RTGWG M. Shand
Internet-Draft S. Bryant
Intended status: Informational Cisco Systems
Expires: August 17, 2008 February 14, 2008
A Framework for Loop-free Convergence
draft-ietf-rtgwg-lf-conv-frmwk-02
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Abstract
This draft describes mechanisms that may be used to prevent or to
suppress the formation of micro-loops when an IP or MPLS network
undergoes topology change due to failure, repair or management
action.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. The Nature of Micro-loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Applicability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Micro-loop Control Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Loop mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Micro-loop Prevention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.1. Incremental Cost Advertisement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.2. Nearside Tunneling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.3. Farside Tunnels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.4. Distributed Tunnels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.5. Packet Marking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.6. MPLS New Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.7. Ordered FIB Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.8. Synchronised FIB Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7. Using PLSN In Conjunction With Other Methods . . . . . . . . . 17
8. Loop Suppression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
9. Compatibility Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
10. Comparison of Loop-free Convergence Methods . . . . . . . . . 18
11. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
12. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
13. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 22
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1. Introduction
When there is a change to the network topology (due to the failure or
restoration of a link or router, or as a result of management action)
the routers need to converge on a common view of the new topology and
the paths to be used for forwarding traffic to each destination.
During this process, referred to as a routing transition, packet
delivery between certain source/destination pairs may be disrupted.
This occurs due to the time it takes for the topology change to be
propagated around the network together with the time it takes each
individual router to determine and then update the forwarding
information base (FIB) for the affected destinations. During this
transition, packets may be lost due to the continuing attempts to use
the failed component, and due to forwarding loops. Forwarding loops
arise due to the inconsistent FIBs that occur as a result of the
difference in time taken by routers to execute the transition
process. This is a problem that occurs in both IP networks and MPLS
networks that use LDP RFC3036 [1] as the label switched path (LSP)
signaling protocol.
The service failures caused by routing transitions are largely hidden
by higher-level protocols that retransmit the lost data. However new
Internet services are emerging which are more sensitive to the packet
disruption that occurs during a transition. To make the transition
transparent to their users, these services require a short routing
transition. Ideally, routing transitions would be completed in zero
time with no packet loss.
Regardless of how optimally the mechanisms involved have been
designed and implemented, it is inevitable that a routing transition
will take some minimum interval that is greater than zero. This has
led to the development of a TE fast-reroute mechanism for MPLS
RFC4090 [2]. Alternative mechanisms that might be deployed in an
MPLS network and mechanisms that may be used in an IP network are
work in progress in the IETF IPFRR [3]. Any repair mechanism may
however be disrupted by the formation of micro-loops during the
period between the time when the failure is announced, and the time
when all FIBs have been updated to reflect the new topology.
There is, however, little point in introducing new mechanisms into an
IP network to provide fast re-route, without also deploying
mechanisms that prevent the disruptive effects of micro-loops which
may starve the repair or cause congestion loss as a result of looping
packets.
The disruptive effect of micro-loops is not confined to periods when
there is a component failure. Micro-loops can, for example, form
when a component is put back into service following repair. Micro-
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loops can also form as a result of a network maintenance action such
as adding a new network component, removing a network component or
modifying a link cost.
This framework provides a summary of the mechanisms that have been
proposed to address the micro-loop issue.
2. The Nature of Micro-loops
Micro-loops may form during the periods when a network is re-
converging following ANY topology change, and are caused by
inconsistent FIBs in the routers. During the transition, micro-loops
may occur over a single link between a pair of routers that
temporarily use each other as the next hop for a prefix. Micro-loops
may also form when each router in a cycle of routers has the next
router in the cycle as a next hop for a prefix.
Cyclic loops may occur if one or more of the following conditions are
met:-
1) Asymmetric link costs.
2) The existence of an equal cost path between a pair of routers
which make different decisions regarding which path to use for
forwarding a particular destination. Note that even routers which
do not implement equal cost multi-path (ECMP) forwarding must make
a choice between the available equal cost paths and unless they
make the same choice the condition for cyclic loops will be
fulfilled.
