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Using IS-IS Multi-Topology (MT) for Segment Routing based Virtual Transport Network
draft-ietf-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt-05

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Active".
Authors Chongfeng Xie , Chenhao Ma , Jie Dong , Zhenbin Li
Last updated 2023-10-31 (Latest revision 2023-07-10)
Replaces draft-xie-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt
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draft-ietf-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt-05
LSR Working Group                                                 C. Xie
Internet-Draft                                                     C. Ma
Intended status: Informational                             China Telecom
Expires: 11 January 2024                                         J. Dong
                                                                   Z. Li
                                                     Huawei Technologies
                                                            10 July 2023

   Using IS-IS Multi-Topology (MT) for Segment Routing based Virtual
                           Transport Network
                    draft-ietf-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt-05

Abstract

   Enhanced VPN (VPN+) aims to provide enhanced VPN service to support
   some existing and emerging application's needs of enhanced isolation
   and stringent performance requirements.  VPN+ requires integration
   between the overlay VPN connectivity and the characteristics provided
   by the underlay network.  A Virtual Transport Network (VTN) is a
   virtual underlay network that is associated with a network topology,
   and is allocated with a set of dedicated or shared resources from the
   underlay physical network.  A VTN could be used as the underlay to
   support one or a group of VPN+ services.

   In some network scenarios, each VTN can be associated with a unique
   logical network topology.  This document describes a mechanism to
   build the SR based VTNs using IS-IS Multi-Topology together with
   other well-defined IS-IS extensions.

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 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 11 January 2024.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2023 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.
   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.  Advertisement of SR VTN Topology Attribute  . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Advertisement of SR VTN Resource Attribute  . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Advertising Topology-specific TE attributes . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Forwarding Plane Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Scalability Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   Enhanced VPN (VPN+) is an enhancement to VPN services to support the
   needs of existing and emerging applications, particularly the
   applications that are associated with 5G services.  These
   applications require enhanced isolation and have more stringent
   performance requirements than that can be provided with traditional
   overlay VPNs.  Thus these properties require integration between the
   underlay and the overlay networks.  [I-D.ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn]
   specifies the framework of enhanced VPN and describes the candidate
   component technologies in different network planes and network
   layers.  VPN+ can be used to deliver IETF network slice services
   [I-D.ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices], but could also be of use in its
   own right providing enhanced connectivity services between customer
   sites.

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   To meet the requirement of VPN+ services, a number of virtual
   transport networks (VTN) can be created, each with a subset of
   network resources allocated on network nodes and links in a
   customized topology of the physical network.  A VTN could be used as
   the underlay to meet the requirement of one or a group of VPN+
   services.  Another possible approach is to create a set of point-to-
   point paths, each with a set of network resources reserved along the
   path, such paths are called Virtual Transport Path (VTP).  Although
   using a set of dedicated VTPs can provide similar characteristics as
   a VTN, it has some scalability issues due to the per-path state in
   the network.

   [I-D.ietf-spring-resource-aware-segments] introduces resource
   awareness to Segment Routing (SR) [RFC8402].  The resource-aware SIDs
   have additional semantics to identify the set of network resources
   available for the packet processing action associated with the SIDs.
   As described in [I-D.ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn], the resource-
   aware SIDs can be used to build SR based VTNs with the required
   network topology and network resource attributes to support VPN+
   services.  With segment routing based data plane, Segment Identifiers
   (SIDs) can be used to represent both the topological instructions and
   the set of network resources allocated by network nodes to a VTN.
   The SR SIDs and the associated topology and resource attributes of a
   VTN need to be distributed using control plane.

   [I-D.dong-lsr-sr-enhanced-vpn] defines the IGP mechanisms with
   necessary extensions to provide scalable Segment Routing (SR) based
   VTNs.  The VTNs could be used as the underlay of the VPN+ service.
   The mechanism described in [I-D.dong-lsr-sr-enhanced-vpn] allows
   flexible combination of the topology and resource attribute to build
   a relatively large number of VTNs.  In some network scenarios, the
   required number of VTNs could be small, and it is assumed that each
   VTN is associated with an independent topology and has a set of
   dedicated or shared network resources.  This document describes a
   simplified mechanism to build SR based VTNs in those scenarios.  The
   resource-aware segments can be used with this approach to provide
   resource guaranteed SR VTNs, while the normal SR segments may also be
   used to provide SR VTNs with shared network resources in the
   forwarding plane.

   The proposed approach is to use IS-IS Multi-Topology [RFC5120] with
   segment routing [RFC8667] to define the independent network topology
   of each VTN.  The network resources and other TE attributes of a VTN
   can be advertised using IS-IS MT with the Traffic Engineering (TE)
   extensions defined in [RFC5305] and [RFC8570].

