Network Working Group T. Li, Ed.
Internet-Draft Li Consulting
Expires: July 5, 2006 R. Fernando, Ed.
Amoora, Inc.
J. Abley, Ed.
ISC
January 2006
The AS_PATHLIMIT Path Attribute
draft-ietf-idr-as-pathlimit-01.txt
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Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This document describes the 'AS path limit' (AS_PATHLIMIT) path
attribute for BGP. This is an optional, transitive path attribute
that is designed to help limit the distribution of routing
information in the Internet.
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By default, prefixes advertised into the BGP graph are distributed
freely, and if not blocked by policy will propagate globally. This
is harmful to the scalability of the routing subsystem since
information that only has a local effect on routing will cause state
creation throughout the default-free zone. This attribute can be
attached to a particular path to limit its scope to a subset of the
Internet.
Table of Contents
1. Requirements notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Inter-Domain Traffic Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Traffic Engineering on a Diet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. AS_PATHLIMIT as Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Anycast Service Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. The AS_PATHLIMIT Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1. Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2. Proxy Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 15
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1. Requirements notation
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].
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2. Introduction
A prefix that is injected into BGP [RFC1771] will propagate
throughout the graph of all BGP speakers unless it is explicitly
blocked by policy configuration. This behavior is necessary for the
correct operation of BGP, but has some unfortunate interactions with
current operational procedures. Currently, it is beneficial in some
cases to inject longer prefixes into BGP to control the flow of
traffic headed towards a particular destination. These longer
prefixes may be advertised in addition to an aggregate, even when the
aggregate advertisement is sufficient for basic reachability. This
particular application is known as "inter-domain traffic engineering"
and is a well-known phenomenon that is contributing to growth in the
size of the global routing table [RFC3221]. The mechanism proposed
here allows the propagation of those longer prefixes to be limited,
allowing some traffic engineering problems to be solved without such
global implications.
Another application of this mechanism is concerned with the
distribution of services across the Internet using anycast. Allowing
an anycast address advertisement to be limited to a subset of ASes in
the network can help control the scope of the anycast service area.
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3. Inter-Domain Traffic Engineering
To perform traffic engineering, a multi-homed site advertises its
prefix to all of its neighbours and then also advertises more
specific prefixes to a subset of its neighbours. The longest match
lookup algorithm then causes traffic for the more specific prefixes
to prefer the subset of neighbours with the more specific prefix.
Figure 1 shows an example of traffic engineering and its impact on
the network. The multi-homed site (A) has a primary provider (C) and
a secondary provider (B). It has a prefix, Y, that provides
reachability to all of A, and advertises this to both B and C. In
addition, due to the internal topology of end-site A, it wishes that
all incoming traffic to subset X of its site enter through provider
B. To accomplish this, A advertises the more specific prefix, X, to
provider B. Longest match again causes traffic to prefer X over Y if
the destination of the traffic is within X.
Assuming that there are no policy boundaries involved, BGP will
propagate both of these prefixes X and Y throughout the entire AS-
level topology. This includes distant providers such as H, F and G.
Unfortunately, this adds to the amount of overhead in the routing
subsystem. The problem to be solved is to reduce this overhead and
thereby improve the scalability of the routing of the Internet.
,--------------. ,--------------. ,--------------.
| Tier 2 +---+ Tier 2 +---+ Tier 3 |
| Provider H | | Provider E | | Provider F |
`--------------' `-+---------+--+ `--------------'
/ |
/ |
,------------------+---. ,----+---------. ,-------------.
| Tier 1 +---+ Tier 1 | | Tier 1 |
| Primary Provider C | | Provider D +---+ Provider G |
`--------+-----------+-' `-------+------' `-------------'
| \ |
|Y \ |
,--------+------. ,-+----------+-----------.
| Multi-homed +-----+ Tier 2 |
| site A |Y,X | Secondary Provider B |
`---------------' `------------------------'
The longer prefix X traverse a core and then coincides with the less-
specific, covering prefix Y.
Figure 1
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3.1. Traffic Engineering on a Diet
What is needed is one or more mechanisms that an AS can use to
distribute its more specific routing information to a subset of the
network that exceeds its immediate neighbouring ASes and yet is also
significantly less than the global BGP graph. The solution space for
this is unbounded, as the limits that a source AS may wish to apply
to its more specific routes could be a fairly complicated
manifestation of its routing policies. One can imagine a policy that
restricts more specifics to ASes that only have prime AS numbers, for
example.
We already have one mechanism for performing this type of function.
