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Graceful BGP session shutdown
draft-ietf-grow-bgp-gshut-10

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 8326.
Authors Pierre Francois , Bruno Decraene , Cristel Pelsser , Keyur Patel , Clarence Filsfils
Last updated 2017-07-28
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draft-ietf-grow-bgp-gshut-10
Network Working Group                                   P. Francois, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                    Individual Contributor
Intended status: Informational                          B. Decraene, Ed.
Expires: January 28, 2018                                         Orange
                                                              C. Pelsser
                                                   Strasbourg University
                                                                K. Patel
                                                            Arrcus, Inc.
                                                             C. Filsfils
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                           July 27, 2017

                     Graceful BGP session shutdown
                      draft-ietf-grow-bgp-gshut-10

Abstract

   This draft describes operational procedures aimed at reducing the
   amount of traffic lost during planned maintenances of routers or
   links, involving the shutdown of BGP peering sessions.  It defines a
   well-known BGP community, called GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN, to signal the
   graceful shutdown of paths.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 28, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 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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   (http://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
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Packet loss upon manual EBGP session shutdown . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Practices to avoid packet losses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.1.  Improving availability of alternate paths . . . . . . . .   4
     4.2.  Make before break convergence: graceful shutdown  . . . .   5
     4.3.  Forwarding modes and transient forwarding loops during
           convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  EBGP graceful shutdown procedure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     5.1.  Pre-configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     5.2.  Operations at maintenance time  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.3.  BGP implementation support for graceful shutdown  . . . .   6
   6.  Beyond EBGP graceful shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.1.  IBGP graceful shutdown  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.2.  EBGP session establishment  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Appendix A.  Alternative techniques with limited applicability  .  10
     A.1.  Multi Exit Discriminator tweaking . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     A.2.  IGP distance Poisoning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Appendix B.  Configuration Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     B.1.  Cisco IOS XR  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     B.2.  BIRD  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     B.3.  OpenBGPD  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12

1.  Introduction

   Routing changes in BGP can be caused by planned maintenance
   operations.  This document discusses operational procedures to be
   applied in order to reduce or eliminate loss of packets during the
   maintenance.  These losses come from the transient lack of
   reachability during the BGP convergence following the shutdown of an

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   EBGP peering session between two Autonomous System Border Routers
   (ASBR).

   This document presents procedures for the cases where the forwarding
   plane is impacted by the maintenance, hence when the use of Graceful
   Restart does not apply.

   The procedures described in this document can be applied to reduce or
   avoid packet loss for outbound and inbound traffic flows initially
   forwarded along the peering link to be shut down.  These procedures
   trigger, in both ASes, rerouting to the alternate path if one exists
   within the AS, while allowing the use of the old path until alternate
   ones are learned.  This ensures that routers always have a valid
   route available during the convergence process.

   The goal of the document is to meet the requirements described in
   [RFC6198] at best, without changing the BGP protocol.

   This document defines a well-known community [RFC1997], called
   GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN, for the purpose of reducing the management
   overhead of gracefully shutting down BGP sessions.  The well-known
   community allows implementers to provide an automated graceful
   shutdown mechanism that does not require any router reconfiguration
   at maintenance time.

   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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

2.  Terminology

   graceful shutdown initiator: a router on which the session shutdown
   is performed for the maintenance.

   graceful shutdown receiver: a router that has a BGP session, to be
   shutdown, with the graceful shutdown initiator.

   Initiator AS: the Autonomous System of the graceful shutdown
   initiator.

   Receiver AS: the Autonomous System of the graceful shutdown receiver.

   Loss of Connectivity (LoC: the state when a router has no path toward
   an affected prefix.

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3.  Packet loss upon manual EBGP session shutdown

   Packets can be lost during a manual shutdown of an EBGP session for
   two reasons.

   First, routers involved in the convergence process can transiently
   lack paths toward an affected prefix, and drop traffic destined to
   this prefix.  This is because alternate paths can be hidden by nodes
   of an AS.  This happens when the paths are not selected as best by
   the ASBR that receive them on an EBGP session, or by Route Reflectors
   that do not propagate them further in the IBGP topology because they
   do not select them as best.

   Second, within the AS, the FIB of routers can be transiently
   inconsistent during the BGP convergence and packets toward affected
   prefixes can loop and be dropped.  Note that these loops only happen
   when ASBR-to-ASBR encapsulation is not used within the AS.

