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Targeted LDP Hello Reduction
draft-pdutta-mpls-tldp-hello-reduce-03

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Pranjal Dutta , Giles Heron , Thomas Nadeau
Last updated 2012-05-20
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draft-pdutta-mpls-tldp-hello-reduce-03
MPLS Working Group                                  Pranjal Kumar Dutta 
Internet Draft                                           Alcatel-Lucent 
Intended status: Standard                               
Expires: November 2012                                       Giles Heron 
                                                           Cisco Systems 
                                                                                 
                                                           Thomas Nadeau 
                                                         CA Technologies 
                                    
                                                           May 20, 2012 
                                      
                       Targeted LDP Hello Reduction  
                draft-pdutta-mpls-tldp-hello-reduce-03.txt 

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 
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 20, 2012. 

Abstract 

   Targeted LDP Hellos are used for establishing adjacencies with non-
   directly connected peers. After an LDP session is established to a 
   targeted peer, the session Keepalives are sufficient to notify the 
   intent of an LSR to maintain its adjacency with the peer. This 
   document proposes a mechanism to turn off Targeted LDP Hellos after 
   LDP session is established to a peer. 

 
 
 
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Table of Contents 

    
   1. Introduction...................................................2 
   2. Conventions used in this document..............................3 
   3. Terminology....................................................3 
   4. Targeted LDP Hello Reduction Procedure.........................3 
   5. Security Considerations........................................5 
   6. IANA Considerations............................................5 
   7. Conclusion.....................................................5 
   8. References.....................................................5 
      8.1. Normative References......................................5 
      8.2. Informative References....................................5 
   9. Acknowledgments................................................6 
    
1. Introduction 

   LDP Hello messages are exchanged as part of the LDP discovery 
   mechanism [RFC5036]. There are two types of LDP discovery mechanism 
   described in [RFC5036] - Basic Discovery and Extended Discovery.  

   To engage in LDP Basic Discovery on an interface, an LSR periodically 
   sends LDP Link Hellos out the interface to the well-known LDP 
   discovery port for the "all routers on this subnet" group multicast 
   address. Receipt of an LDP Link Hello on an interface, identifies a 
   hello adjacency with a potential LDP peer reachable at the link level 
   on the interface. Thus an LSR may establish hello adjacency with 
   multiple peers discovered over a single interface and must continue 
   to transmit hellos at regular intervals even after hello adjacency is 
   established to a peer. 

   Extended discovery is used to support LDP sessions between non-
   directly connected LSRs. An LDP Targeted Hello is sent to a specific 
   address rather than to the "all routers" group multicast address for 
   the ongoing interface. Receipt of a LDP Targeted Hello indentifies a 
   hello adjacency with a potential LDP peer at network level. 

   In Extended discovery there can be only one Targeted Hello Adjacency 
   between two peers. Note that throughout this document "peer" means 
   the LDP LSR designated by a unique LDP Identifier. Once the LDP 
   session is operational between two targeted LDP peers, periodic 
   session Keepalives are used to maintain the LDP session. After the 
   session is operational the periodic Targeted Hellos between the LSRs 
   become redundant, as session Keepalives in turn serves the intent of 
   each LSR to maintain its adjacency to its peer.  
 
 
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   When an LSR maintains a large number of LDP sessions (in thousands) 
   to targeted peers, it is an additional burden to send and receive 
   Targeted Hellos for all peers at periodic intervals. In MPLS 
   deployments at access or mobility backhaul, there can be very large 
   volume of LDP sessions with targeted LDP adjacencies to each base 
   station. Moreover additional mechanisms such as centralized BFD [BFD] 
   may be used to track liveliness of ldp sessions. 

   Another problem with targeted hello adjacency arises is Denial Of 
   Service (DoS)_attacks. It is possible that existing hello adjacencies 
   can get lost due to DoS attack on LDP Hello receiver by spurious 
   hello packets. Unlike TCP sessions it is not always possible to 
   provide per peer protection for UDP based hellos. Implementations can 
   use methods to protect existing adjacencies while throttling spurious 
   adjacencies but such methods may not be available in low cost MPLS 
   devices in access. So it is important to avoid dependency on targeted 
   LDP hellos on session maintenance as far as possible. 

   This document proposes an optional mechanism to turn off Targeted LDP 
   Hellos after a LDP session is established to a targeted peer, without 
   changes in the procedures defined in [RFC5036].  

2. Conventions used in this document 

   INFO (REMOVE): INCLUDE THIS SECTION OR PORTIONS THEREOF IF DESIRED 

   In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and 
   server respectively. 

   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]. 

3. Terminology 

   This document uses the terminology defined in [RFC3031] and 
   [RFC5036]. 