3) Topology changes affecting multiple links, including single
node and line card failures.
Micro-loops have two undesirable side-effects; congestion and repair
starvation. A looping packet consumes bandwidth until it either
escapes as a result of the re-synchronization of the FIBs, or its TTL
expires. This transiently increases the traffic over a link by as
much as 128 times, and may cause the link to congest. This
congestion reduces the bandwidth available to other traffic (which is
not otherwise affected by the topology change). As a result the
"innocent" traffic using the link experiences increased latency, and
is liable to congestive packet loss.
In cases where the link or node failure has been protected by a fast
re-route repair, the inconsistency in the FIBs prevents some traffic
from reaching the failure and hence being repaired. The repair may
thus become starved of traffic and hence become ineffective. Thus in
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addition to the congestive damage, the repair is rendered ineffective
by the micro-loop. Similarly, if the topology change is the result
of management action the link could have been retained in service
throughout the transition (i.e. the link acts as its own repair
path), however, if micro-loops form, they prevent productive
forwarding during the transition.
Unless otherwise controlled, micro-loops may form in any part of the
network that forwards (or in the case of a new link, will forward)
packets over a path that includes the affected topology change. The
time taken to propagate the topology change through the network, and
the non-uniform time taken by each router to calculate the new
shortest path tree (SPT) and update its FIB may significantly extend
the duration of the packet disruption caused by the micro-loops. In
some cases a packet may be subject to disruption from micro-loops
which occur sequentially at links along the path, thus further
extending the period of disruption beyond that required to resolve a
single loop.
3. Applicability
Loop free convergence techniques are applicable APPL [4]to any
situation in which micro-loops may form. For example the convergence
of a network following:
1) Component failure.
2) Component repair.
3) Management withdrawal of a component.
4) Management insertion or a component.
5) Management change of link cost (either positive or negative).
6) External cost change, for example change of external gateway as
a result of a BGP change.
7) A Shared risk link group failure.
In each case, a component may be a link or a router.
Loop free convergence techniques are applicable to both IP networks
and MPLS enabled networks that use LDP, including LDP networks that
use the single-hop tunnel fast-reroute mechanism.
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4. Micro-loop Control Strategies
Micro-loop control strategies fall into three basic classes:
1) Micro-loop mitigation
2) Micro-loop prevention
3) Micro-loop suppression
A micro-loop mitigation scheme works by re-converging the network in
such a way that it reduces, but does not eliminate, the formation of
micro-loops. Such schemes cannot guarantee the productive forwarding
of packets during the transition.
A micro-loop prevention mechanism controls the re-convergence of
network in such a way that no micro-loops form. Such a micro-loop
prevention mechanism allows the continued use of any fast repair
method until the network has converged on its new topology, and
prevents the collateral damage that occurs to other traffic for the
duration of each micro-loop.
A micro-loop suppression mechanism attempts to eliminate the
collateral damage done by micro-loops to other traffic. This may be
achieved by, for example, using a packet monitoring method, which
detects that a packet is looping and drops it. Such schemes make no
attempt to productively forward the packet throughout the network
transition.
Note that all known micro-loop mitigation and micro-loop prevention
mechanisms extend the duration of the re-convergence process. When
the failed component is protected by a fast re-route repair this
implies that the converging network requires the repair to remain in
place for longer than would otherwise be the case. The extended
convergence time means any traffic which is NOT repaired by an
imperfect repair experiences a significantly longer outage than it
would experience with conventional convergence.
When a component is returned to service, or when a network management
action has taken place, this additional delay does not cause traffic
disruption, because there is no repair involved. However the
extended delay is undesirable, because it increases the time that the
network takes to be ready for another failure, and hence leaves it
vulnerable to multiple failures.
