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MPLS On-Path Telemetry Network Action Flag for OAM
draft-ietf-mpls-on-path-telemetry-flag-02

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Active".
Authors Haoyu Song , Giuseppe Fioccola , Rakesh Gandhi
Last updated 2026-08-04 (Latest revision 2026-07-06)
Replaces draft-song-mpls-on-path-telemetry-flag
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draft-ietf-mpls-on-path-telemetry-flag-02
MPLS                                                             H. Song
Internet-Draft                                    Futurewei Technologies
Intended status: Standards Track                             G. Fioccola
Expires: 5 February 2027                             Huawei Technologies
                                                               R. Gandhi
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                           4 August 2026

           MPLS On-Path Telemetry Network Action Flag for OAM
               draft-ietf-mpls-on-path-telemetry-flag-02

Abstract

   This document describes postcard-based on-path telemetry with packet
   marking (PBT-M) using an MPLS Network Actions (MNA) flag to support
   Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) in MPLS networks.
   The scheme uses a single flag bit carried in a Flag-Based Network
   Action Indicator (Opcode 1) of the MNA Sub-Stack as defined in RFC
   9994.  In addition to addressing the protocol requirements for
   applying PBT-M, this document provides comprehensive operational,
   manageability, and security considerations.

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 5 February 2027.

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
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  PBT-M: Direct Export for On-path Telemetry based on Packet
           Marking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  New Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.1.  Packet Marking  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.2.  Flow Path Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.3.  Packet Identity for Export Data Correlation . . . . . . .   8
     4.4.  Load Control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Implementation and Operational Recommendations  . . . . . . .   9
     5.1.  Operational and Manageability Considerations  . . . . . .   9
     5.2.  Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.3.  Data Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.4.  Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   8.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14

1.  Introduction

   To gain detailed data plane visibility to support effective network
   OAM, it is essential to be able to examine the trace of user packets
   along their forwarding paths.  Such on-path flow data reflect the
   state and status of each user packet's real-time experience and
   provide valuable information for network monitoring, measurement, and
   diagnosis.

   The telemetry data include but not limited to the detailed forwarding
   path, the timestamp/latency at each network node, and, in case of
   packet drop, the drop location as well as the reason.  The emerging
   programmable data plane devices allow user-defined data collection or
   conditional data collection based on trigger events.  Such on-path
   flow data are from and about the live user traffic, which complements
   the data acquired through other passive and active OAM mechanisms
   such as IPFIX [RFC7011] and ICMP [RFC4560].

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   On-path telemetry was developed to cater to the need of collecting
   on-path flow data.  There are two basic modes for on-path telemetry:
   the passport mode (e.g., IOAM trace option [RFC9197]) and the
   postcard mode (e.g., IOAM direct export option (DEX) [RFC9326]).

   In MPLS networks, MPLS Network Action (MNA) [RFC9789] extends the
   MPLS label stack by supporting extra in-stack network actions and
   ancillary data encoded in stack, the in-stack MNA Sub-Stack is
   described in [RFC9994].  MNA also extends the MPLS payload by
   supporting extra post-stack network actions and ancillary data
   encoded post-stack, the post-stack MNA header is described in
   [I-D.ietf-mpls-mna-ps-hdr].

   This document describes the method to apply a new variation of the
   postcard mode on-path telemetry, PBT-M, to MPLS networks using an MNA
   flag only.  PBT-M does not require a telemetry instruction header but
   a single trigger bit in MNA flags.  A similar mechanism has been
   adopted for SRv6 OAM [RFC9259], which uses the O-bit in SRH flags as
   the marking bit to trigger on-path telemetry.  The key benefits of
   PBT-M are its low overhead and high flexibility.  However, extracting
   telemetry data in this manner introduces unique protocol
   requirements, alongside critical operational and manageability
   challenges that must be addressed for real-world deployment.  This
   document discusses these requirements and provides comprehensive
   solutions for MPLS networks.  Crucially, it outlines the operational
   guidelines necessary for safe deployment, including concrete
   mechanisms for load control, DoS mitigation, configuration
   scalability, and managing telemetry across partially upgraded
   forwarding paths.

