IDR Working Group R. Raszuk
Internet-Draft Mirantis Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track C. Cassar
Expires: April 25, 2015 Cisco Systems
E. Aman
TeliaSonera
B. Decraene
S. Litkowski
Orange
October 22, 2014
BGP Optimal Route Reflection (BGP-ORR)
draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-08
Abstract
[RFC4456] asserts that, because the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP)
cost to a given point in the network will vary across routers, "the
route reflection approach may not yield the same route selection
result as that of the full IBGP mesh approach." One practical
implication of this assertion is that the deployment of route
reflection may thwart the ability to achieve hot potato routing. Hot
potato routing attempts to direct traffic to the closest AS egress
point in cases where no higher priority policy dictates otherwise.
As a consequence of the route reflection method, the choice of exit
point for a route reflector and its clients will be the egress point
closest to the route reflector - and not necessarily closest to the
RR clients.
Section 11 of [RFC4456] describes a deployment approach and a set of
constraints which, if satsified, would result in the deployment of
route reflection yielding the same results as the iBGP full mesh
approach. Such a deployment approach would make route reflection
compatible with the application of hot potato routing policy.
As networks evolved to accommodate architectural requirements of new
services, tunneled (LSP/IP tunneling) networks with centralized route
reflectors became commonplace. This is one type of common deployment
where it would be impractical to satisfy the constraints described in
Section 11 of [RFC4456]. Yet, in such an environment, hot potato
routing policy remains desirable.
This document proposes two new solutions which can be deployed to
facilitate the application of closest exit point policy centralized
route reflection deployments.
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Status of This Memo
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Proposed solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Best path selection for BGP hot potato routing from
customized IGP network position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Client's perspective best path selection algorithm . . . 7
3.1.1. Flat IGP network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1.2. Hierarchical IGP network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Aside: Configuration-based flexible route reflector
placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3. Route reflector client grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3.1. Route Reflector Client Group ID . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5. Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4. Angular distance approximation for BGP warm potato routing . 13
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4.1. Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2. Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.3. Centralized vs distributed route reflectors . . . . . . . 15
5. Client's perspective policy based best path selection . . . . 16
5.1. Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3. Avoiding routing loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6. Deployment considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
7. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1. Introduction
There are three types of BGP deployments within Autonomous Systems
today: full mesh, confederations and route reflection.
BGP route reflection is the most popular way to distribute BGP routes
between BGP speakers belonging to the same administrative domain.
Traditionally route reflectors have been deployed in the forwarding
path and carefully placed on the POP to core boundaries. That model
of BGP route reflector placement has started to evolve. The
placement of route reflectors outside the forwarding path was
triggered by applications which required traffic to be tunneled from
AS ingress PE to egress PE: for example L3VPN.
This evolving model of intra-domain network design has enabled
deployments of centralized route reflectors. Initially this model
was only employed for new address families e.g. L3VPNs, L2VPNs etc
With edge to edge MPLS or IP encapsulation also being used to carry
internet traffic, this model has been gradually extended to other BGP
address families including IPv4 and IPv6 Internet routing. This is
also applicable to new services achieved with BGP as control plane
for example 6PE.
Such centralized route reflectors can be placed on the POP to core
boundaries, but they are often placed in arbitrary locations in the
core of large networks.
Such deployments suffer from a critical drawback in the context of
best path selection. A route reflector with knowledge of multiple
paths for a given prefix will pick the best path and only advertise
that best path to the the route reflector clients. If the best path
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for a prefix is selected on the basis of an IGP tie break, the best
path advertised from the route reflector to its clients will be the
exit point closest to the route reflector. But route reflector
clients will be in a place in the network toplogy which is different
from the route reflector. In networks with centralized route
reflectors, this difference will be even more acute. It follows that
the best path chosen by the route reflector is not necessarily the
same as the path which would have been chosen by the client if the
client considered the same set of candidate paths as the route
reflector. Furthermore, the path chosen by the client might have
been a better path from that chosen by the route reflector for
traffic entering the network at the client. The path chosen by the
client would have guaranteed the lowest cost and delay trajectory
through the network.
Route reflector clients switch packets using routing information
learnt from route reflectors which are not on the forwarding path of
the packet through the network even in the absence of end-to-end
encapsulation. In those cases the path chosen as best and propagated
to the clients will often not be the optimal path chosen by the
client given all available paths.
