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-
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- Internet-Draft Richard Woundy
- Expiration Date: May 1997 Arun Viswanathan
- Nancy Feldman
- Rick Boivie
- IBM Corp.
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- November 1996
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- ARIS: Aggregate Route-Based IP Switching
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- <draft-woundy-aris-ipswitching-00.txt>
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- Status of This Memo
-
- This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
- documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
- and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
- working documents as Internet-Drafts.
-
- 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."
-
- To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
- "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
- Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe),
- munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
- ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).
-
-
- Abstract
-
- IP based networks use a number of routing protocols, including RIP,
- OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP, to determine how packets ought to be routed.
- Among these protocols, OSPF and BGP are IETF-recommended standards
- that have been extensively deployed and exercised in many networks.
- In this memo, we describe a mechanism which uses these protocols as
- the basis for switching IP datagrams, by the addition of a simple
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- protocol ("ARIS") that establishes switched paths through a network.
- The ARIS protocol allows us to leverage the advantages of switching
- technologies in an internet network.
-
- This memo is defined with respect to ATM. ARIS can be easily
- extended to other switching technologies.
-
-
- 1. Introduction
-
- In this paper, an Integrated Switch Router (ISR), is a standard IP
- router that has been augmented with ATM virtual circuit (VC)
- switching support. The ISR at an entry point to the ATM switching
- environment performs standard IP forwarding of datagrams, but the
- "next hop" of the IP forwarding table has been extended to include a
- reference to a VC (switched path). Each VC may have an endpoint at a
- neighboring router (comparable to today's IP next hops on
- conventional routers), or may traverse a series of ISRs along the
- best IP forwarding path, to an egress ISR endpoint. This allows
- datagrams to be switched at hardware speeds through an entire ISR
- network.
-
- The key link between the IP network routing protocols and the ARIS VC
- establishment protocol is the "egress identifier". The egress
- identifier refers to an egress ISR that forwards traffic either to a
- foreign routing domain, or across an area boundary within the same
- network. ARIS establishes VCs towards each unique egress identifier.
- Since thousands of IP destinations can map to the same egress
- identifier, ARIS minimizes the number of VCs required in an ISR
- network. This allows a large network to switch all of its IP
- traffic, resulting in improved aggregate IP throughput.
-
- Egress ISRs initiate the setup of VCs by sending Establishment
- messages to their upstream neighbors, typically within the same
- domain. These upstream neighbors forward the messages to their own
- upstream neighbors in Reverse Path Multicast style, after ensuring
- that the VC path is loop-free. Eventually, all ISRs establish VCs to
- all egress ISRs.
-
- The VC to an egress point, in general, takes the form of a tree. A
- tree results because of the "merging" of VCs that occurs at a node
- when multiple upstream VCs for a given egress point are spliced to a
- single downstream VC for that egress point.
-
-
- 2. VC Conservation
-
- An important goal of the ARIS protocol is to minimize the number of
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- VCs required by ISRs to switch all IP traffic in the switching cloud.
- Since switches may support only a limited VPI/VCI space, ARIS
- restrains its VC consumption so that VCs are available as needed for
- its own use, as well as for ATM services and other applications, such
- as RSVP. Further benefits include simplification of network
- management, both for automated tools and for human comprehension and
- analysis, and VC-setup overhead.
-
- The consumption of VCs is minimized:
-
- o by the use of egress routers that may map thousands of IP
- destinations to the same VC, and
-
- o by enabling the merging of VCs.
-
- The merging of VCs enables ARIS to create VC trees, each of which
- connects all of the ingresses to a given egress. This results in n
- trees, where n is the number of egresses in a network, while still
- providing the benefits of full mesh connectivity (without O(n**2)
- VCs).
-
- The network routing domain has the greatest performance and VC
- conservation when all routers in the domain are ISRs. Maximum ARIS
- benefits are also tied closely to an IP network routing topology with
- a high ratio of IP destinations to egresses, as exists in a typical
- IP backbone. However, ARIS is flexible enough to be highly
- beneficial even in networks with partial ISR deployments or arbitrary
- network routing topologies.
-
- The ability of the ARIS protocol to conserve the number of VCs
- depends on the hardware capabilities of the ISR. Some ATM switching
- components can "merge" multiple inbound VCs onto one outbound VC at
- close to standard switching rates. These merge-capable components
- are able to reassemble cells from the inbound VCs into frames, and
- inject the frames into the outbound VC, without interleaving cells
- from different frames.
