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MPLS Flow Identification
draft-bryant-mpls-flow-ident-02

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Authors Stewart Bryant , Carlos Pignataro , Mach Chen , Zhenbin Li , Greg Mirsky
Last updated 2015-09-30
Replaced by draft-ietf-mpls-flow-ident
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draft-bryant-mpls-flow-ident-02
MPLS                                                           S. Bryant
Internet-Draft                                              C. Pignataro
Intended status: Informational                             Cisco Systems
Expires: April 2, 2016                                           M. Chen
                                                                   Z. Li
                                                                  Huawei
                                                               G. Mirsky
                                                                Ericsson
                                                      September 30, 2015

                        MPLS Flow Identification
                    draft-bryant-mpls-flow-ident-02

Abstract

   This memo discusses the desired capabilities for MPLS flow
   identification.  The key application that needs this is in-band
   performance monitoring of user data packets.

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 April 2, 2016.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 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
   (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

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   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.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Loss Measurement Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Delay Measurement Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Units of identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  Types of LSP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  Network Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  Backwards Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   9.  Dataplane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   10. Control Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   11. Privacy Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   12. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   13. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   14. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   15. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     15.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     15.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   This memo discusses the desired capabilities for MPLS flow
   identification.  The key application that needs this is in-band
   performance monitoring of user data packets.

   There is a need to identify flows in MPLS networks for applications
   such as packet loss and packet delay measurement.  A method of loss
   and delay measurement in MPLS networks was defined in [RFC6374].
   When used to measure packet loss [RFC6374] depends on the use of the
   injected Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) packets to
   designate the beginning and the end of the packet group over which
   packet loss is being measured.  Where the misordering of packets from
   one group relative to the following group, or misordering of one of
   the packets being counted relative to the [RFC6374] packet occurs,
   then an error will occur in the packet loss measurement.  In
   addition, this packet performance measurement system needs to be
   extended to deal with different granularities of flow and to address
   a number of the multi-point cases in which to or more ingress Label
   Switching Routers (LSRs) could send packets to one or more
   destinations.

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   Improvements in link and transmission technologies mean that it may
   be difficult to assess packet loss using active performance
   measurement methods with synthetic traffic, due to the very low loss
   rate in normal operation.  That, together with more demanding service
   level requirements, mean that network operators need to be able to
   measure the loss of the actual user data traffic by using passive
   performance measurement methods.  Any technique deployed needs to be
   transparent to the end user, and it needs to be assumed that they
   will not take any active part in the measurement process.  Indeed it
   is important that any flow identification technique be invisible to
   them and that no remnant of the identification of measurement process
   leak into their network.

   Additionally where there are multiple traffic sources, such as in
   multi-point to point and multi-point to multi-point network
   environments there needs to be a method whereby the sink can
   distinguish between packets from the various sources, that is to say,
   that a multi-point to multi-point measurement model needs to be
   developed.

2.  Requirements Language

   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].

3.  Loss Measurement Considerations

   Modern networks, if not oversubscribed, normally drop very few
   packets, thus packet loss measurement is highly sensitive to counter
   errors.  Without some form of coloring or batch marking such as that
   proposed in [I-D.tempia-ippm-p3m] it may not be possible to achieve
   the required accuracy in the loss measurement of customer data
   traffic.  Where accuracy better than the data link loss performance
   of a modern optical network is required, it may be economically
   advantageous, or even a technical requirement, to include temporal
   marking.

   Where this level of accuracy is required and the traffic between a
   source-destination pair is subject to Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) a
   demarcation mechanism is needed to group the packets into batches.
   Once a batch is correlated at both ingress and egress, the packet
   accounting mechanism is then able to operate on the batch of packets
   which can be accounted for at both the packet ingress and the packet
   egress.  Errors in the accounting are particularly acute in Label
   Switched Paths (LSPs) subjected to ECMP because the network transit
   time will be different for the various ECMP paths since:

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   a.  The packets may traverse different sets of LSRs.

   b.  The packets may depart from different interfaces on different
       line cards on LSRs

   c.  The packets may arrive at different interfaces on different line
       cards on LSRs.