Eliminating the IGP distance to the BGP nexthop as a tie breaker on
centralized route reflectors does not address the issue. Ignoring
IGP distance to the BGP next hop results in the tie breaking
procedure contributing the best path by differentiating between paths
using attributes otherwise considered less important than IGP cost to
the BGP nexthop.
One possible valid solution or workaround to this problem requires
sending all domain external paths from the RR to all its clients.
This approach suffers the significant drawback of pushing a large
amount of BGP state to all the edge routers. In many networks, the
number of EBGP peers over which full Internet routing information is
received would correlate directly to the number of paths present in
each ASBR. This could easily result in tens of paths for each
prefix.
Notwithstanding this drawback, there are a number of reasons for
sending more than just the single best path to the clients. Improved
path diversity at the edge is a requirement for fast connectivity
restoration, and a requirement for effective BGP level load
balancing.
In practical terms, add/diverse path deployments are expected to
result in the distribution of 2, 3 or n (where n is a small number)
'good' paths rather than all domain external paths. While the route
reflector chooses one set of n paths and distributes those same n
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paths to all its route reflector clients, those n paths may not be
the right n paths for all clients. In the context of the problem
described above, those n paths will not necessarily include the
closest egress point out of the network for each route reflector
client. The mechanisms proposed in this document are likely to be
complementary to mechanisms aimed at improving path diversity.
2. Proposed solutions
This document proposes two simple solutions to the problem described
above. Both of these solutions make it possible for route reflector
clients to direct traffic to their closest exit point in hot potato
routing deployments, without requiring further state to be pushed out
to the edge. These solutions are primarily applicable in deployments
using centralized route reflectors, which are typically implemented
in devices without a capable forwarding plane.
The two alternatives are:
"Best path selection for BGP hot potato routing from client's IGP
network position"
"Angular distance approximation for BGP warm potato routing"
Both solutions rely upon all route reflectors learning all paths
which are eligible for consideration for hot potato routing. In
order to satisfy this requirement, path diversity enhancing
mechanisms such as add paths/diverse paths may need to be deployed
between route reflectors.
In both of these solutions the route reflector selects and
distributes a route to each client based on what would be optimal
from the client's perspective. By optimal we refer in this document
to the decision made during best path selection at the IGP metric to
BGP next hop comparison step. Clearly the overall path selection
preference may be chosen based other policy step and provisions as
defined in this document would not apply.
In the respective solutions the choice is made either factoring in
IGP costs or the configured angular distance to the next hop. The
route reflector makes different decisions for different clients only
in the case where the tie breaker for path selection would have been
the IGP distance to the BGP nexthop (as in hot potato routing).
A significant advantage of this approach is that the RR clients do
not need to run new software or hardware.
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Besides these solutions to manage hot potato routing, there are
deployment scenarios where service providers want to have more
control of traffic exiting the AS by assigning per client preference
to gateways.
This document proposes to introduce a solution to perform a policy
based route-reflection to address those scenarios. This solution has
the same requirements (regarding path diversity) and advantages than
the two IGP metric based solutions.
3. Best path selection for BGP hot potato routing from customized IGP
network position
This section describes a method for calculating the order of
preference of BGP paths from the point of view of each separate route
reflector client. More specifically, the route reflector will
compute the IGP metric to the BGP nexthop from the position of the
client to which the resulting path will be distributed, if the IGP
metric is the tie breaker applied to a set of possible paths. In the
subsequent model authors will propose virtual reflector placement at
operator's selected IGP location.
In the case of a hierarchical IGP deployment where the client is in a
different level in the hierarchy to the route reflector, the route
reflector will compute IGP distance to the BGP nexthop from the Area
Border Routers (ABR) leading to the client in lieu of the route
reflector client itself, and use the shortest distance from these
ABRs to the nexthop. This provides an approximation to the desired
functionality. Rather than a client picking the closest path, the
client would be picking the exit point closest to the client region
as defined by area or level. In cases where one or more nexthops are
in the same region as the client, one of those nexthops would be
preferred, with tie breaking within those nexthops performed from the
route reflector's position in the network.
It is assumed that reachability through a set of ABRs is always
advertised through identical prefixes from those ABRs. If a nexthop
is reachable through multiple ABRs but the ABRs advertise
reachability through prefixes of different length, then only the ABR
advertising the longest prefix will be considered as a viable path to
the nexthop.