   This document only addresses the first reason.

4.  Practices to avoid packet losses

   This section describes means for an ISP to reduce the transient loss
   of packets upon a manual shutdown of a BGP session.

4.1.  Improving availability of alternate paths

   All solutions that increase the availability of alternate BGP paths
   at routers performing forwarding lookups from BGP routes such as
   [I-D.ietf-idr-best-external] and [RFC7911] help in reducing the LoC
   bound with the shutdown of EBGP sessions.

   Any such solution where, at any single step of the convergence
   process following the EBGP session shutdown, a BGP router does not
   receive a message withdrawing the only path it currently knows for a
   given NLRI, allows for a simplified graceful shutdown procedure.

   Note that the LoC for the inbound traffic of graceful shutdown
   initiator, due to the lack of an alternate path on the graceful
   shutdown receiver is not under the control of the Initiator AS.  The
   part of the procedure aimed at avoiding LoC for incoming traffic
   should thus be applied even if no LoC are expected for the outgoing
   traffic.

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4.2.  Make before break convergence: graceful shutdown

   The goal of this procedure is to retain the paths to be shutdown
   between the peers, but with a lower LOCAL_PREF value, allowing the
   paths to remain in use while alternate paths are selected and
   propagated, rather than simply withdrawing the paths.  The LOCAL_PREF
   value must be lower than the one of the alternate path. 0 being the
   lowest value, it can be used in all cases, except if it already has a
   special meaning within the AS.

   Section 5 describes configurations and actions to be performed for
   the graceful shutdown of BGP sessions.

4.3.  Forwarding modes and transient forwarding loops during convergence

   The graceful shutdown procedure or the solutions improving the
   availability of alternate paths, do not change the fact that BGP
   convergence and the subsequent FIB updates are run independently on
   each router of the ASes.  If the AS applying the solution does not
   rely on encapsulation to forward packets from the Ingress Border
   Router to the Egress Border Router, then transient forwarding loops
   and consequent packet losses can occur during the convergence
   process.  If zero LoC is required, encapsulation is required between
   ASBRs of the AS.

5.  EBGP graceful shutdown procedure

   This section describes configurations and actions to be performed for
   the graceful shutdown of EBGP peering links.

5.1.  Pre-configuration

   On each ASBR supporting the graceful shutdown receiver procedure, an
   inbound BGP route policy is applied on all EBGP sessions of the ASBR,
   that:

   o  matches the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community

   o  sets the LOCAL_PREF attribute of the paths tagged with the
      GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community to a low value

   Note that in the case where an AS is aggregating multiple routes
   under a covering prefix, it is recommended to filter out the
   GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community from the resulting aggregate BGP route.
   By doing so, the setting of the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community on one of
   the aggregated routes will not let the entire aggregate inherit the
   community.  Not doing so would let the entire aggregate undergo the
   graceful shutdown behavior.

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5.2.  Operations at maintenance time

   On the graceful shutdown initiator, upon maintenance time, it is
   required to:

   o  apply an outbound BGP route policy on the EBGP session to be
      shutdown.  This policy tags the paths propagated over the session
      with the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community.  This will trigger the BGP
      implementation to re-advertise all active routes previously
      advertised, and tag them with the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community.

   o  apply an inbound BGP route policy on the EBGP session to be
      shutdown.  This policy tags the paths received over the session
      with the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community and sets LOCAL_PREF to a low
      value.

   o  wait for convergence to happen.

   o  shutdown the EBGP session, optionally using
      [I-D.ietf-idr-shutdown] to communicate the reason of the shutdown.

   In the case of a shutdown of the whole router, in addition to the
   graceful shutdown of all EBGP sessions, there is a need to graceful
   shutdown the routes originated by this router (e.g, BGP aggregates
   redistributed from other protocols, including static routes).  This
   can be performed by tagging such routes with the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN
   community and setting LOCAL_PREF to a low value.

5.3.  BGP implementation support for graceful shutdown

   A BGP router implementation MAY provide features aimed at automating
   the application of the graceful shutdown procedures described above.

   Upon a session shutdown specified as graceful by the operator, a BGP
   implementation supporting a graceful shutdown feature SHOULD:

   1.  Update all the paths propagated over the corresponding EBGP
       session, tagging the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community to them.  Any
       subsequent update sent over the session being gracefully shut
       down SHOULD be tagged with the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community.