   A consideration in modifying the identity label (the MPLS label
   ordinarily used to identify the LSP, Virtual Private Network,
   Pseudowire etc) to indicate the batch is the impact that this has on
   the path chosen by the ECMP mechanism.  When the member of the ECMP
   path set is chosen by deep packet inspection a change of batch
   represented by a change of identity label will have no impact on the
   ECMP path.  Where the path member is chosen by reference to an
   entropy label [RFC6790] then changing the batch identifier will not
   result in a change to the chosen ECMP path.  ECMP is so pervasive in
   multi-point to (multi-) point networks that some method of avoiding
   accounting errors introduced by ECMP needs to be supported.

4.  Delay Measurement Considerations

   Most of the existing delay measurement methods are active measurement
   that depend on the extra injected test packet to evaluate the delay
   of a path.  With the active measurement method, the rate, numbers and
   interval between the injected packets may affect the accuracy of the
   results.  Also, for injected test packets, these may not be co-routed
   with the data traffic due to ECMP.  Thus there exists a requirements
   to measure the delay of the real traffic.  For combined loss-delay
   measurements, the identity considerations described in Section 3 also
   apply.

5.  Units of identification

   The most basic unit of identification is the identity of the node
   that processed the packet on its entry to the MPLS network.  However,
   the required unit of identification may vary depending on the use
   case for accounting, performance measurement or other types of packet
   observations.  In particular note that there may be a need to impose
   identify at several different layers of the MPLS label stack.

   This document considers following units of identifications:

   o  Per source LSR - everything from one source is aggregated.

   o  Per group of LSPs chosen by an ingress LSR - an ingress LSP
      aggregates group of LSPs (ex: all LSPs of a tunnel).

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   o  Per LSP - the basic form.

   o  Per flow [RFC6790] within an LSP - fine graining method.

   Note that a finer grained identity resolution is needed when there is
   a need to perform these operations on a flow not readily identified
   by some other element in the label stack.  Such fine grained
   resolution may be possible by deep packet inspection, but this may
   not always be possible, or it may be desired to minimise processing
   costs by doing this only in entry to the network, and adding a
   suitable identifier to the packet for reference by other network
   elements.  An example of such a fine grained case might be traffic
   from a specific application, or from a specific application from a
   specific source, particularly if matters related to service level
   agreement or application performance were being investigated.

   We can thus characterize the identification requirement in the
   following broad terms:

   o  There needs to be some way for an egress LSR to identify the
      ingress LSR with an appropriate degree of scope.  This concept is
      discussed further in Section 7.

   o  There needs to be a way to identify a specific LSP at the egress
      node.  This allows for the case of instrumenting multiple LSPs
      operate between the same pair of nodes.  In such cases the
      identity of the ingress LSR is insufficient.

   o  In order to conserve resources such as labels, counters and/or
      compute cycles it may be desirable to identify an LSP group so
      that a operation can be performed on the group as an aggregate.

   o  There needs to be a way to identify a flow within an LSP.  This is
      necessary when investigating a specific flow that has been
      aggregated into an LSP.

   The unit of identification and the method of determining which
   packets constitute a flow will be application or use-case specific
   and is out of scope of this memo.

6.  Types of LSP

   We need to consider a number of types of LSP.  The two simplest types
   to monitor are point to point LSPs and point to multi-point LSPs.
   The ingress LSR for a point to point LSP, such as those created using
   the Resource Reservation Protocol - Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE)
   [RFC5420] signalling protocol, or those that conform to the MPLS
   Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) [RFC5654] may be identified by inspection

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   of the top label in the stack, since at any provider-edge (PE) or
   provider (P) router on the path this is unique to the ingress-egress
   pair at every hop at a given layer in the LSP hierarchy.  Provided
   that penultimate hop popping is disabled, the identity of the ingress
   LSR of a point to point LSP is available at the egress LSR and thus
   determining the identity of the ingress LSR must be regarded as a
   solved problem.  Note however that the identity of a flow cannot to
   be determined without further information being carried in the
   packet, or gleaned from some aspect of the packet payload.

   In the case of a point to multi-point LSP, and in the absence of
   Penultimate Hop Popping (PHP) the identity of the ingress LSR may
   also be inferred from the top label.  However, it may not possible to
   adequately identify the flow from the top label alone.  In designing
   any solution it is desirable that a common flow identity solution be
   used for both point to point and point to multi-point LSP types.
   Similarly it is desirable that a common method of LSP group
   identification be used.  In the above cases, a context label needs to
   be used to provide the required identity information.  This is widely
   supported MPLS feature.

