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BGP Optimal Route Reflection (BGP ORR)
draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-27

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9107.
Authors Robert Raszuk , Bruno Decraene , Christian Cassar , Erik Aman , Kevin Wang
Last updated 2021-06-17
Replaces draft-raszuk-bgp-optimal-route-reflection
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Susan Hares
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2021-06-08
IESG IESG state Became RFC 9107 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Yes
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Alvaro Retana
Send notices to John Scudder <jgs@juniper.net>, Susan Hares <shares@ndzh.com>, aretana.ietf@gmail.com
IANA IANA review state IANA OK - No Actions Needed
draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-27
IDR Working Group                                         R. Raszuk, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                   NTT Network Innovations
Updates: 4456 (if approved)                             B. Decraene, Ed.
Intended status: Standards Track                                  Orange
Expires: December 19, 2021                                     C. Cassar

                                                                 E. Aman

                                                                 K. Wang
                                                        Juniper Networks
                                                           June 17, 2021

                 BGP Optimal Route Reflection (BGP ORR)
             draft-ietf-idr-bgp-optimal-route-reflection-27

Abstract

   This document defines an extension to BGP route reflectors.  On route
   reflectors, BGP route selection is modified in order to choose the
   best route from the standpoint of their clients, rather than from the
   standpoint of the route reflectors.  Depending on the scaling and
   precision requirements, route selection can be specific for one
   client, common for a set of clients or common for all clients of a
   route reflector.  This solution is particularly applicable in
   deployments using centralized route reflectors, where choosing the
   best route based on the route reflector's IGP location is suboptimal.
   This facilitates, for example, best exit point policy (hot potato
   routing).

   The solution relies upon all route reflectors learning all paths
   which are eligible for consideration.  BGP Route Selection is
   performed in the route reflectors based on the IGP cost from
   configured locations in the link state IGP.

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 https://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

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   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 December 19, 2021.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2021 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
   (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
   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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Modifications to BGP Route Selection  . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Route Selection from a different IGP location . . . . . .   5
       3.1.1.  Restriction when BGP next hop is a BGP prefix . . . .   6
     3.2.  Multiple Route Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   There are three types of BGP deployments within Autonomous Systems
   today: full mesh, confederations and route reflection.  BGP route
   reflection [RFC4456] is the most popular way to distribute BGP routes
   between BGP speakers belonging to the same Autonomous System.
   However, in some situations, this method suffers from non-optimal
   path selection.

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   [RFC4456] asserts that, because the IGP cost to a given point in the
   network will vary across routers, "the route reflection approach may
   not yield the same route selection result as that of the full
   Internal BGP (IBGP) mesh approach."  One practical implication of
   this fact is that the deployment of route reflection may thwart the
   ability to achieve hot potato routing.  Hot potato routing attempts
   to direct traffic to the closest Autonomous System (AS) exit point in
   cases where no higher priority policy dictates otherwise.  As a
   consequence of the route reflection method, the choice of exit point
   for a route reflector and its clients will be the exit point that is
   optimal for the route reflector - not necessarily the one that is
   optimal for its clients.

   Section 11 of [RFC4456] describes a deployment approach and a set of
   constraints which, if satisfied, would result in the deployment of
   route reflection yielding the same results as the IBGP full mesh
   approach.  This deployment approach makes route reflection compatible
   with the application of hot potato routing policy.  In accordance
   with these design rules, route reflectors have often been deployed in
   the forwarding path and carefully placed on the Point of Presence
   (POP) to core boundaries.

   The evolving model of intra-domain network design has enabled
   deployments of route reflectors outside the forwarding path.
   Initially this model was only employed for new services, e.g., IP
   VPNs [RFC4364], however it has been gradually extended to other BGP
   services, including the IPv4 and IPv6 Internet.  In such
   environments, hot potato routing policy remains desirable.

   Route reflectors outside the forwarding path can be placed on the POP
   to core boundaries, but they are often placed in arbitrary locations
   in the core of large networks.