BGP best path selection and its distribution has a natural
consequence of limiting the amount of state in the network. That is
not in itself a drawback. BGP speakers will rarely need to receive
all available BGP paths. In network deployments with multiple
upstream peerings or with very dense peering schemes, the number of
available BGP paths for a given BGP prefix can be high. Real network
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deployments with the number of paths for a prefix ranging from 10s to
100s have been observed. It would be wasteful to propagate all of
those paths to all clients, such that each client can select paths
according to the position of the nexthop relative to the client.
Whenever a BGP route reflector would need to decide what path or
paths need to be selected for advertisement to one of its clients,
the route reflector would need to virtually position itself in its
client IGP network location in order to choose the right set of paths
based on the IGP metric to the next hops from the client's
perspective.
This technique applies in deployments with or without diverse paths
or the various path selection modes contemplated in add-paths.
In the network architectures consisting of more then single pair of
route reflectors it is required that all reflectors are fully meshed
and have ability to learn and maintain all external BGP paths. In
the event of constructing a hierarchy of reflectors to relax the full
RR mesh requirements ORR should not be run between such route
reflectors.
3.1. Client's perspective best path selection algorithm
For each centralized route reflector the proposal assumes that the
route reflector participates in a common IGP with its clients. There
are two scenarios to consider - flat versus hierarchical IGP network.
3.1.1. Flat IGP network
Reflectors run SPF from the client IGP node point of view such
that the cost of BGP nexthops from the client can be determined if
necessary. For the purpose of BGP path selection the interesting
product of this calculation is the ability to determine the IGP
distance from a client to a BGP next hop. This distance to a
nexthop would be interesting in cases where that next hop is for a
path which is contending with otherwise equally preferred paths.
This approach works in tunneled as well as conventional hop-by-hop
IP forwarding cores.
When the path selection tie breaker for a prefix is the IGP metric
to the BGP nexthops of the contending paths, then the route
reflector will determine the order of preference of the contending
paths by considering the distance from the client to the path
nexthops in order to decide what path/s to advertise to a client
(or group of clients where feasible). It should be noted that an
operator may wish to provide a distance tolerance value, such that
beyond a certain granularity, differences between IGP metric are
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invisible to the path selection algorithm. This will allow a
route reflector some leeway in selecting between paths such that
rather than pick one path over another on the basis of a
difference in distance which is operationally irrelevant, the
route reflector can choose to optimize for update generation
grouping. Furthermore, this tolerance will reduce the likelihood
of generation of BGP updates when the IGP topology changes in a
way which is not operationally relevant. In the case that a path
is selected from a set for a given prefix while ignoring
differences in distance within the tolerance figure, then that
same path must always be preferred for all clients where the paths
are within the tolerance figure
3.1.2. Hierarchical IGP network
Hierarchy introduces two challenges:
The first challenge is that the RR IGP view may differ from a
client IGP view by virtue of one or the other having a summarized
view versus the other. Summarization, by its nature, loses
information. Consider the example where a client within a PoP
sees two prefixes with two metrics for two egress points within
the PoP, but where the RR only sees a single summary covering
reachability to both nexthops as injected by the ABR. For
clarification purposes in the case of ISIS by ABR we refer to L1/
L2 node. However it needs to be observed that inter area networks
running LDP are required to disable summarisation of all FEC
advertised in LDP (typically all loopbacks) unless [RFC5283] is
deployed. Such deployments are not likely to suffer summarization
difficulties.
The second challenge is that in cases where the client is in a
different level of hierarchy from the RR, the RR can not build a
Shortest Path First (SPF) tree with the client node as root,
simply because the topology derived by the IGP will not include
the client node. It will instead only include reachability to the
client from one or more ABRs. In order to overcome this problem,
the RR could compute an SPF tree from the ABRs in the area. The
RR would then determine the shortest distance from a client which
lives behind the ABRs, to a nexthop, by adding the advertised
distances from an ABR to the client and the distance from the ABR
to a nexthop, for each ABR, and picking the minimum. This assumes
that IGP metrics on links are symmetric; i.e. that the distance
from the ABR to the client or nexthop is equal to the distance
from the client or nexthop to the ABR.
