SRv6-based BGP Service Capability
draft-lz-bess-srv6-service-capability-07
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Yao Liu , Zheng Zhang , Eduard Metz , Yisong Liu | ||
| Last updated | 2025-12-09 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
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draft-lz-bess-srv6-service-capability-07
BESS Working Group Y. Liu
Internet-Draft Z. Zheng
Intended status: Experimental ZTE
Expires: 12 June 2026 E. Metz
KPN
Y. Liu
China Mobile
9 December 2025
SRv6-based BGP Service Capability
draft-lz-bess-srv6-service-capability-07
Abstract
RFC9252 specifies that implementations MUST provide a mechanism to
control advertisement of SRv6-based BGP service routes on a per
neighbor and per service basis. This document provides analysis on
the problems that may be encountered if the SRv6-based service routes
are received by the MPLS-only PEs. Some currently used SRv6-based
service routes advertisement controlling methods by configuration or
network planning are also described. And this document proposes an
automatic advertisement controlling method for SRv6-based service
routes by defining a new Capability Code for SRv6-based BGP service
capability.
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
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and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 12 June 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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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
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. the Co-existence Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Possible Problems for MPLS-only PEs receiving SRv6 Service
Routes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. Some Current Methods for SRv6 Route Advertisement
Controlling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. SRv6-based BGP Service Capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction
[RFC9252] defines procedures and messages for SRv6-based services.
When an egress PE is enabled for BGP Services over SRv6 data plane,
it signals one or more SRv6 Service SIDs enclosed in SRv6 Service
TLV(s) within the BGP Prefix-SID Attribute[RFC8669] attached to MP-
BGP NLRIs. In other words, instead of defining new AFI/SAFIs for
SRv6-based service routes, existing AFI/SAFIs of MPLS-based service
routes are re-used for SRv6-based service routes.
As specified in [RFC9252], there're two options to encode SRv6
service SIDs in the route advertisement:
* The first option is to encode the whole SRv6 Service SID in the
SRv6 Service TLV and set the MPLS Label field(s) of the
corresponding NLRI to Implicit NULL.
* The second option, which is referred to as the Transposition
Scheme, is to put the function and/or the argument part of the
SRv6 SID in the MPLS Label field of the NLRI and to encode the
locator part of the SID in the SRv6 Service TLV.
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However, [RFC8669] specifies that unknown TLVs in the BGP Prefix
attribute MUST be ignored and propagated unmodified. If SRv6-based
service routes are received by PEs that are only capable of MPLS-
based services, the PEs may discard SRv6 Services TLV in the BGP
Prefix attribute and process these routes wrongly, which may leads to
service failure and/or abnormal extra traffic flows in the network.
To avoid these problems, [RFC9252] specifies that implementations
MUST provide a mechanism to control advertisement of SRv6-based BGP
service routes on a per neighbor and per service basis.
This document provides analysis on the problems that may be
encountered in the MPLS and SRv6 co-existence scenario if the
SRv6-based service routes are received by the MPLS-only PEs. Some
currently used SRv6-based service routes advertisement controlling
methods by configuration or network planning are also described. And
this document proposes an automatic advertisement controlling method
for SRv6-based service routes by defining a new Capability Code
[RFC5492] for SRv6-based BGP service capability.
2. 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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174]
when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
3. the Co-existence Scenario
In the progress of network upgrading, some of the legacy devices that
only support MPLS/SR-MPLS will coexist with the new devices capable
of SRv6 for a long time.
3.1. Possible Problems for MPLS-only PEs receiving SRv6 Service Routes
+-----+
................|S-RR |..................
: +-----+ :
: :
: :
: :
: :
: +----------------+ :
: | |-------PE2...:
PE1-------| Backbone | :
| |-------PE3...:
+----------------+
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Figure 1: the Co-existence Scenario
As shown in Figure 1, PE1 is a legacy device that only supports MPLS-
based services, PE2 supports both MPLS-based and SRv6-based services,
and PE3 is an SRv6-only device. S-RR is a service route reflector
that supports both MPLS and SRv6. On PE2, a SRv6 service SID sid-1
and a MPLS VPN route label label-1 are assigned for overlay service
1. On PE3, only SRv6-based service is enabled and configured for
overlap service 2.
