Network Working Group                                              N. So
Internet-Draft                                                  A. Malis
Intended status: Standards Track                              D. McDysan
Expires: August 18, 2009                                         Verizon
                                                                 L. Yong
                                                              Huawei USA
                                                               F. Jounay
                                                          France Telecom
                                                       February 14, 2009


     Framework and Requirements for Composite Transport Group (CTG)
            draft-so-yong-mpls-ctg-framework-requirement-01

Status of this Memo

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Abstract

   This document states a traffic distribution problem in today's IP/
   MPLS network when multiple physical or logical links are configured
   between two routers.  The document presents a Composite Transport
   Group framework as TE transport methodology over composite link for
   the problems and specifies a set of requirements for Composite
   Transport Group(CTG).


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Conventions used in this document  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     2.1.  Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     2.2.  Terminologies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Problem Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.1.  Incomplete/Inefficient Utilization . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.2.  Inefficiency/Inflexibility of Logical Interface
           Bandwidth Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.  Composite Transport Group Framework  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.1.  CTG Framework  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.2.  CTG Performance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.3.  Differences between CTG and A Link Bundle  . . . . . . . . 12
       4.3.1.  Virtual Routable Link vs. TE Link  . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.3.2.  Component Link Parameter Independence  . . . . . . . . 13
   5.  Composite Transport Group Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     5.1.  Composite Link Appearance as a Routable Virtual
           Interface  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     5.2.  CTG mapping of Traffic Flows to Component Links  . . . . . 14
       5.2.1.  Mapping Using Router TE information  . . . . . . . . . 15
       5.2.2.  Mapping When No Router TE Information is Available . . 15
     5.3.  Bandwidth Control for Connections with and without TE
           information  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.4.  CTG Transport Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     5.5.  CTG Operational and Performance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   7.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   8.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     9.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     9.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21








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1.  Introduction

   IP/MPLS network traffic growth forces carriers to deploy multiple
   parallel physical/logical links between two routers.  The network is
   also expected to carry some flows at rates that can approach capacity
   of any single link, and some flows to be very small compared to a
   single link capacity.  There is not an existing technology today that
   allows carriers to efficiently utilize all parallel transport
   resources in a complex IP/MPLS network environment.  Composite
   Transport Group (CTG) provides the local traffic engineering
   management/transport over multiple parallel links that solves this
   problem in MPLS networks.

   The primary function of Composite Transport Group is to efficiently
   transport aggregated traffic flows over multiple parallel links.  CTG
   can take the flow TE information into account when distributing the
   flows over individual links to gain local traffic engineering
   management and link failure protection.  Because all links have the
   same ingress and egress point, CTG does not need to perform route
   computation and forwarding based on the traffic unit end point
   information, which allows for a unique local transport traffic
   engineering scheme.  CTG can transport both TE flows and non TE
   flows.  It maps the flows to CTG connections that have assigned TE
   information either based on flow TE information or auto bandwidth
   measurement on the connections.  CTG distribution function uses CTG
   connection TE information in the component link selection that CTG
   connections traverse over.

   This document contains the problem statements and the framework and a
   set of requirements for TE transport methodology over composite link.
   The necessity for protocol extensions to provide solutions is for
   future study.



















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2.  Conventions used in this document

   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].

2.1.  Acronyms

   BW: BandWidth

   CTG: Composite Transport Group

   ECMP: Equal Cost Multi-Path

   FRR: Fast Re-Route

   LAG: Link Aggregation Group

   LDP: Label Distributed Protocol

   LR: Logical Router

   LSP: Label Switched Path

   MPLS: Multi-Protocol Label Switching

   OAM: Operation, Administration, and Maintenance

   PDU: Protocol Data Unit

   PE: Provider Edge device

   RSVP: ReSource reserVation Protocol

   RTD: Real Time Delay

   TE: Traffic engineering

   VRF: Virtual Routing & Forwarding

2.2.  Terminologies

   Composite Link: a group of component links that acts as single
   routable interface

   Component Link: physical link (e.g.  Lambda, Ethernet PHY, etc) or
   logical links (e.g.  LSP, etc)




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   Composite Transport Group (CTG): traffic engineered transport
   function entity over composite link

   CTG connection: a connection used for data plane















































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3.  Problem Statements

   Two applications are described here that encounter problems when
   multiple parallel links are deployed between two routers in today's
   IP/MPLS networks.

