Storing BMP messages in MRT Format
draft-petrie-grow-mrt-bmp-01
This document is an Internet-Draft (I-D).
Anyone may submit an I-D to the IETF.
This I-D is not endorsed by the IETF and has no formal standing in the
IETF standards process.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Colin Petrie , Luuk Hendriks | ||
| Last updated | 2025-10-20 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-petrie-grow-mrt-bmp-01
Global Routing Operations C. Petrie
Internet-Draft NTT
Intended status: Standards Track L. Hendriks
Expires: 23 April 2026 NLnet Labs
20 October 2025
Storing BMP messages in MRT Format
draft-petrie-grow-mrt-bmp-01
Abstract
This document extends the Multi-threaded Routing Toolkit (MRT) export
format to support the storage of BMP messages.
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 23 April 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2025 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.
Petrie & Hendriks Expires 23 April 2026 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft BMP in MRT October 2025
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Stateless Message Parsing considerations . . . . . . . . 2
2. BMP Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Introduction
The MRT record format [RFC6396] was developed to provide researchers
and engineers a means to encapsulate, export, and archive routing
protocol transactions and routing information base snapshots.
BMP [RFC7854] was developed to monitor BGP sessions, and also
includes messages containing routing protocol transactions and
Routing Information Base contents and changes. BMP [RFC7854] does
not define a mechanism for exporting and archiving BMP messages. MRT
can be a suitable format for this.
This document contains an optional extension to the MRT format
[RFC6396] and defines additional MRT types to permit storage of BMP
messages.
1.1. Stateless Message Parsing considerations
Previous BGP support in MRT [RFC6396] has required new sub-types to
be introduced every time a new BGP capability is introduced that
alters the wire format of the BGP packets. This meta-information
signals to the parser how to decode the packet.
In the case of this proposed BMP support, the intention is to offload
this meta-information to the in-protocol BMP implmentations. The
current implementations described are Stateless Parsing TLVs
[I-D.ietf-grow-bmp-tlv] and Snapshot Messages
[I-D.lucente-grow-bmp-offline].
It is expected that the producer of MRT files containing BMP data
will ensure that these mechanisms are used to make the data in the
file parseable.
As a result, this document does not define any MRT sub-types, BMP
messages are encapsulated only using an outer MRT type to indicate
that the enclosed messages are BMP messages
Petrie & Hendriks Expires 23 April 2026 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft BMP in MRT October 2025
2. BMP Type
This document defines the following new MRT Types:
* BMP
* BMP_ET
These MRT types support the BMP protocol. They are used to encode
the exchange of BMP messages. The _ET variant is for use with the
Extended Timestamp MRT Header.
The format of the MRT Message field for the BMP types is as follows:
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
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Address Family |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Remote IP Address (variable) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Local IP Address (variable) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| BMP Message Contents (variable)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1
The Address Family indicates what types of addresses are in the
subsequent address fields. At present, the following AFI Types are
supported:
1 - AFI_IPv4
2 - AFI_IPv6
The Address Family value only applies to the IP addresses contained
in the MRT header. The BMP type is otherwise transparent to the
contents of the actual message that may contain any valid AFI/SAFI
values.
Remote and Local IP addresses refer to the endpoints of the TCP
connection carrying the BMP session, from the perspective of the BMP
monitoring station that is recording these messages
Petrie & Hendriks Expires 23 April 2026 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft BMP in MRT October 2025
3. IANA Considerations
This document requests that IANA assign Type codes to the MRT name
space (https://www.iana.org/assignments/mrt/mrt.xhtml):
BMP = TBD1 (Section 2)
BMP_ET = TBD2 (Section 2)
In this draft document this is requested from the Specification
Required range, this may be changed to the IETF Review range by a
later version of this document.
4. Security Considerations
It is not believed that this document adds any additional security
considerations.
However, the security considerations of [RFC6396] and [RFC7854] are
equally applicable to this document.
5. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-grow-bmp-tlv]
Lucente, P. and Y. Gu, "BMP v4: TLV Support for BGP
Monitoring Protocol (BMP) Route Monitoring and Peer Down
Messages", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
grow-bmp-tlv-19, 10 October 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-grow-
bmp-tlv-19>.
[I-D.lucente-grow-bmp-offline]
Hendriks, L., Lucente, P., Cardona, C., and C. Petrie,
"BMP Snapshots", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
lucente-grow-bmp-offline-02, 20 October 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-lucente-grow-
bmp-offline-02>.
[RFC6396] Blunk, L., Karir, M., and C. Labovitz, "Multi-Threaded
Routing Toolkit (MRT) Routing Information Export Format",
RFC 6396, DOI 10.17487/RFC6396, October 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6396>.
[RFC7854] Scudder, J., Ed., Fernando, R., and S. Stuart, "BGP
Monitoring Protocol (BMP)", RFC 7854,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7854, June 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7854>.
Petrie & Hendriks Expires 23 April 2026 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft BMP in MRT October 2025
Authors' Addresses
Colin Petrie
NTT
Veemweg 23
3771 MT Barneveld
Netherlands
Email: colin@ntt.net
Luuk Hendriks
NLnet Labs
Science Park 400
1098 XH Amsterdam
Netherlands
Email: luuk@nlnetlabs.nl
Petrie & Hendriks Expires 23 April 2026 [Page 5]