Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-trill-aa-multi-attach
draft-ietf-trill-aa-multi-attach
INTERNET-DRAFT Mingui Zhang
Intended Status: Proposed Standard Huawei
Radia Perlman
EMC
Hongjun Zhai
JIT
Muhammad Durrani
Cisco Systems
Sujay Gupta
IP Infusion
Expires: March 28, 2016 September 25, 2015
TRILL Active-Active Edge Using Multiple MAC Attachments
draft-ietf-trill-aa-multi-attach-06.txt
Abstract
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) active-active
service provides end stations with flow level load balance and
resilience against link failures at the edge of TRILL campuses as
described in RFC 7379.
This draft specifies a method by which member RBridges in an active-
active edge RBridge group use their own nicknames as ingress RBridge
nicknames to encapsulate frames from attached end systems. Thus,
remote edge RBridges (who are not in the group) will see one host MAC
address being associated with the multiple RBridges in the group.
Such remote edge RBridges are required to maintain all those
associations (i.e., MAC attachments) and to not flip-flop among them
which would be the behavior prior to this specification. Design goals
of this specification are discussed in the document.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
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http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html
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Copyright and License 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
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Acronyms and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Acronyms and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Incremental Deployable Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. Details of Option B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1.1. Advertising Data Labels for Active-Active Edge . . . . 7
4.1.2. Discovery of Active-Active Edge Members . . . . . . . . 7
4.1.3. Advertising Learned MAC Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2. Extended RBridge Capability Flags APPsub-TLV . . . . . . . 10
5. Meeting the Design Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1. No MAC Flip-Flopping (Normal Unicast Egress) . . . . . . . 11
5.2. Regular Unicast/Multicast Ingress . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.3. Correct Multicast Egress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.3.1. No Duplication (Single Exit Point) . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.3.2. No Echo (Split Horizon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.4. No Black-hole or Triangular Forwarding . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.5. Load Balance Towards the AAE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.6. Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. E-L1FS Backwards Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.1. TRILL APPsub-TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
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8.2. Extended RBridge Capabilities Registry . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.3. Active-Active Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Appendix A. Scenarios for Split Horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1. Introduction
As discussed in [RFC7379], in a TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of
Lots of Links) Active-Active Edge (AAE) topology, a Local Active-
Active Link Protocol (LAALP), for example, a Multi-Chassis Link
Aggregation Group (MC-LAG), is used to connect multiple RBridges to
multi-port Customer Equipment (CE), such as a switch, vSwitch or a
multi-port end station. A set of endnodes are attached in the case of
switch or vSwitch. It is required that data traffic within a specific
VLAN from this endnode set (including the multi-port end station
case) can be ingressed and egressed by any of these RBridges
simultaneously. End systems in the set can spread their traffic among
these edge RBridges at the flow level. When a link fails, end systems
keep using the remaining links in the LAALP without waiting for the
convergence of TRILL, which provides resilience to link failures.
Since a frame from each endnode can be ingressed by any RBridge in
the local AAE group, a remote edge RBridge may observe multiple
attachment points (i.e., egress RBridges) for this endnode. This
issue is known as the "MAC flip-flopping". See [RFC7379] for a
discussion of the MAC flip-flopping issue.
In this document, AAE member RBridges use their own nicknames to
ingress frames into the TRILL campus. Remote edge RBridges are
required to keep multiple points of attachment per MAC address and
Data Label (VLAN or Fine Grained Label [RFC7172]) attached to the
AAE. This addresses the MAC flip-flopping issue. The use of the
solution, as specified in this document, in an AAE group does not
prohibit the use of other solutions in other AAE groups in the same
TRILL campus. For example, the specification in this draft and the
specification in [PN] could be simultaneously deployed for different
AAE groups in the same campus.
The main body of this document is organized as follows. Section 2
lists acronyms and terminologies. Section 3 gives the overview model.
Section 4 provides options for incremental deployment. Section 5
describes how this approach meets the design goals. The Sections
after Section 5 cover security, IANA, and some backwards
compatibility considerations.
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2. Acronyms and Terminology
2.1. Acronyms and Terms
AAE: Active-Active Edge
Campus: a TRILL network consisting of TRILL switches, links, and
possibly bridges bounded by end stations and IP routers. For TRILL,
there is no "academic" implication in the name "campus".