On PE2,the SRv6 service SID and a MPLS VPN route label for the
service 1 are advertised in separate UPDATE messages. ADD-
PATH[RFC7911] is used to avoid path hiding. S-RR reflects both
SRv6-VPN route and MPLS-VPN route to PE1. Since PE1 only supports
MPLS, it may discard the SRv6 Service TLV(s) in the BGP Prefix
attribute and treat the SRv6-based route as a MPLS-based route for
service 1, then there're two MPLS-based routes for the same service 1
on PE1.
Depending on whether the Transposition Scheme is used, the following
two scenarios are described separately.
* Scenario 1, the Transposition Scheme is used, the function and/or
argument part of sid-1 is encoded in the MPLS Label field of the
NLRI of the SRv6-based service route. Then PE1 may choose the
route which is originally the SRv6-based route and use the label
field in the NLRI of this route as MPLS VPN label for packet
encapsulation.
Unless the allocation of SRv6 SIDs and MPLS labels on PE2 is
aligned to ensure compatibility, the interpretation of the
function and/or argument of the SRv6 SID (sid-1 in the example)
will lead to incorrect forwarding of the traffic. In the example
above, on PE2 the packets may 1) be sent to the wrong service
instance, in case the sid-1 function and/or argument value
corresponds to an existing MPLS label, or 2) be dropped, in case
the value of sid-1 does not correspond to an allocated MPLS label.
* Scenario 2, the entire sid-1 is encoded in the SRv6 Services TLV
and the MPLS Label field of the corresponding NLRI is set to
Implicit NULL. The SRv6 Services TLV in the UPDATE messages is
discarded by PE1, and from PE1's aspect, it has received a MPLS
service route with an Implicit NULL label.
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It should be noticed that how to deal with the MPLS-based route
with an Implicit NULL label is not standardized, different vendors
may have different processing procedures which are unpredictable,
e.g, set the route to invalid, send the packet to service 1
without the service route label or something else.
On PE3, only SRv6 service SID sid-2 is configured for service 2. If
the service routes from PE3 are received by PE1, the problems are
similar.
* If the Transposition Scheme is used, PE1 may discard the SRv6
Service TLV(s) in the BGP Prefix attribute and treat the function
and/or argument part of SRv6 service SID as a MPLS VPN route
label. PE1 may 1) not send packets to PE2 since there's no LSP
between PE1 and PE3 2) send packets encapsulated in IPv6 to PE3 if
there's route to PE3.
* If the Transposition Scheme is not used and the label field in the
NLRI is Implicit NULL, how PE1 deals with this route is
unpredictable.
3.2. Some Current Methods for SRv6 Route Advertisement Controlling
[RFC9252] specifies that implementations MUST provide a mechanism to
control advertisement of SRv6-based BGP service routes on a per
neighbor and per service basis.
This can be done by configuration. First the network operator must
obtain whether the PEs in the network are capable of SRv6-based
services. Then the operator should config on PEs or route reflectors
based on each PE's capability, the configuration is per neighbor.
* If there's a service route reflector, configurations on S-RR
should ensure that the SRv6 service routes would not be reflected
to MPLS-only legacy devices.
* If there's no route reflector in the network, which neighbors can
the SRv6 service routes be advertised to should be specified when
configuring SRv6 services on the PEs.
The above method may be feasible in small-scale networks, but are not
applicable to large-scale networks. The main reasons are:
* The per neighbor configuration needs to be changed with the device
capability. When a PE is upgraded to support SRv6-based services
or rolled back to an older version that only supports MPLS, the
configuration on its neighbors or the RR should be changed to add
this PE to or exclude it from the advertisement of SRv6-based BGP
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service routes. Although this may be done automatically by the
network management system, it is still not a easy job in a large-
scale network and is not flexible enough.
* The additional steps of device capability acquisition and
capability based configuration increase the fault probability and
troubleshooting difficulty. If the service from PE1 to PE2 fails,
the operator needs to confirm the capability for SRv6-based
service of the two devices, and then check the configuration on
PE3 or RR to make sure that the SRv6-based service route is not
advertised to PE1.
* There is no standard solution for the network operator to obtain
the PE's capability for SRv6-based services. If there are devices
from multiple vendors in the network, there may be interconnection
problems.