3.1.  Incomplete/Inefficient Utilization

   An MPLS-TE network is deployed to carry traffic on RSVP-TE LSPs, i.e.
   traffic engineered flows.  When traffic volume exceeds the capacity
   of a single physical link, multiple physical links are deployed
   between two routers as a single backbone trunk.  How to assign LSP
   traffic over multiple links and maintain this backbone trunk as a
   higher capacity and higher availability trunk than a single physical
   link becomes an extremely difficult task for carriers today.  Three
   methods that are available today are described here.

   1.  A hashing method is a common practice for traffic distribution
       over multiple paths.  Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) for IP
       services and IEEE-defined Link Aggregation Group (LAG) for
       Ethernet traffic are two of the widely deployed hashing based
       technologies.  However, two common occurrences in carrier
       networks often prevent hashing being used efficiently.  First,
       for MPLS networks carrying mostly Virtual Private Network (VPN)
       traffic, the incoming traffic are usually highly encrypted, so
       that hashing depth is severely limited.  Second, the traffic in
       an MPLS-TE network typically contain a certain number of traffic
       flows that have vast differences in the bandwidth requirements.
       Furthermore, the links may be of different speeds.  In those
       cases hashing can cause some links to be congested while others
       are partially filled because hashing can only distinguish the
       flows, not the flow rates.  A TE based solution better applies
       for these cases.  IETF has always had two technology tracks for
       traffic distribution: TE-based and non-TE based.  A TE based
       solution provides a natural compliment to non-TE based hashing
       methods.

   2.  Assigning individual LSPs to each link through constrained
       routing.  A planning tool can track the utilization of each link
       and assignment of LSPs to the links.  To gain high availability,
       FRR [RFC4090] is used to create a bypass tunnel on a link to
       protect traffic on another link or to create a detour LSP to
       protect another LSP.  If reserving BW for the bypass tunnels or
       the detour LSPs, the network will reserve a large amount of
       capacity for failure recovery, which reduces the capacity to
       carry other traffic.  If not reserving BW for the bypass tunnels
       and the detour LSPs, the planning tool can not assign LSPs
       properly to avoid the congestion during link failure when there



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       are more than two parallel links.  This is because during the
       link failure, the impacted traffic is simply put on a bypass
       tunnel or detour LSPs which does not have enough reserved
       bandwidth to carry the extra traffic during the failure recovery
       phase.

   3.  Facility protection, also called 1:1 protection.  Dedicate one
       link to protect another link.  Only assign traffic to one link in
       the normal condition.  When the working link fails, switch
       traffic to the protection link.  This requires 50% capacity for
       failure recovery.  This works when there are only two links.
       Under the multiple parallel link condition, this causes
       inefficient use of network capacity because there is no
       protection capacity sharing.  In addition, due to traffic
       burstiness, having one link fully loaded and another link idle
       increases transport latency and packet loss, which lowers the
       link performance quality for transport.

   None of these methods satisfies carrier requirement either because of
   poor link utilization or poor performance.  This forces carriers to
   go with the solution of deploying single higher capacity link.
   However, a higher capacity link can be expensive as compared with
   parallel low capacity links of equivalent aggregate capacity; a high
   capacity link can not be deployed in some circumstances due to
   physical impairments; or the highest capacity link may not large
   enough for some carriers.

   An LDP network can encounter the same issue as an MPLS-TE enabled
   network when multiple parallel links are deployed as a backbone
   trunk.  An LDP network can have large variance in flow rates where,
   for example, the small flows may be carrying stock tickers at a few
   kbps per flow while the large flows can be near 10 Gbps per flow
   carrying machine to machine and server to server traffic from
   individual customers.  Those large traffic flows often cannot be
   broken into micro flows.  Therefore, hashing would not work well for
   the networks carrying such flows.  Without per-flow TE information,
   this type of network has even more difficulty to use multiple
   parallel links and keep high link utilization.

3.2.  Inefficiency/Inflexibility of Logical Interface Bandwidth
      Allocation

   Logically-separate routing instances in some implementations further
   complicates the situation.  Dedicating separate physical backbone
   links, or in the case of sharing of a single common link, dedicating
   a portion of the link, to each routing instance is not efficient.
   For example, if there are 2 routing instances and 3 parallel links
   and half of each link bandwidth is assigned to a routing instance,



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   then neither routing instance can support an LSP with bandwidth
   greater than half the link bandwidth.  The same problem is also
   present in the case of sharing of a single common link using the
   dedicated logical interface and link bandwidth method.  An
   alternative in dealing with multiple parallel links is to assign a
   logical interface and bandwidth on each of the parallel physical
   links to each routing instance, which improves efficiency as compared
   to dedicating physical links to each routing instance.

