OSPF Node Admin Tags: Advertising Node Administrative Tags in OSPF
Letting OSPF routers carry opaque 32-bit labels so operators can group nodes and write policies about them.
Hegde, S., Shakir, R., Smirnov, A., Li, Z., and B. Decraene, "Advertising Node Administrative Tags in OSPF", RFC 7777, DOI 10.17487/RFC7777, March 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7777>.
@misc{rfc7777,
series = {Request for Comments},
number = 7777,
howpublished = {RFC 7777},
publisher = {RFC Editor},
doi = {10.17487/RFC7777},
url = {https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7777},
author = {S. Hegde and R. Shakir and A. Smirnov and Z. Li and B. Decraene},
title = {{Advertising Node Administrative Tags in OSPF}},
pagetotal = 15,
year = 2016,
month = mar,
} RFC text
Contents
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Hegde
Request for Comments: 7777 Juniper Networks, Inc.
Category: Standards Track R. Shakir
ISSN: 2070-1721 Jive Communications, Inc.
A. Smirnov
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Z. Li
Huawei Technologies
B. Decraene
Orange
March 2016
Advertising Node Administrative Tags in OSPF
Abstract
This document describes an extension to the OSPF protocol to add an
optional operational capability that allows tagging and grouping of
the nodes in an OSPF domain. This allows simplification, ease of
management and control over route and path selection based on
configured policies. This document describes an extension to the
OSPF protocol to advertise node administrative tags. The node tags
can be used to express and apply locally defined network policies,
which are a very useful operational capability. Node tags may be
used by either OSPF itself or other applications consuming
information propagated via OSPF.
This document describes the protocol extensions to disseminate node
administrative tags to the OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 protocol. It provides
example use cases of administrative node tags.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
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). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in 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/rfc7777.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 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. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. OSPF Node Admin Tag TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. TLV Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Elements of Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2.1. Interpretation of Node Administrative Tags . . . . . 4
2.2.2. Use of Node Administrative Tags . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2.3. Processing Node Administrative Tag Changes . . . . . 6
3. Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Service Auto-Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Fast-Rerouting Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. Controlling Remote LFA Tunnel Termination . . . . . . . . 8
3.4. Mobile Backhaul Network Service Deployment . . . . . . . 8
3.5. Explicit Routing Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Manageability Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1. Introduction
It is useful to assign a node administrative tag to a router in the
OSPF domain and use it as an attribute associated with the node. The
node administrative tag can be used in a variety of applications, for
example:
(a) Traffic Engineering (TE) applications to provide different path-
selection criteria.
(b) Prefer or prune certain paths in Loop-Free Alternate (LFA)
backup selection via local policies as defined in [LFA-MANAGE].
This document provides mechanisms to advertise node administrative
tags in OSPF for route and path selection. Route and path selection
functionality applies to both TE and non-TE applications; hence, a
new TLV for carrying node administrative tags is included in Router
Information (RI) Link State Advertisement (LSA) [RFC7770].
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. OSPF Node Admin Tag TLV
An administrative tag is a 32-bit integer value that can be used to
identify a group of nodes in the OSPF domain.
The newly defined TLV is carried within an RI LSA for OSPFV2 and
OSPFV3. RI LSA [RFC7770] can have flooding scope at the link, area,
or Autonomous System (AS) level. The choice of what scope at which
to flood the group tags is a matter of local policy. It is expected
that node administrative tag values will not be portable across
administrative domains.
The TLV specifies one or more administrative tag values. An OSPF
node advertises the set of groups it is part of in the OSPF domain
(for example, all PE nodes are configured with a certain tag value,
and all P nodes are configured with a different tag value in the
domain). Multiple TLVs MAY be added in same RI LSA or in a different
instance of the RI LSA as defined in [RFC7770].
2.1. TLV Format
[RFC7770] defines the RI LSA, which may be used to advertise
properties of the originating router. The payload of the RI LSA
consists of one or more nested Type/Length/Value (TLV) triplets.
