determine the relative position of the RR client and the paths
      within the client region.

      The solution for hierarchical IGP networks also assumes that if
      RRs are present and are responsible for calculation of BGP best
      path to clients they are either placed in each local area
      coinciding with area containing clients or they are placed in the

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      core (area 0/level 2) of the network.

3.2.  Aside: Configuration-based flexible route reflector placement

   The ability to exploit topology information available in the IGP in
   ways described above can also be used to virtually place the RR at
   different points in the network for purposes other than hot potato
   routing.

   A route reflector can be globally configured to "pretend" its logical
   location is one of any of the other nodes within a given IGP area/
   level flooding scope regardless of its physical connectivity.

   Such flexibility provides a useful tool for reflector virtualization,
   and supports moving or replacing physical route reflectors without
   any effect on routing.  Such a change can be permanent or it could be
   performed during network maintenance in order to minimize network
   impact.

   A possible variation would allow the virtual placement of RR to be
   effected on a per-AF or AF plus update/peer group granularity.  It
   should be noted that this approach provides for splitting one
   centralized route reflector such that it is virtually positioned at
   various network locations, with the network location depending upon
   of address family or address family plus update/peer group.

   Virtual slicing of a centralized route reflector relaxes the need to
   propagate all BGP paths between RRs in a alternative conventional
   distributed RR deployment.  It is expected that such RRs would be
   deployed in redundant sets, and that those RRs would not need to be
   physically collocated, while still benefiting from the possibility of
   being logically collocated, and therefore not compromising any of the
   best path selection symmetry.

3.3.  Route reflector client grouping

   It may be appropriate to allow the operator, or the route reflector
   itself, to group clients together using IGP distance between clients
   to determine grouping.  All the operation discussed above which
   relied upon computing best path for each client, and measuring
   distances from each client to different nexthops, would instead be
   performed for each group of clients.  Configurable thresholds can be
   used to determine which IGP metric changes should be visible to BGP,
   and trigger best paths recomputation.  The latter would be beneficial
   in existing BGP RR code too.

   Alternatively route reflector client grouping could be accomplished
   statically by the operator by coloring clients belonging to a common

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   group (for example being part of the same POP).  In order to
   accomplish such marking it is proposed that BGP OPEN message be
   augmented with an optional parameter indicating the Group ID given
   peer belongs to.

3.3.1.  Route Reflector Client Group ID

   This is an Optional Parameter in BGP OPEN message that is used by a
   BGP speaker to convey to its route reflectors the Group ID value.
   Such value will allow automatic and predictable peer grouping on the
   route reflectors as deemed necessary from operator's network
   architecture.

   The parameter contains precisely one set of [Group_ID Code, Group_ID
   Length, Group_ID Value] encoded as shown below:

   +----------------------------+
   | Group ID Code (1 octet)    |
   +----------------------------+
   | Group ID Length (1 octet)  |
   +----------------------------+
   | Group ID Value (4 octets)  |
   +----------------------------+

   The use and meaning of these fields are as follows:

   Group ID Code:

       Group ID Code is a one octet field that identifies Group ID
       optional parameter of BGP OPEN message. Value TBD by IANA
       Recommended value: 3.

   Group ID Length:

       Group ID Length is a one octet field that contains the length
       of the Group ID Value field in octets. It is fixed and equals
       to 4.

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   Group ID Value:

       Group ID Value is a fixed length field of size equal to
       four octets that contains the numerical value of group given
       BGP speaker should be part of on the route reflector.

       Two special values are reserved:

           0x00000000 - No grouping preference
           0xFFFFFFFF - Do not group this BGP speaker

       An implementation may allow automatic population of
       GROUP_ID value using IGP area identifier.

   Route reflectors or EBGP speakers receiving such Group IDs from their
   respective BGP peers as part of the BGP OPEN procedure MAY use them
   when constructing update or peer groups in addition to any of the
   existing grouping mechanism already available.  An implementation may
   allow operator to explicitly allow or disallow honoring such grouping
   or provide means for manual overwrite via explicit configuration.

3.4.  Discussion

   This is not the first instance where a router participating in an IGP
   is required to build the SPF tree using a root other than itself.
   Determination of loop free alternate paths as described in [RFC5714]
   is one such example.

