Dynamic Hostname Exchange Mechanism for IS-IS
RFC 5301
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(October 2008; Errata)
Updated by RFC 6232
Obsoletes RFC 2763
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|
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Authors | Naiming Shen , Danny McPherson | ||
Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 5301 (Proposed Standard) | |
Action Holders |
(None)
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Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Ross Callon | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group D. McPherson Request for Comments: 5301 Arbor Networks Obsoletes: 2763 N. Shen Category: Standards Track Cisco Systems October 2008 Dynamic Hostname Exchange Mechanism for IS-IS Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract RFC 2763 defined a simple and dynamic mechanism for routers running IS-IS to learn about symbolic hostnames. RFC 2763 defined a new TLV that allows the IS-IS routers to flood their name-to-systemID mapping information across the IS-IS network. This document obsoletes RFC 2763. This document moves the capability provided by RFC 2763 to the Standards Track. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ....................................................2 1.1. Specification of Requirements ..............................2 2. Possible Solutions ..............................................2 3. Dynamic Hostname TLV ............................................3 4. Implementation ..................................................4 5. Security Considerations .........................................4 6. Acknowledgments .................................................4 7. IANA Considerations .............................................4 8. Informative References ..........................................4 McPherson & Shen Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 5301 Dynamic Hostname October 2008 1. Introduction IS-IS uses a variable 1-8 byte system ID (normally 6 bytes) to represent a node in the network. For management and operation reasons, network operators need to check the status of IS-IS adjacencies, entries in the routing table, and the content of the IS-IS link state database. It is obvious that, when looking at diagnostics information, hexadecimal representations of system IDs and Link State Protocol Data Unit (LSP) identifiers are less clear than symbolic names. One way to overcome this problem is to define a name-to-systemID mapping on a router. This mapping can be used bidirectionally, e.g., to find symbolic names for system IDs and to find system IDs for symbolic names. One way to build this table of mappings is by static definitions. Among network administrators who use IS-IS as their IGP, it is current practice to define such static mappings. Thus, every router has to maintain a statically-configured table with mappings between router names and system IDs. These tables need to contain the names and system IDs of all routers in the network, and must be modified each time an addition, deletion, or change occurs. There are several ways one could build such a table. One is via static configurations. Another scheme that could be implemented is via DNS lookups. In this document, we provide a third solution, which in wide-scale implementation and deployment has proven to be easier and more manageable than static mapping or DNS schemes. 1.1. Specification of Requirements The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 2. Possible Solutions The obvious drawback of static configuration of mappings is the issue of scalability and maintainability. The network operators have to maintain the name tables. They have to maintain an entry in the table for every router in the network, on every router in the network. The effort to create and maintain these static tables grows with the total number of routers on the network. Changing the name or system ID of one router, or adding a new router will affect the configurations of all the other routers on the network. This will make it very likely that those static tables are outdated. McPherson & Shen Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 5301 Dynamic Hostname October 2008 Having one table that can be updated in a centralized place would be helpful. One could imagine using the DNS system for this. A drawback is that during the time of network problems, the response time of DNS services might not be satisfactory or the DNS services might not even be available. Another possible drawback might be the added complexity of DNS. Also, some DNS implementations might notShow full document text