There are cases where the above approach does not help. If RR is
trying to arbitrate amongst a set of paths for a client which is
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in the same hierarchy as some of those paths, and in a different
hierarchy to the RR, the opaqueness of the region containing the
client at the RR defeats the selection process. It is impossible
to determine the relative position of the RR client and the paths
within the client region.
The solution for hierarchical IGP networks also assumes that if
RRs are present and are responsible for calculation of BGP best
path to clients they are either placed in each local area
coinciding with area containing clients or they are placed in the
core (area 0/level 2) of the network.
3.2. Aside: Configuration-based flexible route reflector placement
The ability to exploit topology information available in the IGP in
ways described above can also be used to virtually place the RR at
different points in the network for purposes other than hot potato
routing.
A route reflector can be globally configured to "pretend" its logical
location is one of any of the other nodes within a given IGP area/
level flooding scope regardless of its physical connectivity.
Such flexibility provides a useful tool for reflector virtualization,
and supports moving or replacing physical route reflectors without
any effect on routing. Such a change can be permanent or it could be
performed during network maintenance in order to minimize network
impact.
A possible variation would allow the virtual placement of RR to be
effected on a per-AF or AF plus update/peer group granularity. It
should be noted that this approach provides for splitting one
centralized route reflector such that it is virtually positioned at
various network locations, with the network location depending upon
of address family or address family plus update/peer group.
Virtual slicing of a centralized route reflector relaxes the need to
propagate all BGP paths between RRs in a alternative conventional
distributed RR deployment. It is expected that such RRs would be
deployed in redundant sets, and that those RRs would not need to be
physically collocated, while still benefiting from the possibility of
being logically collocated, and therefore not compromising any of the
best path selection symmetry.
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3.3. Route reflector client grouping
It may be appropriate to allow the operator, or the route reflector
itself, to group clients together using IGP distance between clients
to determine grouping. All the operation discussed above which
relied upon computing best path for each client, and measuring
distances from each client to different nexthops, would instead be
performed for each group of clients. Configurable thresholds can be
used to determine which IGP metric changes should be visible to BGP,
and trigger best paths recomputation. The latter would be beneficial
in existing BGP RR code too.
Alternatively route reflector client grouping could be accomplished
statically by the operator by coloring clients belonging to a common
group (for example being part of the same POP). In order to
accomplish such marking it is proposed that BGP OPEN message be
augmented with an optional parameter indicating the Group ID given
peer belongs to.
3.3.1. Route Reflector Client Group ID
This is an Optional Parameter in BGP OPEN message that is used by a
BGP speaker to convey to its route reflectors the Group ID value.
Such value will allow automatic and predictable peer grouping on the
route reflectors as deemed necessary from operator's network
architecture.
The parameter contains precisely one set of [Group_ID Code, Group_ID
Length, Group_ID Value] encoded as shown below:
+----------------------------+
| Group ID Code (1 octet) |
+----------------------------+
| Group ID Length (1 octet) |
+----------------------------+
| Group ID Value (4 octets) |
+----------------------------+
The use and meaning of these fields are as follows:
Group ID Code:
Group ID Code is a one octet field that identifies Group ID
optional parameter of BGP OPEN message. Value TBD by IANA
Recommended value: 3.
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Group ID Length:
Group ID Length is a one octet field that contains the length
of the Group ID Value field in octets. It is fixed and equals
to 4.
Group ID Value:
Group ID Value is a fixed length field of size equal to
four octets that contains the numerical value of group given
BGP speaker should be part of on the route reflector.
Two special values are reserved:
0x00000000 - No grouping preference
0xFFFFFFFF - Do not group this BGP speaker
An implementation may allow automatic population of
GROUP_ID value using IGP area identifier.
Route reflectors or EBGP speakers receiving such Group IDs from their
respective BGP peers as part of the BGP OPEN procedure MAY use them
when constructing update or peer groups in addition to any of the
existing grouping mechanism already available. An implementation may
allow operator to explicitly allow or disallow honoring such grouping
or provide means for manual overwrite via explicit configuration.
3.4. Discussion
This is not the first instance where a router participating in an IGP
is required to build the SPF tree using a root other than itself.
Determination of loop free alternate paths as described in [RFC5714]
is one such example.
Determining the shortest path and associated cost between any two
arbitrary points in a network based on the IGP topology learned by a
router is expected to add some extra cost in terms of CPU resource.
