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The Nimrod Routing Architecture
draft-ietf-nimrod-routing-arch-01

The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 1992.
Authors J. Noel Chiappa , Martha E. Steenstrup , Isidro M. Castineyra
Last updated 2013-03-02 (Latest revision 1996-02-21)
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draft-ietf-nimrod-routing-arch-01
Internet Draft                                                 I. Castineyra
Nimrod Working Group                                           J. N. Chiappa
February 1996                                                  M. Steenstrup
draft-ietf-nimrod-routing-arch-01.txt                    Expires August 1996

                      The Nimrod Routing Architecture

                            Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are working documents
of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working
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                                  Abstract

We present a scalable internetwork routing architecture, called Nimrod.  The
Nimrod architecture is designed to accommodate a dynamic internetwork of
arbitrary size with heterogeneous service requirements and restrictions and
to admit incremental deployment throughout an internetwork.  The key to
Nimrod's scalability is its ability to represent and manipulate
routing-related information at multiple levels of abstraction.



Internet Draft              Nimrod Architecture                February 1996

Contents

1 Introduction                                                             1

2 Overview of Nimrod                                                       1

  2.1 Constraints of the Internetworking Environment  . . . . . . . . . .  2

  2.2 The Basic Routing Functions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

  2.3 Scalability Features  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5

    2.3.1 Clustering and Abstraction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5

    2.3.2 Restricting Information Distribution  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6

    2.3.3 Local Selection of Feasible Routes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6

    2.3.4 Caching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6

    2.3.5 Limiting Forwarding Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7

3 Architecture                                                             7

  3.1 Endpoints  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

  3.2 Nodes and Adjacencies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

  3.3 Maps  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8

    3.3.1 Connectivity Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9

  3.4  Locators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9

  3.5 Node Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

    3.5.1 Adjacencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

    3.5.2 Internal Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

    3.5.3 Transit Connectivity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

    3.5.4 Inbound Connectivity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

    3.5.5 Outbound Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4 Physical Realization                                                    11

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  4.1 Contiguity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

  4.2 An Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

  4.3 Multiple Locator Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5 Forwarding                                                              17

  5.1 Policy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

  5.2 Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

  5.3 Connectivity Specification (CSC) Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

  5.4 Flow Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

  5.5 Datagram Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

  5.6 Connectivity Specification Sequence Mode  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

6 Security Considerations                                                 23

7 Authors' Addresses                                                      23

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1 Introduction

Nimrod is a scalable routing architecture designed to accommodate a
continually expanding and diversifying internetwork.  First suggested by
Noel Chiappa, the Nimrod architecture has undergone revision and refinement
through the efforts of the Nimrod working group of the IETF. In this
document, we present a detailed description of this architecture.

The goals of Nimrod are as follows:

 1. To support a dynamic internetwork of arbitrary size by providing
    mechanisms to control the amount of routing information that must be
    known throughout an internetwork.

 2. To provide service-specific routing in the presence of multiple
    constraints imposed by service providers and users.

 3. To admit incremental deployment throughout an internetwork.

We have designed the Nimrod architecture to meet these goals.  The key
features of this architecture include:

 1. Representation of internetwork connectivity and services in the form of
    maps at multiple levels of abstraction.

 2. User-controlled route generation and selection based on maps and
    traffic service requirements.

 3. User-directed packet forwarding along established paths.

Nimrod is a general routing architecture that can be applied to routing both
within a single routing domain and among multiple routing domains.  As a
general internetwork routing architecture designed to deal with increased
internetwork size and diversity, Nimrod is equally applicable to both the
TCP/IP and OSI environments.

2 Overview of Nimrod

Before describing the Nimrod architecture in detail, we provide an overview.
We begin with the internetworking requirements, followed by the routing
functions, and concluding with Nimrod's scaling characteristics.

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2.1 Constraints of the Internetworking Environment

Internetworks are growing and evolving systems, in terms of number,
diversity, and interconnectivity of service providers and users, and
therefore require a routing architecture that can accommodate internetwork
growth and evolution.  A complicated mix of factors such as technological
advances, political alliances, and service supply and demand economics will
determine how an internetwork will change over time.  However, correctly
predicting all of these factors and all of their effects on an internetwork
may not be possible.  Thus, the flexibility of an internetwork routing
architecture is its key to handling unanticipated requirements.

In developing the Nimrod architecture, we first assembled a list of
internetwork environmental constraints that have implications for routing.
This list, enumerated below, includes observations about the present
Internet; it also includes predictions about internetworks five to ten years
in the future.

 1. The Internet will grow to include O(10^9) networks.

 2. The number of internetwork users may be unbounded.

 3. The capacity of internetwork resources is steadily increasing but so is
    the demand for these resources.

 4. Routers and hosts have finite processing capacity and finite memory,
    and networks have finite transmission capacity.

 5. Internetworks comprise different types of communications media --
    including wireline, optical and wireless, terrestrial and satellite,
    shared multiaccess and point-to-point -- with different service
    characteristics in terms of throughput, delay, error and loss
    distributions, and privacy.

