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Egress TLV for Nil FEC in Label Switched Path Ping and Traceroute Mechanisms
draft-rathi-mpls-egress-tlv-for-nil-fec-05

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Authors Deepti N. Rathi , Kapil Arora , Shraddha Hegde , Zafar Ali , Nagendra Kumar Nainar
Last updated 2021-07-04
Replaced by draft-ietf-mpls-egress-tlv-for-nil-fec, draft-ietf-mpls-egress-tlv-for-nil-fec
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draft-rathi-mpls-egress-tlv-for-nil-fec-05
Routing area                                               D. Rathi, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                  K. Arora
Intended status: Standards Track                                S. Hegde
Expires: January 5, 2022                           Juniper Networks Inc.
                                                                  Z. Ali
                                                               N. Nainar
                                                     Cisco Systems, Inc.
                                                            July 4, 2021

   Egress TLV for Nil FEC in Label Switched Path Ping and Traceroute
                               Mechanisms
               draft-rathi-mpls-egress-tlv-for-nil-fec-05

Abstract

   MPLS ping and traceroute mechanism as described in RFC 8029 and
   related extensions for SR as defined in RFC 8287 is very useful to
   precisely validate the control plane and data plane synchronization.
   There is a possibility that all intermediate or transit nodes may not
   have been upgraded to support these validation procedures.  A simple
   mpls ping and traceroute mechanism comprises of ability to traverse
   any path without having to validate the control plane state.  RFC
   8029 supports this mechanism with Nil FEC.  The procedures described
   in RFC 8029 are mostly applicable when the Nil FEC is used as
   intermediate FEC in the label stack.  When all labels in label stack
   are represented using single Nil FEC, it poses some challenges.

   This document introduces new TLV as additional extension to exisiting
   Nil FEC and describes mpls ping and traceroute procedures using Nil
   FEC with this additional extensions to overcome these challenges.

Requirements Language

   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.

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

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   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
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 5, 2022.

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.  Problem with Nil FEC  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Egress TLV  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Sending Egress TLV in MPLS Echo Request . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  Receiving Egress TLV in MPLS Echo Request . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Backward Compatibility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     7.1.  New TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   Segment routing supports the creation of explicit paths using
   adjacency- sids, node-sids, and anycast-sids.  In certain usecases,
   the TE paths are built using mechanisms described in

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   [I.D-ietf-spring-segment-routing-policy] by stacking the labels that
   represent the nodes and links in the explicit path.  When the SR-TE
   paths are built by the controller, the head-end routers may not have
   the complete database of the network and may not be aware of the FEC
   associated with labels that are used in the label stack.  A very
   useful Operations And Maintenance (OAM) requirement is to be able to
   ping and trace these paths.  A simple mpls ping and traceroute
   mechanism comprises of ability to traverse the SR-TE path without
   having to validate the control plane state.

   MPLS ping and traceroute mechanism as described in [RFC8029] and
   related extensions for SR as defined in [RFC8287] is very useful to
   precisely validate the control plane and data plane synchronization.
   It also provides ability to traverse multiple ECMP paths and validate
   each of the ECMP paths.  Use of Target FEC requires all nodes in the
   network to have implemented the validation procedures.  All
   intermediate nodes may not have been upgraded to support validation
   procedures.  In such cases, it is useful to have ability to traverse
   the paths using ping and traceroute without having to obtain the
   Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC) for each label.[RFC8029] supports
   this mechanism with FECs like Nil FEC and Generic FEC.

   Generic IPv4 and IPv6 FEC are used when the protocol that is
   advertising the label is unknown.  The information that is carried in
   Generic FEC is the IPv4 or IPv6 prefix and prefix length.  Thus
   Generic FEC types perform an additional control plane validation.
   But the details of generic FEC and validation procedures are not very
   detailed in the [RFC8029].  The use-case mostly specifies inter-AS
   VPNs as the motivation.  Certain aspects of Segment Routing such as
   anycast SIDs requires clear guidelines on how the validation
   procedure should work.  Also Generic FEC may not be widely supported
   and if transit routers are not upgraded to support validation of
   generic FEC, traceroute may fail.  on other hand, Nil FEC consists of
   the label and there is no other associated FEC information.  NIL FEC
   is used to traverse the path without validation for cases where the
   FEC is not defined or routers are not upgraded to support the FECs.
   Thus it can be used to check any combination of segments on any data
   path.  The procedures described in [RFC8029] are mostly applicable
   when the Nil FEC is used where the Nil FEC is an intermediate FEC in
   the label stack.  When all labels in label-stack are represented
   using single Nil FEC, it poses some challenges.

   Section 2 discusses the problems associated with using single Nil FEC
   in a MPLS ping/traceroute procedure and Section 3 and Section 4
   discusses simple extensions needed to solve the problem.

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2.  Problem with Nil FEC

   The purpose of Nil FEC as described in [RFC8029] is to ensure hiding
   of transit tunnel information and in some cases to avoid false
   negatives when the FEC information is unknown.