+-----+
+---------------|S-RR1|-----------------+
| +-----+ |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| +----------------+ |
PE1-------| |-------PE2---+
| Backbone | |
PE4-------| |-------PE3-+ |
| +----------------+ | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| +-----+ | |
+---------------|S-RR2|---------------+-+
+-----+
Figure 2: the Co-existence Example Topology 2
Some may implement service-RRs separately for MPLS and SRv6 when
building the network. As shown in figure 2, S-RR1 is for MPLS
service routes only and S-RR2 is for SRv6 service routes only. For
MPLS-only PEs like PE1, they would only connect to S-RR1 and the
situation is similar for SRv6-only PEs(e.g,PE3 and PE4). In this
case, the configuration work is less than the scenario above, but,
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* the configuration is at least required on dual-capability devices
like PE2 to control the SRv6-based routes being advertised to the
correct RR(i.e, S-RR2),
* the configuration on the PEs also needs to be changed to connect
to the right S-RR if the PEs' capabilities of SRv6-based service
routes change due to device upgrade.
4. SRv6-based BGP Service Capability
The basic idea is, if the BGP speaker can obtain the capability for
SRv6-based services of its peers, the advertisement of SRv6-based BGP
service routes can be automatically controlled.
[RFC5492] defines the "Capabilities Optional Parameter". A BGP
speaker can include a Capabilities Optional Parameter in a BGP OPEN
message. This allows BGP speakers to communicate capabilities. The
Capabilities Optional Parameter is a triple that includes a one-octet
Capability Code, a one-octet Capability length, and a variable-length
Capability Value.
This document defines a Capability Code for SRv6-based BGP service
capability. If a BGP speaker has not sent the SRv6-based BGP service
capability in its BGP OPEN message on a particular BGP session, or if
it has not received the SRv6-based BGP service capability in the BGP
OPEN message from its peer on that BGP session, that BGP speaker MUST
NOT send on that session any UPDATE message that includes the SRv6
service TLVs. Like any other BGP capabilities, if the capability for
SRv6-based services is enabled or removed, an established session
needs to be reset to resend the OPEN message.
In this way, the advertisement of SRv6-based BGP service routes is
controlled without per neighbor or per-service configuration, which
makes it easier to implement and manage in the network. In the co-
existence scenario, the SRv6-based service routes would only be
exchange between devices that support it based on this capability.
There would be no UPDATE message that includes the SRv6 service TLV
received by legacy devices.
PEs attached to the network, as BGP speakers, SHOULD indicate their
ability to advertise and receive SRv6 based service routes through
the SRv6 based BGP service capability. If service route reflectors
are used in the network deploying SRv6-based services, they MUST
support the SRv6-based BGP service capability if there're PEs in the
network supporting this capability.
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5. Operational Considerations
Considering that there're already many implementations of [RFC9252]
based on the method of per-neighbor configuration, only upgrading
part of the SRv6-PEs/RRs in the network with the new BGP capability
defined in this document would lead to interoperability problems
since the SRv6-PEs/RRs that are not upgarded would not receive the
SRv6-based service routes from the upgarded devices. A recommended
method is to make this new BGP capability configurable on the
devices, that is, to enable the function of this new BGP capability
on the devices only when the network operator confirms that all the
SRv6-PEs and the corresponding service RRs have been upgraded to
support the new BGP capability.
6. IANA Considerations
This document defines a new Capability Codes option, named "SRv6
Service Capability" with an assigned value <TBD1> to indicate that a
BGP speaker supports SRv6-based services. The length of this
capability is 1.
7. Security Considerations
This extension to BGP does not change the underlying security issues
inherent in [RFC5492] and [RFC9252].
8. References
8.1. 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>.
[RFC5492] Scudder, J. and R. Chandra, "Capabilities Advertisement
with BGP-4", RFC 5492, DOI 10.17487/RFC5492, February
2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5492>.
[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>.
8.2. Informative References
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[RFC7911] Walton, D., Retana, A., Chen, E., and J. Scudder,
"Advertisement of Multiple Paths in BGP", RFC 7911,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7911, July 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7911>.
[RFC8669] Previdi, S., Filsfils, C., Lindem, A., Ed., Sreekantiah,
A., and H. Gredler, "Segment Routing Prefix Segment
Identifier Extensions for BGP", RFC 8669,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8669, December 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8669>.
[RFC9252] Dawra, G., Ed., Talaulikar, K., Ed., Raszuk, R., Decraene,
B., Zhuang, S., and J. Rabadan, "BGP Overlay Services
Based on Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6)", RFC 9252,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9252, July 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9252>.
Authors' Addresses
Yao Liu
ZTE
Nanjing
China
Email: liu.yao71@zte.com.cn
Zhang Zheng
ZTE
Nanjing
China
Email: zhang.zheng@zte.com.cn
Eduard Metz
KPN
Netherlands
Email: etmetz@gmail.com
Yisong Liu
China Mobile
China
Email: liuyisong@chinamobile.com
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