 6. Internetwork elements -- networks, routers, hosts, and processes -- may
    be mobile.

 7. Service providers will specify offered services and restrictions on
    access to those services.  Restrictions may be in terms of when a
    service is available, how much the service costs, which users may
    subscribe to the service and for what purposes, and how the user must
    shape its traffic in order to receive a service guarantee.

 8. Users will specify traffic service requirements which may vary widely
    among sessions.  These specifications may be in terms of requested
    qualities of service, the amounts they are willing to pay for these
    services, the times at which they want these services, and the
    providers they wish to use.

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 9. A user traffic session may include m sources and n destinations, where
    m, n > or = 1.

10. Service providers and users have a synergistic relationship.  That is,
    as users develop more applications with special service requirements,
    service providers will respond with the services to meet these demands.
    Moreover, as service providers deliver more services, users will
    develop more applications that take advantage of these services.

11. Support for varied and special services will require more processing,
    memory, and transmission bandwidth on the part of both the service
    providers offering these services and the users requesting these
    services.  Hence, many routing-related activities will likely be
    performed not by routers and hosts but rather by independent devices
    acting on their behalf to process, store, and distribute routing
    information.

12. Users requiring specialized services (e.g., high guaranteed throughput)
    will usually be willing to pay more for these services and to incur
    some delay in obtaining them.

13. Service providers are reluctant to introduce complicated protocols into
    their networks, because they are more difficult to manage.

14. Vendors are reluctant to implement complicated protocols in their
    products, because they take longer to develop.

Collectively, these constraints imply that a successful internetwork routing
architecture must support special features, such as service-specific routing
and component mobility in a large and changing internetwork, using simple
procedures that consume a minimal amount of internetwork resources.  We
believe that the Nimrod architecture meets these goals, and we justify this
claim in the remainder of this document.

2.2 The Basic Routing Functions

The basic routing functions provided by Nimrod are those provided by any
routing system, namely:

 1. Collecting, assembling, and distributing the information necessary for
    route generation and selection.

 2. Generating and selecting routes based on this information.

 3. Establishing in routers information necessary for forwarding packets
    along the selected routes.

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 4. Forwarding packets along the selected routes.

The Nimrod approach to providing this routing functionality includes map
distribution according to the "link-state" paradigm, localization of route
generation and selection at traffic sources and destinations, and
specification of packet forwarding through path establishment by the sources
and destinations.

Link-state map distribution permits each service provider to have control
over the services it offers, through both distributing restrictions in and
restricting distribution of its routing information.  Restricting
distribution of routing information serves to reduce the amount of routing
information maintained throughout an internetwork and to keep certain
routing information private.  However, it also leads to inconsistent routing
information databases throughout an internetwork, as not all such databases
will be complete or identical.  We expect routing information database
inconsistencies to occur often in a large internetwork, regardless of
whether privacy is an issue.  The reason is that we expect some devices to
be incapable of maintaining the complete set of routing information for the
internetwork.  These devices will select only some of the distributed
routing information for storage in their databases.

Route generation and selection, based on maps and traffic service
requirements, may be completely controlled by the users or, more likely, by
devices acting on their behalf and does not require global coordination
among routers.  Thus these devices may generate routes specific to the
users' needs, and only those users pay the cost of generating those routes.
Locally-controlled route generation allows incremental deployment of and
experimentation with new route generation algorithms, as these algorithms
need not be the same at each location in an internetwork.

Packet forwarding according to paths may be completely controlled by the
users or the devices acting on their behalf.  These paths may be specified
in as much detail as the maps permit.  Such packet forwarding provides
freedom from forwarding loops, even when routers in a path have inconsistent
routing information.  The reason is that the forwarding path is a route
computed by a single device and based on routing information maintained at a
single device.

We note that the Nimrod architecture and Inter-Domain Policy Routing (IDPR)
[1] share in common link-state routing information distribution, localized
route generation and path-oriented message forwarding.  In developing the
Nimrod architecture, we have drawn upon experience gained in developing and
experimenting with IDPR.

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2.3 Scalability Features

Nimrod must provide service-specific routing in arbitrarily large
internetworks and hence must employ mechanisms that help to contain the
amount of internetwork resources consumed by the routing functions.  We
provide a brief synopsis of such mechanisms below, noting that arbitrary use
of these mechanisms does not guarantee a scalable routing architecture.
Instead, these mechanisms must be used wisely, in order enable a routing
architecture to scale with internetwork growth.

2.3.1 Clustering and Abstraction

The Nimrod architecture is capable of representing an internetwork as
clusters of entities at multiple levels of abstraction.  Clustering reduces
the number of entities visible to routing.  Abstraction reduces the amount
of information required to characterize an entity visible to routing.

Clustering begins by aggregating internetwork elements such as hosts,
routers, and networks according to some predetermined criteria.  These
elements may be clustered according to relationships among them, such as
"managed by the same authority", or so as to satisfy some objective
function, such as "minimize the expected amount of forwarding information
stored at each router".  Nimrod does not mandate a particular cluster
formation algorithm.