-
-
- 3. Loop Prevention
-
- The ARIS protocol guarantees that VC loops are prevented, even in the
- presence of transient IP routing loops. With datagram forwarding
- loops, each hop decrements the TTL, so traffic is eventually dropped.
- However, ATM switching does not have a counter similar to the TTL, so
- traffic persists in a VC loop as long as the VC loop exists. At
- best, the traffic in the VC loop steals bandwidth from other (UBR)
- VCs; at worst, the traffic interferes with IP routing traffic, slows
- down routing convergence, and lengthens the life of the VC loop.
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- The ARIS protocol avoids creating VC loops by the use of an "ISR ID"
- list, similar in function to the BGP AS_PATH attribute. Each ISR in
- the VC establishment path appends its own unique ISR ID to each
- establishment message it forwards. In this way, an ISR is able to
- determine the path a message has traversed, and can ensure that no
- loops are formed.
-
- Further, if an ISR modifies or deletes an egress due to an IP route
- change, or receives a message that modifies an existing VC to an
- egress, the ISR must unsplice any established upstream VC from the
- downstream VC. This unsplicing forces inbound traffic to be
- forwarded at the IP network layer, so that transient IP routing
- loops, potentially created by the route change, cannot produce VC
- loops. The ISR must then re-establish a new VC to the modified
- egress. Note that ARIS does not attempt to suppress transient IP
- routing protocol loops; it only avoids establishing VC loops with
- this information.
-
-
- 4. ARIS Messages
-
- The ARIS protocol runs directly over IP, using IP protocol TBD. The
- following messages are used to manage the ISR switching cloud:
-
- Init
- This is the first message sent by an ISR to each of its neighbors,
- as notification of its existence. It is periodically transmitted
- until a positive acknowledgment is received. The Init message may
- include the neighbor timeout period, acceptable VC label range,
- encapsulation scheme [1], and other adjacency information.
-
- KeepAlive
- This message is sent by an ISR to inform its neighbors of its
- continued existence. It is the first message that is transmitted
- after an adjacency has been established. In order to prevent the
- neighbor timeout period from expiring, ARIS messages must be
- periodically sent to neighbors. The VC KeepAlive will only be
- sent when no other ARIS messages have been transmitted within the
- periodic interval time. A recommended transmission interval is
- 1/3 of the exchanged neighbor timeout period.
-
- Establishment
- This message is initiated by the egress ISR, and is periodically
- sent to each upstream neighbor to setup or refresh a VC. It is
- also sent by any ISR in response to a Trigger message. Each ISR
- that receives an Establishment message for an egress identifier
- must verify that the path is correct and loop free. If the
- Establishment message changes a previously known VC path to the
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- egress identifier, the ISR unsplices the obsolete VC. The ISR
- creates a downstream VC for the egress identifier, and replies
- with an Acknowledgment message. It then creates a VC for each of
- its upstream neighbors, forwards the Establishment message to the
- upstream neighbors with its unique ISR ID appended to the ISR ID
- path and the VC label for the upstream neighbor to use for
- forwarding, and waits for an Acknowledgment message. This pattern
- continues until all ISRs are reached.
-
- Trigger
- This message is sent by an ISR when it has detected that a local
- IP routing change has modified its path to the egress identifier.
- After unsplicing the obsolete VC, the ISR sends a Trigger message
- to its new downstream neighbor requesting an Establishment
- message.
-
- Teardown
- This message may be sent when an ISR has lost all connectivity to
- an egress identifier, or when a downstream node to an egress
- identifier has become an upstream node due to routing changes. In
- the former case, the message traverses the upstream ISR paths of
- the VC, unsplicing each VC along the way. In the latter case, the
- message is sent single hop to the new upstream (previously
- downstream) node, unsplicing the obsolete VC.
-
- Acknowledgment
- This message is sent as a response to ARIS messages. When an ISR
- receives a positive acknowledgment to Init message, it responds
- with a KeepAlive message. When an ISR receives a positive
- acknowledgment to an Establishment message, it splices the
- upstream VC to the downstream VC.
-
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- 5. ISR Information Bases
-
- The ISR needs three logical information bases to compute routes and
- forward datagrams: the routing information base, the forwarding
- information base, and the VC information base. The first, the
- routing information base (RIB), is used for the computation of best-
- effort routes by various IP routing protocols. The RIB for the ISR
- is essentially unchanged from the RIB on a standard router. In the
- ISR context, the RIB is also used to identify egress points and
- egress identifiers for the other two information bases.