   2.  Lower the LOCAL_PREF value of the paths received over the EBGP
       session being shut down and set the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community.

   3.  Optionally shut down the session after a configured time.

   4.  Prevent the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN community from being inherited by a
       path that would aggregate some paths tagged with the GSHUT

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       community.  This behavior avoids the GSHUT procedure to be
       applied to the aggregate upon the graceful shutdown of one of its
       covered prefixes.

   A BGP implementation supporting a graceful shutdown feature SHOULD
   also automatically install the BGP policies that are supposed to be
   configured, as described in Section 5.1 for sessions over which
   graceful shutdown is to be supported.

6.  Beyond EBGP graceful shutdown

6.1.  IBGP graceful shutdown

   For the shutdown of an IBGP session, provided the IBGP topology is
   viable after the maintenance of the session, i.e, if all BGP speakers
   of the AS have an IBGP signaling path for all prefixes advertised on
   this graceful shutdown IBGP session, then the shutdown of an IBGP
   session does not lead to transient unreachability.  As a consequence,
   no specific graceful shutdown action is required.

6.2.  EBGP session establishment

   We identify two potential causes for transient packet losses upon the
   establishment of an EBGP session.  The first one is local to the
   startup initiator, the second one is due to the BGP convergence
   following the injection of new best paths within the IBGP topology.

6.2.1.  Unreachability local to the ASBR

   An ASBR that selects as best a path received over a newly established
   EBGP session may transiently drop traffic.  This can typically happen
   when the NEXT_HOP attribute differs from the IP address of the EBGP
   peer, and the receiving ASBR has not yet resolved the MAC address
   associated with the IP address of that "third party" NEXT_HOP.

   A BGP speaker implementation may avoid such losses by ensuring that
   "third party" NEXT_HOPs are resolved before installing paths using
   these in the RIB.

   Alternatively, the operator (script) may ping third party NEXT_HOPs
   that are expected to be used before establishing the session.  By
   proceeding like this, the MAC addresses associated with these third
   party NEXT_HOPs are resolved by the startup initiator.

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6.2.2.  IBGP convergence

   Corner cases leading to LoC can occur during the establishment of an
   EBGP session.

   A typical example for such transient unreachability for a given
   prefix is the following:

   Let's consider 3 route reflectors RR1, RR2, RR3.  There is a full
   mesh of IBGP sessions between them.

      1.  RR1 is initially advertising the current best path to the
      members of its IBGP RR full-mesh.  It propagated that path within
      its RR full-mesh.  RR2 knows only that path toward the prefix.

      2.  RR3 receives a new best path originated by the startup
      initiator, being one of its RR clients.  RR3 selects it as best,
      and propagates an UPDATE within its RR full-mesh, i.e., to RR1 and
      RR2.

      3.  RR1 receives that path, reruns its decision process, and picks
      this new path as best.  As a result, RR1 withdraws its previously
      announced best-path on the IBGP sessions of its RR full-mesh.

      4.  If, for any reason, RR3 processes the withdraw generated in
      step 3, before processing the update generated in step 2, RR3
      transiently suffers from unreachability for the affected prefix.

   The use of [I-D.ietf-idr-best-external] among the RR of the IBGP
   full-mesh can solve these corner cases by ensuring that within an AS,
   the advertisement of a new route is not translated into the withdraw
   of a former route.

   Indeed, "best-external" ensures that an ASBR does not withdraw a
   previously advertised (EBGP) path when it receives an additional,
   preferred path over an IBGP session.  Also, "best-intra-cluster"
   ensures that a RR does not withdraw a previously advertised (IBGP)
   path to its non clients (e.g. other RRs in a mesh of RR) when it
   receives a new, preferred path over an IBGP session.

7.  IANA Considerations

   The IANA has assigned the community value 0xFFFF0000 to the planned-
   shut community in the "BGP Well-known Communities" registry.  IANA is
   requested to change the name planned-shut to GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN and
   set this document as the reference.

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8.  Security Considerations

   By providing the graceful shutdown service to a neighboring AS, an
   ISP provides means to this neighbor and possibly its downstream ASes
   to lower the LOCAL_PREF value assigned to the paths received from
   this neighbor.

   The neighbor could abuse the technique and do inbound traffic
   engineering by declaring some prefixes as undergoing a maintenance so
   as to switch traffic to another peering link.