However SPF tree generation code is now implemented efficiently in a
number of implementations, and therefor this is not expected to be a
major drawback. The number of SPTs computed in the general non-
hierarchical case is expected to be of the order of the number of
clients of an RR whenever a topology change is detected. Advanced
optimizations like partial and incremental SPF may also be exploited.
By the nature of route reflection, the number of clients can be split
arbitrarily by the deployment of more route reflectors for a given
number of clients. While this is not expected to be necessary in
existing networks with best in class route reflectors available
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today, this avenue to scaling up the route reflection infrastructure
would be available. If we consider the overall network wide cost/
benefit factor, the only alternative to achieve the same level of
optimality would require significantly increasing state on the edges
of the network, which, in turn, will consume CPU and memory resources
on all BGP speakers in the network. Building this client perspective
into the route reflectors seems appropriate.
3.5. Advantages
The solution described provides a model for integrating the client
perspective into the best path computation for RRs. More
specifically, the choice or BGP path factors in the IGP metric
between the client and the nexthop, rather than the distance from the
RR to the nexthop. The documented method does not require any BGP or
IGP protocol changes as required changes are contained within the RR
implementation.
This solution can be deployed in traditional hop-by-hop forwarding
networks as well as in end-to-end tunneled environments. In the
networks where there are multiple route reflectors and hop-by-hop
forwarding without encapsulation, such optimizations should be
enabled on all route reflectors. Otherwise clients may receive an
inconsistent view of the network and in turn lead to intra-domain
forwarding loops.
With this approach, an ISP can effect a hot potato routing policy
even if route reflection has been moved from the forwarding plane to
the core and hop-by-hop switching has been replaced by end to end
MPLS or IP encapsulation.
As per above, the approach reduces the amount of state which needs to
be pushed to the edge in order to perform hot potato routing. The
memory and CPU resource required at the edge to provide hot potato
routing using this approach is lower than what would be required in
order to achieve the same level of optimality by pushing and
retaining all available paths (potentially 10s) per each prefix at
the edge.
The proposal allows for a fast and safe transition to BGP control
plane route reflection without compromising an operator's closest
exit operational principle. Hot potato routing is important to most
ISPs. The inability to perform hot potato routing effectively stops
migrations to centralized route reflection and edge-to-edge LSP/IP
encapsulation for traffic to IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes.
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4. Angular distance approximation for BGP warm potato routing
This section describes an alternative solution to the use of IGP
topology information to virtually position the RR at the client
location in the network. This solution involves modeling the network
topology as a set of elements (regions, PoPs or routers) arranged in
a circle. Route reflector clients and inter-domain exit points would
then be statically assigned to those elements such that one can
compute the angular distance between route-reflector clients and the
various exit points in order to infer the distance between any two
elements. This measure of distance can be used as an effective
alternative to the IGP distance as a tie breaker in the path
selection algorithm if necessary.
4.1. Problem statement
This solution addresses the problem described in earlier sections,
while attempting to minimize computational overhead. The aim of the
proposed solution is to enable a route reflector to provide a route
reflector client with an exit point for a prefix which is 'closest'
to the client rather than the route-reflector, without having to
distribute all paths to that client, or having to derive each
client's view of the network topology. The measure of closest is
based on a simplistic description of network topology provided by the
operator.
Consider the following example of an ISP network topology drawn to
reflect the location of the nodes and POPs:
N4 POP4
CLIENT B
POP4 POP1 N1
CORE
RR(s) POP2 N2
N5 POP3 POP2 N3
CLIENT A
POP3
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N - represents the different exit points for a given prefix. POP2 is
a geographically large PoP with two paths; N2 and N3.
In a deployment where the centralized RRs tie break on the basis of
their IGP-based view of the network, N1 above would be advertised to
all clients on the basis that it is closest to the RR. Path N4 would
be a more appropriate choice for client B. Similarly, N5 would be
more appropriate for client A since path N5 is closer to client A
then path N1.
4.2. Proposed solution
The proposed solution revolves around the operator establishing the
angular position of the route-reflector clients and inter-domain exit
points in the network. The route reflector then picks the path to
advertise to a client based on the client's angular position versus
the angular position of the inter-domain exit points originating the
paths. The operator can choose the granularity of angular position
appropriate to the desired goals. On one hand, the coarseness of the
angular position will effect the operator overhead; versus the
optimality of routing on the other. The finest granularity possible
will be the relative position of originating clients.