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5. Loop mitigation
The only known loop mitigation approach is the Path Locking with
safe-neighbors (PLSN) method described in PLSN [5]. In this method,
a micro-loop free next-hop safety condition is defined as follows: In
a symmetric cost network, it is safe for router X to change to the
use of neighbor Y as its next-hop for a specific destination if the
path through Y to that destination satisfies both of the following
criteria:
1. X considers Y as its loop-free neighbor based on the topology
before the change AND
2. X considers Y as its downstream neighbor based on the topology
after the change.
In an asymmetric cost network, a stricter safety condition is needed,
and the criterion is that:
X considers Y as its downstream neighbor based on the topology
both before and after the change.
Based on these criteria, destinations are classified by each router
into three classes:
Type A destinations: Destinations unaffected by the change (type
A1) and also destinations whose next hop after the change
satisfies the safety criteria (type A2).
Type B destinations: Destinations that cannot be sent via the new
primary next-hop because the safety criteria are not satisfied,
but which can be sent via another next-hop that does satisfy the
safety criteria.
Type C destinations: All other destinations.
Following a topology change, Type A destinations are immediately
changed to go via the new topology. Type B destinations are
immediately changed to go via the next hop that satisfies the safety
criteria, even though this is not the shortest path. Type B
destinations continue to go via this path until all routers have
changed their Type C destinations over to the new next hop. Routers
must not change their Type C destinations until all routers have
changed their Type A2 and Type B destinations to the new or
intermediate (safe) next hop.
Simulations indicate that this approach produces a significant
reduction in the number of links that are subject to micro-looping.
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However unlike all of the micro-loop prevention methods it is only a
partial solution. In particular, micro-loops may form on any link
joining a pair of type C routers.
Because routers delay updating their Type C destination FIB entries,
they will continue to route towards the failure during the time when
the routers are changing their Type A and B destinations, and hence
will continue to productively forward packets provided that viable
repair paths exist.
A backwards compatibility issue arises with PLSN. If a router is not
capable of micro-loop control, it will not correctly delay its FIB
update. If all such routers had only type A destinations this loop
mitigation mechanism would work as it was designed. Alternatively,
if all such incapable routers had only type C destinations, the
"covert" announcement mechanism used to trigger the tunnel based
schemes (see sections 5.2 to 5.4) could be used to cause the Type A
and Type B destinations to be changed, with the incapable routers and
routers having type C destinations delaying until they received the
"real" announcement. Unfortunately, these two approaches are
mutually incompatible.
Note that simulations indicate that in most topologies treating type
B destinations as type C results in only a small degradation in loop
prevention. Also note that simulation results indicate that in
production networks where some, but not all, links have asymmetric
costs, using the stricter asymmetric cost criterion actually REDUCES
the number of loop free destinations, because fewer destinations can
be classified as type A or B.
This mechanism operates identically for both "bad-news" events,
"good-news" events and SRLG failure.
6. Micro-loop Prevention
Eight micro-loop prevention methods have been proposed:
1. Incremental cost advertisement
2. Nearside tunneling
3. Farside tunneling
4. Distributed tunnels
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5. Packet marking
6. New MPLS labels
7. Ordered FIB update
8. Synchronized FIB update
6.1. Incremental Cost Advertisement
When a link fails, the cost of the link is normally changed from its
assigned metric to "infinity" in one step. However, it can be proved
that no micro-loops will form if the link cost is increased in
suitable increments, and the network is allowed to stabilize before
the next cost increment is advertised. Once the link cost has been
increased to a value greater than that of the lowest alternative cost
around the link, the link may be disabled without causing a micro-
loop.
The criterion for a link cost change to be safe is that any link
which is subjected to a cost change of x can only cause loops in a
part of the network that has a cyclic cost less than or equal to x.
Because there may exist links which have a cost of one in each
direction, resulting in a cyclic cost of two, this can result in the
link cost having to be raised in increments of one. However the
increment can be larger where the minimum cost permits. Recent work
<"Disruption free topology reconfiguration in OSPF networks", IEEE
INFOCOM 2007, May 2007, Anchorage.> has shown that there are a number
of optimizations which can be applied to the problem in order to
minimize the number of increments required.