New clusters may be formed by clustering together existing clusters.
Repeated clustering of entities produces a hierarchy of clusters with a
unique universal cluster that contains all others.  The same clustering
algorithm need not be applied at each level in the hierarchy.

All elements within a cluster must satisfy at least one relation, namely
connectivity.  That is, if all elements within a cluster are operational,
then any two of them must be connected by at least one route that lies
entirely within that cluster.  This condition prohibits the formation of
certain types of separated clusters, such as the following.  Suppose that a
company has two branches located at opposite ends of a country and that
these two branches must communicate over a public network not owned by the
company.  Then the two branches cannot be members of the same cluster,
unless that cluster also includes the public network connecting them.

Once the clusters are formed, their connectivity and service information is
abstracted to reduce the representation of cluster characteristics.  Example
abstraction procedures include elimination of services provided by a small
fraction of the elements in the cluster or expression of services in terms
of average values.  Nimrod does not mandate a particular abstraction
algorithm.  The same abstraction algorithm need not be applied to each
cluster, and multiple abstraction algorithms may be applied to a single
cluster.

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A particular combination of clustering and abstraction algorithms applied to
an internetwork results in an organization related to but distinct from the
physical organization of the component hosts, routers, and networks.  When a
clustering is superimposed over the physical internetwork elements, the
cluster boundaries may not necessarily coincide with host, router, or
network boundaries.  Nimrod performs its routing functions with respect to
the hierarchy of entities resulting from clustering and abstraction, not
with respect to the physical realization of the internetwork.  In fact,
Nimrod need not even be aware of the physical elements of an internetwork.

2.3.2 Restricting Information Distribution

The Nimrod architecture supports restricted distribution of routing
information, both to reduce resource consumption associated with such
distribution and to permit information hiding.  Each cluster determines the
portions of its routing information to distribute and the set of entities to
which to distribute this information.  Moreover, recipients of routing
information are selective in which information they retain.  Some examples
are as follows.  Each cluster might automatically advertise its routing
information to its siblings (i.e., those clusters with a common parent
cluster).  In response to requests, a cluster might advertise information
about specific portions of the cluster or information that applies only to
specific users.  A cluster might only retain routing information from
clusters that provide universal access to their services.

2.3.3 Local Selection of Feasible Routes

Generating routes that satisfy multiple constraints is usually an
NP-complete problem and hence a computationally intensive procedure.  With
Nimrod, only those entities that require routes with special constraints
need assume the computational load associated with generation and selection
of such routes.  Moreover, the Nimrod architecture allows individual
entities to choose their own route generation and selection algorithms and
hence the amount of resources to devote to these functions.

2.3.4 Caching

The Nimrod architecture encourages caching of acquired routing information
in order to reduce the amount of resources consumed and delay incurred in
obtaining the information in the future.  The set of routes generated as a
by-product of generating a particular route is an example of routing
information that is amenable to caching; future requests for any of these
routes may be satisfied directly from the route cache.  However, as with any
caching scheme, the cached information may become stale and its use may
result in poor quality routes.  Hence, the routing information's expected

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duration of usefulness must be considered when determining whether to cache
the information and for how long.

2.3.5 Limiting Forwarding Information

The Nimrod architecture supports two separate approaches for containing the
amount of forwarding information that must be maintained per router.  The
first approach is to multiplex, over a single path (or tree, for multicast),
multiple traffic flows with similar service requirements.  The second
approach is to install and retain forwarding information only for active
traffic flows.

With Nimrod, the service providers and users share responsibility for the
amount of forwarding information in an internetwork.  Users have control
over the establishment of paths, and service providers have control over the
maintenance of paths.  This approach is different from that of the current
Internet, where forwarding information is established in routers independent
of demand for this information.

3 Architecture

Nimrod is a hierarchical, map-based routing architecture that has been
designed to support a wide range of user requirements and to scale to very
large dynamic internets.  Given a traffic stream's description and
requirements (both quality of service requirements and usage-restriction
requirements), Nimrod's main function is to manage in a scalable fashion how
much information about the internetwork is required to choose a route for
that stream, in other words, to manage the trade-off between amount of
information about the internetwork and the quality of the computed route.
Nimrod is implemented as a set of protocols and distributed databases.  The
following sections describe the basic architectural concepts used in Nimrod.
The protocols and databases are specified in other documents.

3.1 Endpoints

The basic entity in Nimrod is the endpoint.  An endpoint represents a user
of the internetwork layer:  for example, a transport connection.  Each
endpoint has at least one endpoint identifier (EID). Any given EID
corresponds to a single endpoint.  EIDs are globally unique, relatively
short "computer-friendly" bit strings---for example, small multiples of 64
bits.  EIDs have no topological significance whatsoever.  For ease of
management, EIDs might be organized hierarchically, but this is not
required.

