Global Routing Operations (grow)

WG Name Global Routing Operations
Acronym grow
Area Operations and Management Area (ops)
State Active
Charter charter-ietf-grow-05 Approved
Document dependencies
Additional resources Issue tracker, Wiki, Zulip stream
Personnel Chairs Job Snijders, Paolo Lucente
Area Director Mohamed Boucadair
Tech Advisor Jeffrey Haas
Secretary Lancheng Qin
Mailing list Address grow@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/grow
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/grow/
Chat Room address https://zulip.ietf.org/#narrow/stream/grow

Charter for Working Group

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is fundamental to the operation
of the global IP routing system and ensuring global reachability
on the Internet.

The purpose of the GROW working group is to consider the operational
challenges associated with the global IP routing system (both IPv4 and
IPv6), including but not limited to default-free zone routing table
growth, forwarding tables growth, effects of the interactions between
interior and exterior routing protocols, and effects of IPv4/IPv6
address allocation policies on the global routing system.

The working group will document the operational aspects of
measurement, monitoring, policy, operational global routing system
security, or safe default behavior of global IP routing protocol
implementations and deployments. The GROW working group will also
develop and increase awareness to mitigations to prevent malpractice
(e.g., route leaks) in the global routing system.

The GROW working group will develop data models and building blocks
for automating the operation of the global routing system.

The GROW working group will collaborate with other working groups,
primarily IDR working group, that are developing solutions for the
global IP routing system. When solicited, the working group will
review the solutions being developed for the global routing system by
these other working groups and provide inputs related to operational
implications. The working group will also provide inputs for
addressing operational and routing security requirements of Internet-
connected networks, and, where appropriate, recommend work to be
taken up by those working groups. Likewise, the working group will
solicit inputs for its chartered work from those other working groups
to strive for an optimal balance between objectives related to ease
of operations and deployability, sustain scaling, enhance robustness,
and optimize performance.

Agenda time at GROW sessions at IETF meetings should allow for
presentations and discussions of operator issues and experience, and
other work within scope for the working group.

The current GROW working group objectives are:

  • Present and discuss operational issues faced by the global routing
    system.

  • Document common terminology relevant to the maintenance and
    operation of the global routing system.

  • Document Best Current Practices for operations of the global
    routing system.

  • Document the operational aspects of securing the Internet routing
    system.

  • Provide guidance and recommendations for operating the global
    routing system.

  • Standardize YANG data models and automation building blocks
    related to the operations of global routing system.

  • Document BGP operational aspects of IP interconnection.

  • Provide documentation to assist in preventing malpractice in the
    global routing system.

  • Determine the effect of IGP extensions on the stability of the
    global routing system.

  • Provide maintenance for the BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP),
    including fixes, extensions, and future versions.

  • Provide maintenance for the Multi-Threaded Routing Toolkit (MRT)
    Routing Information Export Format.

Work related to SIDR operations (consisting of RPKI, Origin Validation of
BGP announcements, and BGPSEC operations) will occur in SIDROPS working group.

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Dec 2026 Submit Peering API to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-peering-api
Apr 2026 Submit Terminology in Global Routing Operations to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-routing-ops-terms
Apr 2026 Submit Updated BGP Operations and Security to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-bgpopsecupd
Feb 2026 Submit Near Real Time Mirroring (NRTM) version 4 to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-nrtm-v4
Dec 2025 Submit TCP-AO Protection for BMP to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-bmp-tcp-ao
Nov 2025 TLV support for BMP Route Monitoring and Peer Down Messages to IESG draft-ietf-grow-bmp-tlv
Nov 2025 Submit BMP Extensions to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-bmp-rel
draft-ietf-grow-bmp-loc-peer
Oct 2025 Submit a YANG Data Model for BMP to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-bmp-yang
Sep 2025 Submit a Recommendation to avoid use of BGP Extended Communities at Internet Exchange Route Servers to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-ixp-ext-comms
Jul 2025 Submit AS Path Prepending to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-as-path-prepending
Jul 2025 Submit New BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) Statistics Types to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-bmp-bgp-rib-stats
Jul 2025 Submit a YANG Data Model for BGP Communities to the IESG draft-ietf-grow-yang-bgp-communities

Done milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Done "Revision to Registration Procedures for Multiple BMP Registries" to IESG rfc9515 (was draft-ietf-grow-bmp-registries-change)
Done "BMP Peer Up Message Namespace" to IESG rfc9736 (was draft-ietf-grow-bmp-peer-up)
Done "Support for Local RIB in BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP)" to IESG rfc9069 (was draft-ietf-grow-bmp-local-rib)