   Note that the traffic flows and LSPs from these different routing
   instances effectively operate in a Ships-in-the-Night mode, where
   they are unaware of each other.  Inflexibility results if there are
   multiple sets of LSPs (e.g., from different routing instances)
   sharing one link or a set of parallel links, and at least one set of
   LSPs can preempt others, then more efficient sharing of the link set
   between the routing instances is highly desirable.



































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4.  Composite Transport Group Framework

4.1.  CTG Framework

   Composite Transport Group (CTG) is the TE method to transport
   aggregated traffic over a composite link.  A composite link defined
   in ITU-T [ITU-T G.800] is a single link that bundles multiple
   parallel links between the two same subnetworks.  Each component link
   in a composite link is independent in the sense that each component
   link is supported by a separate server layer trail that can be
   implemented by different transport technologies such as wavelength,
   Ethernet PHY, MPLS(-TP).  The composite link conveys communication
   information using different server layer trails thus the sequence of
   symbols across this link may not be preserved.

   Composite Transport Group (CTG) is primarily a local traffic
   engineering and transport framework over multiple parallel links or
   multiple paths.  The objective is for a composite link to appear as a
   virtual interface to the connected routers.  The router provisions
   incoming traffic over the virtual interface.  CTG creates CTG
   connection and map incoming traffic CTG connections.  CTG connections
   are transported over parallel links, i.e. component links in a
   composite link.  The CTG distribution function can locally determine
   which component link CTG connections should traverse over.  The CTG
   framework is illustrated in Figure 1 below.




                +---------+                            +-----------+
                |     +---+                            +---+       |
                |     |   |============================|   |       |
     LSP,LDP,IGP|     | C |~~~~~~5 CTG Connections ~~~~| C |       |
             ~~~|~~>~~|   |============================|   |~~~>~~~|~~~
             ~~~|~~>~~| T |============================| T |~~~>~~~|~~~
             ~~~|~~>~~|   |~~~~~~3 CTG Connections ~~~~|   |~~~>~~~|~~~
                |     | G |============================| G |       |
                |     |   |============================|   |       |
                |     |   |~~~~~~9 CTG connections~~~~~|   |       |
                |     |   |============================|   |       |
                | R1  +---+                            +---+    R2 |
                +---------+                            +-----------+
                      !   !                            !   !
                      !   !<----Component Links ------>!   !
                      !<------ Composite Link  ----------->!






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          Figure 1: Composite Transport Group Architecture Model

   In Figure 1, a composite link is configured between router R1 and R2.
   The composite link has three component links.  To transport LSP
   traffic, CTG creates a CTG connection for the LSP first, and select a
   component link to carry the connection. (apply for LDP and IGP
   traffic as well).  A CTG connection only exists in the scope of a
   composite link.  The traffic in a CTG connection is transported over
   a single component link.

   The model in Figure 1 applies two basic scenarios but is not limited
   to.  First, a set of physical links connect adjacent (P) routers.
   Second, a set of logical links connect adjacent (P or PE) routers
   over other equipment that may implement RSVP-TE signaled MPLS
   tunnels, or MPLS-TP tunnels.

   A CTG connection is a point-to-point logical connection over a
   composite link.  The connection rides on component link in a one-to-
   one or many-to-one relationship.  LSPs map to CTG connections in a
   one-to-one or many-to-one relationship.  The connection can have the
   following traffic engineering parameters:

   o  bandwidth over-subscription

   o  factor placement

   o  priority

   o  holding priority

   CTG connection TE parameters can be mapped directly from the LSP
   parameters signaled in RSVP-TE or can be set at the CTG management
   interface (CTG Logical Port).  The connection bandwidth shall be set.
   If a LSP has no bandwidth information, the bandwidth will be
   calculated at CTG ingress using automatic bandwidth measurement
   function.