1.1.  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.

2.  PBT-M: Direct Export for On-path Telemetry based on Packet Marking

   As the name suggests, PBT-M only needs a marking-bit in the existing
   headers of user packets to trigger the telemetry data collection and
   export.  The sketch of PBT-M is as follows.  If on-path data need to
   be collected, the user packet is marked at the path head node.  At
   each PBT-M-aware node, if the mark is detected and data collection is
   enabled, a postcard packet (i.e., the dedicated OAM packet triggered
   by a marked user packet) is generated and sent to a collector.  The
   postcard contains the data requested by the management plane.  The

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   requested data are configured by the management plane.  Once the
   collector receives all the postcards for a single user packet, it can
   infer the packet's forwarding path and analyze the data set.  The
   path end node is configured to un-mark the packets to its original
   format if necessary.

   The overall architecture of PBT-M is depicted in Figure 1.

                         +------------+        +-----------+
                         | Network    |        | Telemetry |
                         | Management |(-------| Data      |
                         |            |        | Collector |
                         +-----:------+        +-----------+
                               :                     ^
                               :configurations       |postcards
                               :                     |(OAM pkts)
                ...............:.....................|........
                :             :               :      |       :
                :   +---------:---+-----------:---+--+-------:---+
                :   |         :   |           :   |          :   |
                V   |         V   |           V   |          V   |
             +------+-+     +-----+--+     +------+-+     +------+-+
   usr pkts  | Head   |     | Path   |     | Path   |     | End    |
        ====>| Node   |====>| Node   |====>| Node   |====>| Node   |===>
             |        |     | A      |     | B      |     |        |
             +--------+     +--------+     +--------+     +--------+
           mark usr pkts  gen postcards  gen postcards  gen postcards
           gen postcards                                unmark usr pkts

                      Figure 1: Architecture of PBT-M

   The advantages of PBT-M are summarized as follows.

   *  1: PBT-M avoids augmenting user packets with new headers and the
      signaling for telemetry data collection remains in the data plane.

   *  2: PBT-M is extensible for collecting arbitrary new data to
      support possible future use cases.  The data set to be collected
      can be configured through the management plane or control plane.

   *  3: PBT-M can avoid interfering with the normal forwarding.  The
      collected data are free to be transported independently through
      in-band or out-of-band channels.  The data collecting, processing,
      assembly, encapsulation, and transport are, therefore, decoupled
      from the forwarding of the corresponding user packets and can be
      performed in data-plane slow-path if necessary.

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   *  4: For PBT-M, the types of data collected from each node can vary
      depending on application requirements and node capability.

   *  5: PBT-M makes it easy to secure the collected data without
      exposing it to unnecessary entities.  For example, both the
      configuration and the telemetry data can be encrypted and/or
      authenticated before being transported, so passive eavesdropping
      and a man-in-the-middle attack can both be deterred.

   *  6: Even if a user packet under inspection is dropped at some node
      in the network, the postcards collected from the preceding nodes
      are still valid and can be used to diagnose the packet drop
      location and reason.

   *  7: Raw data can be processed or aggregated in data plane to reduce
      the exporting traffic load.

3.  New Requirements

   Although PBT-M has some unique features, it also introduces a few new
   requirements.

   *  Req. 1 (Packet Marking Bit): A user packet needs to be marked to
      trigger the path-associated data collection.  Since PBT-M aims to
      avoid the need to augment user packets with new headers, it needs
      to reserve or reuse a single bit from the existing header fields.

   *  Req. 2 (Configuration): Since the packet header will not carry
      telemetry instructions anymore, the data plane devices need to be
      configured to know what data to collect.  However, in general, the
      forwarding path of a flow packet (due to ECMP or dynamic routing)
      is unknown beforehand.  If the per-flow customized data collection
      is required, configuring the data set for each flow at all data
      plane devices might be expensive in terms of configuration load
      and data plane resources.