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    BEGIN COMMENT

    In practice, EIDs will probably have a second form, which we can
    call the endpoint label (EL). ELs are ASCII strings of unlimited
    length, structured to be used as keys in a distributed database
    (much like DNS names).  Information about an endpoint---for
    example, how to reach it---can be obtained by querying this
    distributed database using the endpoint's label as key.

    END COMMENT

3.2 Nodes and Adjacencies

A node represents a region of the physical network.  The region of the
network represented by a node can be as large or as small as desired:  a
node can represent a continent or a process running inside a host.
Moreover, as explained in section 4, a region of the network can
simultaneously be represented by more than one node.

An adjacency consists of an ordered pair of nodes.  An adjacency indicates
that traffic can flow from the first node to the second.

3.3 Maps

The basic data structure used for routing is the map.  A map expresses the
available connectivity between different points of an internetwork.
Different maps can represent the same region of a physical network at
different levels of detail.

A map is a graph composed of nodes and adjacencies.  Properties of nodes are
contained in attributes associated with them.  Adjacencies have no
attributes.  Nimrod defines languages to specify attributes and to describe
maps.

Maps are used by routers to generate routes.  In general, it is not required
that different routers have consistent maps.

    BEGIN COMMENT

    Nimrod has been designed so that there will be no routing loops
    even when the routing databases of different routers are not
    consistent.  A consistency requirement would not permit
    representing the same region of the internetwork at different
    levels of detail.  Also, a routing-database consistency
    requirement would be hard to guarantee in the very large internets

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    Nimrod is designed to support.

    END COMMENT

In this document we speak only of routers.  By "router" we mean a physical
device that implements functions related to routing:  for example,
forwarding, route calculation, path set-up.  A given device need not be
capable of doing all of these to be called a router.  The protocol
specification document, see [2], splits these functionalities into specific
agents.

3.3.1 Connectivity Specifications

By connectivity between two points we mean the available services and the
restrictions on their use.  Connectivity specifications are among the
attributes associated with nodes.  The following are informal examples of
connectivity specifications:

  o "Between these two points, there exists best-effort service with no
    restrictions."

  o "Between these two points, guaranteed 10 ms delay can be arranged for
    traffic streams whose data rate is below 1 Mbyte/sec and that have low
    (specified) burstiness."

  o "Between these two points, best-effort service is offered, as long as
    the traffic originates in and is destined for research organizations."

3.4 Locators

A locator is a string of binary digits that identifies a location in an
internetwork.  Nodes and endpoint are assigned locators.  Different nodes
have necessarily different locators.  A node is assigned only one locator.
Locators identify nodes and specify *where* a node is in the network.
Locators do *not* specify a path to the node.  An endpoint can be assigned
more than one locator.  In this sense, a locator might appear in more than
one location of an internetwork.

In this document locators are written as ASCII strings that include colons
to underline node structure:  for example, a:b:c.  This does not mean that
the representation of locators in packets or in databases will necessarily
have something equivalent to the colons.

A given physical element of the network might help implement more than one

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node---for example, a router might be part of two different nodes.  Though
this physical element might therefore be associated with more than one
locator, the nodes that this physical element implements have each only one
locator.

The connectivity specifications of a node are identified by a tuple
consisting of the node's locator and an ID number.

All map information is expressed in terms of locators, and routing
selections are based on locators.  EIDs are *not* used in making routing
decisions---see section 5.

3.5 Node Attributes

The following are node attributes defined by Nimrod.

3.5.1 Adjacencies

Adjacencies appear in maps as attributes of both the nodes in the adjacency.
A node has two types of adjacencies associated with it:  those that identify
a neighboring node to which the original node can send data to; and those
that identivy a neighboring node that can send data to the original node.

3.5.2 Internal Maps

As part of its attributes, a node can have internal maps.  A router can
obtain a node's internal maps---or any other of the node's attributes, for
that matter---by requesting that information from a representative of that
node.  (A router associated with that node can be such a representative.)  A
node's representative can in principle reply with different internal maps to
different requests---for example, because of security concerns.  This
implies that different routers in the network might have different internal
maps for the same node.

A node is said to own those locators that have as a prefix the locator of
the node.  In a node that has an internal map, the locators of all nodes in
this internal map are prefixed by the locator of the original node.

Given a map, a more detailed map can be obtained by substituting one of the
map's nodes by one of that node's internal maps.  This process can be
continued recursively.  Nimrod defines standard internal maps that are
intended to be used for specific purposes.  A node's "detailed map" gives
more information about the region of the network represented by the original
node.  Typically, it is closer to the physical realization of the network
than the original node.  The nodes of this map can themselves have detailed

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maps.

3.5.3 Transit Connectivity

For a given node, this attribute specifies the services available between
nodes adjacent to the given node.  This attribute is requested and used when
a router intends to route traffic *through* a node.  Conceptually, the
traffic connectivity attribute is a matrix that is indexed by a pair of
locators:  the locators of adjacent nodes.  The entry indexed by such a pair
contains the connectivity specifications of the services available across
the given node for traffic entering from the first node and exiting to the
second node.