   LDP LSPs can be mapped onto the connections per LDP label.  Both
   outer label (PE-PE label) and Inner label (VRF Label) can be used for
   the connection mapping.  CTG connection bandwidth shall be set
   through auto-bandwidth measurement function at the CTG ingress.  When
   the connection bandwidth tends to exceed the component link capacity,
   CTG is able to reassign the flows in one connection into several
   connections and assign other component links for the connections
   without traffic disruption.

   A CTG component link can be a physical link or logical link (LSP
   Tunnel [LSP Hierarchy]) between two routers.  When component links



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   are physical links, there is no restriction to component link type,
   bandwidth, and performance objectives (e.g., RTD and Jitter).  Each
   component link maintains its own OAM.  CTG is able to get component
   link status from each link and take an action upon component link
   status changes.

   Each component link can have its own Component Link Cost and
   Component Link Bandwidth as its associated engineered parameters.
   CTG uses component link parameters in the assignment of CTG
   connections to component links.

   CTG provides local traffic engineering management over parallel links
   based on CTG connection TE information and component link parameters.
   Component link selection for CTG connections is determined locally
   and may change without reconfiguring the traffic flows.  Changing the
   selection may be triggered by a component link condition change,
   configuration of a new traffic flow or modification on existing one,
   or operator required optimization process.  The assignment of CTG
   connections to component links enables TE based traffic distribution
   and link failure recovery with much less link capacity than current
   methods mentioned in the section of the problem statements.

   CTG connections are created for traffic management purpose on a
   composite link.  They do not change the forwarding schema.  The
   forwarding engine still forwards based on the LSP label created per
   traffic LSP.  Therefore, there is no change to the forwarding.

   CTG techniques applies to the situation that the rate of the distinct
   traffic flows are not higher than the capacity of any component link
   in composite link.

4.2.  CTG Performance

   Packet re-ordering when moving a CTG connection from one component
   link to another can occur when the new path is shorter than the
   previous path and the interval between packet transmissions is less
   than the difference in latency between the previous and the new
   paths.  If the new path is longer than the previous path, then re-
   ordering will not occur, but the inter-packet delay variation will be
   increased for those packets before and after the change from the
   previous to the new path.  Requirements are stated in this draft to
   allow an operator to control the frequency of CTG path changes to
   control the rate of occurrence for these reordering or inter-packet
   delay variation events.

   In order to prevent packet loss, CTG must employ make-before-break
   when a connection to component link mapping change has to occur.
   When CTG determines that the current component link for the



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   connection is no longer sufficient based on the connection bandwidth
   requirement, CTG ingress establishes a new connection with increased
   bandwidth on the alternative component link, and switches the traffic
   onto the new connection before the old connection is torn down.  If
   the new connection is placed on a link that has equal or longer
   latency than the previous link, the packet re-ordering problem does
   not occur, but inter-packet delay variation will increase for a pair
   of packets.  When a component link fails, CTG may also move some
   impacted CTG connections to other component links.  In this case, a
   short service disruption may occur, similar to that caused by other
   local protection methods.

   Time sensitive traffic can be supported by CTG.  For example, when
   some traffic which is very sensitive to latency (as indicated by pre-
   set priority bits (i.e., DSCP or Ethernet user priority) is being
   carried over CTG that consists of component links that cannot support
   the traffic latency requirement, the traffic flow with strict latency
   requirement can be mapped onto certain component links manually or by
   using pre-defined policy setting at CTG ingress.

4.3.  Differences between CTG and A Link Bundle

4.3.1.   Virtual Routable Link vs. TE Link

   CTG is a data plane transport function over a composite link.  A
   composite link contains multiple component links that can carry
   traffic independently.  CTG is the method to transport aggregated
   traffic over a composite link.  The composite link appears as a
   single routable virtual interface between the connected routers.  The
   component links in composite link do not belong to IGP links in OSPF/
   IS-IS.  The network only maps LSP or LDP to a composite link, i.e.
   not to individual component links.  CTG ingress will select component
   link for individual LSP and LDP and merge them at composite link
   egress.  CTG ingress does not need to inform CTG egress which
   component link CTG connections traverse over.

   A link bundle [RFC4201] is a collection of TE links.  It is a logical
   construct that represents a way to group/map the information about
   certain physical resources that interconnect routers.  The purpose of
   link bundle is to improve routing scalability by reducing the amount
   of information that has to be handled by OSPF/IS-IS.  Each physical
   links in the link bundle are an IGP link in OSPF/IS-IS.  A link
   bundle only has the significance to router control plane.  The
   mapping of LSP to component link in a bundle is determined at LSP
   setup time and this mapping does not change due to new configurations
   of LSP/LDP traffic.  A link bundle only applies to RSVP-TE signaled
   traffic, CTG applies to RSVP/RSVP-TE/LDP signaled traffic.