   *  Req. 3 (Data Correlation): Due to the variable transport latency,
      the dedicated postcard packets for a single packet may arrive at
      the collector out of order or be dropped in networks for some
      reason.  In order to infer the packet forwarding path, the
      collector needs some information from the postcard packets to
      identify the user packet affiliation and the order of path node
      traversal.

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   *  Req. 4 (Overhead and Security): Since each postcard packet has its
      header, the overall network bandwidth overhead of PBT-M can be
      high.  A large number of postcards could add processing pressure
      on data collecting servers.  That can be used as an attack vector
      for DoS.

4.  Design Considerations

   To address the above requirements, we propose several design details
   for applying PBT-M in MPLS networks.

4.1.  Packet Marking

   To trigger the path-associated data collection, usually, a single bit
   from some header field is sufficient.  The proposed action encoding
   is shown in Figure 2 using the MNA Sub-Stack formats defined in
   [RFC9994].

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |         MNA-Label = bSPL (4)          | TC  |S|      TTL      | (A)
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |  Opcode=1   |         Data=0          |R|IHS|S|NASL=1 |U|NAL=1| (B)
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |1|                  Data=0                   |S|P|      0      | (D)
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

                      Figure 2: Action Encoding

   In the figure, three LSE formats defined in [RFC9994] are used to
   form the Network Action Sub-Stack (NAS).  Format A (labeled A) is the
   MNA Sub-Stack Indicator carrying the MNA bSPL (value 4).  Format B
   (labeled B) is the Initial Opcode LSE; it uses the Flag-Based Network
   Action Indicators without Ancillary Data opcode (Opcode 1,
   Section 6.2 of [RFC9994]), sets the scope (IHS) for the whole NAS,
   and points (NAL=1) to one following Format D LSE.  Format D (labeled
   D) carries the P-flag.  No Format C LSE is needed, since a Format D
   LSE only requires a preceding Format A and Format B LSE (Section 4.4
   of [RFC9994]).

   The PBT-M indicator (P-flag) is carried as a single flag in the
   Format D data field.  If the bit is set to '1', a node is triggered
   to collect and export the telemetry data as configured by the control
   plane.

   Following Section 10 of [RFC9994], the PBT-M network action is
   defined as follows:

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   *  Format: a Format D LSE following a Format A and a Format B LSE,
      where the Format B LSE uses Opcode 1.  No Format C LSE and no
      Ancillary Data are used.

   *  Scope: Hop-by-Hop (IHS = 01), so that every on-path PBT-M-aware
      node processes the flag.  The egress node is included in the HbH
      scope, and the penultimate node MUST NOT remove the NAS.

   *  Ancillary Data: None.  The action is encoded as a single flag
      under Opcode 1.

   *  Processing: A PBT-M-aware node with data collection enabled
      generates and exports a postcard when the P-flag is set.  A node
      that does not support this action skips it (U = 0).

   *  Interactions: PBT-M does not modify other network actions; it only
      triggers telemetry export.

   Because PBT-M marks only a subset of the packets in a flow, the value
   of the P-flag differs among packets of the same flow.  Per
   Section 5.2 of [RFC9994], such mutable data MUST NOT be placed in the
   most significant 20 bits (the label value, which is always used for
   ECMP), nor in the most significant 23 bits when the TC field is also
   used for ECMP hashing, of a Format B, C, or D LSE; otherwise it may
   perturb ECMP load-balancing and cause out-of-order delivery within a
   flow.  The P-flag is therefore placed at Bit Position 42 as numbered
   in Section 13.2.1 of [RFC9994], which falls in the trailing data bits
   of the Format D LSE (word bits 24-31).  This position lies outside
   both the most significant 20 bits and the most significant 23 bits,
   so the marking bit does not affect ECMP load-balancing whether or not
   the TC field is used in the hash.

4.2.  Flow Path Discovery

   In case the path that a flow traverses is unknown in advance, all
   PBT-M-aware nodes should be configured to react to the marked packets
   by exporting some basic data, such as node ID and TTL before a data
   set template for that flow is configured.  This way, the management
   plane can learn the flow path dynamically.