Node administrative tags are advertised in the Node Admin Tag TLV.
The format of the Node Admin Tag TLV is:
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 | Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Administrative Tag #1 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Administrative Tag #2 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
// //
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Administrative Tag #N |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: OSPF Node Admin Tag TLV
Type: 10
Length: A 16-bit field that indicates the length of the value
portion in octets and will be a multiple of 4 octets dependent
on the number of tags advertised.
Value: A set of administrative tags. Each tag is a 32-bit integer
value. At least one tag MUST be carried if this TLV is
included in the RI LSA.
2.2. Elements of Procedure
2.2.1. Interpretation of Node Administrative Tags
The meaning of the node administrative tags is generally opaque to
OSPF. Routers advertising the node administrative tag (or tags) may
be configured to do so without knowing (or even without supporting
processing of) the functionality implied by the tag. This section
describes general rules, regulations, and guidelines for using and
interpreting an administrative tag that will facilitate interoperable
implementations by vendors.
Interpretation of tag values is specific to the administrative domain
of a particular network operator; hence, tag values SHOULD NOT be
propagated outside the administrative domain to which they apply.
The meaning of a node administrative tag is defined by the network
local policy and is controlled via the configuration. If a receiving
node does not understand the tag value or does not have a local
policy corresponding to the tag, it ignores the specific tag and
floods the RI LSA without any change as defined in [RFC7770].
The semantics of the tag order has no meaning. That is, there is no
implied meaning to the ordering of the tags that indicates a certain
operation or set of operations that need to be performed based on the
ordering.
Each tag must be treated as an independent identifier that may be
used in the policy to perform a policy action. Each tag carried by
the Node Admin Tag TLV should be used to indicate a characteristic of
a node that is independent of the characteristics indicated by other
administrative tags. The administrative-tag list within the TLV MUST
be considered an unordered list. While policies may be implemented
based on the presence of multiple tags (e.g., if tag A AND tag B are
present), they MUST NOT be reliant upon the order of the tags (i.e.,
all policies should be considered commutative operations, such that
tag A preceding or following tag B does not change their outcome).
2.2.2. Use of Node Administrative Tags
The node administrative tags are not meant to be extended by future
OSPF standards. New OSPF extensions are not expected to require use
of node administrative tags or define well-known tag values. Node
administrative tags are for generic use and do not require IANA
registration. Future OSPF extensions requiring well-known values MAY
define their own data signaling tailored to the needs of the feature
or MAY use the capability TLV as defined in [RFC7770].
Being part of the RI LSA, the Node Admin Tag TLV must be reasonably
small and stable. In particular, implementations supporting node
administrative tags MUST NOT be used to convey attributes of the
routing topology or associate tags with changes in the network
topology (both within and outside the OSPF domain) or reachability of
routes.
2.2.3. Processing Node Administrative Tag Changes
Multiple Node Admin Tag TLVs MAY appear in an RI LSA or multiple Node
Admin Tag TLVs MAY be contained in different instances of the RI LSA.
The administrative tags associated with a node that originates tags
for the purpose of any computation or processing at a receiving node
SHOULD be a superset of node administrative tags from all the TLVs in
all the received RI LSA instances in the Link-State Database (LSDB)
advertised by the corresponding OSPF router. When an RI LSA is
received that changes the set of tags applicable to any originating
node, which has features depending on node administrative tags, a
receiving node MUST repeat any computation or processing that is
based on those administrative tags.
When there is a change or removal of an administrative affiliation of
a node, the node MUST re-originate the RI LSA with the latest set of
node administrative tags. On the receiver, when there is a change in
the Node Admin Tag TLV or removal/addition of a TLV in any instance
of the RI LSA, implementations MUST take appropriate measures to
update their state according to the changed set of tags. The exact
actions needed depend on features working with administrative tags
and are outside of scope of this specification.
3. Applications
This section lists several examples of how implementations might use
the node administrative tags. These examples are given only to
demonstrate the generic usefulness of the router tagging mechanism.
