Network Working Group                                      R. White, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                             S. Zandi, Ed.
Intended status: Informational                                  LinkedIn
Expires: October 2, 2019                                  March 31, 2019


        IS-IS Optimal Distributed Flooding for Dense Topologies
                      draft-white-distoptflood-00

Abstract

   Dense topologies, such as data center fabrics based on the Clos and
   butterfly fabric topologies.  Flooding mechanisms designed for sparse
   topologies, when used in these dense topologies, can result in slower
   convergence times and higher resource utilization.  The modifications
   to the flooding mechanism in the Intermediate System to Intermediate
   System (IS-IS) link state protocol described in this document reduce
   resource utilization to a minimum, while increaseing convergence
   performance in dense topologies.

   Note that a Clos fabric is used as the primary example of a desne
   flooding topology throughout this document.  However, the flooding
   optimizations described in this document apply to any dense topology.

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
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on October 2, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 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



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   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.2.  Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.3.  Experience  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.4.  Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.5.  Sample Network  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  Adjacency Formation Optimization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Flooding Modifications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.1.  Optimizing Flooding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.2.  Flooding Failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Appendix A.  Flooding Optimization Operation  . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13

1.  Introduction

1.1.  Goals

   The goal of this draft is to solve one specific set of problems
   involved in operating a link state protocol in a dense mesh topology.
   The problem with such topologies is the connectivity density, which
   causes too much information to be flooded (or too much repeated state
   to be flooded).  Analysis and experiment show, for instance, that in
   a butterfyl fabric of around 2500 intermediate systems, each
   intermediate system will receive 40+ copies of any changed LSP
   fragment.  This not only wastes bandwidth and processor time, this
   dramatically slows convergence speed.

   While there are a number of centralized flooding reduction mechanisms
   designed specifically for data center fabrics available, a
   distributed flooding reduction mechanism will be more widely
   applicable to dense topologies.  Modifying existing distributed
   flooding mechanisms for efficiency is also simpler than creating
   entirely new flooding mechanisms.  Experience with the existing




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   distributed flooding mechanism in IS-IS is directly applicable to
   modifications of that scheme.

   Ultimately, the goal of this document is to describe a set of
   modifications that will reduce the number of copies any single
   intermediate system receives of an LSP fragment on any network change
   to less than three, and almost always one.  Optimizing flooding in
   this way can dramatically increase the performance of IS-IS in terms
   of convergence performance and resource utilization.

1.2.  Contributors

   The following people have contributed to this draft: Nikos
   Triantafillis (reflected flooding optimization), Ivan Pepelnjak
   (fabric locality calculation modifications), Christian Franke (fabric
   localigy calculation modification), Hannes Gredler (do not reflood
   optimizations), Les Ginsberg (capabilities encoding, circuit local
   reflooding), Naiming Shen (capabilities encoding, circuit local
   reflooding), Uma Chunduri (failure mode suggestions, flooding), Nick
   Russo, and Rodny Molina.

   See [RFC5449], [RFC5614], and [RFC7182] for similar solutions in the
   Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) solution space.

1.3.  Experience

   The modifications described in this draft have been implemented in
   the FR Routing open source routing stack, and hence are available for
   testing and modification.  The implementation is part of the
   openfabric daemon, which can be conditionally compiled from isisd.
   Note openfabricd has further modifications are not described in this
   document.

   Lab testing shows these modifications reduce flooding in a large
   scale emulated butterfly network topology; without these
   modifications, intermediate systems receive, on average, 40 copies of
   any changed LSP fragment.  With these modifications, intermediate
   systems recieve, on average, two copies of any changed LSPF fragment.
   In many cases, each intermediate system receives one copy of each
   changed LSP.  In terms of performance, the modifications described
   here reduce convergence times by around 50%. A network that converges
   in about 30-40 seconds without these modifications converged in 15-20
   seconds with these modifications.  Processor load times were not
   checked, as this was an emulated environment.







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1.4.  Additions

   This draft describes two additions to IS-IS to improve flooding
   efficiency and convergence time:

   o  A slightly modified adjacency formation process.

   o  A mechanism that reduces flooding to the minimum possible, while
      still ensuring complete database synchronization among the
      intermediate systems within the fabric.