Note that this solution has nothing to do with actual IGP link
metrics and resulting topology in the network.
It can be shown that for each network topology, elements such as AS
exit points can be mapped on to a circle. By putting POPs, Regions
or individual clients onto the hypothetical circle we can identify an
angular location for each element relative to some fixed direction;
for example defining the angular north of the circle at 0 degrees.
The angular position of elements in the network can be conveyed to a
route reflector in a number of ways:
Assignment of angular position of each RR client through
configuration on the route reflector itself; per client
configuration on RR
Assignment of angular position of an RR client at each client,
then propagating it to RRs.
The proposed angular distance approximation is compatible with both
flat and hierarchical IGP deployments.
In the example illustrated above the route reflector might learn or
be configured with the following set of paths and corresponding
angular positions:
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Prefix X/Y N1 N2 N3 N4 N5
Location
in degrees 60 85 120 290 260
If the absolute angular position of clients A and B were as follows:
Client A: 260 degrees
Client B: 290 degrees
Then the corresponding angular distances for those clients versus the
exit points can be calculated as follows:
Prefix X/Y N1 N2 N3 N4 N5
Client A 200 175 140 30 0
Client B 230 205 170 0 30
With an RR running the BGP best path algorithm modified to use the
angular distance from the client to the nexthops, rather than its IGP
distance to the nexthops as tie breaker, each client is provided with
its closest path with the measure of closeness reflecting the angular
position as configured by the operator.
The model used by the operator in order to determine the angular
position of a client or exit point, might involve grouping elements
together by region or PoP, or might involve no grouping at all.
Implementations should allow the operator to pick the appropriate
granularity.
4.3. Centralized vs distributed route reflectors
In an environment where the RR clusters are distributed (yet
centralized enough to make hot potato routing hard), and each RR
cluster serves a subset of clients, it becomes necessary to propagate
the angular position of the clients between route reflectors. This
can be achieved as follows:
Deploy add-paths between route reflectors in order to maximize
path diversity within the cluster.
A non AS transitive BGP community of type (TBA by IANA) can be
used to encode and propagate angular position between 0 and 359 of
a client. This community is only relevant to the route reflectors
of a given BGP domain and should be stripped either at the ASBR
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boundary or when propagating updates to BGP peers which are not
route reflectors.
The angular position marking could also be added by clients and
advertised to the route reflector. This would require some
configuration effort.
5. Client's perspective policy based best path selection
There is some deployment scenarios where a service provider wants to
achieve a stronger control on traffic exiting the AS (for capacity
planning) rather than using hot potato routing based on IGP metric.
| | | |
| | | |
GW1 GW2 GW3 GW4
RR1 RR2
R1 R2 R3
Considering the figure above, all gateways have iBGP sessions to RR1
and RR2, and R1 R2 R3 have iBGP sessions as well to RR1 and RR2.
Gateway routers are meshed to an external network (for example, a
transit service provider).
We would like to achieve a strong control on the gateway used
(primary and backup) for each router (or each set of routers) in the
network (taking into account that routers do not support ADD PATHs).
For example, R1 using GW1 as primary and GW2 as backup; R2 using GW2
as primary and GW3 as backup; R3 using GW3 as primary and GW4 as
backup.
Basically, today a prefix P1 is received on each gateway from the
external network. Each gateway will send the prefix to both route
reflectors. Each route-reflector will receive four paths for P1 and
choose the best one based on his own decision process. Note that RR1
and RR2 may choose a different path as best. Each route-reflector
sends his best path towards R1, R2 and R3. Each router will receive
the same paths from the route-reflectors for P1 (at max, only two
gateways are visible from Rx routers). So default behavior does not
fit our requirements in term of traffic flows.
Using current BGP mechanisms available, we could achieve our
requirements using two solutions :
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o Modify the BGP meshing: for example, R1 meshed directly to GW1 and
GW2 and apply inbound policies on R1; R2 meshed directly to GW2
and GW3 and apply inbound policies on R2 ...
o Adding more route-reflectors (one RR per gateway used as primary)
and applying inbound policies on RRs to make each RR choosing a
different primary gateway and apply policies on routers to select
his own primary gateway.