CE: Customer Equipment (end station or bridge). The device can be
either physical or virtual equipment.
Data Label: VLAN or FGL
DRNI: Distributed Resilient Network Interconnect. A link aggregation
specified in [802.1AX] that can provide an LAALP between from 1 to 3
CEs and 2 or 3 RBridges.
Edge RBridge: An RBridge providing end station service on one or more
of its ports.
E-L1FS: Extended Level 1 Flooding Scope
ESADI: End Station Address Distribution Information [RFC7357]
FGL: Fine Grained Label [RFC7172]
FS-LSP: Flooding Scoped Link State PDU
IS: Intermediate System [ISIS]
IS-IS: Intermediate System to Intermediate System [ISIS]
LAALP: As in [RFC7379], Local Active-Active Link Protocol. Any
protocol similar to MC-LAG (or DRNI) that runs in a distributed
fashions on a CE, the links from that CE to a set of edge group
RBridges, and on those RBridges.
LSP: Link State PDU
MC-LAG: Multi-Chassis LAG. Proprietary extensions of Link Aggregation
[802.1AX] that can provide an LAALP between one CE and 2 or more
RBridges.
PDU: Protocol Data Unit
RBridge: A device implementing the TRILL protocol.
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TRILL: TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links or Tunneled
Routing in the Link Layer [RFC6325] [RFC7177].
TRILL switch: An alternative name for an RBridge.
vSwitch: A virtual switch such as a hypervisor that also simulates a
bridge.
2.2. Terminology
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].
Familiarity with [RFC6325], [RFC6439] and [RFC7177] is assumed in
this document.
3. Overview
+-----+
| RB4 |
+----------+-----+----------+
| |
| |
| Rest of campus |
| |
| |
+-+-----+--+-----+--+-----+-+
| RB1 | | RB2 | | RB3 |
+-----\ +-----+ /-----+
\ | /
\ | /
|||LAALP1
|||
+---+
| B |
+---+
H1 H2 H3 H4: VLAN 10
Figure 3.1: An example topology for TRILL Active-Active Edge
Figure 3.1 shows an example network for TRILL Active-Active Edge (See
also Figure 1 in [RFC7379]). In this figure, endnodes (H1, H2, H3 and
H4) are attached to a bridge B that communicates with multiple
RBridges (RB1, RB2 and RB3) via the LAALP. Suppose RB4 is a 'remote'
RBridge not in the AAE group in the TRILL campus. This connection
model is also applicable to the virtualized environment where the
physical bridge can be replaced with a vSwitch while those bare metal
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hosts are replaced with virtual machines (VM).
For a frame received from its attached endnode sets, a member RBridge
of the AAE group conforming to this document always encapsulates that
frame using its own nickname as the ingress nickname no matter
whether it's unicast or multicast.
With the options specified as follows, even though the remote RBridge
RB4 will see multiple attachments for each MAC from one of the end-
nodes, the "MAC flip-flopping" will not cause any problem.
4. Incremental Deployable Options
Two options are specified. Option A requires new hardware support.
Option B can be incrementally implemented throughout a TRILL campus
with common existing TRILL fast path hardware. Further details on
Option B are given in Section 4.1.
-- Option A
A new capability announcement would appear in LSPs: "I can cope
with data plane learning of multiple attachments for an endnode".
This mode of operation is generally not supported by existing
TRILL fast path hardware. Only if all edge RBridges, to which the
group has data connectivity, and that are interested in any of the
Data Labels in which the AAE is interested, announce this
capability, can the AAE group safely use this approach. If all
such RBridges do not announce this "Option A" capability, then a
fallback would be needed such as reverting from active-active to
active-standby operation or isolating the RBridges that would need
to support this capability and do not support it. Further details
for Options A are beyond the scope of this document except that in
Section 4.2 a bit is reserved to indicate support for Option A
because a remote RBridge supporting Option A is compatible with an
AAE group using Option B.
-- Option B
As pointed out in Section 4.2.6 of [RFC6325] and Section 5.3 of
[RFC7357], one MAC address may be persistently claimed to be
attached to multiple RBridges within the same Data Label in the
TRILL ESADI-LSPs. For Option B, AAE member RBridges make use of
the TRILL ESADI (End Station Address Distribution Information)
protocol to distribute multiple attachments of a MAC address.