1.5.  Sample Network

   The following spine and leaf fabric will be used to describe these
   modifications.

   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
   | 1A | | 1B | | 1C | | 1D | | 1E | | 1F | (T0)
   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+

   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
   | 2A | | 2B | | 2C | | 2D | | 2E | | 2F | (T1)
   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+

   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
   | 3A | | 3B | | 3C | | 3D | | 3E | | 3F | (T2)
   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+

   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
   | 4A | | 4B | | 4C | | 4D | | 4E | | 4F | (T1)
   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+

   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
   | 5A | | 5B | | 5C | | 5D | | 5E | | 5F | (T0)
   +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+ +----+

                                 Figure 1

   To reduce confusion (spine and leaf fabrics are difficult to draw in
   plain text art), this diagram does not contain the connections
   between devices.  The reader should assume that each device in a
   given layer is connected to every device in the layer above it.  For
   instance:

   o  5A is connected to 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, 4E, and 4F

   o  5B is connected to 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, 4E, and 4F




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   o  4A is connected to 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 3E, 3F, 5A, 5B, 5C, 5D, 5E, and
      5F

   o  4B is connected to 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 3E, 3F, 5A, 5B, 5C, 5D, 5E, and
      5F

   o  etc.

   The tiers or stages of the fabric are also marked for easier
   reference.  T0 is assumed to be connected to application servers, or
   rather they are Top of Rack (ToR) intermediate systems.  The
   remaining tiers, T1 and T2, are connected only to the fabric itself.

2.  Adjacency Formation Optimization

   While adjacency formation is not considered particularly burdensome
   in IS-IS, it may still be useful to reduce the amount of state
   transferred across the network when connecting a new IS to the
   fabric.  In its simplest form, the process is:

   o  An IS connected to the fabric will send hellos on all links.

   o  The IS will only complete the three-way handshake with one newly
      discovered neighbor; this would normally be the first neighbor
      which sends the newly connected intermediate system's ID back in
      the three-way handshake process.

   o  The IS will complete its database exchange with this one newly
      adjacent neighbor.

   o  Once this process is completed, the IS will continue processing
      the remaining neighbors as normal.

   o  If synchronization is not achieved within twice the dead timer on
      the local interface, the newly connected IS will repeat this
      process with the second neighbor with which it forms a three-way
      adjacency.

   This process allows each IS newly added to the fabric to exchange a
   full table once; a very minimal amount of information will be
   transferred with the remaining neighbors to reach full
   synchronization.

   Any such optimization is bound to present a tradeoff between several
   factors; the mechanism described here increases the amount of time
   required to form adjacencies slightly in order to reduce the total
   state carried across the network.  An alternative mechanism could
   provide a better balance of the amount of information carried across



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   the network for initial synchronization and the time required to
   synchronize a new IS.  For instance, an IS could choose to
   synchronize its database with two or three adjacent intermediate
   systems, which could speed the synchronization process up at the cost
   of carrying additional data on the network.  A locally determined
   balance between the speed of synchronization and the amount of data
   carried on the network can be acheived by adjusting the number of
   adjacent intermediate systems the newly attached IS synchronizes
   with.

3.  Flooding Modifications

   Flooding is perhaps the most challenging scaling issue for a link
   state protocol running on a dense, large scale fabric.  This section
   describes modifications to the IS-IS flooding process to reduce
   flooding load on a dense or mesh topology.

3.1.  Optimizing Flooding

   To reduce the flooding of link state information in the form of Link
   State Protocol Data Units (LSPs), the following tables are required
   to compute a set of reflooders:

   o  Neighbor List (NL) list: The set of neighbors

   o  Neighbor's Neighbors (NN) list: The set of neighbor's neighbors;
      this can be calculated by running SPF truncated to two hops

   o  Do Not Reflood (DNR) list: The set of neighbors who should have
      LSPs (or fragments) who should not reflood LSPs

   o  Reflood (RF) list: The set of neighbors who should flood LSPs (or
      fragments) to their adjacent neighbors to ensure synchronization