These solutions have many drawbacks: first one is not flexible (re-
meshing needed when we want to change gateway of a router), second
one requires a lot of CAPEX.
We would like to introduce a solution where a single currently
deployed route-reflector chassis may take a different best path
decision for different set of clients based on preferences.
It should be noted that in simple scenarios (example: two RRs and two
gateways), RFC6774 would be able to fulfill service provider needs.
The solution proposed here would permit to handle more complex
scenarios and fine gateway choice per client or groups of clients.
5.1. Proposal
Our proposal is to reuse the concept introduced in [I.D.ietf-idr-ix-
bgp-route-server] in an iBGP context. To perform per client best
path selection, the router should maintain a per client BGP local-RIB
(or Adj-RIB-Out) associated with inbound policies implemented between
Adj-RIB-In and client LOC-RIB.
It would not be very scalable to use a per client policy (considering
hundreds of peers on a route-reflector), therefor our proposal is to
group clients sharing common policies inside a client group to
minimize computation/memory overhead. Client grouping could be done
statically (by configuration) or dynamically using the solution
described in section 3.3.1 of this document. Client grouping would
be performed with a per AFI/SAFI granularity as gateway/client
mapping may change in each AFI/SAFI context. A route-reflector
should be able to implement multiple client groups (with associated
inbound policies) as well as a default client group for clients that
does not require any specific policy decision: in this case, the
overall BGP best path computation would be used.
5.2. Example
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GW1 GW2 GW3
\ | /
\ | /
RR1
/ | \
R1 R2 R3
In the above figure GW1, GW2, GW3 and R3 are standard ibgp route-
reflector clients. R1 and R2 want to use a special gateway
combination (primary GW3, backup GW2, last resort GW1). R1 and R2
are configured in a specific client group CG1 on the route-reflector
while other peers are in the default client group. CG1 is associated
with a policy achieving the expected GW preference for R1 and R2, and
letting other paths without any change.
All routes received by RR1 (ebgp, ibgp, ibgp rr client, ibgp rr
client routing context) must be evaluated using overall BGP best path
computation as well as in client group, the client group policy will
accept or not the route to be evaluated by the local decision
process.
o Paths from GW1, GW2, GW3 are compared within default client group
leading to one GW (for example GW1) to be selected as best and
installed in global LOC-RIB. GW1 path will be advertised to GW2,
GW3 and R3 as they are in default CG. In CG1, preference of GW
paths has been modified, leading to GW3 being the best path and
installed in client group LOC-RIB. GW3 path will be advertised to
R1 and R2, as R1 and R2 are part of CG1.
o Paths from R3 are compared within default client group and
advertised to GW1, GW2, GW3. Those paths are also compared within
CG1 (as accepted by policy) and advertised to R1 and R2.
o Paths from R1 are compared within default client group and
advertised to GW1, GW2, GW3 and R3. Those paths are also compared
within GG1 (as accepted by policy) and advertised to R2.
o Paths from R2 are compared within default client group and
advertised to GW1, GW2, GW3 and R3. Those paths are also compared
within CG1 (as accepted by policy) and advertised to R1.
5.3. Avoiding routing loops
Compared to the IGP approaches described in this document, the policy
based route-reflection should be limited to end-to-end encapsulation
environments to avoid intra-domain forwarding loops. Using end-to-
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end encapsulation permit Edge routers to transport the traffic to the
targeted/preferred ASBR without any loop in the core.
To avoid a potential rerouting of the ASBR into the core (and
possible loop between Edges and ASBR), we must enforce forwarding at
the ASBR to the eBGP peer. This could be done by :
o implementing policies on ASBR to prefer eBGP path and install it
in FIB.
o implementing tunneling of traffic until the outside interface
(ASBR action to switch to outside interface).
The exact choice of encapsulation and techniques to prevent transport
loops (including potential loops at gateways) is left to the operator
choice and its specification is outside of the scope of this
document.
6. Deployment considerations
The solutions are primarily intended for end-to-end tunneled
environments, i.e. where traffic is label switched or IP tunneled
across the core. If unencapsulated hop-by-hop forwarding is used,
either misconfigurations or conflicts between these optimizations and
classical BGP path selection rules could lead to intra-domain
forwarding loops. Under certain circumstances the solutions can also
be deployable without end-to-end tunneling. In particular the best
path selection based on the client's IGP best-path selection is
guaranteed not to cause any forwarding loops (other than micro loops
associated with reconvergence) when deployed in a flat IGP area
provided that no distance tolerance value is used so that the path
choice is truly made on a per-client basis.