   Determining the shortest path and associated cost between any two
   arbitrary points in a network based on the IGP topology learned by a
   router is expected to add some extra cost in terms of CPU resource.
   However SPF tree generation code is now implemented efficiently in a
   number of implementations, and therefor this is not expected to be a
   major drawback.  The number of SPTs computed in the general non-
   hierarchical case is expected to be of the order of the number of
   clients of an RR whenever a topology change is detected.  Advanced
   optimizations like partial and incremental SPF may also be exploited.
   By the nature of route reflection, the number of clients can be split
   arbitrarily by the deployment of more route reflectors for a given
   number of clients.  While this is not expected to be necessary in
   existing networks with best in class route reflectors available
   today, this avenue to scaling up the route reflection infrastructure
   would be available.  If we consider the overall network wide cost/
   benefit factor, the only alternative to achieve the same level of
   optimality would require significantly increasing state on the edges
   of the network, which, in turn, will consume CPU and memory resources
   on all BGP speakers in the network.  Building this client perspective

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   into the route reflectors seems appropriate.

3.5.  Advantages

   The solution described provides a model for integrating the client
   perspective into the best path computation for RRs.  More
   specifically, the choice or BGP path factors in the IGP metric
   between the client and the nexthop, rather than the distance from the
   RR to the nexthop.  The documented method does not require any BGP or
   IGP protocol changes as required changes are contained within the RR
   implementation.

   This solution can be deployed in traditional hop-by-hop forwarding
   networks as well as in end-to-end tunneled environments.  In the
   networks where there are multiple route reflectors and hop-by-hop
   forwarding without encapsulation, such optimizations should be
   enabled on all route reflectors.  Otherwise clients may receive an
   inconsistent view of the network and in turn lead to intra-domain
   forwarding loops.

   With this approach, an ISP can effect a hot potato routing policy
   even if route reflection has been moved from the forwarding plane to
   the core and hop-by-hop switching has been replaced by end to end
   MPLS or IP encapsulation.

   As per above, the approach reduces the amount of state which needs to
   be pushed to the edge in order to perform hot potato routing.  The
   memory and CPU resource required at the edge to provide hot potato
   routing using this approach is lower than what would be required in
   order to achieve the same level of optimality by pushing and
   retaining all available paths (potentially 10s) per each prefix at
   the edge.

   The proposal allows for a fast and safe transition to BGP control
   plane route reflection without compromising an operator's closest
   exit operational principle.  Hot potato routing is important to most
   ISPs.  The inability to perform hot potato routing effectively stops
   migrations to centralized route reflection and edge-to-edge LSP/IP
   encapsulation for traffic to IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes.

4.  Angular distance approximation for BGP warm potato  routing

   This section describes an alternative solution to the use of IGP
   topology information to virtually position the RR at the client
   location in the network.  This solution involves modeling the network
   topology as a set of elements (regions, PoPs or routers) arranged in
   a circle.  Route reflector clients and inter-domain exit points would

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   then be statically assigned to those elements such that one can
   compute the angular distance between route-reflector clients and the
   various exit points in order to infer the distance between any two
   elements.  This measure of distance can be used as an effective
   alternative to the IGP distance as a tie breaker in the path
   selection algorithm if necessary.

4.1.  Problem statement

   This solution addresses the problem described in earlier sections,
   while attempting to minimize computational overhead.  The aim of the
   proposed solution is to enable a route reflector to provide a route
   reflector client with an exit point for a prefix which is 'closest'
   to the client rather than the route-reflector, without having to
   distribute all paths to that client, or having to derive each
   client's view of the network topology.  The measure of closest is
   based on a simplistic description of network topology provided by the
   operator.

   Consider the following example of an ISP network topology drawn to
   reflect the location of the nodes and POPs:

      N4  POP4

      CLIENT B
        POP4                    POP1 N1

                      CORE
                       RR(s)          POP2 N2

        N5  POP3                   POP2 N3

        CLIENT A
              POP3

   N - represents the different exit points for a given prefix.  POP2 is
   a geographically large PoP with two paths; N2 and N3.

   In a deployment where the centralized RRs tie break on the basis of
   their IGP-based view of the network, N1 above would be advertised to
   all clients on the basis that it is closest to the RR.  Path N4 would
   be a more appropriate choice for client B. Similarly, N5 would be

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   more appropriate for client A since path N5 is closer to client A
   then path N1.

4.2.  Proposed solution

   The proposed solution revolves around the operator establishing the
   angular position of the route-reflector clients and inter-domain exit
   points in the network.  The route reflector then picks the path to
   advertise to a client based on the client's angular position versus
   the angular position of the inter-domain exit points originating the
   paths.  The operator can choose the granularity of angular position
   appropriate to the desired goals.  On one hand, the coarseness of the
   angular position will effect the operator overhead; versus the
   optimality of routing on the other.  The finest granularity possible
   will be the relative position of originating clients.