Remote RBridges SHOULD disable the data plane MAC learning for
such multi-attached MAC addresses from TRILL Data packet
decapsulation unless they also support Option A. The ability to
configure an RBridge to disable data plane learning is provided by
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the base TRILL protocol [RFC6325].
4.1. Details of Option B
With Option B, the receiving edge RBridges MUST avoid flip-flop
errors for MAC addresses learned from the TRILL Data packet
decapsulation for the originating RBridge within these Data Labels.
It is RECOMMENDED that the receiving edge RBridge disable the data
plane MAC learning from TRILL Data packet decapsulation within those
advertised Data Labels for the originating RBridge unless the
receiving RBridge also supports Option A. Alternative implementations
that produce the same expected behavior, i.e., the receiving edge
RBridge does not flip-flop among multiple MAC attachments, are
acceptable. For example, the confidence level mechanism as specified
in [RFC6325] can be used. Let the receiving edge RBridge give a
prevailing confidence value (e.g., 0x21) to the first MAC attachment
learned from the data plane over others from the TRILL Data packet
decapsulation. The receiving edge RBridge will stick to this MAC
attachment until it is overridden by one learned from the ESADI
protocol [RFC7357]. The MAC attachment learned from ESADI is set to
have higher confidence value (e.g., 0x80) to override any alternative
learning from the decapsulation of received TRILL Data packets
[RFC6325].
4.1.1. Advertising Data Labels for Active-Active Edge
RBridge in an AAE group MUST participate in ESADI in Data Labels
enabled for its attached LAALPs. This document further registers two
data flags, which are used to advertise that the originating RBridge
supports and participates in an Active-Active Edge. These two flags
are allocated from the Interested VLANs Flag Bits that appear in the
Interested VLANs and Spanning Tree Roots Sub-TLV and the Interested
Labels Flag Bits that appear in the Interested Labels and Spanning
Tree Roots Sub-TLV [RFC7176] (see Section 8.3). When these flags are
set to 1, the originating RBridge is advertising Data Labels for
LAALPs rather than plain LAN links.
4.1.2. Discovery of Active-Active Edge Members
Remote edge RBridges need to discover RBridges in an AAE. This is
achieved by listening to the following "AA LAALP Group RBridges"
TRILL APPsub-TLV included in the TRILL GENINFO TLV in FS-LSPs
[RFC7180bis].
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+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type = AA-LAALP-GROUP-RBRIDGES| (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Length | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Sender Nickname | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| LAALP ID Size | (1 byte)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+...+-+-+
| LAALP ID (k bytes) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+...+-+-+
o Type: AA LAALP Group RBridges (TRILL APPsub-TLV type tbd1)
o Length: 3+k
o Sender Nickname: The nickname the originating RBridge will use as
the ingress nickname. This field is useful because the originating
RBridge might own multiple nicknames.
o LAALP ID Size: The length k of the LAALP ID in bytes.
o LAALP ID: The ID of the LAALP which is k bytes long. If the LAALP
is an MC-LAG or DRNI, it is the 8-byte ID specified in Clause
6.3.2 in [802.1AX].
This APPsub-TLV is expected to rarely change as it only does so in
cases of the creation or elimination of an AAE group or of link
failure or restoration to the CE in such a group.
4.1.3. Advertising Learned MAC Addresses
Whenever MAC addresses from the LAALP of this AAE are learned through
ingress or configuration, the originating RBridge MUST advertise
these MAC addresses using the MAC-Reachability TLV [RFC6165] via the
ESADI protocol [RFC7357]. The MAC-Reachability TLVs are composed in a
way that each TLV only contains MAC addresses of end-nodes attached
to a single LAALP. Each such TLV is enclosed in a TRILL APPsub-TLV
defined as follows.