The incremental cost change approach has the advantage over all other
currently known loop prevention scheme that it requires no change to
the routing protocol. It will work in any network because it does
not require any co-operation from the other routers in the network.
Where large metrics are used and no optimization is performed, the
method can be extremely slow. However in cases where the per link
metric is small, either because small values have been assigned by
the network designers, or because of restrictions implicit in the
routing protocol (e.g. RIP restricts the metric, and BGP using the
AS path length frequently uses an effective metric of one, or a very
small integer for each inter AS hop), the number of required
increments can be acceptably small even without optimizations.
The number of increments required, and hence the time taken to fully
converge, is significant because for the duration of the transition
some parts of the network continue to use the old forwarding path,
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and hence use any repair mechanism for an extended period. In the
case of a failure that cannot be fully repaired, some destinations
may become unreachable for an extended period.
Where the micro-loop prevention mechanism was being used to support a
fast re-route repair the network may be vulnerable to a second
failure for the duration of the controlled re-convergence.
Where the micro-loop prevention mechanism was being used to support a
reconfiguration of the network the extended time is less of an issue.
In this case, because the real forwarding path is available
throughout the whole transition, there is no conflict between
concurrent change actions throughout the network.
It will be appreciated that when a link is returned to service, its
cost is reduced in small steps from "infinity" to its final cost,
thereby providing similar micro-loop prevention during a "good-news"
event. Note that the link cost may be decreased from "infinity" to
any value greater than that of the lowest alternative cost around the
link in one step without causing a micro-loop.
When the failure is an SRLG the link cost increments must be
coordinated across all members of the SRLG. This may be achieved by
completing the transition of one link before starting the next, or by
interleaving the changes. This can be achieved without the need for
any protocol extensions, by for example, using existing identifiers
to establish the ordering and the arrival of LSP/LSAs to trigger the
generation of the next increment.
6.2. Nearside Tunneling
This mechanism works by creating an overlay network using tunnels
whose path is not affected by the topology change and carrying the
traffic affected by the change in that new network. When all the
traffic is in the new, tunnel based, network, the real network is
allowed to converge on the new topology. Because all the traffic
that would be affected by the change is carried in the overlay
network no micro-loops form.
When a failure is detected (or a link is withdrawn from service), the
router adjacent to the failure issues a new ("covert") routing
message announcing the topology change. This message is propagated
through the network by all routers, but is only understood by routers
capable of using one of the tunnel based micro-loop prevention
mechanisms.
Each of the micro-loop preventing routers builds a tunnel to the
closest router adjacent to the failure. They then determine which of
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their traffic would transit the failure and place that traffic in the
tunnel. When all of these tunnels are in place, the failure is then
announced as normal. Because these tunnels will be unaffected by the
transition, and because the routers protecting the link will continue
the repair (or forward across the link being withdrawn), no traffic
will be disrupted by the failure. When the network has converged
these tunnels are withdrawn, allowing traffic to be forwarded along
its new "natural" path. The order of tunnel insertion and withdrawal
is not important, provided that the tunnels are all in place before
the normal announcement is issued.
This method completes in bounded time, and is much faster than the
incremental cost method. Depending on the exact design, it completes
in two or three flood-SPF-FIB update cycles.
At the time at which the failure is announced as normal, micro-loops
may form within isolated islands of non-micro-loop preventing
routers. However, only traffic entering the network via such routers
can micro-loop. All traffic entering the network via a micro-loop
preventing router will be tunneled correctly to the nearest repairing
router, including, if necessary being tunneled via a non- micro-loop
preventing router, and will not micro-loop.
Where there is no requirement to prevent the formation of micro-
loops involving non-micro-loop preventing routers, a single, "normal"
announcement may be made, and a local timer used to determine the
time at which transition from tunneled forwarding to normal
forwarding over the new topology may commence.
This technique has the disadvantage that it requires traffic to be
tunneled during the transition. This is an issue in IP networks
because not all router designs are capable of high performance IP
tunneling. It is also an issue in MPLS networks because the
encapsulating router has to know the label set that the decapsulating
router is distributing.