   This draft uses single NIL FEC to represent complete label stack in
   MPLS ping/traceroute packet irrespective of number of segments in the
   label-stack.  When router in the label-stack path receives MPLS ping/
   traceroute packets, there is no definite way to decide on whether its
   egress or transit since Nil FEC does not carry any information.  So
   there is high possibility that the packet may be mis-forwarded to
   incorrect destination but the ping/traceroute might still return
   success.

   To avoid this problem, there is a need to add additional information
   in the MPLS ping and traceroute packet along with Nil FEC to do
   minimal validation on egress/destination router and sends proper
   information to ingress router on success and failure.  This
   additional information should help to report transit router
   information to ingress/initiator router that can be used by offline
   application to validate the traceroute path.

   Thus addition of egress information in ping/traceroute packet will
   help in validating Nil-FEC on each receiving router on label-stack
   path to ensure the correct destination.  It can be used to check any
   combination of segments on any path without upgrading transit nodes.

3.  Egress TLV

   The Egress object is a TLV that MAY be included in an MPLS Echo
   Request message.  Its an optional TLV and should appear before FEC-
   stack TLV in the MPLS Echo Request packet.  In case multiple Nil FEC
   is present in Target FEC Stack TLV, Egress TLV should be added
   corresponding to the ultimate egress of the label-stack.  It can be
   use for any kind of path with Egress TLV added corresponding to the
   end-point of the path.  Explicit Path can be created using node-sid,
   adj-sid, binding-sid etc, EGRESS TLV prefix will be derived from path
   egress/destination and not based on labels used in the path to reach
   the destination.  The format is as specified below:

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       0                   1                   2                   3
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |      Type = TBD (EGRESS TLV)  |          Length               |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |                      Prefix (4 or 16 octets)                  |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   Type : TBD

   Length : variable based on IPV4/IPV6 prefix.  Length excludes the
   length of Type and length field.  Length will be 4 octets for IPv4
   and 16 octets for IPv6.

   Prefix : This field carries the valid IPv4 prefix of length 4 octets
   or valid IPv6 Prefix of length 16 octets.  It can be obtained from
   egress of Nil FEC corresponding to last label in the label-stack or
   SR-TE policy endpoint field [I.D-ietf-idr-segment-routing-te-policy].

4.  Procedure

   This section describes aspects of LSP Ping and Traceroute operations
   that require further considerations beyond [RFC8029].

4.1.  Sending Egress TLV in MPLS Echo Request

   As stated earlier, when the sender node builds a Echo Request with
   target FEC Stack TLV, Egress TLV SHOULD appear before Target FEC-
   stack TLV in MPLS Echo Request packet.

   Ping

   When the sender node builds a Echo Request with target FEC Stack TLV
   that contains a single NiL FEC corresponding to the last segment of
   the SR-TE path, sender node MUST add a Egress TLV with prefix
   obtained from SR-TE policy endpoint field
   [I.D-ietf-idr-segment-routing-te-policy] to indicate the egress for
   this Nil FEC in the Echo Request packet.  In case endpoint is not
   specified or is equal to 0, sender MUST use the prefix corresponding
   to last segment of the SR-TE path as prefix for Egress TLV.

   Traceroute

   When the sender node builds a Echo Request with target FEC Stack TLV
   that contains a single NiL FEC corresponding to complete segment-list
   of the SR-TE path, sender node MUST add a Egress TLV with prefix
   obtained from SR-TE policy endpoint field

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   [I.D-ietf-idr-segment-routing-te-policy] to indicate the egress for
   this Nil FEC in the Echo Request packet.  Some implementations may
   send multiple NilFEC but it is not really required.  In case headend
   sends multiple Nil FECs the last one should have the egress TLV.
   When the label stack becomes zero, all Nil FEC TLVs are removed and
   egress TLV MUST be validated from last Nil FEC In case endpoint is
   not specified or is equal to 0 ( as in case of color-only SR-TE
   policy), sender MUST use the prefix corresponding to the last segment
   endpoint of the SR-TE path i.e. ultimate egress as prefix for Egress
   TLV.

                     ----R3----
                    /  (1003)  \
         (1001)    /            \(1005)     (1007)
           R1----R2(1002)        R5----R6----R7(prefix X)
                   \            /     (1006)
                    \   (1004) /
                     ----R4----

   Consider the SR-TE policy configured with label-stack as 1002, 1004 ,
   1007 and end point/destination as prefix X on ingress router R1 to
   reach egress router R7.  Segment 1007 belongs to R7 that has prefix X
   locally configured on it.

   In Ping Echo Request, with target FEC Stack TLV that contains a
   single NiL FEC corresponding to 1007, should add Egress TLV for
   endpoint/destination prefix X with type as EGRESS-TLV, length depends
   on if X is IPv4 or IPv6 address and prefix as X.