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+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type = AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Length | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| LAALP ID Size | (1 byte)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+...+-+-+
| LAALP ID (k bytes) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+...+-+-+
| MAC-Reachability TLV (7 + 6*n bytes) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+...+-+-+
o Type: AA LAALP Group MAC (TRILL APPsub-TLV type tbd2)
o Length: The MAC-Reachability TLV [RFC6165] is contained in the
value field as a sub-TLV. The total number of bytes contained in
the value field is given by k+8+6*n.
o LAALP ID Size: The length k of the LAALP ID in bytes.
o LAALP ID: The ID of the LAALP that is k bytes long. Here, it also
serves as the identifier of the AAE. If the LAALP is an MC-LAG (or
DRNI), it is the 8 byte ID as specified in Clause 6.3.2 in
[802.1AX].
o MAC-Reachability sub-TLV: The AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV value
contains the MAC-Reachability TLV as a sub-TLV (see [RFC6165], n
is the number of MAC addresses present). As specified in Section
2.2 in [RFC7356], the type and length fields of the MAC-
Reachability TLV are encoded as unsigned 16 bit integers. The one
octet unsigned Confidence along with these TLVs SHOULD be set to
prevail over those MAC addresses learned from TRILL Data
decapsulation by remote edge RBridges.
This AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV MUST be included in a TRILL
GENINFO TLV [RFC7357] in the ESADI-LSP. There may be more than one
occurrence of such TRILL APPsub-TLV in one ESADI-LSP fragment.
For those MAC addresses contained in an AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-
TLV, this document applies. Otherwise, [RFC7357] applies. For
example, an AAE member RBridge continues to enclose MAC addresses
learned from TRILL Data packet decapsulation in MAC-Reachability TLV
as per [RFC6165] and advertise them using the ESADI protocol.
When the remote RBridge learns MAC addresses contained in the AA-
LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV via the ESADI protocol [RFC7357], it sends
the packets destined to these MAC addresses to the closest one (the
one to which the remote RBridge has the least cost forwarding path)
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of those RBridges in the AAE identified by the LAALP ID in the AA-
LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV. If there are multiple equal least cost
member RBridges, the ingress RBridge is required to select a unique
one in a pseudo-random way as specified in Section 5.3 of [RFC7357].
When another RBridge in the same AAE group receives an ESADI-LSP with
the AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV, it also learns MAC addresses of
those end-nodes served by the corresponding LAALP. These MAC
addresses SHOULD be learned as if those end-nodes are locally
attached to this RBridge itself.
An AAE member RBridge MUST use the AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV to
advertise in ESADI the MAC addresses learned from a plain local link
(a non LAALP link) with Data Labels that happen to be covered by the
Data Labels of any attached LAALP. The reason is that MAC learning
from TRILL Data packet decapsulation within these Data Labels at the
remote edge RBridge has normally been disabled for this RBridge.
This APPsub-TLV changes whenever the MAC reachability situation for
the LAALP changes.
4.2. Extended RBridge Capability Flags APPsub-TLV
The following Extended RBridge Capability Flags APPsub-TLV will be
included in an E-L1FS FS-LSP fragment zero [RFC7180bis] as an APPsub-
TLV of the TRILL GENINFO-TLV.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type = EXTENDED-RBRIDGE-CAP | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Length | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Topology | (2 bytes)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|E|H| Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reserved (continued) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
o Type: Extended RBridge Capability (TRILL APPsub-TLV type tbd3)
o Length: Set to 8.
o Topology: Indicates the topology to which the capabilities apply.
When this field is set to zero, this implies that the capabilities
apply to all topologies or topologies are not in use [TRILL-MT].
o E: Bit 0 of the capability bits. When this bit is set, it
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indicates the originating RBridge acts as specified in Option B
above.
o H: Bit 1 of the capability bits. When this bit is set, it
indicates that the originating RBridge keeps multiple MAC
attachments learned from TRILL Data packet decapsulation with fast
path hardware, that is, it acts as specified in Option A above.
o Reserved: Flags extending from bit 2 through bit 63 of the
capability fits reserved for future use. These MUST be sent as
zero and ignored on receipt.
The Extended RBridge Capability Flags TRILL APPsub-TLV is used to
notify other RBridges whether the originating RBridge supports the
capability indicated by the E and H bits. For example, if E bit is
set, it indicates the originating RBridge will act as defined in
Option B. That is, it will disable the MAC learning from TRILL Data
packet decapsulation within Data Labels advertised by AAE RBridges
while waiting for the TRILL ESADI-LSPs to distribute the {MAC,
Nickname, Data Label} association. Meanwhile, this RBridge is able to
act as an AAE RBridge. It's required to advertise MAC addresses
learned from local LAALPs in TRILL ESADI-LSPs using the AA-LAALP-
GROUP-MAC APPsub-TLV defined in Section 4.1. If an RBridge in an AAE
group, as specified herein, observe a remote RBridge interested in
one or more of that AAE group's Data Labels, and the remote RBridge
does not support, as indicated by its extended capabilities, either
Option A or Option B, then the AAE group MUST fall back to active-
standby mode.
