IDR J. Heitz, Ed.
Internet-Draft Cisco
Intended status: Standards Track J. Snijders, Ed.
Expires: May 17, 2017 NTT
K. Patel
Arrcus
I. Bagdonas
Equinix
N. Hilliard
INEX
November 13, 2016
BGP Large Communities
draft-ietf-idr-large-community-07
Abstract
This document describes the BGP Large Communities attribute, an
extension to BGP-4. This attribute provides a mechanism to signal
opaque information within separate namespaces to aid in routing
management. The attribute is suitable for use with four-octet
Autonomous System Numbers.
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].
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 http://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 May 17, 2017.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 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
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. BGP Large Communities Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Canonical Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Reserved BGP Large Community values . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8. Implementation status - RFC EDITOR: REMOVE BEFORE PUBLICATION 5
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
10. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
11. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
12.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
BGP implementations typically support a routing policy language to
control the distribution of routing information. Network operators
attach BGP communities to routes to associate particular properties
with these routes. These properties may include information such as
the route origin location, or specification of a routing policy
action to be taken, or one that has been taken, and is applied to all
routes contained in a BGP Update Message where the Communities
Attribute is included. Because BGP communities are optional
transitive BGP attributes, BGP communities may be acted upon or
otherwise used by routing policies in other Autonomous Systems (ASes)
on the Internet.
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BGP Communities attributes are a variable length attribute consisting
of a set of one or more four-octet values, each of which specify a
community [RFC1997]. Common use of the individual values of this
attribute type split this single 32-bit value into two 16-bit values.
The most significant word is interpreted as an Autonomous System
Number (ASN) and the least significant word is a locally defined
value whose meaning is assigned by the operator of the Autonomous
System in the most significant word.
Since the adoption of four-octet ASNs [RFC6793], the BGP Communities
attribute can no longer accommodate the above encoding, as a two-
octet word cannot fit a four-octet ASN. The BGP Extended Communities
attribute [RFC4360] is also unsuitable. The six-octet length of the
Extended Community value precludes the common operational practise of
encoding four-octet ASNs in both the Global Administrator and the
Local Administrator sub-fields.
To address these shortcomings, this document defines a BGP Large
Communities attribute encoded as an unordered set of one or more
twelve-octet values, each consisting of a four-octet Global
Administrator field and two four-octet operator-defined fields, each
of which can be used to denote properties or actions significant to
the operator of the Autonomous System assigning the values.
2. BGP Large Communities Attribute
This document defines the BGP Large Communities attribute as an
optional transitive path attribute of variable length. All routes
with the BGP Large Communities attribute belong to the communities
specified in the attribute.
Each BGP Large Community value is encoded as a 12-octet quantity, 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
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Global Administrator |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Local Data Part 1 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Local Data Part 2 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Global Administrator: A four-octet namespace identifier.
Local Data Part 1: A four-octet operator-defined value.
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Local Data Part 2: A four-octet operator-defined value.
The Global Administrator field is intended to allow different
Autonomous Systems to define BGP Large Communities without collision.
This field SHOULD be either one of the reserved values as defined
below, or an Autonomous System Number (ASN). If it is a reserved
value, then the Local Data Parts are as defined by the reserved
value. If it is an ASN then the Local Data Parts are to be
interpreted as defined by the owner of the ASN.
There is no significance to the order in which twelve-octet Large
Community Attribute values are encoded in a Large Communities
attribute, A BGP speaker can transmit them in any order.
Duplicate BGP Large Community values SHOULD NOT be transmitted. A
receiving speaker SHOULD silently remove duplicate BGP Large
Community values from a BGP Large Community attribute.
3. Aggregation
If a range of routes is aggregated, then the resulting aggregate
should have a BGP Large Communities attribute which contains all of
the BGP Large Communities attributes from all of the aggregated
routes.
4. Canonical Representation
The canonical representation of BGP Large Communities is three
separate unsigned integers in decimal notation in the following
order: Global Administrator, Local Data 1, Local Data 2. Numbers
MUST NOT contain leading zeros; a zero value MUST be represented with
a single zero. Each number is separated from the next by a single
colon. For example: 64496:4294967295:2, 64496:0:0.
BGP Large Communities SHOULD be represented in the canonical
representation.
5. Reserved BGP Large Community values
The following Global Administrator values are reserved: 0, 65535, and
4294967295. Operators SHOULD NOT use these Global Administrator
values.
Although this document does not define any Special-Use BGP Large
Communities, the Global Administrator values specified above could be
used if there is a future need for them.
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6. Error Handling
The error handling of BGP Large Communities is as follows:
o A BGP Large Communities attribute SHALL be considered malformed if
the length of the BGP Large Communities Attribute value, expressed
in octets, is not a non-zero multiple of 12.
o A BGP UPDATE message with a malformed BGP Large Communities
attribute SHALL be handled using the approach of "treat-as-
withdraw" as described in section 2 [RFC7606].
The BGP Large Communities Global Administrator field MAY contain any
value, and a BGP Large Communities attribute MUST NOT be considered
malformed if the Global Administrator field contains an unallocated,
unassigned or reserved ASN or is set to one of the reserved BGP Large
Community values defined in Section 5.
7. Security Considerations
This extension to BGP has similar security implications as BGP
Communities [RFC1997].