   NL is set to contain all neighbors, and sorted deterministically (for
   instance, from the highest IS identifier to the lowest).  All
   intermediate systems within a single fabric SHOULD use the same
   mechanism for sorting the NL list.  NN is set to contain all
   neighbor's neighbors, or all intermediate systems that are two hops
   away, as determined by performing a truncated SPF.  The DNR and RF
   tables are initially empty.  To begin, the following steps are taken
   to reduce the size of NN and NL:

   o  Remove all intermediate systems from NL and NN that in the
      shortest path to the IS that originated the LSP

   Then, for every IS in NL:




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   o  If the current entry in NL is connected to any entries in NN:

      *  Move the IS to RF

      *  Remove the intermediate systems connected to the IS from NN

   o  Else move the IS to DNR

   The calculation terminates when the NL is empty.

   When flooding, LSPs transmitted to adjacent neighbors on the RF list
   will be transmitted normally.  Adjacent intermediate systems on this
   list will reflood received LSPs into the next stage of the topology,
   ensuring database synchronization.  LSPs transmitted to adjacent
   neighbors on the DNR list, however, MUST be transmitted using a
   circuit scope PDU as described in [RFC7356].

3.2.  Flooding Failures

   It is possible in some failure modes for flooding to be incomplete
   because of the flooding optimizations outlined.  Specifically, if a
   reflooder fails, or is somehow disconnected from all the links across
   which it should be reflooding, it is possible an LSP is only
   partially flooded through the fabric.  To prevent such situations,
   any IS receiving an LSP transmitted using DNR SHOULD:

   o  Set a short timer; the default should be less than one second

   o  When the timer expires, send a Complete Sequence Number Packet
      (CSNP) to all neighbors

   o  Process any Partial Sequence Number Packets (PSNPs) as required to
      resynchronize

   o  If a resynchronization is required, notify the network operator
      through a network management system

4.  Security Considerations

   This document outlines modifications to the IS-IS protocol for
   operation on high density network topologies.  Implementations SHOULD
   implement IS-IS cryptographic authentication, as described in
   [RFC5304], and should enable other security measures in accordance
   with best common practices for the IS-IS protocol.







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5.  References

5.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.shen-isis-spine-leaf-ext]
              Shen, N., Ginsberg, L., and S. Thyamagundalu, "IS-IS
              Routing for Spine-Leaf Topology", draft-shen-isis-spine-
              leaf-ext-07 (work in progress), October 2018.

   [ISO10589]
              International Organization for Standardization,
              "Intermediate system to Intermediate system intra-domain
              routeing information exchange protocol for use in
              conjunction with the protocol for providing the
              connectionless-mode Network Service (ISO 8473)", ISO/
              IEC 10589:2002, Second Edition, Nov 2002.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC2629]  Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2629, June 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2629>.

   [RFC5120]  Przygienda, T., Shen, N., and N. Sheth, "M-ISIS: Multi
              Topology (MT) Routing in Intermediate System to
              Intermediate Systems (IS-ISs)", RFC 5120,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5120, February 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5120>.

   [RFC5301]  McPherson, D. and N. Shen, "Dynamic Hostname Exchange
              Mechanism for IS-IS", RFC 5301, DOI 10.17487/RFC5301,
              October 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5301>.

   [RFC5303]  Katz, D., Saluja, R., and D. Eastlake 3rd, "Three-Way
              Handshake for IS-IS Point-to-Point Adjacencies", RFC 5303,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5303, October 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5303>.

   [RFC5305]  Li, T. and H. Smit, "IS-IS Extensions for Traffic
              Engineering", RFC 5305, DOI 10.17487/RFC5305, October
              2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5305>.

   [RFC5308]  Hopps, C., "Routing IPv6 with IS-IS", RFC 5308,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5308, October 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5308>.



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   [RFC5309]  Shen, N., Ed. and A. Zinin, Ed., "Point-to-Point Operation
              over LAN in Link State Routing Protocols", RFC 5309,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5309, October 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5309>.