This APPsub-TLV is expected to rarely change as it only needs to be
updated when RBridge capabilities change, such as due to an upgrade
or reconfiguration.
5. Meeting the Design Goals
This section explores how this specification meets the major design
goals of AAE.
5.1. No MAC Flip-Flopping (Normal Unicast Egress)
Since all RBridges talking with the AAE RBridges in the campus are
able to see multiple attachments for one MAC address in ESADI
[RFC7357], a MAC address learned from one AAE member will not be
overwritten by the same MAC address learned from another AAE member.
Although multiple entries for this MAC address will be created, for
return traffic the remote RBridge is required to adhere to a unique
one of the attachments for each MAC address rather than keep flip-
flopping among them (see Section 4.2.6 of [RFC6325] and Section 5.3
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of [RFC7357]).
5.2. Regular Unicast/Multicast Ingress
LAALP guarantees that each frame will be sent upward to the AAE via
exactly one uplink. RBridges in the AAE simply follow the process per
[RFC6325] to ingress the frame. For example, each RBridge uses its
own nickname as the ingress nickname to encapsulate the frame. In
such a scenario, each RBridge takes for granted that it is the
Appointed Forwarder for the VLANs enabled on the uplink of the LAALP.
5.3. Correct Multicast Egress
A fundamental design goal of AAE is that there must be no duplication
or forwarding loop.
5.3.1. No Duplication (Single Exit Point)
When multi-destination TRILL Data packets for a specific Data Label
are received from the campus, it's important that exactly one RBridge
out of the AAE group let through each multi-destination packet so no
duplication will happen. The LAALP will have defined its selection
function (using hashing or election algorithm) to designated a
forwarder for a multi-destination frame. Since AAE member RBridges
support the LAALP, they are able to utilize that selection function
to determine the single exit point. If the output of the selection
function points to the port attached to the receiving RBridge itself
(i.e., the packet should be egressed out of this node), the receiving
RBridge MUST egress this packet for that AAE group. Otherwise, the
packet MUST NOT be egressed for that AAE group. (For ports that lead
to non-AAE links, the receiving RBridge determines whether to egress
the packet or not according to [RFC6325] which is updated by
[RFC7172].)
5.3.2. No Echo (Split Horizon)
When a multi-destination frame originated from an LAALP is ingressed
by an RBridge of an AAE group, distributed to the TRILL network and
then received by another RBridge in the same AAE group, it is
important that this receiving RBridge does not egress this frame back
to this LAALP. Otherwise, it will cause a forwarding loop (echo). The
well known 'split horizon' technique (as discussed in Section 2.2.1
of [RFC1058]) is used to eliminate the echo issue.
RBridges in the AAE group need to split horizon based on the ingress
RBridge nickname plus the VLAN of the TRILL Data packet. They need to
set up per port filtering lists consisting of the tuple of <ingress
nickname, VLAN>. Packets with information matching with any entry of
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the filtering list MUST NOT be egressed out of that port. The
information of such filters is obtained by listening to the AA-LAALP-
GROUP-RBRIDGES TRILL APPsub-TLVs as defined in Section 4.1.2. Note
that all enabled VLANs MUST be consistent on all ports connected to
an LAALP. So the enabled VLANs need not be included in these TRILL
APPsub-TLVs. They can be locally obtained from the port attached to
that LAALP. Through parsing these APPsub-TLVs, the receiving RBridge
discovers all other RBridges connected to the same LAALP. The Sender
Nickname of the originating RBridge will be added into the filtering
list of the port attached to the LAALP. For example, RB3 in Figure
3.1 will set up a filtering list that looks like {<RB1, VLAN10>,
<RB2, VLAN10>} on its port attached to LAALP1. According to split
horizon, TRILL Data packets within VLAN10 ingressed by RB1 or RB2
will not be egressed out of this port.
When there are multiple LAALPs connected to the same RBridge, these
LAALPs may have VLANs that overlap. Here a VLAN overlaps means this
VLAN ID is enabled by multiple LAALPs. A customer may require that
hosts within these overlapped VLANs communicate with each other. In
Appendix A, several scenarios are given to explain how hosts
communicate within the overlapped VLANs and how split horizon
happens.