   In Traceroute Echo Request, with target FEC Stack TLV that contains a
   single NiL FEC corresponding to complete label-stack (1002, 1004,
   1007) or multiple Nil-FEC corresponding to each label in label-stack,
   should add single Egress TLV for endpoint/destination prefix X with
   type as EGRESS-TLV, length depends on if X is IPv4 or IPv6 address
   and prefix as X.  In case X is not present or is set to 0 ( as in
   case of color-only SR-TE policy), sender should use endpoint of
   segment 1007 as prefix for Egress TLV.

4.2.  Receiving Egress TLV in MPLS Echo Request

   No change in the processing for Nil FEC as defined in [RFC8029] in
   Target FEC stack TLV Node that receives an MPLS echo request.

   Additional processing done for Egress TLV on receiver node as
   follows:

   1.  If the Label-stack-depth is greater than 0 and the Target FEC
   Stack sub-TLV at FEC-stack-depth is Nil FEC, set Best-return-code to

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   8 ("Label switched at stack-depth") and Best-return-subcode to Label-
   stack-depth to report transit switching in MPLS Echo Reply message.

   2.  If the Label-stack-depth is 0 and the Target FEC Stack sub-TLV at
   FEC-stack-depth is Nil FEC then do the look up for an exact match of
   the EGRESS TLV prefix to any of locally configured interfaces or
   loopback addresses.

   2a.  If EGRESS TLV prefix look up succeeds, set Best-return-code to 3
   ("Replying router is an egress for the FEC at stack-depth") and Best-
   return-subcode to 1 to report egress ok in MPLS Echo Reply message.

   2b.  If EGRESS TLV prefix look up fails, set the Best-return-code to
   10, "Mapping for this FEC is not the given label at stack-depth" and
   Best-return-subcode to 1.

5.  Backward Compatibility

   The extension proposed in this document is backward compatible with
   procedures described in [RFC8029].  Router that does not support
   EGRESS-TLV, will ignore it and use current NIL-FEC procedures
   described in [RFC8029].

   When the egress node in the path does not support the extensions
   proposed in this draft egress validation will not be done and Best-
   return-code as 3 ("Replying router is an egress for the FEC at stack-
   depth") and Best-return- subcode as 1 to report egress ok will be set
   in MPLS Echo Reply message.

   When the transit node in the path does not support the extensions
   proposed in this draft Best-return-code as 8 ("Label switched at
   stack-depth") and Best-return-subcode as Label-stack-depth to report
   transit switching will be set in MPLS Echo Reply message.

6.  Security Considerations

   TBD

7.  IANA Considerations

7.1.  New TLV

   IANA need to assign new value for EGRESS TLV in the "Multi-Protocol
   Label Switching (MPLS) Label Switched Paths (LSPs) Ping Parameters"
   TLV registry [IANA].

   EGRESS TLV : (TBD)

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8.  Acknowledgements

   TBD.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [I.D-ietf-idr-segment-routing-te-policy]
              Filsfils, C., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Talaulikar , K.,
              Mattes, P., Rosen, E., Jain, D., and S. Lin, "Advertising
              Segment Routing Policies in BGP",  draft-ietf-idr-segment-
              routing-te-policy-09,  work in progress, may 2020,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-idr-
              segment-routing-te-policy-09>.

   [I.D-ietf-spring-segment-routing-policy]
              Filsfils, C., Talaulikar , K., Bogdanov, A., Mattes, P.,
              and D. Voyer, "Segment Routing Policy Architecture",
              draft-ietf-spring-segment-routing-policy-08,  work in
              progress, July 2020,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-spring-
              segment-routing-policy-08>.

   [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>.

   [RFC8029]  Kompella, K., Swallow, G., Pignataro, C., Ed., Kumar, N.,
              Aldrin, S., and M. Chen, "Detecting Multiprotocol Label
              Switched (MPLS) Data-Plane Failures", RFC 8029,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8029, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8029>.

   [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>.

   [RFC8287]  Kumar, N., Ed., Pignataro, C., Ed., Swallow, G., Akiya,
              N., Kini, S., and M. Chen, "Label Switched Path (LSP)
              Ping/Traceroute for Segment Routing (SR) IGP-Prefix and
              IGP-Adjacency Segment Identifiers (SIDs) with MPLS Data
              Planes", RFC 8287, DOI 10.17487/RFC8287, December 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8287>.

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9.2.  Informative References

   [IANA]     IANA, "Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label Switched
              Paths (LSPs) Ping Parameters",
              <http://www.iana.org/assignments/mpls-lsp-ping-
              parameters>.

Authors' Addresses

   Deepti N. Rathi (editor)
   Juniper Networks Inc.
   Exora Business Park
   Bangalore, KA  560103
   India

   Email: deeptir@juniper.net

   Kapil Arora
   Juniper Networks Inc.
   Exora Business Park
   Bangalore, KA  560103
   India

   Email: kapilaro@juniper.net

   Shraddha Hegde
   Juniper Networks Inc.
   Exora Business Park
   Bangalore, KA  560103
   India

   Email: shraddha@juniper.net

   Zafar Ali
   Cisco Systems, Inc.

   Email: zali@cisco.com

   Nagendra Kumar Nainar
   Cisco Systems, Inc.

   Email: naikumar@cisco.com

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