Implementations supporting this specification are not required to
implement any of these use cases. It is also worth noting that in
some described use cases, routers configured to advertise tags help
other routers in their calculations but do not themselves implement
the same functionality.
3.1. Service Auto-Discovery
Router tagging may be used to automatically discover a group of
routers sharing a particular service.
For example, a service provider might desire to establish a full mesh
of MPLS TE tunnels between all PE routers in the area of the MPLS VPN
network. Marking all PE routers with a tag and configuring devices
with a policy to create MPLS TE tunnels to all other devices
advertising this tag will automate maintenance of the full mesh.
When a new PE router is added to the area, all other PE devices will
open TE tunnels to it without needing to reconfigure them.
3.2. Fast-Rerouting Policy
Increased deployment of Loop-Free Alternates (LFA) as defined in
[RFC5286] poses operation and management challenges. [LFA-MANAGE]
proposes policies which, when implemented, will ease LFA operation
concerns.
One of the proposed refinements is to be able to group the nodes in
an IGP domain with administrative tags and engineer the LFA based on
configured policies.
(a) Administrative limitation of LFA scope
Service provider access infrastructure is frequently designed in
a layered approach with each layer of devices serving different
purposes and thus having different hardware capabilities and
configured software features. When LFA repair paths are being
computed, it may be desirable to exclude devices from being
considered as LFA candidates based on their layer.
For example, if the access infrastructure is divided into the
Access, Distribution, and Core layers, it may be desirable for a
Distribution device to compute LFA only via Distribution or Core
devices but not via Access devices. This may be due to features
enabled on Access routers, due to capacity limitations, or due to
the security requirements. Managing such a policy via
configuration of the router computing LFA is cumbersome and error
prone.
With the node administrative tags, it is possible to assign a tag
to each layer and implement LFA policy of computing LFA repair
paths only via neighbors that advertise the Core or Distribution
tag. This requires minimal per-node configuration and the
network automatically adapts when new links or routers are added.
(b) LFA calculation optimization
Calculation of LFA paths may require significant resources of the
router. One execution of Dijkstra's algorithm is required for
each neighbor eligible to become the next hop of repair paths.
Thus, a router with a few hundred neighbors may need to execute
the algorithm hundreds of times before the best (or even valid)
repair path is found. Manually excluding from the calculation
neighbors that are known to provide no valid LFA (such as single-
connected routers) may significantly reduce the number of
Dijkstra algorithm runs.
LFA calculation policy may be configured so that routers
advertising certain tag values are excluded from LFA calculation,
even if they are otherwise suitable.
3.3. Controlling Remote LFA Tunnel Termination
[RFC7490] defined a method of tunneling traffic to extend the basic
LFA coverage after connection failure of a link and defined an
algorithm to find tunnel tail-end routers meeting the LFA
requirement. In most cases, the proposed algorithm finds more than
one candidate tail-end router. In a real-life network, it may be
desirable to exclude some nodes from the list of candidates based on
the local policy. This may be either due to known limitations of the
node (the router does not accept the targeted LDP sessions required
to implement remote LFA tunneling) or due to administrative
requirements (for example, it may be desirable to choose the tail-end
router among colocated devices).
The node administrative tag delivers a simple and scalable solution.
Remote LFA can be configured with a policy to accept only routers
advertising a certain tag as candidates during the tail-end router
calculation. Tagging routers allows both exclusion of nodes not
capable of serving as remote LFA tunnel tail ends and definition of a
region from which a tail-end router must be selected.
3.4. Mobile Backhaul Network Service Deployment
Mobile backhaul networks usually adopt a ring topology to save fibre
resources; it is usually divided into the aggregate network and the
access network. Cell Site Gateways (CSGs) connects the LTE Evolved
NodeBs (eNodeBs) and RNC (Radio Network Controller) Site Gateways
(RSGs) connects the RNCs. The mobile traffic is transported from
CSGs to RSGs. The network takes a typical aggregate traffic model
that more than one access ring will attach to one pair of aggregate
site gateways (ASGs) and more than one aggregate ring will attach to
one pair of RSGs.
