Internet DRAFT - draft-li-mpls-mna-entropy
draft-li-mpls-mna-entropy
MPLS Working Group T. Li
Internet-Draft J. Drake
Intended status: Informational Juniper Networks
Expires: 27 October 2023 25 April 2023
MPLS Network Action for Entropy
draft-li-mpls-mna-entropy-01
Abstract
Load balancing is a powerful tool for engineering traffic across a
network and has been successfully used in MPLS as described in "The
Use of Entropy Labels in MPLS Forwarding". With the emergence of
MPLS Network Actions (MNA), there is signficant benefit in being able
to invoke the same load balancing capabilities within the more
general MNA infrastructure.
This document describes a network action for entropy to be used in
conjunction with [I-D.jags-mpls-mna-hdr].
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
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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 27 October 2023.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2023 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
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extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Requirement Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The Entropy Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1. Introduction
Load balancing is a powerful tool for engineering traffic across a
network. The use of entropy labels within MPLS was first described
in [RFC6790] and has been deployed succesfully in multiple MPLS
networks.
With the emergence of MPLS Network Actions
[I-D.ietf-mpls-miad-mna-requirements] [I-D.ietf-mpls-mna-fwk], there
is a significant benefit to being able to describe entropy as a
network action. Without this, a packet that required load balancing
and network actions would need to deal with the complexity and
overhead of both the MNA and Entropy Labels in the label stack. By
defining an action for Entropy within the MNA infrastructure,
overhead and complexity can be reduced.
1.1. Requirement 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
BCP14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
2. The Entropy Action
* Name: Entropy Action
* Network Action Indication: The Entropy Action is opcode TBA1.
* Scope: The Entropy Action is valid in Hop-by-Hop (HBH) and Select
scopes.
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* In-Stack Data: The Entropy Action carries 20 bits of ancillary
data, known as the Entropy Value. The semantics of the Entropy
Value are identical to the semantics of the Entropy Label as found
in [RFC6790], but the Entropy Value is not found in the Label
field of the Label Stack Entry (LSE). While the RFC 6790 Entropy
Label has some restrictions to avoid collisions with the reserved
label space (0-15) [RFC3032], those restrictions are not necessary
for the Entropy Value and do not apply. A forwarding node should
incorporate the Entropy Value into its forwarding decision when
the Entropy Action is evaluated.
* LSE Format: C. There is no additional data. The Network Action
Length (NAL) field SHOULD be sent as zero.
* Post-Stack Data: None. The Entropy Action does not appear in
post-stack data.
3. Security Considerations
The forwarding plane is insecure. If an adversary can affect the
forwarding plane, then they can inject data, remove data, corrupt
data, or modify data. MNA additionally allows an adversary to make
packets perform arbitrary network actions.
Link-level security mechanisms can help mitigate some on-link
attacks, but does nothing to preclude hostile nodes.
4. IANA Considerations
This document requests that IANA allocate a codepoint (TBA1) from the
"Multiprotocol Label Switching Architecture (MPLS)"/"MPLS Network
Actions Parameters"/"Network Action Opcodes" registry for the Entropy
Action. The allocation should reference this document.
5. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-mpls-miad-mna-requirements]
Bocci, M. and S. Bryant, "Requirements for MPLS Network
Action Indicators and MPLS Ancillary Data", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-mpls-miad-mna-
requirements-00, 5 May 2022,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-mpls-
miad-mna-requirements-00>.
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[I-D.ietf-mpls-mna-fwk]
Andersson, L., Bryant, S., Bocci, M., and T. Li, "MPLS
Network Actions Framework", Work in Progress, Internet-
Draft, draft-ietf-mpls-mna-fwk-03, 11 March 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-mpls-
mna-fwk-03>.
[I-D.jags-mpls-mna-hdr]
Rajamanickam, J., Gandhi, R., Zigler, R., Song, H., and K.
Kompella, "MPLS Network Action (MNA) Sub-Stack Solution",
Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-jags-mpls-mna-hdr-
05, 10 January 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-jags-mpls-
mna-hdr-05>.
[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>.
[RFC3032] Rosen, E., Tappan, D., Fedorkow, G., Rekhter, Y.,
Farinacci, D., Li, T., and A. Conta, "MPLS Label Stack
Encoding", RFC 3032, DOI 10.17487/RFC3032, January 2001,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3032>.
[RFC6790] Kompella, K., Drake, J., Amante, S., Henderickx, W., and
L. Yong, "The Use of Entropy Labels in MPLS Forwarding",
RFC 6790, DOI 10.17487/RFC6790, November 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6790>.
[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>.
Authors' Addresses
Tony Li
Juniper Networks
Email: tony.li@tony.li
John Drake
Juniper Networks
Email: jdrake@juniper.net
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