   Note that this solution has nothing to do with actual IGP link
   metrics and resulting topology in the network.

   It can be shown that for each network topology, elements such as AS
   exit points can be mapped on to a circle.  By putting POPs, Regions
   or individual clients onto the hypothetical circle we can identify an
   angular location for each element relative to some fixed direction;
   for example defining the angular north of the circle at 0 degrees.

   The angular position of elements in the network can be conveyed to a
   route reflector in a number of ways:

      Assignment of angular position of each RR client through
      configuration on the route reflector itself; per client
      configuration on RR

      Assignment of angular position of an RR client at each client,
      then propagating it to RRs.

   The proposed angular distance approximation is compatible with both
   flat and hierarchical IGP deployments.

   In the example illustrated above the route reflector might learn or
   be configured with the following set of paths and corresponding
   angular positions:

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   Prefix X/Y    N1   N2   N3   N4   N5

   Location
   in degrees    60   85   120  290  260

   If the absolute angular position of clients A and B were as follows:

      Client A: 260 degrees

      Client B: 290 degrees

   Then the corresponding angular distances for those clients versus the
   exit points can be calculated as follows:

    Prefix X/Y    N1   N2   N3   N4   N5

    Client A    200   175   140   30   0

    Client B    230   205   170    0   30

   With an RR running the BGP best path algorithm modified to use the
   angular distance from the client to the nexthops, rather than its IGP
   distance to the nexthops as tie breaker, each client is provided with
   its closest path with the measure of closeness reflecting the angular
   position as configured by the operator.

   The model used by the operator in order to determine the angular
   position of a client or exit point, might involve grouping elements
   together by region or PoP, or might involve no grouping at all.
   Implementations should allow the operator to pick the appropriate
   granularity.

4.3.  Centralized vs distributed route reflectors

   In an environment where the RR clusters are distributed (yet
   centralized enough to make hot potato routing hard), and each RR
   cluster serves a subset of clients, it becomes necessary to propagate
   the angular position of the clients between route reflectors.  This
   can be achieved as follows:

      Deploy add-paths between route reflectors in order to maximize
      path diversity within the cluster.

      A non AS transitive BGP community of type (TBA by IANA) can be
      used to encode and propagate angular position between 0 and 359 of
      a client.  This community is only relevant to the route reflectors
      of a given BGP domain and should be stripped either at the ASBR

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      boundary or when propagating updates to BGP peers which are not
      route reflectors.

   The angular position marking could also be added by clients and
   advertised to the route reflector.  This would require some
   configuration effort.

5.  Client's perspective policy based best path selection

   There is some deployment scenarios where a service provider wants to
   achieve a stronger control on traffic exiting the AS (for capacity
   planning) rather than using hot potato routing based on IGP metric.

     |  |   |   |
     |  |   |   |
   GW1 GW2 GW3 GW4

      RR1 RR2

      R1 R2 R3

   Considering the figure above, all gateways have iBGP sessions to RR1
   and RR2, and R1 R2 R3 have iBGP sessions as well to RR1 and RR2.
   Gateway routers are meshed to an external network (for example, a
   transit service provider).

   We would like to achieve a strong control on the gateway used
   (primary and backup) for each router (or each set of routers) in the
   network (taking into account that routers do not support ADD PATHs).
   For example, R1 using GW1 as primary and GW2 as backup; R2 using GW2
   as primary and GW3 as backup; R3 using GW3 as primary and GW4 as
   backup.

   Basically, today a prefix P1 is received on each gateway from the
   external network.  Each gateway will send the prefix to both route
   reflectors.  Each route-reflector will receive four paths for P1 and
   choose the best one based on his own decision process.  Note that RR1
   and RR2 may choose a different path as best.  Each route-reflector
   sends his best path towards R1, R2 and R3.  Each router will receive
   the same paths from the route-reflectors for P1 (at max, only two
   gateways are visible from Rx routers).  So default behavior does not
   fit our requirements in term of traffic flows.

   Using current BGP mechanisms available, we could achieve our
   requirements using two solutions :

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   o  Modify the BGP meshing: for example, R1 meshed directly to GW1 and
      GW2 and apply inbound policies on R1; R2 meshed directly to GW2
      and GW3 and apply inbound policies on R2 ...

   o  Adding more route-reflectors (one RR per gateway used as primary)
      and applying inbound policies on RRs to make each RR choosing a
      different primary gateway and apply policies on routers to select
      his own primary gateway.

   These solutions have many drawbacks: first one is not flexible (re-
   meshing needed when we want to change gateway of a router), second
   one requires a lot of CAPEX.