5.4. No Black-hole or Triangular Forwarding
If a sub-link of the LAALP fails while remote RBridges continue to
send packets towards the failed port, a black-hole happens. If the
AAE member RBridge with that failed port starts to redirect the
packets to other member RBridges for delivery, triangular forwarding
occurs.
The member RBridge attached to the failed sub-link makes use of the
ESADI protocol to flush those failure affected MAC addresses as
defined in Section 5.2 of [RFC7357]. After doing that, no packets
will be sent towards the failed port, hence no black-hole will
happen. Nor will the member RBridge need to redirect packets to other
member RBridges, which may otherwise lead to triangular forwarding.
5.5. Load Balance Towards the AAE
Since a remote RBridge can see multiple attachments of one MAC
address in ESADI, this remote RBridge can choose to spread the
traffic towards the AAE members on a per flow basis. Each of them is
able to act as the egress point. In doing this, the forwarding paths
need not be limited to the least cost path selection from the ingress
RBridge to the AAE RBridges. The traffic load from the remote RBridge
towards the AAE RBridges can be balanced based on a pseudo-random
selection method (see Section 4.1).
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Note that the load balance method adopted at a remote ingress RBridge
is not to replace the load balance mechanism of LAALP. These two load
spreading mechanisms should take effect separately.
5.6. Scalability
With Option A, multiple attachments need to be recorded for a MAC
address learned from AAE RBridges. More entries may be consumed in
the MAC learning table. However, MAC addresses attached to an LAALP
are usually only a small part of all MAC addresses in the whole TRILL
campus. As a result, the extra space required by the multi-attached
MAC addresses can usually be accommodated by RBridges unused MAC
table space.
With Option B, remote RBridges will keep the multiple attachments of
a MAC address in the ESADI link state databases that are usually
maintained by software. While in the MAC table that is normally
implemented in hardware, an RBridge still establishes only one entry
for each MAC address.
6. E-L1FS Backwards Compatibility
The Extended TLVs defined in Section 4 and 5 are to be used in an
Extended Level 1 Flooding Scope ( E-L1FS [RFC7356] [RFC7180bis]) PDU.
For those RBridges that do not support E-L1FS, the EXTENDED-RBRIDGE-
CAP TRILL APPsub-TLV will not be sent out either, and MAC multi-
attach active-active is not supported.
7. Security Considerations
For security considerations pertaining to extensions transported by
TRILL ESADI, see the Security Considerations section in [RFC7357].
For extensions not transported by TRILL ESADI, RBridges may be
configured to include the IS-IS Authentication TLV (10) in the IS-IS
PDUs to use the IS-IS security [RFC5304][RFC5310].
Since currently deployed LAALPs [RFC7379] are proprietary, security
over membership in and internal management of active-active edge
groups is proprietary. In the environment that above authentication
are not adopted, a rogue RBridge that insinuates itself into an
active-active edge group can disrupt end station traffic flowing into
or out of that group. For example, if there are N RBridges in the
group, it could typically control 1/Nth of the traffic flowing out of
that group and a similar amount of unicast traffic flowing into that
group.
For general TRILL security considerations, see [RFC6325].
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8. IANA Considerations
8.1. TRILL APPsub-TLVs
IANA is requested to allocate three new types under the TRILL GENINFO
TLV [RFC7357] for the TRILL APPsub-TLVs defined in Section 4.1 of
this document. The following entries are added to the "TRILL APPsub-
TLV Types under IS-IS TLV 251 Application Identifier 1" Registry on
the TRILL Parameters IANA web page.
Type Name Reference
--------- ---- ---------
tbd1(252) AA-LAALP-GROUP-RBRIDGES [This document]
tbd2(253) AA-LAALP-GROUP-MAC [This document]
tbd3(254) EXTENDED-RBRIDGE-CAP [This document]
8.2. Extended RBridge Capabilities Registry
IANA is requested to create a registry under the TRILL Parameters
registry as follows:
Name: Extended RBridge Capabilities
Registration Procedure: Expert Review
Reference: [this document]
Bit Mnemonic Description Reference
---- -------- ----------- ---------
0 E Option B Support [this document]
1 H Option A Support [this document]
2-63 - Unassigned
8.3. Active-Active Flags
IANA is requested to allocate two flag bits, with mnemonic "AA", as
follows:
One flag bit is allocated from the Interested VLANs Flag Bits.