This document does not change any underlying security issues
associated with any other BGP Communities mechanism. Specifically,
an AS relying on the BGP Large Communities attribute carried in BGP
must have trust in every other AS in the path, as any intermediate
Autonomous System in the path may have added, deleted, or altered the
BGP Large Communities attribute. Specifying the mechanism to provide
such trust is beyond the scope of this document.
BGP Large Communities do not protect the integrity of each community
value. Operators should be aware that it is possible for a BGP
speaker to alter BGP Large Community Attribute values in a BGP Update
Message. Protecting the integrity of the transitive handling of BGP
Large Community attributes in a manner consistent with the intent of
expressed BGP routing policies falls within the broader scope of
securing BGP, and is not specifically addressed here.
Network administrators should note the recommendations in Section 11
of BGP Operations and Security [RFC7454].
8. Implementation status - RFC EDITOR: REMOVE BEFORE PUBLICATION
This section records the status of known implementations of the
protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this
Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in [RFC7942].
The description of implementations in this section is intended to
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assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to
RFCs. Please note that the listing of any individual implementation
here does not imply endorsement by the IETF. Furthermore, no effort
has been spent to verify the information presented here that was
supplied by IETF contributors. This is not intended as, and must not
be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their
features. Readers are advised to note that other implementations may
exist.
As of today these vendors have produced an implementation of BGP
Large Communities:
o Cisco IOS XR
o ExaBGP
o GoBGP
o BIRD
o OpenBGPD
o pmacct
o Quagga
The latest implementation news is tracked at
http://largebgpcommunities.net/ [1].
9. IANA Considerations
IANA has made an Early Allocation of the value 32 (LARGE_COMMUNITY)
in the "BGP Path Attributes" registry under the "Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP) Parameters" group and is now asked to make that
Permanent.
10. Contributors
The following people contributed significantly to the content of the
document:
John Heasley
NTT Communications
Email: heas@shrubbery.net
Adam Simpson
Nokia
Email: adam.1.simpson@nokia.com
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11. Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Ruediger Volk, Russ White, Acee
Lindem, Shyam Sethuram, Jared Mauch, Joel M. Halpern, Jeffrey Haas,
Gunter van de Velde, Marco Marzetti, Eduardo Ascenco Reis, Mark
Schouten, Paul Hoogsteder, Martijn Schmidt, Greg Hankins, Bertrand
Duvivier, Barry O'Donovan, Grzegorz Janoszka, Linda Dunbar, Marco
Davids, Gaurab Raj Upadhaya, Jeff Tantsura, Teun Vink, Adam
Davenport, Theodore Baschak, Pier Carlo Chiodi, Nabeel Cocker, Ian
Dickinson, Jan Baggen, Duncan Lockwood, David Farmer, Randy Bush, Wim
Henderickx, Stefan Plug, Kay Rechthien, Rob Shakir, Warren Kumari,
Gert Doering, Thomas King, Mikael Abrahamsson, Wesley Steehouwer,
Sander Steffann, Brad Dreisbach, Martin Millnert, Christopher Morrow,
Jay Borkenhagen, Arnold Nipper, Joe Provo, Niels Bakker, Bill Fenner,
Tom Daly, Ben Maddison, Alexander Azimov, Brian Dickson, Peter van
Dijk, Julian Seifert, Tom Petch, Tom Scholl, Arjen Zonneveld, Remco
van Mook, Adam Chappell, Jussi Peltola, Kristian Larsson, Markus
Hauschild, Richard Steenbergen, David Freedman, Richard Hartmann,
Geoff Huston and Mach Chen for their support, insightful review and
comments.
12. References
12.1. Normative References
[RFC1997] Chandra, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP Communities
Attribute", RFC 1997, DOI 10.17487/RFC1997, August 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1997>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC6793] Vohra, Q. and E. Chen, "BGP Support for Four-Octet
Autonomous System (AS) Number Space", RFC 6793,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6793, December 2012,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6793>.
[RFC7606] Chen, E., Ed., Scudder, J., Ed., Mohapatra, P., and K.
Patel, "Revised Error Handling for BGP UPDATE Messages",
RFC 7606, DOI 10.17487/RFC7606, August 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7606>.
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12.2. Informative References
[RFC4360] Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, DOI 10.17487/RFC4360,
February 2006, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4360>.
[RFC7454] Durand, J., Pepelnjak, I., and G. Doering, "BGP Operations
and Security", BCP 194, RFC 7454, DOI 10.17487/RFC7454,
February 2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7454>.
[RFC7942] Sheffer, Y. and A. Farrel, "Improving Awareness of Running
Code: The Implementation Status Section", BCP 205,
RFC 7942, DOI 10.17487/RFC7942, July 2016,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7942>.
12.3. URIs
[1] http://largebgpcommunities.net
Authors' Addresses
Jakob Heitz (editor)
Cisco
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95054
USA
Email: jheitz@cisco.com
Job Snijders (editor)
NTT Communications
Theodorus Majofskistraat 100
Amsterdam 1065 SZ
The Netherlands
Email: job@ntt.net
Keyur Patel
Arrcus, Inc
Email: keyur@arrcus.com
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Ignas Bagdonas
Equinix
London
UK
Email: ibagdona.ietf@gmail.com
Nick Hilliard
INEX
4027 Kingswood Road
Dublin 24
IE
Email: nick@inex.ie
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