The BGP NO_EXPORT community string attribute [RFC1997] can be
attached to more specific prefixes. This will cause the more
specifics not to be advertised past the immediate neighbouring AS.
This is effective at helping to prevent more specific prefixes from
becoming global, but it is extremely limited in that the more
specific prefixes can only propagate to adjacent ASes.
Some ASes have created a further mechanism wherein a prefix that is
given a particular community will have NO_EXPORT attached to that
prefix when the prefix is propagated to a specific AS. This is not a
generally deployed mechanism, but is used by some ASes as another
means of scope control.
Referring again to our example, A can advertise X with NO_EXPORT to
provider B. However, this will cause provider B not to advertise X to
the remainder of the network, and providers C, D, and G will not have
the longer prefixes and will thus send all of A's traffic via
provider C. This is not what A hoped to accomplish with advertising a
longer prefix and demonstrates why this NO_EXPORT mechanism is not
sufficiently flexible.
Instead of attempting to provide an infinitely flexible and
complicated mechanism for controlling the distribution of prefixes,
we propose a single, coarse, scope control mechanism. This coarse
mechanism will provide a limited amount of control at a very low cost
and address most of the evils associated with performing traffic
engineering through route distribution.
We observe that traffic engineering via longer prefixes is only
effective when the longer prefixes have a different next hop from the
less specific prefix. Thus, past the point where the next hops
become identical, the longer prefixes provide no value whatsoever.
We also observe that most traffic ends up traversing a subset of the
network operated by a relatively small number of large market-
dominant providers, joined by settlement-free interconnects. If one
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looks one AS hop past this subset of the network, it is likely that
the longer prefixes and the site aggregate are using the same next
hop, and thus the longer prefixes have stopped providing value.
We can see this clearly in our example. Provider F sees that both
prefix X and prefix Y will lead all traffic through provider E. There
is no point in F carrying and propagating the more specific prefix X.
Similarly, providers G and H need not carry prefix X.
3.2. AS_PATHLIMIT as Control
To accomplish this, we propose to add information that will limit the
radius of propagation of more specific prefixes. If we attach a
count of the ASes that may be traversed by the more specific prefix,
we gain much of the control that we hope to achieve. We propose the
creation of a new path attribute that will carry an upper bound on
the number of ASes found the AS_PATH attribute. This new path
attribute will be called the 'path limit' or AS_PATHLIMIT. For
example, if prefix X is advertised with path limit 1, then only
provider B has the information and we get an effect that is identical
to NO_EXPORT. If prefix X is advertised with path limit 2, then only
B, C and D will carry it. This is an interesting compromise as
traffic for X will now flow consistently through provider B, as
desired.
However, this is not identical to fully distributing X. Consider, for
example that provider E in this circumstance will not receive prefix
X and is likely to prefer provider C for all A destinations. This
causes traffic for X to flow from E to C to B. If provider E did have
prefix X, it may choose to prefer provider D instead, resulting in a
different path. This second result can be achieved by increasing the
path limit to 3, but this has the unfortunate effect that provider G
would also receive prefix X.
Thus, AS_PATHLIMIT is an extremely lightweight mechanism, and
achieves a great deal of control. It is easy to imagine more
complicated control mechanisms, such IDRP [IDRP] distribution lists,
but we currently feel that the complexity of such a mechanism is
simply not warranted.
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4. Anycast Service Distribution
A growing number of services are being distributed using anycast, by
advertising a route which covers one or more addresses for a service
which is provided autonomously at multiple locations.
For some services, it is useful to restrict the peak possible service
load, to avoid overloading local connectivity or service
infrastructure capabilities; it may be a better failure mode for
service to be retained only for a small community of surrounding
networks than for a single node to fail under a global load of
queries.
Although to some degree this policy can be accomplished through
negotiation and judicious use of NO_EXPORT without AS_PATHLIMIT, the
AS_PATHLIMIT attribute provides a more flexible and reliable
mechanism.
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5. The AS_PATHLIMIT Attribute
The AS_PATHLIMIT attribute is a transitive optional BGP path
attribute, with Type Code XXXX. The AS_PATHLIMIT attribute has a
fixed length of 5 octets. The first octet is an unsigned number that
is the upper bound on the number of ASes in the AS_PATH attribute of
the associated paths. The second thru fifth octets are the AS number
of the AS that attached the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute to the NLRI.
5.1. Operations
A BGP speaker attaching the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute to an NLRI MUST
encode its AS number in the second thru fifth octets. The encoding
is described in [4B AS]. This information is intended to aid
debugging in the case where the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute is added by an
AS other than the originator of the NLRI.