----------------
/ \
/ \
/ \
+------+ +----+ Access +----+
|eNodeB|---|CSG1| Ring 1 |ASG1|------------
+------+ +----+ +----+ \
\ / \
\ / +----+ +---+
\ +----+ |RSG1|----|RNC|
-------------| | Aggregate +----+ +---+
|ASG2| Ring |
-------------| | +----+ +---+
/ +----+ |RSG2|----|RNC|
/ \ +----+ +---+
/ \ /
+------+ +----+ Access +----+ /
|eNodeB|---|CSG2| Ring 2 |ASG3|-----------
+------+ +----+ +----+
\ /
\ /
\ /
-----------------
Figure 2: Mobile Backhaul Network
A typical mobile backhaul network with access rings and aggregate
links is shown in the figure above. The mobile backhaul networks
deploy traffic engineering due to strict Service Level Agreements
(SLAs). The TE paths may have additional constraints to avoid
passing via different access rings or to get completely disjoint
backup TE paths. The mobile backhaul networks towards the access
side change frequently due to the growing mobile traffic and addition
of new eNodeBs. It's complex to satisfy the requirements using cost,
link color, or explicit path configurations. The node administrative
tag defined in this document can be effectively used to solve the
problem for mobile backhaul networks. The nodes in different rings
can be assigned with specific tags. TE path computation can be
enhanced to consider additional constraints based on node
administrative tags.
3.5. Explicit Routing Policy
A partially meshed network provides multiple paths between any two
nodes in the network. In a data centre environment, the topology is
usually highly symmetric with many/all paths having equal cost. In a
long distance network, this is usually not the case, for a variety of
reasons (e.g., historic, fibre availability constraints, different
distances between transit nodes, and different roles). Hence,
between a given source and destination, a path is typically preferred
over the others, while between the same source and another
destination, a different path may be preferred.
+----------------------+ +----------------+
| \ / |
| +-----------------+ x +---------+ |
| | \/ \/ | |
| | +-T-10-T | |
| | / | /| | |
| | / 100 / | | |
| | / | | 100 | |
| | / +-+-+ | | |
| | / / | | | |
| | / / R-18-R | |
| | 10 10 /\ /\ | |
| | / / / \ / \ | |
| | / / / x \ | |
| | / / 10 10 \ \ | |
| | / / / / 10 10 | |
| | / / / / \ \ | |
| | A-25-A A-25-A A-25-A | |
| | | | \ \ / / | |
| | | | 201 201 201 201 | |
| | | | \ \ / / | |
| | 201 201 \ x / | |
| | | | \ / \ / | |
| | | | \/ \/ | |
| | I-24-I I-24-I 100 100
| | / / | | | |
| +-+ / | +-----------+ |
+---------+ +---------------------+
Figure 3: Explicit Routing topology
In the above topology, an operator may want to enforce the following
high-level explicit routing policies:
o Traffic from A nodes to A nodes should preferably go through R or
T nodes (rather than through I nodes);
o Traffic from A nodes to I nodes must not go through R and T nodes.
With node admin tags, tag A (resp. I, R, T) can be configured on all
A (resp. I, R, T) nodes to advertise their role. The first policy
is about preferring one path over another. Given the chosen metrics,
it is achieved with regular SPF routing. The second policy is about
prohibiting (pruning) some paths. It requires an explicit routing
policy. With the use of node tags, this may be achieved with a
generic Constrained Shortest Path First (CSPF) policy configured on A
nodes: for destination nodes, having the tag "A" runs a CSPF with the
exclusion of nodes having the tag "I".
4. Security Considerations
Node administrative tags may be used by operators to indicate
geographical location or other sensitive information. As indicated
in [RFC2328] and [RFC5340], OSPF authentication mechanisms do not
provide confidentiality and the information carried in node
administrative tags could be leaked to an IGP snooper.