The actual format of this attribute need not be a matrix.  This document
does not specify the format for this attribute.

3.5.4 Inbound Connectivity

For a given node, this attribute represents connectivity from adjacent nodes
to points within the given node.  This attribute is requested and used when
a router intends to route traffic to a point within the node but does not
have, and either cannot or does not want to obtain, a detailed map of the
node.  The inbound connectivity attribute identifies what connectivity
specifications are available between pairs of locators.  The first element
of the pair is the locator of an adjacent node; the second is a locator
owned by the given node.

3.5.5 Outbound Connectivity

For a given node, this attribute represents connectivity from points within
the given node to adjacent nodes.  This attribute identifies what
connectivity specifications are available between pairs of locators.  The
first element of the pair is a locator owned by the given node, the second
is the locator of an adjacent node.

The Transit, Inbound and Outbound connectivity attributes together wiht a
list of adjacencies form the "abstract map."

4 Physical Realization

A network is modeled as being composed of physical elements:  routers,
hosts, and communication links.  The links can be either
point-to-point---e.g., T1 links---or multi-point---e.g., ethernets, X.25

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networks, IP-only networks, etc.

The physical representation of a network can have associated with it one or
more Nimrod maps.  A Nimrod map is a function not only of the physical
network, but also of the configured clustering of elements (locator
assignment) and of the configured connectivity.

Nimrod has no pre-defined "lowest level":  for example, it is possible to
define and advertise a map that is physically realized inside a CPU. In this
map, a node could represent, for example, a process or a group of processes.
The user of this map need not necessarily know or care.  ("It is turtles
all the way down!", in [3] page 63.)

4.1 Contiguity

Locators sharing a prefix must be assigned to a contiguous region of a map.
That is, two nodes in a map that have been assigned locators sharing a
prefix should be connected to each other via nodes that themselves have been
assigned locators with that prefix.  The main consequence of this
requirement is that "you cannot take your locator with you."

As an example of this, see figure 1, consider two providers x.net and y.net
(these designations are *not* locators but DNS names) which appear in a
Nimrod map as two nodes with locators A and B. Assume that corporation z.com
(also a DNS name) was originally connected to x.net.  Locators corresponding
to elements in z.com are, in this example, A-prefixed.  Corporation z.com
decides to change providers---severing its physical connection to x.net.
The connectivity requirement described in this section implies that, after
the provider change has taken place, elements in z.com will have been, in
this example, assigned B-prefixed locators and that it is not possible for
them to receive data destined to A-prefixed locators through y.net.

                  A                 B
               +------+          +------+
               | x.net|          | y.net|
               +------+         /+------+
                               /
                        +-----+
                        |z.com|
                        +-----+

             Figure 1:  Connectivity after switching providers

The contiguity requirement simplifies routing information exchange:  if it

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were permitted for z.com to receive A-prefixed locators through y.net, it
would be necessary that a map that contains node B include information about
the existence of a group of A-prefixed locators inside node B. Similarly, a
map including node A would have to include information that the set of
A-prefixed locators asigned to z.com is not to be found within A. The more
situations like this happen, the more the hierarchical nature of Nimrod is
subverted to "flat routing."  The contiguity requirement can also be
expressed as "EIDs are stable; locators are ephemeral."

4.2 An Example

Figure 2 shows a physical network.  Hosts are drawn as squares, routers as
diamonds, and communication links as lines.  The network shown has the
following components:  five ethernets ---EA through EE; five routers---RA
through RE; and four hosts---HA through HD. Routers RA, RB, and RC
interconnect the backbone ethernets---EB, EC and ED. Router RD connects
backbone EC to a network consisting of ethernet EA and hosts HA and HB.
Router RE interconnects backbone ED to a network consisting of ethernet EE
and hosts HC and HD. The assigned locators appear in lower case beside the
corresponding physical entity.

Figure 3 shows a Nimrod map for that network.  The nodes of the map are
represented as squares.  Lines connecting nodes represent two adjacencies in
opposite directions.  Different regions of the network are represented at
different detail.  Backbone b1 is represented as a single node.  The region
of the network with locators prefixed by "a" is represented as a single
node.  The region of the network with locators prefixed by "c" is
represented in full detail.

4.3 Multiple Locator Assignment

Physical elements can form part of, or implement, more than one node.  In
this sense it can be said that they can be assigned more than one locator.
Consider figure 4, which shows a physical network.  This network is composed
of routers (RA, RB, RC, and RD), hosts (HA, HB, and HC), and communication
links.  Routers RA, RB, and RC are connected with point-to-point links.  The
two horizontal lines in the bottom of the figure represent ethernets.  The
figure also shows the locators assigned to hosts and routers.

In figure 4, RA and RB have each been assigned one locator (a:t:r1 and
b:t:r1, respectively).  RC has been assigned locators a:y:r1 and b:d:r1; one
of these two locators shares a prefix with RA's locator, the other shares a
prefix with RB's locator.  Hosts HA and HB have each been assigned three
locators.  Host HC has been assigned one locator.  Depending on what
communication paths have been set up between points, different Nimrod maps
result.  A possible Nimrod map for this network is given in figure 5.