   [RFC5311]  McPherson, D., Ed., Ginsberg, L., Previdi, S., and M.
              Shand, "Simplified Extension of Link State PDU (LSP) Space
              for IS-IS", RFC 5311, DOI 10.17487/RFC5311, February 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5311>.

   [RFC5316]  Chen, M., Zhang, R., and X. Duan, "ISIS Extensions in
              Support of Inter-Autonomous System (AS) MPLS and GMPLS
              Traffic Engineering", RFC 5316, DOI 10.17487/RFC5316,
              December 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5316>.

   [RFC7356]  Ginsberg, L., Previdi, S., and Y. Yang, "IS-IS Flooding
              Scope Link State PDUs (LSPs)", RFC 7356,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7356, September 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7356>.

   [RFC7981]  Ginsberg, L., Previdi, S., and M. Chen, "IS-IS Extensions
              for Advertising Router Information", RFC 7981,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7981, October 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7981>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

5.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-isis-segment-routing-extensions]
              Previdi, S., Ginsberg, L., Filsfils, C., Bashandy, A.,
              Gredler, H., and B. Decraene, "IS-IS Extensions for
              Segment Routing", draft-ietf-isis-segment-routing-
              extensions-23 (work in progress), March 2019.

   [I-D.ietf-spring-segment-routing]
              Filsfils, C., Previdi, S., Ginsberg, L., Decraene, B.,
              Litkowski, S., and R. Shakir, "Segment Routing
              Architecture", draft-ietf-spring-segment-routing-15 (work
              in progress), January 2018.

   [RFC3277]  McPherson, D., "Intermediate System to Intermediate System
              (IS-IS) Transient Blackhole Avoidance", RFC 3277,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3277, April 2002,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3277>.




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   [RFC3719]  Parker, J., Ed., "Recommendations for Interoperable
              Networks using Intermediate System to Intermediate System
              (IS-IS)", RFC 3719, DOI 10.17487/RFC3719, February 2004,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3719>.

   [RFC4271]  Rekhter, Y., Ed., Li, T., Ed., and S. Hares, Ed., "A
              Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4271, January 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4271>.

   [RFC5304]  Li, T. and R. Atkinson, "IS-IS Cryptographic
              Authentication", RFC 5304, DOI 10.17487/RFC5304, October
              2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5304>.

   [RFC5440]  Vasseur, JP., Ed. and JL. Le Roux, Ed., "Path Computation
              Element (PCE) Communication Protocol (PCEP)", RFC 5440,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5440, March 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5440>.

   [RFC5449]  Baccelli, E., Jacquet, P., Nguyen, D., and T. Clausen,
              "OSPF Multipoint Relay (MPR) Extension for Ad Hoc
              Networks", RFC 5449, DOI 10.17487/RFC5449, February 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5449>.

   [RFC5614]  Ogier, R. and P. Spagnolo, "Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET)
              Extension of OSPF Using Connected Dominating Set (CDS)
              Flooding", RFC 5614, DOI 10.17487/RFC5614, August 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5614>.

   [RFC5820]  Roy, A., Ed. and M. Chandra, Ed., "Extensions to OSPF to
              Support Mobile Ad Hoc Networking", RFC 5820,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5820, March 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5820>.

   [RFC5837]  Atlas, A., Ed., Bonica, R., Ed., Pignataro, C., Ed., Shen,
              N., and JR. Rivers, "Extending ICMP for Interface and
              Next-Hop Identification", RFC 5837, DOI 10.17487/RFC5837,
              April 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5837>.

   [RFC6232]  Wei, F., Qin, Y., Li, Z., Li, T., and J. Dong, "Purge
              Originator Identification TLV for IS-IS", RFC 6232,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6232, May 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6232>.

   [RFC7182]  Herberg, U., Clausen, T., and C. Dearlove, "Integrity
              Check Value and Timestamp TLV Definitions for Mobile Ad
              Hoc Networks (MANETs)", RFC 7182, DOI 10.17487/RFC7182,
              April 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7182>.



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   [RFC7921]  Atlas, A., Halpern, J., Hares, S., Ward, D., and T.
              Nadeau, "An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing
              System", RFC 7921, DOI 10.17487/RFC7921, June 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7921>.