Regarding potential intra-domain forwarding loops at ASBR level, this
could be solved by enforcing external route preference or by
performing tunnel to external interface switching action on ASBRs.
Regarding client's IGP best-path selection, it should be self evident
that this solution does not interfere with policies enforced above
IGP tie breaking in the BGP best path algorithm.
The solution applies to NLRIs of all address families which can be
route reflected.
It should be noted that customized per-client or group of clients
best path selection is already in use today in the context of
Internet Exchange Point (IXP) route servers. In an IXP route server
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the client best path is selected as a result of different policies
rather than IGP metric distance to BGP next hop.
A possible scalability impact of optimizing path selection to take
account of the RR client position or operator's policy based
preference is that different RR clients receive different paths, and
therefore update/peer group efficiency diminishes. This cost is
imposed by the requirement to optimize the egress path from the
client's perspective. It is also likely that groups of clients will
end up receiving the same best path/s, in which case, inefficiency of
update generation will be minimized. It should be noted that in the
cases described under flexible router placement where placement is
determined on a per update/peer group basis or per route reflector,
the scale benefits of peer groupings are retained.
7. Security considerations
No new security issues are introduced to the BGP protocol by this
specification.
8. IANA Considerations
IANA is requested to allocate a type code for the Standard BGP
Community to be used for inter cluster propagation of angular
position of the clients.
IANA is requested to allocate a new type code from BGP OPEN Optional
Parameter Types registry to be used for Group_ID propagation.
9. Acknowledgments
Authors would like to thank Eric Rosen, Clarence Filsfils, Uli
Bornhauser Russ White, Jakob Heitz, Mike Shand and Jon Mitchell for
their valuable input.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.
[RFC4360] Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, February 2006.
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[RFC5492] Scudder, J. and R. Chandra, "Capabilities Advertisement
with BGP-4", RFC 5492, February 2009.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-idr-add-paths]
Walton, D., Retana, A., Chen, E., and J. Scudder,
"Advertisement of Multiple Paths in BGP", draft-ietf-idr-
add-paths-09 (work in progress), October 2013.
[RFC1997] Chandrasekeran, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP
Communities Attribute", RFC 1997, August 1996.
[RFC1998] Chen, E. and T. Bates, "An Application of the BGP
Community Attribute in Multi-home Routing", RFC 1998,
August 1996.
[RFC4384] Meyer, D., "BGP Communities for Data Collection", BCP 114,
RFC 4384, February 2006.
[RFC4456] Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
(IBGP)", RFC 4456, April 2006.
[RFC4893] Vohra, Q. and E. Chen, "BGP Support for Four-octet AS
Number Space", RFC 4893, May 2007.
[RFC5283] Decraene, B., Le Roux, JL., and I. Minei, "LDP Extension
for Inter-Area Label Switched Paths (LSPs)", RFC 5283,
July 2008.
[RFC5668] Rekhter, Y., Sangli, S., and D. Tappan, "4-Octet AS
Specific BGP Extended Community", RFC 5668, October 2009.
[RFC5714] Shand, M. and S. Bryant, "IP Fast Reroute Framework", RFC
5714, January 2010.
[RFC6774] Raszuk, R., Fernando, R., Patel, K., McPherson, D., and K.
Kumaki, "Distribution of Diverse BGP Paths", RFC 6774,
November 2012.
Authors' Addresses
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Robert Raszuk
Mirantis Inc.
615 National Ave. #100
Mt View, CA 94043
USA
Email: robert@raszuk.net
Christian Cassar
Cisco Systems
10 New Square Park
Bedfont Lakes, FELTHAM TW14 8HA
UK
Email: ccassar@cisco.com
Erik Aman
TeliaSonera
Marbackagatan 11
Farsta SE-123 86
Sweden
Email: erik.aman@teliasonera.com
Bruno Decraene
Orange
38-40 rue du General Leclerc
Issy les Moulineaux cedex 9 92794
France
Email: bruno.decraene@orange.com
Stephane Litkowski
Orange
9 rue du chene germain
Cesson Sevigne 35512
France
Email: stephane.litkowski@orange.com
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