   Such deployments suffer from a critical drawback in the context of
   BGP Route Selection: A route reflector with knowledge of multiple
   paths for a given prefix will typically pick its best path and only
   advertise that best path to its clients.  If the best path for a
   prefix is selected on the basis of an IGP tie-break, the path
   advertised will be the exit point closest to the route reflector.
   However, the clients are in a different place in the network topology
   than the route reflector.  In networks where the route reflectors are
   not in the forwarding path, this difference will be even more acute.

   In addition, there are deployment scenarios where service providers
   want to have more control in choosing the exit points for clients
   based on other factors, such as traffic type, traffic load, etc.
   This further complicates the issue and makes it less likely for the
   route reflector to select the best path from the client's

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   perspective.  It follows that the best path chosen by the route
   reflector is not necessarily the same as the path which would have
   been chosen by the client if the client had considered the same set
   of candidate paths as the route reflector.

2.  Terminology

   This memo makes use of the terms defined in [RFC4271] and [RFC4456].

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Modifications to BGP Route Selection

   The core of this solution is the ability for an operator to specify
   the IGP location for which the route reflector calculates interior
   cost for the NEXT_HOP.  The IGP location is defined as a node in the
   IGP topology, it is identified by an IP address of this node (e.g., a
   loopback address), and may be configured on a per route reflector
   basis, per set of clients, or per client basis.  Such configuration
   will allow the route reflector to select and distribute to a given
   set of clients routes with shortest distance to the next hops from
   the position of the selected IGP location.  This provides for freedom
   of route reflector physical location, and allows transient or
   permanent migration of this network control plane function to an
   arbitrary location with no impact to IP transit.

   The choice of specific granularity (route reflector, set of clients,
   or client) is configured by the network operator.  An implementation
   is considered compliant with this document if it supports at least
   one such grouping category.

   For purposes of route selection, the perspective of a client can
   differ from that of a route reflector or another client in two
   distinct ways:

   o  it has a different position in the IGP topology,

   o  it can have a different routing policy.

   These factors correspond to the issues described earlier.

   This document defines, for BGP Route Reflectors [RFC4456], two
   changes to the BGP Route Selection algorithm:

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   o  The first change, introduced in Section 3.1, is related to the IGP
      cost to the BGP Next Hop in the BGP decision process.  The change
      consists of using the IGP cost from a different IGP location than
      the route reflector itself.

   o  The second change, introduced in Section 3.2, is to extend the
      granularity of the BGP decision process, to allow for running
      multiple decisions processes using different perspective or
      policies.

   A significant advantage of these approaches is that the route
   reflector clients do not need to be modified.

3.1.  Route Selection from a different IGP location

   In this approach, optimal refers to the decision where the interior
   cost of a route is determined during step e) of [RFC4271] section
   9.1.2.2 "Breaking Ties (Phase 2)".  It does not apply to path
   selection preference based on other policy steps and provisions.

   In addition to the change specified in [RFC4456] section 9, [RFC4271]
   section 9.1.2.2 is modified as follows.

   The below text in step e)

      e) Remove from consideration any routes with less-preferred
      interior cost.  The interior cost of a route is determined by
      calculating the metric to the NEXT_HOP for the route using the
      Routing Table.

   ...is replaced by this new text:

      e) Remove from consideration any routes with less-preferred
      interior cost.  The interior cost of a route is determined by
      calculating the metric from the selected IGP location to the
      NEXT_HOP for the route using the shortest IGP path tree rooted at
      the selected IGP location.

   In order to be able to compute the shortest path tree rooted at the
   selected IGP locations, knowledge of the IGP topology for the area/
   level that includes each of those locations is needed.  This
   knowledge can be gained with the use of the link state IGP such as
   IS-IS [ISO10589] or OSPF [RFC2328] [RFC5340] or via BGP-LS [RFC7752].
   When specifying logical location of a route reflector for a group of
   clients one or more backup IGP locations SHOULD be allowed to be
   specified for redundancy.  Further deployment considerations are
   discussed in Section 4.