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2.  Advertisement of SR VTN Topology Attribute

   IS-IS Multi-Topology Routing (MTR) [RFC5120] has been defined to
   create independent topologies in one network.  In [RFC5120], MT-based
   TLVs are introduced to carry topology-specific link-state
   information.  The MT-specific Link or Prefix TLVs are defined by
   adding additional two bytes, which includes 12-bit MT-ID field in
   front of the ISN TLV and IP or IPv6 Reachability TLVs.  This provides
   the capability of specifying the customized attributes of each
   topology.  When each VTN is associated with an independent network
   topology, MT-ID could be used as the identifier of VTN in control
   plane.

   MTR can be used with segment routing based data plane.  Thus the
   topology attribute of an SR based VTN could be advertised using MTR
   with segment routing.  The IS-IS extensions to support the
   advertisement of topology-specific MPLS SIDs are specified in
   [RFC8667].  Topology-specific Prefix-SIDs can be advertised by
   carrying the Prefix-SID sub-TLVs in the IS-IS TLV 235 (MT IP
   Reachability) and TLV 237 (MT IPv6 IP Reachability).  Topology-
   specific Adj-SIDs can be advertised by carrying the Adj-SID sub-TLVs
   in IS-IS TLV 222 (MT-ISN) and TLV 223 (MT IS Neighbor Attribute).
   The topology-specific Prefix-SIDs and Adj-SIDs can be resource-aware
   segments or normal SR segments.

   The IS-IS extensions to support the advertisement of topology-
   specific SRv6 Locators and SIDs are specified in [RFC9352].  The
   topology-specific SRv6 locators are advertised using SRv6 Locator
   TLV, and SRv6 End SIDs inherit the MT-ID from the parent locator.
   The topology-specific End.X SID are advertised by carrying SRv6 End.X
   SID sub-TLVs in the IS-IS TLV 222 (MT-ISN) and TLV 223 (MT IS
   Neighbor Attribute).  The topology-specific SRv6 locators can be
   resource-aware locator or normal SRv6 locator, and accordingly the
   topology-specific SRv6 SIDs can be resource-aware SRv6 segments or
   normal SRv6 segments.

3.  Advertisement of SR VTN Resource Attribute

   In order to perform constraint based path computation for each VTN on
   the network controller or on the ingress nodes, the network resource
   attributes and other attributes associated with each VTN need to be
   advertised.

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3.1.  Advertising Topology-specific TE attributes

   On each network link, the information of the network resources and
   other attributes associated with a VTN can be specified by carrying
   the TE attributes sub-TLVs [RFC5305] and [RFC8570] in the IS-IS TLV
   222 (MT-ISN) and TLV 223 (MT IS Neighbor Attribute) of the
   corresponding topology.

   When Maximum Link Bandwidth sub-TLV is carried in the MT-ISN TLV of a
   topology, it indicates the amount of link bandwidth allocated to the
   corresponding VTN.  The bandwidth allocated to a VTN can be exclusive
   for services carried in the corresponding VTN.  The usage of other TE
   attributes in topology-specific TLVs is for further study.

   Editor's note: It is noted that carrying per-topology TE attributes
   was considered as a possible feature in future when the encoding of
   IS-IS multi-topology was defined in [RFC5120].

4.  Forwarding Plane Operations

   For SR-MPLS data plane, the Adj-SIDs and Prefix-SIDs associated with
   the same VTN can be used together to build SR-MPLS paths with the
   topological and resource constraints of the VTN taken into
   consideration.  A Prefix-SID is associated with the paths calculated
   in the corresponding topology of the VTN.  An outgoing interface is
   determined for each path.  In addition, the resource-aware prefix-SID
   can steer the traffic to use the subset of network resources
   allocated to the VTN on the outgoing interface for packet forwarding.
   A forwarding entry is installed in the forwarding plane using the
   MPLS label that corresponds to the Prefix-SID associated with the
   topology corresponding to the VTN.  A resource-aware Adj-SID is
   associated with a subset of network resources allocated to the VTN on
   the link it identifies, and can be used together with the prefix-SIDs
   of the same VTN to build SR-MPLS TE paths of the VTN.

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   For SRv6 data plane, the SRv6 SIDs associated with the same VTN can
   be used together to build SRv6 paths with the topological and
   resource constraints of the VTN taken into consideration.  An SRv6
   Locator is a prefix which is associated with the paths calculated in
   the corresponding topology of the VTN.  An outgoing interface is
   determined for each path.  In addition, the resource-aware SRv6
   Locator prefix also steers the traffic to use the subset of network
   resources which are allocated to the VTN on the outgoing interface
   for packet forwarding.  A forwarding entry for the SRv6 Locator
   prefix is installed in the forwarding plane for the topology
   corresponding to the VTN.  A resource-aware End.X SID is associated
   with a subset of network resources allocated to the VTN on the link
   it identifies, and can be used together with other types of SRv6 SIDs
   of the same VTN to build SRv6 TE paths of the VTN.