   A more interesting case is the case of a multi-point to point LSP.
   In this case the same label is normally used by multiple ingress or
   upstream LSRs and hence source identification is not possible by
   inspection of the top label by the egress LSRs.  It is therefore
   necessary for a packet to be able to explicitly convey any of the
   identity types described in Section 5.

   Similarly, in the case of a multi-point to multi-point LSP the same
   label is normally used by multiple ingress or upstream LSRs and hence
   source identification is not possible by inspection of the top label
   by egress LSRs.  The various types of identity described in Section 5
   are again needed.  Note however, that the scope of the identity may
   be constrained to be unique within the set of multi-point to multi-
   point LSPs terminating on any common node.

7.  Network Scope

   The scope of identification can be constrained to the set of flows
   that are uniquely identifiable at an ingress LSR, or some aggregation
   thereof.  There is no question of an ingress LSR seeking assistance
   from outside the MPLS protocol domain.

   In any solution that constrains itself to carrying the required
   identity in the MPLS label stack rather than in some different
   associated data structure, constraints on the label stack size imply
   that the scope of identity reside within that MPLS domain.  For

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   similar reasons the identity scope of a component of an LSP should be
   constrained to the scope of that LSP.

8.  Backwards Compatibility

   In any network it is unlikely that all LSRs will have the same
   capability to support the methods of identification discussed in this
   memo.  It is therefore an important constraint on any flow identity
   solution that it is backwards compatible with deployed MPLS equipment
   to the extent that deploying the new feature will not disable
   anything that currently works on a legacy equipment.

   This is particularly the case when the deployment is incremental or
   when the feature is not required for all LSRs or all LSPs.  Thus in
   broad the flow identification design MUST support the co-existence of
   both LSRs that can, and cannot, identify the traffic components
   described in Section 5.  In addition the identification of the
   traffic components described in Section 5 MUST be an optional feature
   that is disabled by default.  As a design simplification, a solution
   MAY require that all egress LSRs of a point to multipoint or a multi-
   point to multipoint LSP support the identification type in use so
   that a single packet can be correctly processed by all egress
   devices.  The corollary of this last point is that either all egress
   LSRs are enabled to support the required identity type, or none of
   them are.

9.  Dataplane

   There is a huge installed base of MPLS equipment, typically this type
   of equipment remains in service for an extended period of time, and
   in many cases hardware constraints mean that it is not possible to
   upgrade its dataplane functionality.  Changes to the MPLS data plane
   are therefore expensive to implement, add complexity to the network,
   and may significantly impact the deployability of a solution that
   requires such changes.  For these reasons, the MPLS designers have
   set a very high bar to changes to the MPLS data plane, and only a
   very small number have been adopted.  Hence, it is important that the
   method of identification must minimize changes to the MPLS data
   plane.  Ideally method(s) of identification that require no changes
   to the MPLS data plane should be given preferential consideration.
   If a method of identification makes a change to the data plane is
   chosen it will need to have a significant advantage over any method
   that makes no change, and the advantage of the approach will need to
   be carefully evaluated and documented.  If a change is necessary to
   the MPLS data plane proves necessary, it should be (a) be as small a
   change as possible and (b) be a general purpose method so as to
   maximise its use for future applications.  It is imperative that, as
   far as can be foreseen, any necessary change made to the MPLS data

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   plane does not impose any foreseeable future limitation on the MPLS
   data plane.

   Stack size is an issue with many MPLS implementations both as a
   result of hardware limitations, and due to the impact on networks and
   applications where a large number of small payloads need to be
   transported In particular one MPLS payload may be carried inside
   another.  For example one LSP may be carried over another LSP, or a
   PW or similar multiplexing construct may be carried over an LSP and
   identification may be required at both layers.  Of particular concern
   is the implementation of low cost edge LSRs that for cost reasons
   have a significant limit on the number of Label Stack Elements (LSEs)
   that they can impose or dispose.  Therefore, any method of identity
   MUST NOT consume an excessive number of unique labels, and MUST NOT
   result in an excessive increase in the size of the label stack.

