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Problem Statement and Goals for Active-Active Connection at the Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) Edge
draft-ietf-trill-active-active-connection-prob-07

The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7379.
Authors Yizhou Li , Hao Weiguo , Radia Perlman , Jon Hudson , Hongjun Zhai
Last updated 2015-10-14 (Latest revision 2014-08-24)
Replaces draft-yizhou-trill-active-active-connection-prob
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Intended RFC status Informational
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2014-05-14
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7379 (Informational)
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Consensus boilerplate Yes
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Ted Lemon
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IANA IANA review state Version Changed - Review Needed
IANA action state No IANA Actions
draft-ietf-trill-active-active-connection-prob-07
TRILL Working Group                                            Yizhou Li
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                Weiguo Hao
Intended Status: Informational                       Huawei Technologies
                                                           Radia Perlman
                                                                     EMC
                                                              Jon Hudson
                                                                 Brocade
                                                            Hongjun Zhai
                                                                     ZTE
Expires: Feb 26, 2015                                    August 25, 2014

        Problem Statement and Goals for Active-Active TRILL Edge
           draft-ietf-trill-active-active-connection-prob-07

Abstract

   The IETF TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links)
   protocol provides support for flow level multi-pathing with rapid
   failover for both unicast and multi-destination traffic in networks
   with arbitrary topology. Active-active at the TRILL edge is the
   extension of these characteristics to end stations that are multiply
   connected to a TRILL campus. This informational document discusses
   the high level problems and goals when providing active-active
   connection at the TRILL edge.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
   other groups may also distribute working documents as
   Internet-Drafts.

   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."

   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html

   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
 

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Copyright and License Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 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.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
     1.1 Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2. Target Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     2.1 LAALP and Edge Group Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3. Problems in Active-Active at the TRILL Edge . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.1 Frame Duplications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.2 Loop Back  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.3 Address Flip-Flop  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     3.4 Unsynchronized Information Among Member RBridges . . . . . .  8
   4. High Level Requirements and Goals for Solutions . . . . . . . .  8
   5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   8. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     8.1  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     8.2  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

 

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1. Introduction

   The IETF TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links)
   [RFC6325] protocol provides loop free and per hop based multipath
   data forwarding with minimum configuration. TRILL uses [IS-IS]
   [RFC6165] [RFC7176] as its control plane routing protocol and defines
   a TRILL specific header for user data. In a TRILL campus,
   communications between TRILL switches can

   (1) use multiple parallel links and/or paths,

   (2) spread load over different links and/or paths at a fine grained
   flow level through equal cost multipathing of unicast traffic and
   multiple distribution trees for multi-destination traffic, and

   (3) rapidly re-configure to accommodate link or node failures or
   additions.

   "Active-active" is the extension, to the extent practical, of similar
   load spreading and robustness to the connections between end stations
   and the TRILL campus. Such end stations may have multiple ports and
   will be connected, directly or via bridges, to multiple edge TRILL
   switches. It must be possible, except in some failure conditions, to
   spread end station traffic load at the granularity of flows across
   links to such multiple edge TRILL switches and rapidly re-configure
   to accommodate topology changes.

1.1 Terminology

   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].

   The acronyms and terminology in [RFC6325] are used herein with the
   following additions:

   CE - Customer Equipment (end station or bridge).

   Data Label - VLAN or FGL (Fine Grained Label [RFC7172]).

   LAALP - Local Active-Active Link Protocol. Any protocol similar to
   MC-LAG that runs in a distributed fashions on a CE, the links from
   that CE to a set of edge group RBridges, and on those RBridges.

   MC-LAG - Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation. Proprietary extensions to
   IEEE Std 802.1AX-2011 [802.1AX] standard so that the aggregated links
   can, at one end of the aggregation, attach to different switches.
 

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   Edge group - a group of edge RBridges to which at least one CE is
   multiply attached using an LAALP. When multiple CEs attach to the
   exact same set of edge RBridges, those edge RBridges can be
   considered as a single edge group. An RBridge can be in more than one
   edge group.