Appendix A.  Flooding Optimization Operation

   Recent testing has shown that flooding is largely a "non-issue" in
   terms of scaling when using high speed links connecting intermediate
   systems with reasonable processing power and memory.  However,
   testing has also shown that flooding will impact convergence speed
   even in such environments, and flooding optimization has a major
   impact on the performance of a link state protocol in resource
   constrained environments.  Some thoughts on flooding optimization in
   general, and the flooding optimization contained in this document,
   follow.

   There are two general classes of flooding optimization available for
   link state protocols.  The first class of optimization relies on a
   centralized service or server to gather the link state information
   and redistribute it back into the intermediate systems making up the
   fabric.  Such solutions are attractive in many, but not all,
   environments; hence these systems compliment, rather than compete
   with, the system described here.  Systems relying on a service or
   server necessarily also rely on connectivity to that service or
   server, either through an out-of-band network or connectivity through
   the fabric itself.  Because of this, these mechanisms do not apply to
   all deployments; some deployments require underlying reachability
   regardless of connectivity to an outside service or server.

   The second possibility is to create a fully distributed system that
   floods the minimal amount of information possible to every
   intermediate system.  The system described in this draft is an
   example of such a system.  Again, there are many ways to accomplish
   this goal, but simplicity is a primary goal of the system described
   in this draft.

   The system described here divides the work into two different parts;
   forward and reverse optimization.  The forward optimization begins by
   finding the set of intermediate systems two hops away from the
   flooding device, and choosing a subset of connected neighbors that
   will successfully reach this entire set of intermediate systems, as
   shown in the diagram below.








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   G
   |
   A     B    C--+
   |     |    |  |
   +--D--+    E  H
      |       |  |
      +----F--+--+

                                 Figure 2

   If F is flooding some piece of information, then it will find the
   entire set of intermediate systems within two hops by discovering its
   neighbors and their neighbors from the local LSDB.  This will include
   A, B, C, D, and E--but not G.  From this set, F can determine that D
   can reach A and B, while a single flood to either E or H will reach
   C.  Hence F can flood to D and either E or H to reach C.  F can
   choose to flood to D and E normally.  Because H still needs to
   receive this new LSP (or fragment!), but does not need to reflood to
   C, F can send the LSP using link local signaling.  In this case, H
   will receive and process the new LSP, but not reflood it.

   Rather than carrying the information necessary through hello
   extensions, as is done in [RFC5820], the neighbors are allowed to
   complete initial synchronization, and then a truncated shortest path
   tree is built to determine the "two hop neighborhood."  This has the
   advantage of using mechanisms already used in IS-IS, rather than
   adding new processes.  The risk with this process is any LSPs flooded
   through the network before this initial calculation takes place will
   be suboptimal.  This "two hop neighborhood" process has been used in
   OSPF deployments for a number of years, and has proven stable in
   practice.

   Rather than setting a timer for reflooding, the implementation
   described here uses IS-IS' ability to describe the entire database
   using a CSNP to ensure flooding is successful.  This adds some small
   amount of overhead, so there is some balance between optimal flooding
   and ensuring flooding is complete.

   The reverse optimization is simpler.  It relies on the observation
   that any intermediate system between the local IS and the origin of
   the LSP, other than in the case of floods removing an LSP from the
   shared LSDB, should have already received a copy of the LSP.  For
   instance, if F originates an LSP in the figure above, and E refloods
   the LSP to C, C does not need to reflood back to F if F is on its
   shortest path tree towards F.  It is obvious this is not a "perfect"
   optimization.  A perfect optimization would block flooding back along
   a directed acyclic graph towards the originator.  Using the SPT,




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Internet-DraIS-IS Optimal Distributed Flooding for Dense Top  March 2019


   however, is a quick way to reduce flooding without performing more
   calculations.

   The combination of these two optimizations have been seen, in
   testing, to reduce the number of copies any IS receives from the tens
   to precisely one.

Authors' Addresses

   Russ White (editor)
   LinkedIn

   Email: russ@riw.us


   Shawn Zandi (editor)
   LinkedIn

   Email: szandi@linkedin.com
































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