   We would like to introduce a solution where a single currently
   deployed route-reflector chassis may take a different best path
   decision for different set of clients based on preferences.

   It should be noted that in simple scenarios (example: two RRs and two
   gateways), RFC6774 would be able to fulfill service provider needs.
   The solution proposed here would permit to handle more complex
   scenarios and fine gateway choice per client or groups of clients.

5.1.  Proposal

   Our proposal is to reuse the concept introduced in [I.D.ietf-idr-ix-
   bgp-route-server] in an iBGP context.  To perform per client best
   path selection, the router should maintain a per client BGP local-RIB
   (or Adj-RIB-Out) associated with inbound policies implemented between
   Adj-RIB-In and client LOC-RIB.

   It would not be very scalable to use a per client policy (considering
   hundreds of peers on a route-reflector), therefor our proposal is to
   group clients sharing common policies inside a client group to
   minimize computation/memory overhead.  Client grouping could be done
   statically (by configuration) or dynamically using the solution
   described in section 3.3.1 of this document.  Client grouping would
   be performed with a per AFI/SAFI granularity as gateway/client
   mapping may change in each AFI/SAFI context.  A route-reflector
   should be able to implement multiple client groups (with associated
   inbound policies) as well as a default client group for clients that
   does not require any specific policy decision: in this case, the
   overall BGP best path computation would be used.

5.2.  Example

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    GW1 GW2 GW3
      \  |  /
       \ | /
        RR1
       / | \
      R1 R2 R3

   In the above figure GW1, GW2, GW3 and R3 are standard ibgp route-
   reflector clients.  R1 and R2 want to use a special gateway
   combination (primary GW3, backup GW2, last resort GW1).  R1 and R2
   are configured in a specific client group CG1 on the route-reflector
   while other peers are in the default client group.  CG1 is associated
   with a policy achieving the expected GW preference for R1 and R2, and
   letting other paths without any change.

   All routes received by RR1 (ebgp, ibgp, ibgp rr client, ibgp rr
   client routing context) must be evaluated using overall BGP best path
   computation as well as in client group, the client group policy will
   accept or not the route to be evaluated by the local decision
   process.

   o  Paths from GW1, GW2, GW3 are compared within default client group
      leading to one GW (for example GW1) to be selected as best and
      installed in global LOC-RIB.  GW1 path will be advertised to GW2,
      GW3 and R3 as they are in default CG.  In CG1, preference of GW
      paths has been modified, leading to GW3 being the best path and
      installed in client group LOC-RIB.  GW3 path will be advertised to
      R1 and R2, as R1 and R2 are part of CG1.

   o  Paths from R3 are compared within default client group and
      advertised to GW1, GW2, GW3.  Those paths are also compared within
      CG1 (as accepted by policy) and advertised to R1 and R2.

   o  Paths from R1 are compared within default client group and
      advertised to GW1, GW2, GW3 and R3.  Those paths are also compared
      within GG1 (as accepted by policy) and advertised to R2.

   o  Paths from R2 are compared within default client group and
      advertised to GW1, GW2, GW3 and R3.  Those paths are also compared
      within CG1 (as accepted by policy) and advertised to R1.

5.3.  Avoiding routing loops

   Compared to the IGP approaches described in this document, the policy
   based route-reflection should be limited to end-to-end encapsulation
   environments to avoid intra-domain forwarding loops.  Using end-to-
   end encapsulation permit Edge routers to transport the traffic to the

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   targeted/preferred ASBR without any loop in the core.

   To avoid a potential rerouting of the ASBR into the core (and
   possible loop between Edges and ASBR), we must enforce forwarding at
   the ASBR to the eBGP peer.  This could be done by :

   o  implementing policies on ASBR to prefer eBGP path and install it
      in FIB.

   o  implementing tunneling of traffic until the outside interface
      (ASBR action to switch to outside interface).

   The exact choice of encapsulation and techniques to prevent transport
   loops (including potential loops at gateways) is left to the operator
   choice and its specification is outside of the scope of this
   document.

6.  Deployment considerations

   The solutions are primarily intended for end-to-end tunneled
   environments, i.e. where traffic is label switched or IP tunneled
   across the core.  If unencapsulated hop-by-hop forwarding is used,
   either misconfigurations or conflicts between these optimizations and
   classical BGP path selection rules could lead to intra-domain
   forwarding loops.  Under certain circumstances the solutions can also
   be deployable without end-to-end tunneling.  In particular the best
   path selection based on the client's IGP best-path selection is
   guaranteed not to cause any forwarding loops (other than micro loops
   associated with reconvergence) when deployed in a flat IGP area
   provided that no distance tolerance value is used so that the path
   choice is truly made on a per-client basis.