A further disadvantage of this method is that it requires co-
operation from all the routers within the routing domain to fully
protect the network against micro-loops.
When a new link is added, the mechanism is run in "reverse". When
the "covert" announcement is heard, routers determine which traffic
they will send over the new link, and tunnel that traffic to the
router on the near side of that link. This path will not be affected
by the presence of the new link. When the "normal" announcement is
heard, they then update their FIB to send the traffic normally
according to the new topology. Any traffic encountering a router
that has not yet updated its FIB will be tunneled to the near side of
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the link, and will therefore not loop.
When a management change to the topology is required, again exactly
the same mechanism protects against micro-looping of packets by the
micro-loop preventing routers.
When the failure is an SRLG, the required strategy is to classify
traffic according the first member of the SRLG that it will traverse
on its way to the destination, and to tunnel that traffic to the
router that is closest to that SRLG member. This will require
multiple tunnel destinations, in the limiting case, one per SRLG
member.
6.3. Farside Tunnels
Farside tunneling loop prevention requires the loop preventing
routers to place all of the traffic that would traverse the failure
in one or more tunnels terminating at the router (or in the case of
node failure routers) at the far side of the failure. The properties
of this method are a more uniform distribution of repair traffic than
is a achieved using the nearside tunnel method, and in the case of
node failure, a reduction in the decapsulation load on any single
router.
Unlike the nearside tunnel method (which uses normal routing to the
repairing router), this method requires the use of a repair path to
the farside router. This may be provided by the not-via mechanism,
in which case no further computation is needed.
The mode of operation is otherwise identical to the nearside
tunneling loop prevention method (Section 5.2).
6.4. Distributed Tunnels
In the distributed tunnels loop prevention method, each router
calculates its own repair and forwards traffic affected by the
failure using that repair. Unlike the FRR case, the actual failure
is known at the time of the calculation. The objective of the loop
preventing routers is to get the packets that would have gone via the
failure into G-space TUNNEL [6] using routers that are in F-space.
Because packets are decapsulated on entry to G-space, rather than
being forced to go to the farside of the failure, more optimum
routing may be achieved. This method is subject to the same
reachability constraints described in TUNNEL [6] .
The mode of operation is otherwise identical to the nearside
tunneling loop prevention method (Section 5.2).
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6.5. Packet Marking
If packets could be marked in some way, this information could be
used to assign them to one of: the new topology, the old topology or
a transition topology. They would then be correctly forwarded during
the transition. This could, for example, be achieved by allocating a
Type of Service bit to the task RFC791 [7]. This mechanism works
identically for both "bad-news" and "good-news" events. It also
works identically for SRLG failure. There are three problems with
this solution:
The packet marking bit may not available.
The mechanism would introduce a non-standard forwarding procedure.
Packet marking using either the old or the new topology would
double the size of the FIB, however some optimizations may be
possible
6.6. MPLS New Labels
In an MPLS network that is using RFC3036 [1] for label distribution,
loop free convergence can be achieved through the use of new labels
when the path that a prefix will take through the network changes.
As described in Section 5.2, the repairing routers issue a covert
announcement to start the loop free convergence process. All loop
preventing routers calculate the new topology and determine whether
their FIB needs to be changed. If there is no change in the FIB they
take no part in the following process.
The routers that need to make a change to their FIB consider each
change and check the new next hop to determine whether it will use a
path in the OLD topology which reaches the destination without
traversing the failure (i.e. the next hop is in F-space with respect
to the failure TUNNEL [6]). If so the FIB entry can be immediately
updated. For all of the remaining FIB entries, the router issues a
new label to each of its neighbors. This new label is used to lock
the path during the transition in a similar manner to the previously
described loop-free convergence with tunnels method (Section 5.2).
Routers receiving a new label install it in their FIB, for MPLS label
translation, but do not yet remove the old label and do not yet use
this new label to forward IP packets. i.e. they prepare to forward
using the new label on the new path, but do not use it yet. Any
packets received continue to be forwarded the old way, using the old
labels, towards the repair.