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3.1.1.  Restriction when BGP next hop is a BGP prefix

   In situations where the BGP next hop is a BGP route itself, the IGP
   metric of a route used for its resolution SHOULD be the final IGP
   cost to reach such next hop.  Implementations which cannot inform BGP
   of the final IGP metric to a recursive next hop MUST treat such paths
   as least preferred during next hop metric comparison.  However, such
   paths MUST still be considered valid for BGP Phase 2 Route Selection.

3.2.  Multiple Route Selections

   BGP Route Reflector as per [RFC4456] runs a single BGP Decision
   Process.  Optimal route reflection may require multiple BGP Decision
   Processes or subsets of the Decision Process in order to consider
   different IGP locations or BGP policies for different sets of
   clients.  This is very similar to what is defined in [RFC7947]
   section 2.3.2.1.

   If the required routing optimization is limited to the IGP cost to
   the BGP Next-Hop, only step e) and subsequent steps as defined in
   [RFC4271] section 9.1.2.2, needs to be run multiple times.

   If the routing optimization requires the use of different BGP
   policies for different sets of clients, a larger part of the decision
   process needs to be run multiple times, up to the whole decision
   process as defined in section 9.1 of [RFC4271].  This is for example
   the case when there is a need to use different policies to compute
   different degree of preference during Phase 1.  This is needed for
   use cases involving traffic engineering or dedicating certain exit
   points for certain clients.  In the latter case, the user may specify
   and apply a general policy on the route reflector for a set of
   clients.  Regular path selection, including IGP perspective for a set
   of clients as per Section 3.1, is then applied to the candidate paths
   to select the final paths to advertise to the clients.

   A route reflector can implement either or both of the modifications
   in order to allow it to choose the best path for its clients that the
   clients themselves would have chosen given the same set of candidate
   paths.

4.  Deployment Considerations

   BGP Optimal Route Reflection provides a model for integrating the
   client perspective into the BGP Route Selection decision function for
   route reflectors.  More specifically, the choice of BGP path takes
   into account either the IGP cost between the client and the NEXT_HOP
   (rather than the IGP cost from the route reflector to the NEXT_HOP)
   or other user configured policies.

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   The achievement of optimal routing between clients of different
   clusters relies upon all route reflectors learning all paths that are
   eligible for consideration.  In order to satisfy this requirement,
   BGP add-path [RFC7911] needs to be deployed between route reflectors.

   This solution can be deployed in traditional hop-by-hop forwarding
   networks as well as in end-to-end tunneled environments.  To avoid
   routing loops in networks with multiple route reflectors and hop-by-
   hop forwarding without encapsulation, it is essential that the
   network topology be carefully considered in designing a route
   reflection topology (see also Section 11 of [RFC4456]).

   As discussed in section 11 of [RFC4456], the IGP locations of BGP
   route reflectors is important and has routing implications.  This
   equally applies to the choice of the IGP locations configured on
   optimal route reflectors.  If a backup location is provided, it is
   used when the primary IGP location disappears from the IGP (i.e.
   fails).  Just like the failure of a RR [RFC4456], it may result in
   changing the paths selected and advertised to the clients and in
   general the post-failure paths are expected to be less optimal.  This
   is dependent on the IGP topologies and the IGP distance between the
   primary and the backup IGP locations: the smaller the distance the
   smaller the potential impact.

   After selecting suitable IGP locations, an operator may let one or
   multiple route reflectors handle route selection for all of them.
   The operator may alternatively deploy one or multiple route reflector
   for each IGP location or create any design in between.  This choice
   may depend on operational model (centralized vs per region),
   acceptable blast radius in case of failure, acceptable number of IBGP
   sessions for the mesh between the route reflectors, performance and
   configuration granularity of the equipment.

   With this approach, an ISP can effect a hot potato routing policy
   even if route reflection has been moved out of the forwarding plane,
   and hop-by-hop forwarding has been replaced by end-to-end MPLS or IP
   encapsulation.  Compared with a deployment of ADD-PATH on all
   routers, BGP Optimal Route Reflection (ORR) reduces the amount of
   state which needs to be pushed to the edge of the network in order to
   perform hot potato routing.

   Modifying the IGP location of BGP ORR does not interfere with
   policies enforced before IGP tie-breaking (step e) of [RFC4271]
   section 9.1.2.2 in the BGP Decision Process.