5.  Scalability Considerations

   The mechanism described in this document assumes that each VTN is
   associated with a unique multi-topology, so that the MT-IDs can be
   reused to identify the VTNs in the control plane.  While this brings
   the benefit of simplicity, it also has some limitations.  For
   example, it means that even if multiple VTNs share the same topology,
   they would still need to be identified using different MT-IDs in the
   control plane, then independent path computation needs to be executed
   for each VTN.  Thus the number of VTNs supported in a network may be
   dependent on the number of topologies supported, which is related to
   both the number of topologies supported in the protocol and the
   control plane overhead which the network nodes could afford.  The
   mechanism described in this document is applicable to network
   scenarios where the number of required VTN is relatively small.  A
   detailed analysis about the VTN scalability and the possible
   optimizations for supporting a large number of VTNs is described in
   [I-D.ietf-teas-nrp-scalability].

6.  Security Considerations

   This document introduces no additional security vulnerabilities to
   IS-IS.

   The mechanism proposed in this document is subject to the same
   vulnerabilities as any other protocol that relies on IGPs.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not request any IANA actions.

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8.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Zhibo Hu, Dean Cheng, Les Ginsberg
   and Peter Psenak for the review and discussion of this document.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-spring-resource-aware-segments]
              Dong, J., Bryant, S., Miyasaka, T., Zhu, Y., Qin, F., Li,
              Z., and F. Clad, "Introducing Resource Awareness to SR
              Segments", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              spring-resource-aware-segments-07, 31 May 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-spring-
              resource-aware-segments-07>.

   [I-D.ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn]
              Dong, J., Bryant, S., Miyasaka, T., Zhu, Y., Qin, F., Li,
              Z., and F. Clad, "Segment Routing based Virtual Transport
              Network (VTN) for Enhanced VPN", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn-05,
              31 May 2023, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn-05>.

   [I-D.ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn]
              Dong, J., Bryant, S., Li, Z., Miyasaka, T., and Y. Lee, "A
              Framework for Enhanced Virtual Private Network (VPN+)",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-teas-
              enhanced-vpn-13, 7 July 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/api/v1/doc/document/draft-
              ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn/>.

   [RFC5120]  Przygienda, T., Shen, N., and N. Sheth, "M-ISIS: Multi
              Topology (MT) Routing in Intermediate System to
              Intermediate Systems (IS-ISs)", RFC 5120,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5120, February 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5120>.

   [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>.

   [RFC8402]  Filsfils, C., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Ginsberg, L.,
              Decraene, B., Litkowski, S., and R. Shakir, "Segment
              Routing Architecture", RFC 8402, DOI 10.17487/RFC8402,
              July 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8402>.

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   [RFC8570]  Ginsberg, L., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Giacalone, S., Ward,
              D., Drake, J., and Q. Wu, "IS-IS Traffic Engineering (TE)
              Metric Extensions", RFC 8570, DOI 10.17487/RFC8570, March
              2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8570>.

   [RFC8667]  Previdi, S., Ed., Ginsberg, L., Ed., Filsfils, C.,
              Bashandy, A., Gredler, H., and B. Decraene, "IS-IS
              Extensions for Segment Routing", RFC 8667,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8667, December 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8667>.

   [RFC9352]  Psenak, P., Ed., Filsfils, C., Bashandy, A., Decraene, B.,
              and Z. Hu, "IS-IS Extensions to Support Segment Routing
              over the IPv6 Data Plane", RFC 9352, DOI 10.17487/RFC9352,
              February 2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9352>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.dong-lsr-sr-enhanced-vpn]
              Dong, J., Hu, Z., Li, Z., Tang, X., Pang, R., and S.
              Bryant, "IGP Extensions for Scalable Segment Routing based
              Enhanced VPN", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              dong-lsr-sr-enhanced-vpn-08, 11 July 2022,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dong-lsr-sr-
              enhanced-vpn-08>.

   [I-D.ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices]
              Farrel, A., Drake, J., Rokui, R., Homma, S., Makhijani,
              K., Contreras, L. M., and J. Tantsura, "A Framework for
              IETF Network Slices", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices-21, 15 June 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-teas-
              ietf-network-slices-21>.

   [I-D.ietf-teas-nrp-scalability]
              Dong, J., Li, Z., Gong, L., Yang, G., Guichard, J.,
              Mishra, G. S., Qin, F., Saad, T., and V. P. Beeram,
              "Scalability Considerations for Network Resource
              Partition", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              teas-nrp-scalability-02, 2 June 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-teas-
              nrp-scalability-02>.

Authors' Addresses

   Chongfeng Xie
   China Telecom
   China Telecom Beijing Information Science & Technology, Beiqijia

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   Beijing
   102209
   China
   Email: xiechf@chinatelecom.cn

   Chenhao Ma
   China Telecom
   China Telecom Beijing Information Science & Technology, Beiqijia
   Beijing
   102209
   China
   Email: machh@chinatelecom.cn

   Jie Dong
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Campus, No. 156 Beiqing Road
   Beijing
   100095
   China
   Email: jie.dong@huawei.com

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

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