   RBridge - Routing Bridge - an alternative name for a TRILL switch.

   TRILL - Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links.

   TRILL switch -- a device the implements the TRILL protocol; an
   alternative term for an RBridge.

2. Target Scenario

   This section presents a typical scenario of active-active connections
   to a TRILL campus via multiple edge RBridges where the current TRILL
   appointed forwarder mechanism does not work as expected. 

   The TRILL appointed forwarder mechanism [RFC6439] can handle fail
   over (active-standby), provides loop avoidance and, with
   administrative configuration, provides load spreading based on VLAN.
   One and only one appointed RBridge can ingress/egress native frames
   into/from the TRILL campus for a given VLAN among all edge RBridges
   connecting a legacy network to the TRILL campus. This is true whether
   the legacy network is a simple point-to-point link or a complex
   bridged LAN or anything in between. By carefully selecting different
   RBridges as appointed forwarder for different sets of VLANs, load
   spreading over different edge RBidges across different Data Labels
   can be achieved.

   The appointed forwarder mechanism [RFC6439] requires all of the edge
   group RBridges to exchange TRILL IS-IS Hello packets through their
   access ports. As Figure 1 shows, when multiple access links of
   multiple edge RBridges are connected to a CE by an LAALP, Hello
   messages sent by RB1 via access port to CE1 will not be forwarded to
   RB2 by CE1. RB2 (and other members of LAALP1) will not see that Hello
   from RB1 via the LAALP1. Every member RBridge of LAALP1 thinks of
   itself as appointed forwarder on an LAALP1 link for all VLANs and
   will ingress/egress frames. Hence the appointed forwarder mechanism
   cannot provide active-active or even active-standby service across
   the edge group in such a scenario.

 

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                  ----------------------
                 |                      |
                 |   TRILL Campus       |
                 |                      |
                  ----------------------
                      |       |    |
                 -----        |     --------
                |             |             |
            +------+      +------+      +------+
            |      |      |      |      |      |
            |(RB1) |      |(RB2) |      | (RBk)|
            +------+      +------+      +------+
              |..|          |..|          |..|
              |  +----+     |  |          |  |
              |   +---|-----|--|----------+  |
              | +-|---|-----+  +-----------+ |
              | | |   +------------------+ | |       
   LAALP1--->(| | |)                    (| | |) <---LAALPn
            +-------+    .  .  .       +-------+
            | CE1   |                  | CEn   |
            |       |                  |       |
            +-------+                  +-------+

        Figure 1 Active-Active connection to TRILL edge RBridges        

   Active-Active connection is useful when we want to achieve the
   following two goals:

   - Flow rather than VLAN based load balancing is desired. 

   - More rapid failure recovery is desired. The current appointed
   forwarder mechanism relies on the TRILL Hello timer expiration to
   detect the unreachability of another edge RBridge connecting to the
   same local link. Then re-appointing the forwarder for specific VLANs
   may be required. Such procedures take time on the scale of seconds
   although this can be improved with TRILL use of BFD [RFC7175].
   Active-Active connection usually has a faster built-in mechanism for
   member node and/or link failure detection. Faster detection of
   failures minimizes the frame loss and recovery time.

   Today LAALP is usually a proprietary facility whose implementation
   varies by vendor. So, to be sure the LAALP operations successfully
   across a group of edge RBridges, those edge RBridges will almost
   always have to be from the same vendor. In the case where the LAALP
   is an MC-LAG, the CE normally implements standard [802.1AX] logic so
   proprietary elements would only be at the edge group end. There is
   also a revision of [802.1AX] underway (802.1X-REV) to remove the
 

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   restriction in [802.1AX] that there be one box at each end of the
   aggregation. So it is possible that in the future an LAALP could be
   implemented through such a revised [802.1AX] with standards
   conformant logic at both the CE and edge group ends. In order to have
   a common understanding of active-active connection scenarios, the
   assumptions in Section 2.1 are made about the characteristics of the
   LAALP and edge group of RBridges.