   If this behavior is not tolerated by the ISP, it SHOULD monitor the
   use of the graceful shutdown community.

9.  Acknowledgments

   The authors wish to thank Olivier Bonaventure, Pradosh Mohapatra, Job
   Snijders and John Heasley for their useful comments.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC1997]  Chandra, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP Communities
              Attribute", RFC 1997, DOI 10.17487/RFC1997, August 1996,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1997>.

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

   [RFC6198]  Decraene, B., Francois, P., Pelsser, C., Ahmad, Z.,
              Elizondo Armengol, A., and T. Takeda, "Requirements for
              the Graceful Shutdown of BGP Sessions", RFC 6198,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6198, April 2011,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6198>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-idr-best-external]
              Marques, P., Fernando, R., Chen, E., Mohapatra, P., and H.
              Gredler, "Advertisement of the best external route in
              BGP", draft-ietf-idr-best-external-05 (work in progress),
              January 2012.

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   [I-D.ietf-idr-shutdown]
              Snijders, J., Heitz, J., and J. Scudder, "BGP
              Administrative Shutdown Communication", draft-ietf-idr-
              shutdown-10 (work in progress), June 2017.

   [RFC7911]  Walton, D., Retana, A., Chen, E., and J. Scudder,
              "Advertisement of Multiple Paths in BGP", RFC 7911,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7911, July 2016,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7911>.

Appendix A.  Alternative techniques with limited applicability

   A few alternative techniques have been considered to provide graceful
   shutdown capabilities but have been rejected due to their limited
   applicability.  This section describe them for possible reference.

A.1.  Multi Exit Discriminator tweaking

   The MED attribute of the paths to be avoided can be increased so as
   to force the routers in the neighboring AS to select other paths.

   The solution only works if the alternate paths are as good as the
   initial ones with respect to the Local-Pref value and the AS Path
   Length value.  In the other cases, increasing the MED value will not
   have an impact on the decision process of the routers in the
   neighboring AS.

A.2.  IGP distance Poisoning

   The distance to the BGP NEXT_HOP corresponding to the maintained
   session can be increased in the IGP so that the old paths will be
   less preferred during the application of the IGP distance tie-break
   rule.  However, this solution only works for the paths whose
   alternates are as good as the old paths with respect to their Local-
   Pref value, their AS Path length, and their MED value.

   Also, this poisoning cannot be applied when nexthop self is used as
   there is no nexthop specific to the maintained session to poison in
   the IGP.

Appendix B.  Configuration Examples

   This appendix is non-normative.

   Example routing policy configurations to honor the GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN
   well-known BGP community.

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B.1.  Cisco IOS XR

   community-set comm-graceful-shutdown
     65535:0
   end-set
   !
   route-policy AS64497-ebgp-inbound
     ! normally this policy would contain much more
     if community matches-any comm-graceful-shutdown then
       set local-preference 0
     endif
   end-policy
   !
   router bgp 64496
    neighbor 2001:db8:1:2::1
     remote-as 64497
     address-family ipv6 unicast
      send-community-ebgp
      route-policy AS64497-ebgp-inbound in

     !
    !
   !

B.2.  BIRD

   function honor_graceful_shutdown() {
       if (65535, 0) ~ bgp_community then {
           bgp_local_pref = 0;
       }
   }
   filter AS64497_ebgp_inbound
   {
           # normally this policy would contain much more
           honor_graceful_shutdown();
   }
   protocol bgp peer_64497_1 {
       neighbor 2001:db8:1:2::1 as 64497;
       local as 64496;
       import keep filtered;
       import filter AS64497_ebgp_inbound;
   }

B.3.  OpenBGPD

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   AS 64496
   router-id 192.0.2.1
   neighbor 2001:db8:1:2::1 {
           remote-as 64497
   }
   # normally this policy would contain much more
   match from any community GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN set { localpref 0 }

Authors' Addresses

   Pierre Francois (editor)
   Individual Contributor

   Email: pfrpfr@gmail.com

   Bruno Decraene (editor)
   Orange

   Email: bruno.decraene@orange.com

   Cristel Pelsser
   Strasbourg University

   Email: pelsser@unistra.fr

   Keyur Patel
   Arrcus, Inc.

   Email: keyur@arrcus.com

   Clarence Filsfils
   Cisco Systems

   Email: cfilsfil@cisco.com

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