   The MPLS data plane design provides two types of special purpose
   labels: the original 16 reserved labels and the much larger set of
   special purpose labels defined in [RFC7274].  The original reserved
   labels need one LSE, and the newer [RFC7274] special purpose labels
   need two LSEs.  Given the tiny number of original reserved labels, it
   is core to the MPLS design philosophy that this scarce resource is
   only used when it is absolutely necessary.  Using a single LSE
   reserved or special purpose label to encode flow identity thus
   requires two stack entries, one for the reserved label and one for
   the flow identity.  The larger set of [RFC7274] labels requires two
   labels stack entries for the special purpose label itself and hence a
   total of three label stack entries to encode the flow identity.

   The use of special purpose labels (SPL) [RFC7274]as part of a method
   to encode the identity information therefore has a number of
   undesirable implications for the data plane and hence whilst a
   solution may use SPL(s), methods that do not require SPLs need to be
   carefully considered.

10.  Control Plane

   Any flow identity design should both seek to minimise the complexity
   of the control plane and should minimise the amount of label co-
   ordination needed amongst LSRs.

11.  Privacy Considerations

   The inclusion of originating and/or flow information in a packet
   provides more identity information and hence potentially degrades the
   privacy of the communication.  Recent IETF concerns on pervasive
   monitoring [RFC7258] would lead it to prefer a solution that does not
   degrade the privacy of user traffic below that of an MPLS network not

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   implementing the flow identification feature.  The minimizing the
   scope of the identity indication can be useful in minimizing the
   observability of the flow characteristics.

12.  Security Considerations

   Any solution to the flow identification needs must not degrade the
   security of the MPLS network below that of an equivalent network not
   deploying the specified identity solution.  Propagation of
   identification information outside the MPLS network imposing it must
   be disabled by default.  Any solution should provide for the
   restriction of the identity information to those components of the
   network that need to know it.  It is thus desirable to limit the
   knowledge of the identify of an endpoint to only those LSRs that need
   to participate in traffic flow.

13.  IANA Considerations

   This memo has no IANA considerations.

14.  Acknowledgements

   The authors thank Nobo Akiya (nobo@cisco.com), Nagendra Kumar Nainar
   (naikumar@cisco.com) and George Swallow (swallow@cisco.com) for their
   comments.

15.  References

15.1.  Normative References

   [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>.

15.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.tempia-ippm-p3m]
              Capello, A., Cociglio, M., Fioccola, G., Castaldelli, L.,
              and A. Bonda, "A packet based method for passive
              performance monitoring", draft-tempia-ippm-p3m-01 (work in
              progress), September 2015.

   [RFC5420]  Farrel, A., Ed., Papadimitriou, D., Vasseur, JP., and A.
              Ayyangarps, "Encoding of Attributes for MPLS LSP
              Establishment Using Resource Reservation Protocol Traffic
              Engineering (RSVP-TE)", RFC 5420, DOI 10.17487/RFC5420,
              February 2009, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5420>.

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   [RFC5654]  Niven-Jenkins, B., Ed., Brungard, D., Ed., Betts, M., Ed.,
              Sprecher, N., and S. Ueno, "Requirements of an MPLS
              Transport Profile", RFC 5654, DOI 10.17487/RFC5654,
              September 2009, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5654>.

   [RFC6374]  Frost, D. and S. Bryant, "Packet Loss and Delay
              Measurement for MPLS Networks", RFC 6374,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6374, September 2011,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6374>.

   [RFC6790]  Kompella, K., Drake, J., Amante, S., Henderickx, W., and
              L. Yong, "The Use of Entropy Labels in MPLS Forwarding",
              RFC 6790, DOI 10.17487/RFC6790, November 2012,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6790>.

   [RFC7258]  Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
              Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
              2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.

   [RFC7274]  Kompella, K., Andersson, L., and A. Farrel, "Allocating
              and Retiring Special-Purpose MPLS Labels", RFC 7274,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7274, June 2014,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7274>.

Authors' Addresses

   Stewart Bryant
   Cisco Systems

   Email: stbryant@cisco.com

   Carlos Pignataro
   Cisco Systems

   Email: cpignata@cisco.com

   Mach Chen
   Huawei

   Email: mach.chen@huawei.com

   Zhenbin Li
   Huawei

   Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com

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   Gregory Mirsky
   Ericsson

   Email: gregory.mirsky@ericsson.com

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