4. Targeted LDP Hello Reduction Procedure 

   The Targeted LDP Hello Reduction procedure uses the existing Common 
   Hello Parameters TLV defined in [RFC5036]. Figure 1. shows the 
   encoding of the TLV from [RFC5036] for reference. 

    

 
 
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       0                   1                   2                   3 
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 
      |0|0| Common Hello Parms(0x0400)|      Length                   | 
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 
      |      Hold Time                |T|R| Reserved                  | 
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 
    

                Figure 1. Common Hello Parameters TLV. 

    By definition in [RFC5036], a value of 0 means use the default,  
    which is 45 seconds for Targeted Hellos.  A value of 0xffff means 
    infinite. 
 
    The procedure to be followed for Targeted LDP Hello Reduction    
    between a pair of LSRs is as follows: 

   1. An LSR starts transmitting periodic targeted hellos to its peer in 
      order to establish the targeted hello adjacency. Each LSR proposes 
      its configured hello hold time in the Common Hello Parameters TLV 
      in its hello message to the peer. The hold time used between a 
      pair of LSRs is the minimum of the hold times proposed in their 
      Hellos. 

   2. If the Hello is acceptable by receiving LSR it establishes 
      targeted hello adjacency with the source LSR. Establishment of 
      Hello adjacency establishes the LDP session between peering LSRs.  

   3. After the LDP session is ESTABLISHED [RFC5036], each LSR MAY 
      advertise hello holdtime value of 0xffff in the Common Hello 
      Parameters TLV. Thus after the session is ESTABLISHED, the hello 
      hold time between the LSRs gets negotiated to infinite. An LSR MAY 
      implement a locally configurable "tolerance" - the number of 
      Targeted LDP Hellos to be advertised with infinite hold time after 
      the LDP session is ESTABLISHED.  

   4. If the LDP session between two LSRs fails leading to tearing down 
      of adjacency, then each LSR reverts to advertising their 
      configured hello hold time and repeats procedure 1 to 3. 

   It is RECOMMENDED that each peering LSR implements the Targeted LDP 
   Hello Reduction procedure; otherwise negotiated hello hold time 
   between the LSRs does not fall back to the infinite hold time in step 
   3.  
 
 
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   Note that it is not mandatory to advertise infinite hold time after 
   session is established but can be any value that is significantly 
   larger than configured hello hold time. It is RECOMMENDED to 
   advertise Inifinite holdtime after session setup to derive maximum 
   advantage from the procedure described above. 

5. Security Considerations 

   - Control plane aspects    
      - LDP security (authentication) methods as described in [RFC5036]  
        is applicable here.  
 
   - Data plane aspects 
      - This specification does not have any impact on the MPLS 
        forwarding plane setup by LDP. 
 
6. IANA Considerations 

   This document does not require any IANA consideration. 

7. Conclusion 

   The method proposed in the document reduces significant burden on an 
   LDP LSR that maintains Targeted LDP sessions to a large number (in 
   thousands) of peers. Further, if BFD [BFD][BFD-MHOP] is used for 
   tracking connectivity to peers it is desirable to turn off Targeted 
   LDP hellos after the LDP session is setup.  

8. References 

8.1. Normative References 

   [RFC5036]   Andersson, L., et al. "LDP Specification", RFC5036,  
               October 2007.   
  
   [RFC2119]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate   
               Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 

8.2. Informative References 

   [RFC3031]   Rosen, E., et al. "Multiprotocol Label Switching 
               Architecture", RFC 3031, January 2001. 

   [BFD]       Katz, D., et al. "Bidirectional Forwarding Detection", 
               draft-ietf-bfd-base-011.txt, January 2010. 
 
 
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   [BFD-MHOP]  Katz, D., et al. "BFD for Multihop Paths",  
               draft-ietf-bfd-multihop-09.txt, January 2010. 

9. Acknowledgments 

   The authors would like acknowledge the comments and suggestions from 
   Wim Henderickx, Vach Kompella, Florin Balus, Mustapha Aissaoui, 
   Mathew Bocci and Paul Kwok. 

   This document was prepared using 2-Word-v2.0.template.dot. 

 

Authors' Addresses 

   Pranjal Kumar Dutta 
   701 E Middlefield Road,  
   Mountain View, CA 94043. 
   USA.   
   Email: pranjal.dutta@alcatel-lucent.com 
    
   Giles Heron 
   Cisco Systems 
   Email: giheron@cisco.com 
    
   Thomas D. Nadeau  
   CA Technologies 
   273 Corporate Drive, Portsmouth, NH, USA 
 
   Email: thomas.nadeau@ca.com 
 
 

   Copyright Notice 

      Copyright (c) 2011 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  
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      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 

 
 
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      document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in 
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