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                                             a:h1 +--+      a:h2 +--+
                                                  |HA|           |HB|
                                                  |  |           |  |
                                                  +--+           +--+
                                           a:e1    |              |
                                               --------------------- EA
                                                       |
                                 /\                    /\
                                /RB\ b1:r1            /RD\ b2:r1
                               /\  /\                 \  /
                              /  \/  \                 \/
    EB         b1:t:e1       /        \                 |   EC
    ------------------------          -------------------------- b2:e1
               /                             \
              /                               \
             /\                                \
            /RA\ b1:r2                          \/\
            \  /                                /RC\  b2:t:r2
             \/                                 \  /
               \                                 \/
                \                               /   ED
                  ----------------------------------- b3:t:e1
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
                                   /\
                                  /RE\ b3:t:r1
                                  \  /
                      EE           \/
                      -----------------------------   c:e1
                         |                   |
                        +--+                +--+
                        |HC|   c:h1         |HD|    c:h2
                        |  |                |  |
                        +--+                +--+

                    Figure 2:  Example Physical Network

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                             +-----+               +-----+
   +----------+              |     |               |     |
   |          |--------------| b2  | --------------| a   |
   |          |              |     |               |     |
   |    b1    |              +-----+               +-----+
   |          |                 |
   |          |                 |
   |          |                 |
   +----------+                 |
               \                |
                \               |
                 \              |
                  \             |
                   \         +--------+
                    \        |        |
                     ------- | b3:t:e1|
                             |        |
                             +--------+
                                |
                                |
                                |
                                |
                             +-------+
                             |       |
                             |b3:t:r1|
                             |       |
                             +-------+
                                  |
                 +-----+       +-----+     +-----+
                 |     |       |     |     |     |
                 | c:h1|-------| c:e1|-----| c:h2|
                 |     |       |     |     |     |
                 +-----+       +-----+     +-----+

                           Figure 3:  Nimrod Map

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                      a:t:r1              b:t:r1
                         +--+            +--+
                         |RA|------------|RB|
                         +--+            +--+
                           \             /
                            \           /
                             \         /
                              \       /
                               \     /
                                \   /
                                 \ /
                                  \
                                 +--+
                                 |RC|  a:y:r1
                                 +--+  b:d:r1
                                  |
                     ---------------------------
                      |        |             |
             a:y:h1  +--+     +--+          +--+    a:y:h2
             b:d:h2  |HA|     |RD| c:r1     |HB|    b:d:h1
             c:h1    +--+     +--+          +--+    c:h2
                                |
                                |
                         --------------------
                                  |
                                 +--+
                                 |HC| c:h3
                                 +--+

                        Figure 4:  Multiple Locators

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           a                       b                   c
     +-------------+       +-------------+         +---------------+
     |             |       |             |         |               |
     |        a:t  |       |      b:t    |         |               |
     |   +--+      |       |  +--+       |         |               |
     |   |  |--------------|--|  |       |         |               |
     |   +--+      |       |  +--+       |         |               |
     |     |       |       |    |        |         |               |
     |   +--+      |       |  +--+       |         |               |
     |   +  +      |       |  +  +       |         |               |
     |   +--+ a:y  |       |  +--+ b:d   |         |               |
     |             |       |             |         |               |
     +-------------+       +-------------+         +---------------+

                           Figure 5:  Nimrod Map

Nodes and adjacencies represent the *configured* clustering and connectivity
of the network.  Notice that even though a:y and b:d are defined on the same
hardware, the map shows no connection between them:  this connection has not
been configured.  A packet given to node `a' addressed to a locator prefixed
with "b:d" would have to travel from node a to node b via the arc joining
them before being directed towards its destination.  Similarly, the map
shows no connection between the c node and the other two top level nodes.
If desired, these connections could be established, which would necessitate
setting up the exchange of routing information.  Figure 6 shows the map when
these connections have been established.

In the strict sense, Nimrod nodes do not overlap:  they are distinct
entities.  But, as we have seen in the previous example, a physical element
can be given more than one locator, and, in that sense, participate in
implementing more than one node.  That is, two different nodes might be
defined on the same hardware.  In this sense, Nimrod nodes can be said to

overlap.  But to notice this overlap one would have to know the
physical-to-map correspondence.  It is not possible to know when two nodes
share physical assets by looking only at a Nimrod map.