Confidentiality for the OSPF control packets can be achieved by
either running OSPF on top of IP Security (IPsec) tunnels or by
applying IPsec-based security mechanisms as described in [RFC4552].
Advertisement of tag values for one administrative domain into
another risks misinterpretation of the tag values (if the two domains
have assigned different meanings to the same values), which may have
undesirable and unanticipated side effects.
[RFC4593] and [RFC6863] discuss the generic threats to routing
protocols and OSPF, respectively. These security threats are also
applicable to the mechanisms described in this document. OSPF
authentication described in [RFC2328] and [RFC5340] or extended
authentication mechanisms described in [RFC7474] or [RFC7166] SHOULD
be used in deployments where attackers have access to the physical
networks and nodes included in the OSPF domain are vulnerable.
5. Operational Considerations
Operators can assign meaning to the node administrative tags, which
are local to the operator's administrative domain. The operational
use of node administrative tags is analogical to the IS-IS prefix
tags [RFC5130] and BGP communities [RFC1997]. Operational discipline
and procedures followed in configuring and using BGP communities and
IS-IS prefix tags is also applicable to the usage of node
administrative tags.
Defining language for local policies is outside the scope of this
document. As is the case of other policy applications, the pruning
policies can cause the path to be completely removed from forwarding
plane, and hence have the potential for more severe operational
impact (e.g., node unreachability due to path removal) by comparison
to preference policies that only affect path selection.
6. Manageability Considerations
Node administrative tags are configured and managed using routing
policy enhancements. The YANG data definition language is the latest
model to describe and define configuration for network devices. The
OSPF YANG data model is described in [OSPF-YANG] and the routing
policy configuration model is described in [RTG-POLICY]. These two
documents will be enhanced to include the configurations related to
the node administrative tag.
7. IANA Considerations
This specification updates the "OSPF Router Information (RI) TLVs"
registry. IANA has registered the following value:
Node Admin Tag TLV - 10
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC2328] Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", STD 54, RFC 2328,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2328, April 1998,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2328>.
[RFC5340] Coltun, R., Ferguson, D., Moy, J., and A. Lindem, "OSPF
for IPv6", RFC 5340, DOI 10.17487/RFC5340, July 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5340>.
[RFC7490] Bryant, S., Filsfils, C., Previdi, S., Shand, M., and N.
So, "Remote Loop-Free Alternate (LFA) Fast Reroute (FRR)",
RFC 7490, DOI 10.17487/RFC7490, April 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7490>.
[RFC7770] Lindem, A., Ed., Shen, N., Vasseur, JP., Aggarwal, R., and
S. Shaffer, "Extensions to OSPF for Advertising Optional
Router Capabilities", RFC 7770, DOI 10.17487/RFC7770,
February 2016, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7770>.
8.2. Informative References
[LFA-MANAGE]
Litkowski, S., Decraene, B., Filsfils, C., Raza, K.,
Horneffer, M., and P. Sarkar, "Operational management of
Loop Free Alternates", Work in Progress, draft-ietf-rtgwg-
lfa-manageability-11, June 2015.
[OSPF-YANG]
Yeung, D., Qu, Y., Zhang, J., Bogdanovic, D., and K.
Koushik, "Yang Data Model for OSPF Protocol", Work in
Progress, draft-ietf-ospf-yang-03, October 2015.
[RFC1997] Chandra, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP Communities
Attribute", RFC 1997, DOI 10.17487/RFC1997, August 1996,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1997>.
[RFC4552] Gupta, M. and N. Melam, "Authentication/Confidentiality
for OSPFv3", RFC 4552, DOI 10.17487/RFC4552, June 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4552>.
[RFC4593] Barbir, A., Murphy, S., and Y. Yang, "Generic Threats to
Routing Protocols", RFC 4593, DOI 10.17487/RFC4593,
October 2006, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4593>.