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   If the management plane wants to collect on-path data for some flow,
   it configures the head node with a probability or time interval for
   the flow packet marking.  When the first marked packet is forwarded
   in the network, the PBT-M-aware nodes will export the basic data set
   to the collector.  Hence, the flow path is identified.  If additional
   data types need to be collected, the management plane can further
   configure the data set's template to the target nodes on the flow's
   path.  The PBT-M-aware nodes collect and export data accordingly if
   the packet is marked and a data set template is present.

   To mitigate configuration churn caused by frequent path shifts (e.g.,
   due to dynamic routing or ECMP), controllers SHOULD employ scalable
   data collection configurations where applicable, and implement a
   graceful aging mechanism for stale configurations rather than
   explicitly revoking configurations on every path change.  When a path
   changes, the new path can be quickly learned by the collector,
   directing the management plane to update nodes on the new path.

4.3.  Packet Identity for Export Data Correlation

   The collector needs to correlate all the postcard packets for a
   single user packet.  Once this is done, the TTL (or the timestamp, if
   the network time is synchronized) can be used to infer the flow
   forwarding path.  The key issue here is to correlate all the
   postcards for the same user packet.

   The first possible approach includes the flow ID in the OAM packets.
   In case of MPLS, the MPLS label stack can serve as the flow ID.  If
   the packet marking interval is large enough, the flow ID is enough to
   identify a user packet.  As a result, it can be assumed that all the
   exported postcard packets for the same flow during a short time
   interval belong to the same user packet.

   Alternatively, if the network is synchronized, then the flow ID plus
   the timestamp at each node can also infer the postcard affiliation.
   However, some errors may occur under some circumstances.  For
   example, two consecutive user packets from the same flow are marked,
   but one exported postcard from a node is lost.  It is difficult for
   the collector to decide to which user packet the remaining postcard
   is related.  In many cases, such a rare error has no catastrophic
   consequence.  Therefore it is tolerable.

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4.4.  Load Control

   PBT-M should not be applied to all the packets all the time.  It is
   better used in an interactive environment where the network telemetry
   applications dynamically decide which subset of traffic is under
   scrutiny.  To bound the DoS vector identified in Req. 4, a PBT-
   M-aware node MUST enforce two independent rate limits, and it MUST
   ship with a conservative default posture that is enabled without
   operator action and that operators MAY tune to their platform and
   deployment:

   *  Marking rate (at the head node): the fraction of a flow's packets
      that are marked MUST be bounded.  The RECOMMENDED default marks no
      more than 1 in 1000 packets (0.1%) of any single flow, which keeps
      the added postcard traffic within roughly 0.1% of the monitored
      flow rate.

   *  Postcard generation rate (at every PBT-M-aware node): the number
      of postcards a node generates MUST be capped, e.g., by a token
      bucket.  The RECOMMENDED default is an average of 1000 postcards
      per second per node with a burst of 2000, above which the trigger
      is skipped and the drop is counted (see the counters in
      Section 5.1) rather than queued.  These specific values are
      starting points intended for calibration by the WG and by
      operators against node forwarding capacity and collector ingest
      capacity; the normative requirement is the presence of an enabled-
      by-default, configurable cap, not the exact numbers.

   Marked packets in excess of these limits are forwarded normally but
   do not trigger a postcard.  The postcard packets can be distributed
   to different collectors to balance the processing load.

   Because PBT-M sends telemetry data by dedicated postcard packets, it
   allows data aggregation and compression.  Each node can process the
   generated raw data according to the configured local data-export
   policies.  Such policies may specify how raw data is used to
   calculate performance metrics, e.g., max, min, mean, percentile, etc.

5.  Implementation and Operational Recommendations

5.1.  Operational and Manageability Considerations

   Following the baseline set by [RFC5706], [RFC9994], and
   [I-D.ietf-mpls-mna-ps-hdr], PBT-M implementations MUST support the
   following operational mechanisms:

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   *  Counters: Nodes MUST maintain counters for marked user packets,
      triggered postcards, dropped postcards, and malformed MNA
      instructions.