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4.3.2.   Component Link Parameter Independence

   CTG allows component links to have different costs, traffic
   engineering metric and resource classes.  CTG can derive the virtual
   interface cost from component link costs based on operator policy.
   CTG can derive the traffic engineering parameter for a virtual
   interface from its component link traffic engineering parameters.

   A Link Bundle requires that all component links in a bundle to have
   the same traffic engineering metric, and the same set of resource
   classes.








































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5.  Composite Transport Group Requirements

   Composite Transport Group (CTG) is about the method to transport
   aggregated traffic over multiple parallel links.  CTG can address the
   problems existing in today IP/MPLS network.  Here are some CTG
   requirements:

5.1.  Composite Link Appearance as a Routable Virtual Interface

   The carrier needs a solution where multiple routing instances see a
   separate "virtual interface" to a shared composite link composed of
   parallel physical/logical links between a pair of routers.

   CTG would communicate parameters (e.g., admin cost, available
   bandwidth, maximum bandwidth, allowable bandwidth) for the "virtual
   interface" associated with each routing instance.

   The "virtual interface" shall appear as a fully-featured routing
   adjacency in each routing instance, not just an FA [RFC3477] .  In
   particular, it needs to work with at least the following IP/MPLS
   control protocols: OSPF/IS-IS, LDP, IGP-TE, and RSVP-TE.

   CTG SHALL accept a new component link or remove an existing component
   link by operator provisioning or in response to signaling at a lower
   layer (e.g., using GMPLS).

   CTG SHALL be able to derive the admin cost and TE metric of the
   "virtual interface" from the admin cost and TE metric of individual
   component links.

   A component link in CTG SHALL be supportable numbered link or
   unnumbered link in the IGP.

5.2.  CTG mapping of Traffic Flows to Component Links

   The objective of CTG is to solve the traffic sharing problem at a
   virtual interface level by mapping LSP traffic to component links
   (not using hashing):

   1.  using TE information from the control planes of the routing
       instances attached to the virtual interface when available, or

   2.  using traffic measurements when it is not.

   CTG SHALL map traffic flows to CTG connections and place an entire
   connection onto a single component link.

   CTG SHALL support operator assignment of traffic flow to component



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   link.

5.2.1.  Mapping Using Router TE information

   CTG SHALL use RSVP-TE for bandwidth signaled by a routing instance to
   explicitly assign TE information to the CTG connection that the LSP
   is mapped to.

   CTG SHALL be able to receive, interpret and act upon at least the
   following router signaled parameters: minimum bandwidth, maximum
   bandwidth, preemption priority, and holding priority and apply them
   to the CTG connections where the LSP is mapped.

5.2.2.  Mapping When No Router TE Information is Available

   CTG SHALL map LDP-assigned labeled packets based upon local
   configuration (e.g., label stack depth) to define a CTG connection
   that is mapped to one of the component links in the CTG.

   CTG SHALL map LDP-assigned labeled packets that identify the source-
   destination LER as a CTG connection.

   CTG SHOULD support entropy labels [Entropy Label] to map more
   granular flows to CTG connections.

   In a mapping case, the CTG SHALL be able to measure the bandwidth
   actually used by a particular connection and derive proper TE
   information for the connection.

   CTG SHALL support parameters that define at least a minimum
   bandwidth, maximum bandwidth, preemption priority, and holding
   priority for connections without TE information.

5.3.  Bandwidth Control for Connections with and without TE information

   The following requirements apply to a virtual interface with CTG
   capability that supports the traffic flows with TE information and
   the flows without TE information.

   A "bandwidth shortage" issue can arise in CTG if the total bandwidth
   of the connections with provisioned TE information and those with
   auto measured TE information exceeds the bandwidth of the composite
   link.