At some time after the covert announcement, an overt announcement of
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the failure is issued. This announcement must not be issued until
such time as all routers have carried out all of their covert
announcement activities. On receipt of the overt announcement all
routers that were delaying convergence move to their new path for
both the new and the old labels. This involves changing the IP
address entries to use the new labels, AND changing the old labels to
forward using the new labels.
Because the new label path was installed during the covert phase,
packets reach their destinations as follows:
If they do not go via any router using a new label they go via the
repairing router and the repair.
If they meet any router that is using the new labels they get
marked with the new labels and reach their destination using the
new path, back-tracking if necessary.
When all routers have changed to the new path the network is
converged. At some time later, when it can be assumed that all
routers have moved to using the new path, the FIB can be cleaned up
to remove the, now redundant, old labels.
As with other method methods the new labels may be modified to
provide loop prevention for "good news". There are also a number of
optimizations of this method.
6.7. Ordered FIB Update
The Ordered FIB loop prevention method is described in OFIB [8].
Micro-loops occur following a failure or a cost increase, when a
router closer to the failed component revises its routes to take
account of the failure before a router which is further away. By
analyzing the reverse spanning tree over which traffic is directed to
the failed component in the old topology, it is possible to determine
a strict ordering which ensures that nodes closer to the root always
process the failure after any nodes further away, and hence micro-
loops are prevented.
When the failure has been announced, each router waits a multiple of
the convergence timer TIMER [9]. The multiple is determined by the
node's position in the reverse spanning tree, and the delay value is
chosen to guarantee that a node can complete its processing within
this time. The convergence time may be reduced by employing a
signaling mechanism to notify the parent when all the children have
completed their processing, and hence when it was safe for the parent
to instantiate its new routes.
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The property of this approach is therefore that it imposes a delay
which is bounded by the network diameter although in many cases it
will be much less.
When a link is returned to service the convergence process above is
reversed. A router first determines its distance (in hops) from the
new link in the NEW topology. Before updating its FIB, it then waits
a time equal to the value of that distance multiplied by the
convergence timer.
It will be seen that network management actions can similarly be
undertaken by treating a cost increase in a manner similar to a
failure and a cost decrease similar to a restoration.
The ordered FIB mechanism requires all nodes in the domain to operate
according to these procedures, and the presence of non co- operating
nodes can give rise to loops for any traffic which traverses them
(not just traffic which is originated through them). Without
additional mechanisms these loops could remain in place for a
significant time.
It should be noted that this method requires per router ordering, but
not per prefix ordering. A router must wait its turn to update its
FIB, but it should then update its entire FIB.
When an SRLG failure occurs a router must classify traffic into the
classes that pass over each member of the SRLG. Each router is then
independently assigned a ranking with respect to each SRLG member for
which they have a traffic class. These rankings may be different for
each traffic class. The prefixes of each class are then changed in
the FIB according to the ordering of their specific ranking. Again,
as for the single failure case, signaling may be used to speed up the
convergence process.
Note that the special SRLG case of a full or partial node failure,
can be dealt with without using per prefix ordering, by running a
single reverse SPF rooted at the failed node (or common point of the
subset of failing links in the partial case).
There are two classes of signaling optimization that can be applied
to the ordered FIB loop-prevention method:
When the router makes NO change, it can signal immediately. This
significantly reduces the time taken by the network to process
long chains of routers that have no change to make to their FIB.
When a router HAS changed, it can signal that it has completed.
This is more problematic since this may be difficult to determine,
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particularly in a distributed architecture, and the optimization
obtained is the difference between the actual time taken to make
the FIB change and the worst case timer value. This saving could
be of the order of one second per hop.
There is another method of executing ordered FIB which is based on
pure signaling <P. Francois, O. Bonaventure, "Avoiding transient
loops during IGP convergence" IEEE INFOCOM 2005, March 2005, Miami,
Fl., USA .>. Methods that use signaling as an optimization are safe
because eventually they fall back on the established IGP mechanisms
which ensure that networks converge under conditions of packet loss.