   *  Action Tracking: Success and failure of postcard generation MUST
      be tracked per action.

   *  Rate-limited Alarms: Nodes SHOULD generate rate-limited alarms
      when postcard dropping exceeds a configured threshold or when
      anomalous PBT-M flag rates are detected.

   *  Partial Path Support: In deployments where not all nodes are PBT-
      M-aware, the collector will receive an incomplete postcard set.
      Consistent with the capable/incapable node interaction described
      in Section 12.3 of [RFC9994], a non-PBT-M-aware node leaves the
      U-bit unset and silently forwards the packet without generating a
      postcard.  To keep the resulting gaps interpretable, operators and
      analytic systems SHOULD use TTL gaps or IGP topology data to
      distinguish a PBT-M-aware hop that is idle (aware, but exported no
      data) from a non-PBT-M-aware hop that cannot respond to the
      trigger at all.

5.2.  Configuration

   Access lists with an optional sampler, [RFC5476], should be
   configured and attached at the ingress of the PBT-M encapsulation
   node to select the intended flows for PBT-M.

   Based on the requirements and node capability, the flow data could be
   exported at each transit node and at the end edge node with IPFIX
   [RFC7011].

5.3.  Data Export

   The data decomposition can be achieved on the PBT-M-aware node
   exporting the data or on the IPFIX data collection.
   [I-D.spiegel-ippm-ioam-rawexport] describes how data is being
   exported when decomposed at IPFIX data collection.  When being
   decomposed on the PBT-M-aware node the data can be aggregated
   according to section 5 of [RFC7015].

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5.4.  Use Cases

   In MPLS networks, the Maximum Label Depth (MLD) that a node can push
   or read bounds the MNA size and, in turn, the OAM capability.  For
   SR-MPLS, the Maximum SID Depth (MSD) and the resulting PMTU of an SR
   Policy similarly bound the number of segments a controller can
   instantiate on a path.  PBT-M is well suited to these constraints
   because its cost is fixed and does not scale with either the path
   length or the amount of telemetry collected.

   Specifically, PBT-M adds a single MNA Sub-Stack of three LSEs (Format
   A, Format B, and Format D; see Figure 2), a fixed 12 octets, to a
   marked packet.  This overhead is constant regardless of how many hops
   the packet traverses and regardless of how many or how large the
   telemetry parameters are, because the telemetry data itself is
   carried out-of-band in postcards rather than in-situ in the packet.
   By contrast, in-stack passport-mode telemetry adds per-node data at
   every hop, so its label-stack cost grows with both the path length
   and the size of the collected data set.

   The measurable consequences for an operator are: (1) PBT-M consumes a
   constant three label positions of the MLD/MSD budget, so enabling
   telemetry on an N-segment SR-TE path reduces the number of segments
   that fit within a given MSD by at most three, independent of N; and
   (2) PBT-M adds a fixed 12 octets at the ingress and nothing further
   along the path, so it has no per-hop PMTU impact, whereas in-stack
   telemetry can grow the packet by tens to hundreds of octets over a
   path and risk exceeding the PMTU.  Relative to IOAM DEX [RFC9326],
   which also relies on a marking trigger, PBT-M contributes the MNA
   flag encoding and the flow path discovery mechanism of Section 4.2.
   Note that the overhead incurred by PBT-M can also be shared with
   other MNAs so its cost can be further amortized.

6.  Security Considerations

   Only the ingress node is allowed to set these flag bits.  The other
   on-path nodes can only react to the bit values.  The tampering of
   these flag-based actions would result in DoS attack or unreliable
   measurements.  Therefore, security measures MUST be taken to ensure
   the proper functioning of these actions.  Specifically, ingress
   filtering and the default rate-limiting posture MUST be applied to
   prevent DoS vectors as described in Section 4.4.  The security
   considerations of the MNA Sub-Stack in Section 11 of [RFC9994] also
   apply.