2.1 LAALP and Edge Group Characteristics

   For a CE connecting to multiple edge RBridges via an LAALP (active-
   active connection), the following characteristics apply:

   a) The LAALP will deliver a frame from an endnode to TRILL at exactly
   one edge group RBridge.
   b) The LAALP will never forward frames it receives from one up-link
   to another.
   c) The LAALP will attempt to send all frames for a given flow on the
   same uplink. To do this, it has some unknown rule for which frames
   get sent to which  uplinks (typically based on a simple hash function
   of Layer 2 through 4 header fields).
   d) Frames are accepted from any of the uplinks and passed down to
   endnodes (if any exist).
   e) The LAALP cannot be assumed to send useful control information to
   the up-link such as "this is the set of other RBridges to which this
   CE is attached", or "these are all the MAC addresses attached".

   For an edge group of RBridges to which a CE is multiply attached with
   an LAALP:

   a) Any two RBridges in the edge group are reachable from each other
   via the TRILL campus.
   b) Each RBridge in the edge group knows an ID for each LAALP instance
   multiply attached to that group.  The ID will be consistent across
   the edge group and globally unique across the TRILL campus.  For
   example, if CE1 attaches to RB1, RB2, ... RBn using an LAALP, then
   each of RBs will know, for the port to CE1, that it is has some label
   such as "LAALP1"
   c) Each RB in the edge group can be configured with the set of
   acceptable VLANs for the ports to any CE. The acceptable VLANs
   configured for those ports should include all the VLANs the CE has
   joined and be consistent for all the member RBridges of the edge
   group.
   d) When a RBridge fails, all the other RBridges having formed any
   LAALP instance with it know the information in a timely fashion.
   e) When a down-link of an edge group RBridge to an LAALP instance
   fails, that RBridge and all the other RBridges participating in the
 

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   LAALP instance including that down-link know of the failure in a
   timely fashion.
   f) The RBridges in the edge group have some mechanism to exchange
   information with each other, including the set of CEs they are
   connecting to or the IDs of the LAALP instances their down-links are
   part of. 

   Other than the applicable characteristics above, the internals of an
   LAALP are out of scope for TRILL.  

3. Problems in Active-Active at the TRILL Edge

   This section presents the problems that need to be addressed in
   active-active connection scenarios. The topology in Figure 1 is used
   in the following sub-sections as the example scenario for
   illustration purposes.

3.1 Frame Duplications

   When a remote RBridge ingresses a multi-destination TRILL Data packet
   in VLAN x, all edge group RBridges of LAALP1 will receive the frame
   if any local CE1 joins VLAN x. As each of them thinks it is the
   appointed forwarder for VLAN x, without changes made for active-
   active connection support, they would all forward the frame to CE1.
   The bad consequence is that CE1 receives multiple copies of that
   multi-destination frame from the remote end host source. 

   Frame duplication may also occur when an ingress RBridge is non-
   remote, say ingress and egress are two RBridges belonging to the same
   edge group. Assume LAALP m connects to an edge group g and the edge
   group g consists of RB1, RB2 and RB3. The multi-destination frames
   ingressed from a port not connected to LAALP m by RB1 can be locally
   replicated to other ports on RB1 and also TRILL encapsulated and
   forwarded to RB2 and RB3. CE1 will receive duplicate copies from RB1,
   RB2 and RB3. 

   Note that frame duplication is only a problem in multi-destination
   frame forwarding. Unicast forwarding does not have this issue as
   there is only ever one copy of the packet.