   Calculating routes for different IGP locations requires multiple
   Shortest Path First (SPF) calculations and multiple (subsets of) BGP
   Decision Processes, which requires more computing resources.  This

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   document allows for different granularity such as one Decision
   Process per route reflector, per set of clients or per client.  A
   more fine-grained granularity may translate into more optimal hot
   potato routing at the cost of more computing power.  Selecting to
   configure an IGP location per client has the highest precision as
   each client can be associated with their ideal (own) IGP location.
   However, doing so may have an impact on the performance (as explained
   above).  Using an IGP location per set of clients implies a loss of
   precision, but reduces the impact on the performance of the route
   reflector.  Similarly, if an IGP location is selected for the whole
   routing instance, the lowest precision is achieved, but the
   performance impact is minimal.  In the last mode of operation both
   precision as well as perfomance metrics are equal to same metrics
   when using route reflection as described in [RFC4456] without ORR
   extension.  The ability to run fine-grained computations depends on
   the platform/hardware deployed, the number of clients, the number of
   BGP routes and the size of the IGP topology.  In essence, sizing
   considerations are similar to the deployments of BGP Route Reflector.

5.  Security Considerations

   This extension provides a new metric value using additional
   information for computing routes for BGP route reflectors.  While any
   improperly used metric value could impact the resiliency of the
   network, this extension does not change the underlying security
   issues inherent in the existing IBGP per [RFC4456].

   This document does not introduce requirements for any new protection
   measures.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not request any IANA allocations.

7.  Acknowledgments

   Authors would like to thank Keyur Patel, Eric Rosen, Clarence
   Filsfils, Uli Bornhauser, Russ White, Jakob Heitz, Mike Shand, Jon
   Mitchell, John Scudder, Jeff Haas, Martin Djernaes, Daniele
   Ceccarelli, Kieran Milne, Job Snijders, Randy Bush, Alvaro Retana,
   Francesca Palombini, Benjamin Kaduk, Zaheduzzaman Sarker, Lars
   Eggert, Murray Kucherawy, Tom Petch and Nick Hilliard for their
   valuable input.

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8.  Contributors

   Following persons substantially contributed to the current format of
   the document:

   Stephane Litkowski
   Cisco System

   slitkows.ietf@gmail.com

   Adam Chappell
   GTT Communications, Inc.
   Aspira Business Centre
   Bucharova 2928/14a
   158 00 Prague 13 Stodulky
   Czech Republic

   adam.chappell@gtt.net

9.  References

9.1.  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,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [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>.

   [RFC4456]  Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
              Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
              (IBGP)", RFC 4456, DOI 10.17487/RFC4456, April 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4456>.

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

   [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>.

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9.2.  Informative References

   [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.

   [RFC2328]  Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", STD 54, RFC 2328,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2328, April 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2328>.

   [RFC4364]  Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private
              Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, DOI 10.17487/RFC4364, February
              2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4364>.

   [RFC5340]  Coltun, R., Ferguson, D., Moy, J., and A. Lindem, "OSPF
              for IPv6", RFC 5340, DOI 10.17487/RFC5340, July 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5340>.

   [RFC7752]  Gredler, H., Ed., Medved, J., Previdi, S., Farrel, A., and
              S. Ray, "North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and
              Traffic Engineering (TE) Information Using BGP", RFC 7752,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7752, March 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7752>.

   [RFC7947]  Jasinska, E., Hilliard, N., Raszuk, R., and N. Bakker,
              "Internet Exchange BGP Route Server", RFC 7947,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7947, September 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7947>.

Authors' Addresses

   Robert Raszuk (editor)
   NTT Network Innovations

   Email: robert@raszuk.net

   Bruno Decraene (editor)
   Orange

   Email: bruno.decraene@orange.com

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   Christian Cassar

   Email: cassar.christian@gmail.com

   Erik Aman

   Email: erik.aman@aman.se

   Kevin Wang
   Juniper Networks
   10 Technology Park Drive
   Westford, MA  01886
   USA

   Email: kfwang@juniper.net

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