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7.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests IANA to allocate one bit position (TBA1,
   suggested value 42) for the PBT-M network action, with the
   description "PBT-M (Postcard-Based Telemetry with Packet Marking)",
   from the "Network Action Flags Without Ancillary Data" registry in
   the "MPLS Network Actions" registry group created by [RFC9994].  Bit
   Position 42 falls in a Format D LSE (word bits 24-31), outside the
   most significant 23 bits of the LSE, so that the mutable marking bit
   does not affect ECMP load-balancing whether or not the TC field is
   used in the hash (see Section 5.2 of [RFC9994]).  The registration
   procedure for this range (bit positions 20-439) is IETF Review.

8.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Carlos Pignataro for the OPSDIR
   review.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

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

   [RFC7011]  Claise, B., Ed., Trammell, B., Ed., and P. Aitken,
              "Specification of the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
              Protocol for the Exchange of Flow Information", STD 77,
              RFC 7011, DOI 10.17487/RFC7011, September 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7011>.

   [RFC7015]  Trammell, B., Wagner, A., and B. Claise, "Flow Aggregation
              for the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Protocol",
              RFC 7015, DOI 10.17487/RFC7015, September 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7015>.

   [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>.

   [RFC9789]  Andersson, L., Bryant, S., Bocci, M., and T. Li, "MPLS
              Network Actions (MNAs) Framework", RFC 9789,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9789, July 2025,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9789>.

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   [RFC9994]  Rajamanickam, J., Ed., Gandhi, R., Ed., Zigler, R., Song,
              H., and K. Kompella, "MPLS Network Action (MNA) Sub-Stack
              Specification Including In-Stack Network Actions and
              Data", RFC 9994, DOI 10.17487/RFC9994, June 2026,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9994>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-mpls-mna-ps-hdr]
              Rajamanickam, J., Gandhi, R., Zigler, R., Dong, J., and J.
              Bhattacharya, "Post-Stack MPLS Network Action (MNA) Header
              Specification", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              ietf-mpls-mna-ps-hdr-10, 18 July 2026,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-mpls-
              mna-ps-hdr-10>.

   [I-D.spiegel-ippm-ioam-rawexport]
              Spiegel, M., Brockners, F., Bhandari, S., and R.
              Sivakolundu, "In-situ OAM raw data export with IPFIX",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-spiegel-ippm-ioam-
              rawexport-07, 12 February 2024,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-spiegel-ippm-
              ioam-rawexport-07>.

   [RFC4560]  Quittek, J., Ed. and K. White, Ed., "Definitions of
              Managed Objects for Remote Ping, Traceroute, and Lookup
              Operations", RFC 4560, DOI 10.17487/RFC4560, June 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4560>.

   [RFC5476]  Claise, B., Ed., Johnson, A., and J. Quittek, "Packet
              Sampling (PSAMP) Protocol Specifications", RFC 5476,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5476, March 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5476>.

   [RFC5706]  Harrington, D., "Guidelines for Considering Operations and
              Management of New Protocols and Protocol Extensions",
              RFC 5706, DOI 10.17487/RFC5706, November 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5706>.

   [RFC9197]  Brockners, F., Ed., Bhandari, S., Ed., and T. Mizrahi,
              Ed., "Data Fields for In Situ Operations, Administration,
              and Maintenance (IOAM)", RFC 9197, DOI 10.17487/RFC9197,
              May 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9197>.

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   [RFC9259]  Ali, Z., Filsfils, C., Matsushima, S., Voyer, D., and M.
              Chen, "Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM)
              in Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6)", RFC 9259,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9259, June 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9259>.

   [RFC9326]  Song, H., Gafni, B., Brockners, F., Bhandari, S., and T.
              Mizrahi, "In Situ Operations, Administration, and
              Maintenance (IOAM) Direct Exporting", RFC 9326,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9326, November 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9326>.

Authors' Addresses

   Haoyu Song
   Futurewei Technologies
   United States of America
   Email: haoyu.song@futurewei.com

   Giuseppe Fioccola
   Huawei Technologies
   Germany
   Email: giuseppe.fioccola@huawei.com

   Rakesh Gandhi
   Cisco Systems
   Canada
   Email: rgandhi@cisco.com

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