[RFC5130] Previdi, S., Shand, M., Ed., and C. Martin, "A Policy
Control Mechanism in IS-IS Using Administrative Tags",
RFC 5130, DOI 10.17487/RFC5130, February 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5130>.
[RFC5286] Atlas, A., Ed. and A. Zinin, Ed., "Basic Specification for
IP Fast Reroute: Loop-Free Alternates", RFC 5286,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5286, September 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5286>.
[RFC6863] Hartman, S. and D. Zhang, "Analysis of OSPF Security
According to the Keying and Authentication for Routing
Protocols (KARP) Design Guide", RFC 6863,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6863, March 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6863>.
[RFC7166] Bhatia, M., Manral, V., and A. Lindem, "Supporting
Authentication Trailer for OSPFv3", RFC 7166,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7166, March 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7166>.
[RFC7474] Bhatia, M., Hartman, S., Zhang, D., and A. Lindem, Ed.,
"Security Extension for OSPFv2 When Using Manual Key
Management", RFC 7474, DOI 10.17487/RFC7474, April 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7474>.
[RTG-POLICY]
Shaikh, A., Shakir, R., D'Souza, K., and C. Chase,
"Routing Policy Configuration Model for Service Provider
Networks", Work in Progress, draft-ietf-rtgwg-policy-
model-00, September 2015.
Contributors
Thanks to Hannes Gredler for his substantial review, guidance, and
editing of this document. Thanks to Harish Raguveer for his
contributions to initial draft versions of this document.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Bharath R, Pushpasis Sarakar, and Dhruv Dhody for useful
input. Thanks to Chris Bowers for providing useful input to remove
ambiguity related to tag ordering. Thanks to Les Ginsberg and Acee
Lindem for the input. Thanks to David Black for careful review and
valuable suggestions for the document, especially for the operations
section.
Authors' Addresses
Shraddha Hegde
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Embassy Business Park
Bangalore, KA 560093
India
Email: shraddha@juniper.net
Rob Shakir
Jive Communications, Inc.
1275 W 1600 N, Suite 100
Orem, UT 84057
United States
Email: rjs@rob.sh
Anton Smirnov
Cisco Systems, Inc.
De Kleetlaan 6a
Diegem 1831
Belgium
Email: as@cisco.com
Li zhenbin
Huawei Technologies
Huawei Bld. No.156 Beiqing Rd
Beijing 100095
China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
Bruno Decraene
Orange
Email: bruno.decraene@orange.com
AI ELI5
On this page
§1Tagging Nodes in OSPF
RFC 7777 adds an optional capability to OSPF: giving a router a node administrative tag and using it as an attribute of that node. The RFC gives two example uses: Traffic Engineering applications that want different path-selection criteria, and preferring or pruning paths when selecting Loop-Free Alternate (LFA) backups through local policy.
Route and path selection applies to both TE and non-TE uses, so the tags are carried in a new TLV inside the Router Information (RI) Link State Advertisement defined in RFC 7770. Tags may be used by OSPF itself or by other applications that consume information propagated via OSPF. The document covers both OSPFv2 and OSPFv3.
Imagine putting a sticker on each router saying what job it does. Then you can write a rule like 'only use routers with the blue sticker'.
§2The Node Admin Tag TLV
An administrative tag is a 32-bit integer that identifies a group of nodes in the OSPF domain. The Node Admin Tag TLV has Type 10, a 16-bit Length field that counts the value in octets (always a multiple of 4), and a Value made of one or more 32-bit tags. At least one tag MUST be carried if the TLV is included.
The TLV travels in an RI LSA for both OSPFv2 and OSPFv3. An RI LSA can have link, area or Autonomous System flooding scope, and which scope to use for tags is a matter of local policy. A node advertises the set of groups it belongs to, for example all PE nodes with one tag value and all P nodes with another. Multiple Node Admin Tag TLVs MAY appear in the same RI LSA or in different instances of it.