5 Forwarding

Nimrod supports four forwarding modes:

 1. Connectivity Specification Chain (CSC) mode:  In this mode, packets
    carry a list of connectivity specifications.  The packet is required to
    go through the nodes that own the connectivity specifications using the
    services specified.  The nodes associated with the listed connectivity

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   +--------+                                               +--------+
   |        |                                               |        |
   | a:t:r1 |-----------------------------------------------| b:t:r1 |
   |        |                                               |        |
   +--------+                                               +--------+
     |                                                             |
     |                                                             |
     |         /-----------------------------------------\         |
     |         |                                         |         |
     |         |                                         |         |
     |  +--------+       +--------+                    +--------+  |
     |  |        |       |        |                    |        |  |
     |  | a:y:h1 --------|  c:h1  |--------------------| b:d:h1 |  |
     |  |        |       |        |                    |        |  |
     |  +--------+       +--------+                    +--------+  |
     |    |    |           |    |                        |    |    |
   +--------+  |           |  +------+  +------+         |  +--------+
   |        |  |           |  |      |  |      |         |  |        |
   | a:y:r1 |  |           |  | c:r1 |--| c:h3 |         |  | b:d:r1 |
   |        |  |           |  |      |  |      |         |  |        |
   +--------+  |           |  +------+  +------+         |  +--------+
     |    |    |           |    |                        |    |    |
     |  +--------+       +--------+                    +--------+  |
     |  |        |       |        |                    |        |  |
     |  | a:y:h2 |--------  c:h2  |--------------------| b:d:h2 |  |
     |  |        |       |        |                    |        |  |
     |  +--------+       +--------+                    +--------+  |
     |         |                                         |         |
     |         |                                         |         |
     |         |                                         |         |
     |         \-----------------------------------------/         |
     \-------------------------------------------------------------/

                          Figure 6:  Nimrod Map II

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    specifications should define a continuous path in the map.  A more
    detailed description of the requirements of this mode is given in
    section 5.3.

 2. Connectivity Specifications Sequence (CSS) mode:  In this mode, packets
    carry a list of connectivity specifications.  The packet is supposed to
    go sequentially through the nodes that own each one of the listed
    connectivity specifications in the order they were specified.  The
    nodes need not be adjacent.  This mode can be seen as a generalization
    of the CSC mode.  Notice that CSCs are said to be a *chains* of
    locators, CSSs are *sequences* of locators.  This difference emphasizes
    the contiguity requirement in CSCs.  A detailed description of this
    mode is in section 5.6.

 3. Flow mode:  In this mode, the packet includes a path-id that indexes
    state that has been previously set up in routers along the path.
    Packet forwarding when flow state has been established is relatively
    simple:  follow the instructions in the routers' state.  Nimrod
    includes a mechanism for setting up this state.  A more detailed
    description of this mode can be found in section 5.4.

 4. Datagram mode:  in this mode, every packet carries source and
    destination locators.  This mode can be seen as a special case of the
    CSS mode.  Forwarding is done following procedures as indicated in
    section 5.5.

    BEGIN COMMENT

    The obvious parallels are between CSC mode and IPV4's strict
    source route and between CSS mode and IPV4's loose source route.

    END COMMENT

In all of these modes, the packet may also carry locators and EIDs for the
source and destinations.  In normal operation, forwarding does not take the
EIDs into account, only the receiver does.  EIDs may be carried for
demultiplexing at the receiver, and to detect certain error conditions.  For
example, if the EID is unknown at the receiver, the locator and EID of the
source included in the packet could be used to generate an error message to
return to the source (as usual, this error message itself should probably
not be allowed to be the cause of other error messages).  Forwarding can
also use the source locator and EID to respond to error conditions, for
example, to indicate to the source that the state for a path-id cannot be
found.

Packets can be visualized as moving between nodes in a map.  A packet
indicates, implicitly or explicitly, a destination locator.  In a packet
that uses the datagram, CSC, or CSS forwarding mode, the destination locator

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is explicitly indicated .  In a packet that uses the flow forwarding mode,
the destination locator is implied by the path-id and the distributed state
in the network (it might also be included explicitly).  Given a map, a
packet moves to the node in this map to which the associated destination
locator belongs.  If the destination node has a "detailed" internal map,
the destination locator must belong to one of the nodes in this internal map
(otherwise it is an error).  The packet goes to this node (and so on,
recursively).

5.1 Policy

CSC and CSS mode implement policy by specifying the connectivity
specifications associated with those nodes that the packet should traverse.
Strictly speaking, there is no policy information included in the packet.
That is, in principle, it is not possible to determine what criteria were
used to select the route by looking at the packet.  The packet only contains
the results of the route generation process.  Similarly, in a flow mode
packet, policy is implicit in the chosen route.

A datagram-mode packet can indicate a limited form of policy routing by the
choice of destination and source locators.  For this choice to exist, the
source or destination endpoints must have several locators associated with
them.  This type of policy routing is capable of, for example, choosing
providers.

5.2 Trust

A node that chooses not to divulge its internal map can work internally any
way its administrators decide, as long as the node satisfies its external
characterization as given in its Nimrod map advertisements.  Therefore, the
advertised Nimrod map should be consistent with a node's actual
capabilities.  For example, consider the network shown in figure 7 which
shows a physical network and the advertised Nimrod map.  The physical
network consists of hosts and a router connected together by an ethernet.
This node can be sub-divided into component nodes by assigning locators as
shown in the figure and advertising the map shown.  The map seems to imply
that it is possible to send packets to node a:x without these being
observable by node a:y; however, this is actually not enforceable.