A BGP speaker sending a route with an associated AS_PATHLIMIT
attribute to an EBGP neighbour MUST examine the value of the
attribute and the associated AS_PATH to be advertised. If the number
of ASes found in the AS_PATH exceeds the AS_PATHLIMIT value, then the
route should not be sent.
For the purposes of this attribute, private AS numbers [RFC1930] and
confederation AS members [RFC3065] found in the AS_PATH are not
counted. AS numbers found within an AS_SET are counted. Each
instance of an AS number that appears multiple times in an AS_PATH is
counted.
A BGP speaker receiving a route with an associated AS_PATHLIMIT
attribute from an EBGP neighbour MUST examine the value of the
attribute. If the number of ASes in the AS_PATH exceeds the value of
the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute, then the route MUST be ignored without
further processing.
When a BGP speaker propagates a route with an associated AS_PATHLIMIT
attribute, which it has learned from another BGP speaker's UPDATE
message, it MUST NOT modify the route's AS_PATHLIMIT attribute.
BGP requires that a BGP speaker that advertises a less specific
prefix, but not a more specific prefix that it is using, must
advertise the less specific prefix with the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE
attribute. BGP speakers that do not advertise a more specific prefix
based on the AS_PATHLIMIT must comply with this rule and advertise
the less specific prefixes with the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute. To
help ensure compliance with this, sites that choose to advertise the
AS_PATHLIMIT path attribute should advertise the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE
attribute on all less specific covering prefixes.
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5.2. Proxy Control
An AS may attach the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute to a route that it has
received from another AS. This is a form of proxy aggregation and
may result in routing behaviors that the origin of the route did not
intend. Further, if the overlapping prefixes are not advertised with
the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute, adding the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute may
cause defective implementations to advertise incorrect paths. Before
adding the AS_PATHLIMIT attribute an AS must carefully consider the
risks and consequences outlined here.
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6. Security Considerations
This new BGP attribute creates no new security issues. For it to be
used, it must be attached to a BGP route. If the router is forging a
route, then this attribute limits the extent of the damage caused by
the forgery. If a router attaches this attribute to a route, then it
could have just as easily have used normal policy mechanisms to
filter out the route.
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7. IANA Considerations
IANA is hereby requested to allocate a code point from the BGP path
attribute Type Code space for the AS_PATHLIMIT path attribute.
Please replace 'XXXX' in the text above with the newly allocated code
point value.
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8. Acknowledgements
The editors would like to acknowledge that they are not the original
initiators of this concept. Over the years, many similar proposals
have come our way, and we had hoped that self-discipline would cause
this type of mechanism to be unnecessary. We were overly optimistic.
The names of those who originally proposed this are now lost to the
mists of time. This should rightfully be their document. We would
like to thank them for the opportunity to steward their concept to
fruition.
9. References
[4B AS] Vohra, Q. and E. Chen, "BGP support for Four-octet AS
Number Space", Sept. 2005, <http://www.ietf.org/
internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idr-as4bytes-11.txt>.
[IDRP] ISO/IEC, "Information Processing Systems -
Telecommunications and Information Exchange between
Systems - Protocol for Exchange of Inter-domain Routeing
Information among Intermediate Systems to Support
Forwarding of ISO 8473 PDUs", IS 10747, 1993, <http://
www.acm.org/sigcomm/standards/iso_stds/IDRP/10747.TXT>.
[RFC1771] Rekhter, Y. and T. Li, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4
(BGP-4)", RFC 1771, March 1995.
[RFC1930] Hawkinson, J. and T. Bates, "Guidelines for creation,
selection, and registration of an Autonomous System (AS)",
BCP 6, RFC 1930, March 1996.
[RFC1997] Chandrasekeran, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP
Communities Attribute", RFC 1997, August 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3065] Traina, P., McPherson, D., and J. Scudder, "Autonomous
System Confederations for BGP", RFC 3065, February 2001.
[RFC3221] Huston, G., "Commentary on Inter-Domain Routing in the
Internet", RFC 3221, December 2001.
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Authors' Addresses
T. Li (editor)
Li Consulting
Email: tony.li@tony.li
R. Fernando (editor)
Amoora, Inc.
1463 Cedarmeadow Ct.
San Jose, CA 95131
US
Email: rex_f@yahoo.com
J. Abley (editor)
Internet Systems Consortium
950 Charter Street
Redwood City, CA 94023
US
Phone: +1 650 423 1317
Email: jabley@isc.org
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