However a mechanism that relies on signaling in order to converge
requires a reliable signaling mechanism which must be proven to
recover from any failure circumstance.
6.8. Synchronised FIB Update
Micro-loops form because of the asynchronous nature of the FIB update
process during a network transition. In many router architectures it
is the time taken to update the FIB itself that is the dominant term.
One approach would be to have two FIBs and, in a synchronized action
throughout the network, to switch from the old to the new. One way
to achieve this synchronized change would be to signal or otherwise
determine the wall clock time of the change, and then execute the
change at that time, using NTP [10] to synchronize the wall clocks in
the routers.
This approach has a number of major issues. Firstly two complete
FIBs are needed which may create a scaling issue and secondly a
suitable network wide synchronization method is needed. However,
neither of these are insurmountable problems.
Since the FIB change synchronization will not be perfect there may be
some interval during which micro-loops form. Whether this scheme is
classified as a micro-loop prevention mechanism or a micro-loop
mitigation mechanism within this taxonomy is therefore dependent on
the degree of synchronization achieved.
This mechanism works identically for both "bad-news" and "good-news"
events. It also works identically for SRLG failure. Further
consideration needs to be given to interoperating with routers that
do not support this mechanism. Without a suitable interoperating
mechanism, loops may form for the duration of the synchronization
delay.
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7. Using PLSN In Conjunction With Other Methods
All of the tunnel methods and packet marking can be combined with
PLSN PLSN [5] to reduce the traffic that needs to be protected by the
advanced method. Specifically all traffic could use PLSN except
traffic between a pair of routers both of which consider the
destination to be type C. The type C to type C traffic would be
protected from micro-looping through the use of a loop prevention
method.
However, determining whether the new next hop router considers a
destination to be type C may be computationally intensive. An
alternative approach would be to use a loop prevention method for all
local type C destinations. This would not require any additional
computation, but would require the additional loop prevention method
to be used in cases which would not have generated loops (i.e. when
the new next-hop router considered this to be a type A or B
destination).
The amount of traffic that would use PLSN is highly dependent on the
network topology and the specific change, but would be expected to be
in the region %70 to %90 in typical networks.
However, PLSN cannot be combined safely with Ordered FIB. Consider
the network fragment shown below:
(preamble)
R
/|\
/ | \
1/ 2| \3
/ | \ cost S->T = 10
Y-----X----S----T cost T->S = 1
| 1 2 |
|1 |
D---------------+
20
(postamble)
On failure of link XY, according to PLSN, S will regard R as a safe
neighbor for traffic to D. However the ordered FIB rank of both R and
T will be zero and hence these can change their FIBs during the same
time interval. If R changes before T, then a loop will form around
R, T and S. This can be prevented by using a stronger safety
condition than PLSN currently specifies, at the cost of introducing
more type C routers, and hence reducing the PLSN coverage.
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8. Loop Suppression
A micro-loop suppression mechanism recognizes that a packet is
looping and drops it. One such approach would be for a router to
recognize, by some means, that it had seen the same packet before.
It is difficult to see how sufficiently reliable discrimination could
be achieved without some form of per-router signature such as route
recording. A packet recognizing approach therefore seems infeasible.
An alternative approach would be to recognize that a packet was
looping by recognizing that it was being sent back to the place that
it had just come from. This would work for the types of loop that
form in symmetric cost networks, but would not suppress the cyclic
loops that form in asymmetric networks.
This mechanism operates identically for both "bad-news" events,
"good-news" events and SRLG failure.
The problem with this class of micro-loop control strategies is that
whilst they prevent collateral damage they do nothing to enhance the
productive forwarding of packets during the network transition.
9. Compatibility Issues
Deployment of any micro-loop control mechanism is a major change to a
network. Full consideration must be given to interoperation between
routers that are capable of micro-loop control, and those that are
not. Additionally there may be a desire to limit the complexity of
micro-loop control by choosing a method based purely on its
simplicity. Any such decision must take into account that if a more
capable scheme is needed in the future, its deployment will be
complicated by interaction with the scheme previously deployed.