In general, it is reasonable to ask how much trust should be put in the maps
obtained by a router.  Even when a node is "trustworthy," and the
information received from the node has been authenticated, there is always
the possibility of an honest mistake.

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                                 +--+
                                 |RA| a:r1
                                 +--+
                                  |
                                  |
                                  |
                                  |
                     -------------------------------
                         |                       |
                        +--+                    +--+
                        |Ha| a:x:h1             |Ha| a:y:h2
                        +--+                    +--+

                               Physical Network

                      a             |
                   +----------------|--------------------
                   |                |                   |
                   |              +----+                |
                   |              |a:r1|                |
                   |   a:x        +----+  a:y           |
                   |   +------+  /      \ +-------+     |
                   |   |      | /        \|       |     |
                   |   |      |           |       |     |
                   |   |      |           |       |     |
                   |   +------+           +-------+     |
                   |                                    |
                   + -----------------------------------+

                               Advertised Nimrod Map

                    Figure 7:  Example of Misleading Map

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5.3 Connectivity Specification (CSC) Mode

Routing for a CSC packet is specified by a list of connectivity
specifications carried in the packet.  These are the connectivity
specifications that make the specified path, in the order that they appear
along the path.  These connectivity specifications are attributes of nodes.
The route indicated by a CSC packet is specifed in terms of connectivity
specifications rather than physical entities:  a connectivity specification
in a CSC-mode packet would correspond to a type of service between two
points of the network without specifying the physical path.

Given two connectivity specifications that appear consecutively in the a
CSC-mode packet, there should exist an adjacency going from the node
corresponding to the first connectivity specification to the node
corresponding to the second connectivity specification.  The first
connectivity specification referenced in a CSC-mode packet should be an
outbound connectivity specification; similarly, the last connectivity
specification referenced in a CSC-mode packet should be an inbound
connectivity specification; the rest should be transit connectivity
specifications.

5.4 Flow Mode

A flow mode packet includes a path-id field.  This field identifies state
that has been established in intermediate routers.  The packet might also
contain locators and EIDs for the source and destination.  The setup packet
also includes resource requirements.  Nimrod includes protocols to set up
and modify flow-related state in intermediate routers.  These protocols not
only identify the requested route, but also describe the resources requested
by the flow---e.g., bandwidth, delay, etc.  The result of a set-up attempt
might be either confirmation of the set-up or notification of its failure.
The source-specified routes in flow mode setup are specified in terms of
CSSs.

5.5 Datagram Mode

A realistic routing architecture must include an optimization for datagram
traffic, by which we mean user transactions which consist of single packets,
such as a lookup in a remote translation database.  Either of the two
previous modes contains unacceptable overhead if much of the network traffic
consists of such datagram transactions.  A mechanism is needed which is
approximately as efficient as the existing IPv4 "hop-by-hop" mechanism.
Nimrod has such a mechanism.

The scheme can be characterized by the way it divides the state in a
datagram network between routers and the actual packets.  In IPv4, most

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packets currently contain only a small amount of state associated with the
forwarding process ("forwarding state")---the hop count.  Nimrod proposes
that enlarging the amount of forwarding state in packets can produce a
system with useful properties.  It was partially inspired by the efficient
source routing mechanism in SIP [5], and the locator pointer mechanism in
PIP [6]).

Nimrod datagram mode uses pre-set flow-mode state to support a strictly
non-looping path, but without a source-route.

5.6 Connectivity Specification Sequence Mode

The connectivity specification sequence mode specifies a route by a list of
connectivity specifications.  There are no contiguity restrictions on
consecutive connectivity specifications.

    BEGIN COMMENT

    The CSS and CSC modes can be seen as combination of the datagram
    and flow modes.  Therefore, in a sense, the basic forwarding modes
    of Nimrod are just these last two.

    END COMMENT

6 Security Considerations

Security Considerations are not addressed in this document.

7 Authors' Addresses

Isidro Castineyra
BBN Systems and Technologies
10 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone:  (617) 873-6233
Email:  isidro@bbn.com

Noel Chiappa
Email:  gnc@ginger.lcs.mit.edu

Martha Steenstrup
BBN Systems and Technologies
10 Moulton Street

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Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone:  (617) 873-3192
Email:  msteenst@bbn.com

References

[1] M. Steenstrup, "Inter-Domain Policy Routing Protocol Specification:
    version 1," RFC 1479, June 1993.

[2] M. Steenstrup and R. Ramanathan, "Nimrod Functionality and Protocols
    Specification," Internet Draft, February 1996.

[3] R. Wright, Three Scientists and their Gods Looking for Meaning in an
    Age of Information. New York:  Times Book, first ed., 1988.

[4] S. Deering, "SIP: Simple Internet Protocol," IEEE Network, vol. 7,
    May 1993.

[5] P. Francis, "A Near-Term Architecture for Deploying Pip," IEEE
    Network, vol. 7, May 1993.

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