3.2 Loop Back

   As shown in Figure 1, CE1 may send a native multi-destination frame
   to the TRILL campus via a member of the LAALP1 edge group (say RB1).
   This frame will be TRILL encapsulated and then forwarded through the
   campus to the multi-destination receivers. Other members (say RB2) of
   the same LAALP edge group will receive this multicast packet as well.
   In this case, without changes made for active-active connection
 

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   support, RB2 will decapsulate the frame and egress it. The frame
   loops back to CE1.  

3.3 Address Flip-Flop

   Consider RB1 and RB2 using their own nickname as ingress nickname for
   data into a TRILL campus. As shown by Figure 1, CE1 may send a data
   frame with the same VLAN and source MAC address to any member of the
   edge group LAALP1. If some egress RBridge receives TRILL data packets
   from different ingress RBridges but with same source Data Label and
   MAC address, it learns different Data Label and MAC to nickname
   address correspondences when decapsulating the data frames. Address
   correspondence may keep flip-flopping among nicknames of the member
   RBridges of the LAALP for the same Data Label and MAC address.
   Existing hardware does not support data plane learning of multiple
   nicknames for the same MAC address and data label -- when data plane
   learning indicates attachment of the MAC to a new nickname, it
   overwrites the old attachment nickname.

   Implementers have stated that most current TRILL switch hardware,
   when doing data plane learning, behaves badly under these
   circumstances and, for example, interpret address flip-flopping as a
   severe network problem. It may also cause the returning traffic to go
   through different paths to reach the destination resulting in
   persistent re-ordering of the frames.

3.4 Unsynchronized Information Among Member RBridges

   A local RBridge, say RB1 connected to LAALP1, may have learned a Data
   Label and MAC to nickname correspondence for a remote host h1 when h1
   sends a packet to CE1. The returning traffic from CE1 may go to any
   other member RBridge of LAALP1, for example RB2. RB2 may not have
   h1's Data Label and MAC to nickname correspondence stored. Therefore
   it has to do the flooding for unknown unicast [RFC6325]. Such
   flooding is unnecessary since the returning traffic is almost always
   expected and RB1 had learned the address correspondence. It is
   desirable to avoid flooding; it imposes a greater burden on the
   network than known destination unicast traffic because the flooded
   traffic is sent over more links.

   Synchronization of the Data Label and MAC to nickname correspondence
   information among member RBridges will reduce such unnecessary
   flooding.

4. High Level Requirements and Goals for Solutions

 

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   The problems identified in section 3 should be solved in any solution
   for active-active connection to edge RBridges. The following high-
   level requirements and goals should be met.

   Data plane:

   1) All up-links of CE MUST be active: the LAALP is free to choose any
   up-link on which to send packets and the CE is able to receive
   packets from any up-link of an edge group.
   2) Looping back and frame duplication MUST be prevented. 
   3) Learning of Data Label and MAC to nickname correspondence by a
   remote RBridge MUST NOT flip-flop between the local multiply attached
   edge RBridges.
   4) Packets for a flow SHOULD stay in order.
   5) The Reverse Path Forwarding Check MUST work properly as per
   [RFC6325].
   6) Single up-link failure on CE to an edge group MUST NOT cause
   persistent packet delivery failure between TRILL campus and CE.

   Control plane:

   1) No requirement for new information to be passed between edge
   RBridges and CE or between edge RBridges and endnodes.
   2) If there is any TRILL specific information required to be
   exchanged between RBridges in an edge group, for example data labels
   and MAC addresses binding to nicknames, a solution MUST specify the
   mechanism to perform such exchange unless this is handled internal to
   the LAALP.
   3) RBridges SHOULD be able to discover other members in the same edge
   group by exchanging their LAALP attachment information.

   Configuration, incremental deployment, and others:

   1) Solution SHOULD require minimal configuration.
   2) Solution SHOULD automatically detect misconfiguration of edge
   RBridge group.
   3) Solution SHOULD support incremental deployment, that is, not
   require campus wide upgrading for all RBridges, only changes to the
   edge group RBridges.
   4) Solution SHOULD be able to support from 2 up to at least 4 active-
   active up-links on a multiply attached CE.
   5) Solution SHOULD NOT assume there is a dedicated physical link
   between any two of the edge RBridges in an edge group.