The sticker is just a long number. A router can wear several stickers, and it announces them all in one message to its neighbors.
| Field | Name | Size | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
TYPE | Type | 2 bytes | 10 | TLV type 10. |
LENGTH | Length | 2 bytes | Length of the value in octets, a multiple of 4. | |
TAG-1 | Administrative Tag #1 | 4 bytes | First 32-bit tag; at least one tag is required. | |
TAG-N | Administrative Tag #N | 4 bytes | Further tags, in no meaningful order. |
§2.2How Tags Are Interpreted and Processed
The meaning of a tag is generally opaque to OSPF. It is defined by the network's local policy and set by configuration, so tag values SHOULD NOT be propagated outside the administrative domain they apply to. A router that does not understand a tag or has no matching policy ignores that tag and floods the RI LSA unchanged.
The order of tags has no meaning, and the list MUST be treated as unordered. Each tag is an independent identifier, and policies may test for several tags together (tag A AND tag B) but MUST NOT depend on order.
Tags are not meant to be extended by future OSPF standards and do not require IANA registration. Because they live in the RI LSA, they must be reasonably small and stable, and they MUST NOT be used to convey routing topology attributes or to track topology or reachability changes.
For processing, the tags a node originates SHOULD be treated as the superset of all tags from all its RI LSA instances in the Link-State Database. When the set of tags changes, a node MUST re-originate its RI LSA, and receivers that have features depending on the tags MUST repeat the relevant computation.
OSPF just passes the stickers along without knowing what they mean. Each network decides its own meanings, and the order of the stickers does not matter.
§3Example Applications
The RFC lists examples only to show how generally useful tagging is; implementations are not required to support any of them.
- Service auto-discovery: tag every PE router and configure a policy to build MPLS TE tunnels to all routers with that tag. When a new PE router joins, the others open tunnels to it without reconfiguration.
- Fast-reroute policy: give each layer (Access, Distribution, Core) a tag, so that a Distribution device computes LFA only via Distribution or Core neighbors. Excluding neighbors known to provide no valid LFA can also cut the number of Dijkstra runs.
- Remote LFA tunnel termination: accept only routers with a certain tag as tail-end candidates, which excludes unsuitable nodes or defines a region for the choice.
- Mobile backhaul: assign tags to nodes in different rings so TE path computation can respect extra constraints.
- Explicit routing policy: tag A, I, R and T nodes by role. To forbid traffic from A nodes to I nodes passing through R and T nodes, run a CSPF on A nodes that excludes nodes tagged I for destinations tagged A.
Stickers let you say 'build roads to every house with a red sticker', 'never route through the school zone', or 'only pick helpers from this neighborhood', without listing each house.
§5Operations and Manageability
Operators assign tag meanings that are local to their administrative domain. The RFC compares operational use to IS-IS prefix tags and BGP communities, and says the discipline used for those applies here too. Defining a policy language is out of scope.
A caution: pruning policies can remove a path from the forwarding plane entirely, so they have more severe potential impact, such as node unreachability, than preference policies that only influence path selection.
For manageability, tags are configured through routing policy enhancements. The OSPF YANG data model and the routing policy model are expected to be enhanced to cover node administrative tags.
Stickers that only say 'prefer this' are mild. Stickers that say 'never use this road' can cut a town off if you get them wrong, so be careful.
§4Security and IANA
Tags may be used to indicate geographical location or other sensitive information. OSPF authentication does not provide confidentiality, so tag contents could leak to an IGP snooper. Confidentiality can be obtained by running OSPF over IPsec tunnels or using the IPsec-based mechanisms of RFC 4552. Advertising tags from one administrative domain into another risks misinterpretation if the domains assign different meanings to the same values.
The generic routing and OSPF threats in RFC 4593 and RFC 6863 also apply. OSPF authentication or the extended mechanisms of RFC 7474 or RFC 7166 SHOULD be used where attackers can reach the physical network. IANA registered Node Admin Tag TLV value 10 in the "OSPF Router Information (RI) TLVs" registry.
A sticker might reveal something private, like where a router sits. Keep the stickers inside your own network and lock the messages if you need to.