Bit Mnemonic Description Reference
--- -------- ----------- ---------
tbd4(16) AA VLANs for Active-Active [This document]
One flag bit is allocated from the Interested Labels Flag Bits.
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Bit Mnemonic Description Reference
--- -------- ----------- ---------
tbd5(4) AA FGLs for Active-Active [This document]
9. Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank the comments and suggestions from Andrew
Qu, Donald Eastlake, Erik Nordmark, Fangwei Hu, Liang Xia, Weiguo
Hao, Yizhou Li and Mukhtiar Shaikh.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC6165] Banerjee, A. and D. Ward, "Extensions to IS-IS for Layer-2
Systems", RFC 6165, April 2011.
[RFC6325] Perlman, R., Eastlake 3rd, D., Dutt, D., Gai, S., and A.
Ghanwani, "Routing Bridges (RBridges): Base Protocol
Specification", RFC 6325, July 2011.
[RFC6439] Perlman, R., Eastlake, D., Li, Y., Banerjee, A., and F. Hu,
"Routing Bridges (RBridges): Appointed Forwarders", RFC
6439, November 2011.
[RFC7172] D. Eastlake 3rd and M. Zhang and P. Agarwal and R. Perlman
and D. Dutt, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links
(TRILL): Fine-Grained Labeling", RFC 7172, May 2014.
[RFC7176] D. Eastlake 3rd and T. Senevirathne and A. Ghanwani and D.
Dutt and A. Banerjee, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots
of Links (TRILL) Use of IS-IS", RFC7176, May 2014.
[RFC7177] D. Eastlake 3rd and R. Perlman and A. Ghanwani and H. Yang
and V. Manral, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots of
Links (TRILL): Adjacency", RFC 7177, May 2014.
[RFC7356] Ginsberg, L., Previdi, S., and Y. Yang, "IS-IS Flooding
Scope Link State PDUs (LSPs)", RFC 7356, September 2014.
[RFC7357] Zhai, H., Hu, F., Perlman, R., Eastlake 3rd, D., and O.
Stokes, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links
(TRILL): End Station Address Distribution Information
(ESADI) Protocol", RFC 7357, September 2014.
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[RFC7180bis] D. Eastlake, M. Zhang, et al, "TRILL: Clarifications,
Corrections, and Updates", draft-ietf-trill-rfc7180bis,
work in progress.
[802.1AX] IEEE, "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area
Networks - Link Aggregation", 802.1AX-2014, 24 December
2014.
10.2. Informative References
[RFC7379] Li, Y., Hao, W., Perlman, R., Hudson, J., and H. Zhai,
"Problem Statement and Goals for Active-Active Connection
at the Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL)
Edge", RFC 7379, October 2014.
[PN] H. Zhai, T. Senevirathne, et al, "TRILL: Pseudo-Nickname
for Active-active Access", draft-ietf-trill-pseudonode-
nickname, work in progress.
[TRILL-MT] D. Eastlake, M. Zhang, A. Banerjee, V. Manral, "TRILL:
Multi-Topology", draft-eastlake-trill-multi-topology, work
in progress.
[ISIS] ISO, "Intermediate system to Intermediate system routeing
information exchange protocol for use in conjunction with
the Protocol for providing the Connectionless-mode Network
Service (ISO 8473)", ISO/IEC 10589:2002.
[RFC5310] Bhatia, M., Manral, V., Li, T., Atkinson, R., White, R.,
and M. Fanto, "IS-IS Generic Cryptographic Authentication",
RFC 5310, February 2009.