   Regarding potential intra-domain forwarding loops at ASBR level, this
   could be solved by enforcing external route preference or by
   performing tunnel to external interface switching action on ASBRs.

   Regarding client's IGP best-path selection, it should be self evident
   that this solution does not interfere with policies enforced above
   IGP tie breaking in the BGP best path algorithm.

   The solution applies to NLRIs of all address families which can be
   route reflected.

   It should be noted that customized per-client or group of clients
   best path selection is already in use today in the context of
   Internet Exchange Point (IXP) route servers.  In an IXP route server
   the client best path is selected as a result of different policies

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   rather than IGP metric distance to BGP next hop.

   A possible scalability impact of optimizing path selection to take
   account of the RR client position or operator's policy based
   preference is that different RR clients receive different paths, and
   therefore update/peer group efficiency diminishes.  This cost is
   imposed by the requirement to optimize the egress path from the
   client's perspective.  It is also likely that groups of clients will
   end up receiving the same best path/s, in which case, inefficiency of
   update generation will be minimized.  It should be noted that in the
   cases described under flexible router placement where placement is
   determined on a per update/peer group basis or per route reflector,
   the scale benefits of peer groupings are retained.

7.  Security considerations

   No new security issues are introduced to the BGP protocol by this
   specification.

8.  IANA Considerations

   IANA is requested to allocate a type code for the Standard BGP
   Community to be used for inter cluster propagation of angular
   position of the clients.

   IANA is requested to allocate a new type code from BGP OPEN Optional
   Parameter Types registry to be used for Group_ID propagation.

9.  Acknowledgments

   Authors would like to thank Eric Rosen, Clarence Filsfils, Uli
   Bornhauser Russ White, Jakob Heitz and Mike Shand for their valuable
   input.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

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

   [RFC4271]  Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
              Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.

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   [RFC4360]  Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
              Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, February 2006.

   [RFC5492]  Scudder, J. and R. Chandra, "Capabilities Advertisement
              with BGP-4", RFC 5492, February 2009.

10.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-idr-add-paths]
              Walton, D., Chen, E., Retana, A., and J. Scudder,
              "Advertisement of Multiple Paths in BGP",
              draft-ietf-idr-add-paths-07 (work in progress), June 2012.

   [RFC1997]  Chandrasekeran, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP
              Communities Attribute", RFC 1997, August 1996.

   [RFC1998]  Chen, E. and T. Bates, "An Application of the BGP
              Community Attribute in Multi-home Routing", RFC 1998,
              August 1996.

   [RFC4384]  Meyer, D., "BGP Communities for Data Collection", BCP 114,
              RFC 4384, February 2006.

   [RFC4456]  Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
              Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
              (IBGP)", RFC 4456, April 2006.

   [RFC4893]  Vohra, Q. and E. Chen, "BGP Support for Four-octet AS
              Number Space", RFC 4893, May 2007.

   [RFC5283]  Decraene, B., Le Roux, JL., and I. Minei, "LDP Extension
              for Inter-Area Label Switched Paths (LSPs)", RFC 5283,
              July 2008.

   [RFC5668]  Rekhter, Y., Sangli, S., and D. Tappan, "4-Octet AS
              Specific BGP Extended Community", RFC 5668, October 2009.

   [RFC5714]  Shand, M. and S. Bryant, "IP Fast Reroute Framework",
              RFC 5714, January 2010.

   [RFC6774]  Raszuk, R., Fernando, R., Patel, K., McPherson, D., and K.
              Kumaki, "Distribution of Diverse BGP Paths", RFC 6774,
              November 2012.

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Authors' Addresses

   Robert Raszuk
   NTT MCL
   101 S Ellsworth Avenue Suite 350
   San Mateo, CA  94401
   US

   Email: robert@raszuk.net

   Christian Cassar
   Cisco Systems
   10 New Square Park
   Bedfont Lakes, FELTHAM  TW14 8HA
   UK

   Email: ccassar@cisco.com

   Erik Aman
   TeliaSonera
   Marbackagatan 11
   Farsta,   SE-123 86
   Sweden

   Email: erik.aman@teliasonera.com

   Bruno Decraene
   France Telecom
   38-40 rue du General Leclerc
   Issy les Moulineaux cedex 9,   92794
   France

   Email: bruno.decraene@orange.com

   Stephane Litkowski
   Orange
   9 rue du chene germain
   Cesson Sevigne,   35512
   France

   Email: stephane.litkowski@orange.com

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