IP-Only LAN Service (IPLS)
RFC 7436

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                           H. Shah
Request for Comments: 7436                                   Cinea Corp.
Category: Historic                                              E. Rosen
ISSN: 2070-1721                                         Juniper Networks
                                                          F. Le Faucheur
                                                                G. Heron
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                            January 2015

                       IP-Only LAN Service (IPLS)

Abstract

   A Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is used to interconnect systems
   across a wide-area or metropolitan-area network, making it appear
   that they are on a private LAN.  The systems that are interconnected
   may themselves be LAN switches.  If, however, they are IP hosts or IP
   routers, certain simplifications to the operation of the VPLS are
   possible.  We call this simplified type of VPLS an "IP-only LAN
   Service" (IPLS).  In an IPLS, as in a VPLS, LAN interfaces are run in
   promiscuous mode, and frames are forwarded based on their destination
   Media Access Control (MAC) addresses.  However, the maintenance of
   the MAC forwarding tables is done via signaling, rather than via the
   MAC address learning procedures specified in the IEEE's "Media Access
   Control (MAC) Bridges".  This document specifies the protocol
   extensions and procedures for support of the IPLS service.

   The original intent was to provide an alternate solution to VPLS for
   those Provider Edge (PE) routers that were not capable of learning
   MAC addresses through data plane.  This became a non-issue with newer
   hardware.  The concepts put forth by this document are still valuable
   and are adopted in one form or other by newer work such as Ethernet
   VPN in L2VPN working group and possible data center applications.  At
   this point, no further action is planned to update this document and
   it is published simply as a historic record of the ideas.

Shah, et al.                    Historic                        [Page 1]
RFC 7436                          IPLS                      January 2015

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for the historical record.

   This document defines a Historic Document for the Internet community.
   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7436.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   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. Overview ........................................................4
      1.1. Terminology ................................................7
   2. Topology ........................................................9
   3. Configuration ..................................................10
   4. Discovery ......................................................10
      4.1. CE Discovery ..............................................10
           4.1.1. IPv4-Based CE Discovery ............................11
           4.1.2. IPv6-Based CE Discovery (RFC 4861) .................11
   5. PW Creation ....................................................11
      5.1. Receive Unicast Multipoint-to-Point PW ....................11
      5.2. Receive Multicast Multipoint-to-Point PW ..................12
      5.3. Send Multicast Replication Tree ...........................13

Shah, et al.                    Historic                        [Page 2]
RFC 7436                          IPLS                      January 2015

   6. Signaling ......................................................13
      6.1. IPLS PW Signaling .........................................13
      6.2. IPv6 Capability Advertisement .............................17