Appendix A. Scenarios for Split Horizon
+------------------+ +------------------+ +------------------+
| RB1 | | RB2 | | RB3 |
+------------------+ +------------------+ +------------------+
L1 L2 L3 L1 L2 L3 L1 L2 L3
VL10~20 VL15~25 VL15 VL10~20 VL15~25 VL15 VL10~20 VL15~25 VL15
LAALP1 LAALP2 LAN LAALP1 LAALP2 LAN LAALP1 LAALP2 LAN
B1 B2 B10 B1 B2 B20 B1 B2 B30
Figure A.1: An example topology to explain split horizon
Suppose RB1, RB2 and RB3 are the Active-Active group connecting
LAALP1 and LAALP2. LAALP1 and LAALP2 are connected to B1 and B2 at
their other ends. Suppose all these RBridges use port L1 to connect
LAALP1 while they use port L2 to connect LAALP2. Assume all three L1
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enable VLAN 10~20 while all three L2 enable VLAN 15~25. So that there
is an overlap of VLAN 15~20. A customer may require that hosts within
these overlapped VLANs communicate with each other. That is, hosts
attached to B1 in VLAN 15~20 need to communicate with hosts attached
to B2 in VLAN 15~20. Assume the remote plain RBridge RB4 also has
hosts attached in VLAN 15~20 which need to communicate with those
hosts in these VLANs attached to B1 and B2.
Two major requirements:
1. Frames ingressed from RB1-L1-VLAN 15~20 MUST NOT be egressed out
of ports RB2-L1 and RB3-L1. At the same time,
2. frames coming from B1-VLAN 15~20 should reach B2-VLAN 15~20.
RB3 stores the information for split horizon on its ports L1 and L2.
On L1: {<ingress_nickname_RB1, VLAN 10~20>, <ingress_nickname_RB2,
VLAN 10~20>} and on L2: {<ingress_nickname_RB1, VLAN 15~25>,
<ingress_nickname_RB2, VLAN 15~25>}.
Five clarification scenarios:
a. Suppose RB2/RB3 receives a TRILL multi-destination data packet
with VLAN 15 and ingress nickname RB1. RB3 is the single exit
point (selected out according to the hashing function of LAALP)
for this packet. On ports L1 and L2, RB3 has covered
<ingress_nickname_RB1, VLAN 15>, so that RB3 will not egress this
packet out of either L1 or L2. Here, _split horizon_ happens.
Beforehand, RB1 obtains a native frame on port L1 from B1 in VLAN
15. RB1 judges it should be forwarded as a multi-destination
packet across the TRILL campus. Also, RB1 replicates this frame
without TRILL encapsulation and sends it out of port L2, so that
B2 will get this frame.
b. Suppose RB2/RB3 receives a TRILL multi-destination data packet
with VLAN 15 and ingress nickname RB4. RB3 is the single exit
point. On ports L1 and L2, since RB3 has not stored any tuple with
ingress_ nickname_RB4, RB3 will decapsulate the packet and egress
it out of both ports L1 and L2. So both B1 and B2 will receive the
frame.
c. Suppose there is a plain LAN link port L3 on RB1, RB2 and RB3,
connecting to B10, B20 and B30 respectively. These L3 ports happen
to be configured with VLAN 15. On port L3, RB2 and RB3 stores no
information of split horizon for AAE (since this port has not been
configured to be in any LAALP). They will egress the packet
ingressed from RB1-L1 in VLAN 15.
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d. If a packet is ingressed from RB1-L1 or RB1-L2 with VLAN 15, port
RB1-L3 will not egress packets with ingress-nickname-RB1. RB1
needs to replicate this frame without encapsulation and sends it
out of port L3. This kind of 'bounce' behavior for multi-
destination frames is just as specified in paragraph 2 of Section
4.6.1.2 of [RFC6325].
e. If a packet is ingressed from RB1-L3, since RB1-L1 and RB1-L2
cannot egress packets with VLAN 15 and ingress-nickname-RB1, RB1
needs to replicate this frame without encapsulation and sends it
out of port L1 and L2. (Also see paragraph 2 of Section 4.6.1.2 of
[RFC6325].)
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Author's Addresses
Mingui Zhang
Huawei Technologies
No.156 Beiqing Rd. Haidian District,
Beijing 100095 P.R. China
EMail: zhangmingui@huawei.com
Radia Perlman
EMC
2010 256th Avenue NE, #200
Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
EMail: radia@alum.mit.edu
Hongjun Zhai
Jinling Institute of Technology
99 Hongjing Avenue, Jiangning District
Nanjing, Jiangsu 211169 China
EMail: honjun.zhai@tom.com
Muhammad Durrani
Cisco Systems
170 West Tasman Dr.
San Jose, CA 95134
EMail: mdurrani@cisco.com
Sujay Gupta
IP Infusion,
RMZ Centennial
Mahadevapura Post
Bangalore - 560048
India
EMail: sujay.gupta@ipinfusion.com
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