   CTG SHALL support a policy based preemption capability such that, in
   the event of such a "bandwidth shortage", the signaled or configured
   preemption and holding parameters can be applied to the following
   treatments to the connections:



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   o  For a connection that has RSVP-TE LSP(s), signal the router that
      the LSP has been preempted.  CTG SHALL support soft preemption
      (i.e., notify the preempted LSP source prior to preemption).
      [Soft Preemption]

   o  For a connection that has LDP(s), where the CTG is aware of the
      LDP signaling involved to the preempted label stack depth, signal
      release of the label to the router

   o  For a connection that has non-re-routable RSVP-TE LSP(s) or non-
      releasable LDP(s), signal the router or operator that the LSP or
      LDP has been lost.

5.4.  CTG Transport Resilience

   Component links in CTG may fail independently.  The failure of a
   component link may impact some CTG connections.  The impacted CTG
   connections SHALL be replaced to other active component links by
   using the same rules as of the assignment of CTG connection to
   component link.

   CTG component link recovery scheme SHALL perform equal to or better
   than existing local recovery methods.  A short service disruption may
   occur during the recovery period.

5.5.  CTG Operational and Performance

   CTG requires methods to dampen the frequency of connection bandwidth
   change and/or connection to component link mapping changes (e.g., for
   re-optimization).  Operator imposed control policy SHALL be allowed.

   CTG SHALL support latency sensitive traffic.

   The determination of latency sensitive traffic SHALL be determined by
   any of the following methods:

   o  Use of a pre-defined local policy setting at CTG ingress

   o  A manually configured setting at CTG ingress

   o  MPLS traffic class in a RSVP-TE signaling message

   The determination of latency sensitive traffic SHOULD be determined
   (if possible) by any of the following methods:

   o  Pre-set bits in the Payload (e.g., DSCP bits for IP or Ethernet
      user priority for Ethernet payload)




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6.  Security Considerations

   CTG is a local function on the router to support traffic engineering
   management over multiple parallel links.  It does not introduce a
   security risk for control plane and data plane.














































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7.  IANA Considerations

   IANA actions to provide solutions are for further study.
















































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8.  Acknowledgements

   Authors would like to thank Adrian Farrel from Olddog, Ron Bonica
   from Juniper, Nabil Bitar from Verizon, and Eric Gray from Ericsson
   for the review and great suggestions.














































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9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [ITU-T G.800]
              ITU-T Q12, "Unified Functional Architecture of Transport
              Network", ITU-T G.800, February 2008.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement  Levels", RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC3477]  Kompella, K., "Signalling Unnumbered Links in Resource
              ReSerVation Protocol - Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE)",
              RFC 3477, January 2003.

   [RFC4090]  Pan, P., "Fast Reroute Extensions to RSVP-TE for LSP
              Tunnels", RFC 4090, May 2005.

   [RFC4201]  Kompella, K., "Link Bundle in MPLS Traffic Engineering",
              RFC 4201, March 2005.

9.2.  Informative References

   [Entropy Label]
              Kompella, K. and S. Amante, "The Use of Entropy Labels in
              MPLS Forwarding", November 2008, <http://www.ietf.org/
              internet-drafts/draft-kompella-mpls-entropy-label-01>.

   [LSP Hierarchy]
              Shiomoto, K. and A. Farrel, "Procedures for Dynamically
              Signaled Hierarchical Label Switched Paths",
              November 2008, <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
              draft-ietf-ccamp-lsp-hierarchy-bis-05.txt>.

   [Soft Preemption]
              Meyer, M. and J. Vasseur, "MPLS Traffic Engineering Soft
              Preemption", February 2009, <http://www.ietf.org/
              internet-drafts/draft-ietf-mpls-soft-preemption-16.txt>.













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Authors' Addresses

   So Ning
   Verizon
   2400 N. Glem Ave.,
   Richerson, TX  75082

   Phone: +1 972-729-7905
   Email: ning.so@verizonbusiness.com


   Andrew Malis
   Verizon
   117 West St.
   Waltham, MA  02451

   Phone: +1 781-466-2362
   Email: andrew.g.malis@verizon.com


   Dave McDysan
   Verizon
   22001 Loudoun County PKWY
   Ashburn, VA  20147

   Phone: +1 707-886-1891
   Email: dave.mcdysan@verizon.com


   Lucy Yong
   Huawei USA
   1700 Alma Dr. Suite 500
   Plano, TX  75075

   Phone: +1 469-229-5387
   Email: lucyyong@huawei.com


   Frederic Jounay
   France Telecom
   2, avenue Pierre-Marzin
   22307 Lannion Cedex,
   FRANCE

   Phone:
   Email: frederic.jounay@orange-ftgroup.com





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