5. Security Considerations

   As an informational overview, this draft does not introduce any extra
   security risks. Security risks introduced by any particular LAALP or
 

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   other elements of solutions to the problems presented here will be
   discussed in the separate document(s) describing such LAALP or
   solutions.

   End station links in TRILL are Ethernet links and consideration
   should be given to securing them with [802.1AE] link security for the
   protection of end station data and link level control messages
   including any LAALP control messages.

   For general TRILL Security Considerations, see [RFC6325].

6. IANA Considerations

   No IANA action is required. RFC Editor: please delete this section
   before publication.

7. Acknowledgments

   Special acknowledgments to Donald Eastlake, Adrian Farrel and Mingui
   Zhang for their valuable comments.

8. References

8.1  Normative References

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

   [IS-IS]  ISO/IEC 10589:2002, Second Edition, "Intermediate System to
              Intermediate System Intra-Domain Routing Exchange Protocol
              for use in Conjunction with the Protocol for Providing the
              Connectionless-mode Network Service (ISO 8473)", 2002.

   [RFC6165] Banerjee, A. and D. Ward, "Extensions to IS-IS for Layer-2
              Systems", RFC 6165, April 2011.

   [RFC6325] Perlman, R., Eastlake 3rd, D., Dutt, D., Gai, S., and A.
              Ghanwani, "Routing Bridges (RBridges): Base Protocol
              Specification", RFC 6325, July 2011

   [RFC6439] Perlman, R., Eastlake, D., Li, Y., Banerjee, A., and F. Hu,
              "Routing Bridges (RBridges): Appointed Forwarders", RFC
              6439, November 2011 

   [RFC7172] Eastlake, D., M. Zhang, P. Agarwal, R. Perlman, D. Dutt,
              "Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL):
              Fine-Grained Labeling", RFC7172, May 2014.
 

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   [RFC7176] Eastlake 3rd, D., Senevirathne, T., Ghanwani, A., Dutt, D.,
              and A. Banerjee, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots of
              Links (TRILL) Use of IS-IS", RFC 7176, May 2014.

8.2  Informative References

   [RFC7175] Manral, V., D. Eastlake, D. Ward, A. Banerjee, "Transparent
              Interconnetion of Lots of Links (TRILL): Bidirectional
              Forwarding Detection (BFD) Support", RFC7175, May 2014.

   [802.1AX] IEEE, "Link Aggregration", 802.1AX-2008, 3 November 2008.

   [802.1Q] IEEE, "Media Access Control (MAC) Bridges and Virtual
              Bridged Local Area Networks", IEEE Std 802.1Q-2011, 31
              August 2011.

   [802.1AE] IEEE, "Media Access Control (MAC) Security", IEEE Std
              802.1AE-2006, 18 August 2006.

Authors' Addresses

   Yizhou Li
   Huawei Technologies
   101 Software Avenue,
   Nanjing 210012
   China

   Phone: +86-25-56625409
   EMail: liyizhou@huawei.com

   Weiguo Hao
   Huawei Technologies
   101 Software Avenue,
   Nanjing 210012
   China

   Phone: +86-25-56623144
   EMail: haoweiguo@huawei.com

   Radia Perlman
   EMC
   2010 256th Avenue NE, #200
   Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
 

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   Email: Radia@alum.mit.edu

   Jon Hudson
   Brocade
   130 Holger Way
   San Jose, CA 95134 USA

   Phone: +1-408-333-4062
   jon.hudson@gmail.com

   Hongjun Zhai
   ZTE
   68 Zijinghua Road, Yuhuatai District
   Nanjing, Jiangsu  210012
   China

   Phone: +86 25 52877345
   Email: zhai.hongjun@zte.com.cn

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