10. Comparison of Loop-free Convergence Methods
PLSN [5] is an efficient mechanism to prevent the formation of micro-
loops, but is only a partial solution. It is a useful adjunct to
some of the complete solutions, but may need modification.
Incremental cost advertisement is impractical as a general solution
because it takes too long to complete. However, it is universally
available, and hence may find use in certain network reconfiguration
operations.
Packet Marking is probably impractical because of the need to find
the marking bit and to change the forwarding behavior.
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Of the remaining methods distributed tunnels is significantly more
complex than nearside or farside tunnels, and should only be
considered if there is a requirement to distribute the tunnel
decapsulation load.
Synchronised FIBs is a fast method, but has the issue that a suitable
synchronization mechanism needs to be defined. One method would be
to use NTP [10], however the coupling of routing convergence to a
protocol that uses the network may be a problem. During the
transition there will be some micro-looping for a short interval
because it is not possible to achieve complete synchronization of the
FIB changeover.
The ordered FIB mechanism has the major advantage that it is a
control plane only solution. However, SRLGs require a per-
destination calculation, and the convergence delay is high, bounded
by the network diameter. The use of signaling as an accelerator will
reduce the number of destinations that experience the full delay, and
hence reduce the total re-convergence time to an acceptable period.
The nearside and farside tunnel methods deal relatively easily with
SRLGs and uncorrelated changes. The convergence delay would be
small. However these methods require the use of tunneled forwarding
which is not supported on all router hardware, and raises issues of
forwarding performance. When used with PLSN, the amount of traffic
that was tunneled would be significantly reduced, thus reducing the
forwarding performance concerns. If the selected repair mechanism
requires the use of tunnels, then a tunnel based loop prevention
scheme may be acceptable.
11. IANA Considerations
There are no IANA considerations that arise from this draft.
12. Security Considerations
All micro-loop control mechanisms raise significant security issues
which must be addressed in their detailed technical description.
13. Informative References
[1] Andersson, L., Doolan, P., Feldman, N., Fredette, A., and B.
Thomas, "LDP Specification", RFC 3036, January 2001.
[2] Pan, P., Swallow, G., and A. Atlas, "Fast Reroute Extensions to
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RSVP-TE for LSP Tunnels", RFC 4090, May 2005.
[3] Shand, M. and S. Bryant, "IP Fast Reroute Framework",
draft-ietf-rtgwg-ipfrr-framework-07 (work in progress),
July 2007.
[4] Bryant, S. and M. Shand, "Applicability of Loop-free
Convergence", draft-bryant-shand-lf-applicability-04 (work in
progress), November 2007.
[5] Zinin, A., "Analysis and Minimization of Microloops in Link-
state Routing Protocols",
draft-ietf-rtgwg-microloop-analysis-01 (work in progress),
October 2005.
[6] Bryant, S., Filsfils, C., Previdi, S., and M. Shand, "IP Fast
Reroute using tunnels", draft-bryant-ipfrr-tunnels-03 (work in
progress), November 2007.
[7] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
September 1981.
[8] Francois, P., "Loop-free convergence using oFIB",
draft-ietf-rtgwg-ordered-fib-01 (work in progress), July 2007.
[9] Bryant, S., "Synchronisation of Loop Free Timer Values",
draft-atlas-bryant-shand-lf-timers-03 (work in progress),
July 2007.
[10] Mills, D., "Network Time Protocol (Version 3) Specification,
Implementation", RFC 1305, March 1992.
Authors' Addresses
Mike Shand
Cisco Systems
250, Longwater Ave,
Green Park,, Reading, RG2 6GB,
United Kingdom.
Phone:
Fax:
Email: mshand@cisco.com
URI:
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Stewart Bryant
Cisco Systems
250, Longwater Ave,
Green Park,, Reading, RG2 6GB
United Kingdom.
Phone:
Email: stbryant@cisco.com
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