Skip to main content

BGP Link Bandwidth Extended Community
draft-ietf-idr-link-bandwidth-05

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Active".
Authors Prodosh Mohapatra , Rex Fernando
Last updated 2012-11-05
Replaces draft-rfernando-idr-link-bandwidth
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state WG Document
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state I-D Exists
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)
draft-ietf-idr-link-bandwidth-05
Network Working Group                                       P. Mohapatra
Internet-Draft                                               R. Fernando
Intended status: Standards Track                           Cisco Systems
Expires: May 9, 2013                                    November 5, 2012

                 BGP Link Bandwidth Extended Community
                  draft-ietf-idr-link-bandwidth-05.txt

Abstract

   This document describes an application of BGP extended communities
   that allows a router to perform unequal cost load balancing.

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 May 9, 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.

   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November

Mohapatra & Fernando       Expires May 9, 2013                  [Page 1]
Internet-Draft               Link Bandwidth                November 2012

   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Link Bandwidth Extended Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   4.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Mohapatra & Fernando       Expires May 9, 2013                  [Page 2]
Internet-Draft               Link Bandwidth                November 2012

1.  Introduction

   When a BGP speaker receives multiple paths from its internal peers,
   it could select more than one path to send traffic to.  In doing so,
   it might be useful to provide the speaker with information that would
   help it distribute the traffic based on the bandwidth of the external
   (DMZ) link.  This document suggests that the external link bandwidth
   be carried in the network using a new extended community [RFC4360] -
   the link bandwidth extended community.

1.1.  Requirements Language

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

2.  Link Bandwidth Extended Community

   When a BGP speaker receives a route from an external neighbor and
   advertises this route (via IBGP) to internal neighbors, as part of
   this advertisement the router may carry the cost to reach the
   external neighbor.  The cost can be either configured per neighbor or
   derived from the bandwidth of the link that connects the router to a
   directly connected external neighbor.  This value is carried in the
   Link Bandwidth Extended Community.  No more than one link bandwidth
   extended community SHALL be attached to a route.  Additionally, if a
   route is received with link bandwidth extended community and the BGP
   speaker sets itself as next-hop while announcing that route to other
   peers, the link bandwidth extended community should be removed.

   The extended community is optional non-transitive.  The value of the
   high-order octet of the extended Type Field is 0x40.  The value of
   the low-order octet of the extended type field for this community is
   0x04.  The value of the Global Administrator subfield in the Value
   Field SHOULD represent the Autonomous System of the router that
   attaches the Link Bandwidth Community.  If four octet AS numbering
   scheme is used [RFC4893], AS_TRANS should be used in the Global
   Administrator subfield.  The bandwidth of the link is expressed as 4
   octets in IEEE floating point format, units being bytes (not bits!)
   per second.  It is carried in the Local Administrator subfield of the
   Value Field.

3.  Deployment Considerations

   The usage of this community is restricted to the cases where BGP
   multipath can be safely deployed.  In other words, the IGP distance

Mohapatra & Fernando       Expires May 9, 2013                  [Page 3]
Internet-Draft               Link Bandwidth                November 2012

   between the load balancing router and the exit points should be the
   same.  Alternatively, the path between the load sharing router and
   the exit points could be tunneled.  If there are multiple paths to
   reach a destination and if only some of them have link bandwidth
   community, the receiver should not perform unequal cost load
   balancing based on link bandwidths.

4.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Yakov Rekhter, Srihari Sangli and Dan
   Tappan for proposing unequal cost load balancing as one possible
   application of the extended community attribute.

   The authors would like to thank Bruno Decraene, Robert Raszuk, Joel
   Halpern, Aleksi Suhonen, and Randy Bush for their useful comments and
   discussions.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document defines a specific application of the two-octet AS
   specific extended community.  IANA is requested to assign a sub- type
   value of 0x04 for the link bandwidth extended community.

      Name                                           Value
      ----                                           -----
      non-transitive Link Bandwidth Ext. Community  0x4004

6.  Security Considerations

   There are no additional security risks introduced by this design.

7.  Normative References

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

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

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

Mohapatra & Fernando       Expires May 9, 2013                  [Page 4]
Internet-Draft               Link Bandwidth                November 2012

Authors' Addresses

   Pradosh Mohapatra
   Cisco Systems
   170 W. Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Phone:
   Email: pmohapat@cisco.com

   Rex Fernando
   Cisco Systems
   170 W. Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Phone:
   Email: rex@cisco.com

Mohapatra & Fernando       Expires May 9, 2013                  [Page 5]