-
- The forwarding information base (FIB) of the ISR has been extended
- beyond the content of the FIB on a standard router to include an
- egress identifier in each next hop entry. The FIB tends to contain
- many IP destination prefix entries, which point to a small number of
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- next hop entries that describe the hop-by-hop forwarding
- operation(s). Next hop entries on the ISR consist of an outgoing
- interface, next hop IP address, egress identifier, and the associated
- established downstream VC. The association of the next hops with the
- egress identifiers is the responsibility of the routing protocols,
- while the association of the next hop/egress identifiers with the
- established VCs is the responsibility of the ARIS protocol.
-
- The VC information base (VCIB), which does not exist on a standard
- router, maintains for each egress identifier the upstream to
- downstream VC mappings and related states. This mapping is controlled
- by the ARIS protocol.
-
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- 6. Egress Identifiers
-
- The ARIS protocol uses egress identifiers that balance the desire to
- share the same egress identifier among many IP destination prefixes,
- with the desire to maximize switching benefits. To provide
- flexibility, ARIS supports many types of egress identifiers. ISRs
- choose the type of egress identifier to use based on routing protocol
- information and local configuration.
-
- The first type of egress identifier is the IP destination prefix.
- This type results in each IP destination prefix sustaining its own VC
- tree, and thus will not scale in large backbone and enterprise
- networks. However, this is the only information that some routing
- protocols, such as RIP, can provide. This type of identifier may
- work well in networks where the number of destination prefixes is
- limited, such as in campus environments, or even in a wide-area
- network of a private enterprise.
-
- The second type of egress identifier is the egress IP address. This
- type is used primarily for BGP protocol updates, which carry this
- information in the NEXT_HOP attribute [2]. There are certain types
- of OSPF routes that also use this type. See "BGP Interaction" and
- "OSPF Interaction" for detailed information.
-
- The third type of egress identifier is the OSPF Router ID, which
- allows aggregation of traffic on behalf of multiple datagram
- protocols routed by OSPF. The latest version of OSPF, OSPFv3,
- supports the Router ID for both IP and IPv6 [3]. See "OSPF
- Interaction" for further information.
-
- The fourth type of egress identifier is the multicast (source, group)
- pair [4], used by multicast protocols, such as DVMRP [5], MOSPF [6]
- and PIM ([7], [8]). The fifth is the (ingress-of-source, group),
- used for such multicast protocols as MOSPF and PIM. See "IP
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- Multicast Interaction" for IP multicast protocol details.
-
- Other egress identifier types may be defined, including but not
- limited to IS-IS NSAP addresses, NLSP IPX addresses, IPv6 destination
- prefixes, etc.
-
- A hierarchy amongst the egress identifiers may be introduced to allow
- more flexible control over egress identifier selection. This allows
- an ISR to autolearn or be configured with non-default egress
- identifiers, and to select which egress identifiers to use in various
- routing situations.
-
- It should be noted that a network achieves a further performance
- optimization with ARIS when egress identifiers refer to the next hop
- router of the egress ISR. This allows datagrams to be switched
- entirely from the ingress point in the routing domain to the router
- past the egress ISR.
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- 7. Egress ISRs
-
- In the ARIS protocol, Establishment messages are originated from the
- egress ISR. An ISR is considered an egress ISR, with respect to a
- particular egress identifier, under any of the following conditions:
-
- 1. The egress identifier refers to the ISR itself (including
- one of its directly attached interfaces).
-
- 2. The egress identifier is reachable via a next hop router
- that is outside the ISR switching infrastructure.
-
- 3. The egress identifier is reachable by crossing a routing
- domain boundary, such as another area for OSPF summary
- networks, or another autonomous system for OSPF AS
- externals and BGP routes.
-
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- 8. Establishment Initiation Example
-
-
- +---+
- .... | 2 |
- +---+ ---> +---+ +--------+
- | 1 | ---> | Egress | --> ...
- +---+ ---> +---+ +--------+
- .... | 3 |
- +---+
- Example: Egress initiates Establishment
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- a) The Egress ISR learns of an egress identifier that indicates the
- egress is itself (see "Egress ISRs"). It creates a FIB entry
- for its next hop and egress identifier (itself).
-
- b) The Egress creates a VCIB entry with an upstream VC to ISR1, and
- initiates a VC Establishment message with the upstream VC label
- to use, and itself in the ISR ID path.
-
- c) ISR1 verifies that the Establish message was received from the
- expected next hop (Egress) by matching its FIB entry, and that
- the ISR ID path is loop free. It then creates a VCIB entry and
- a downstream VC to the Egress with the given VC label, replaces
- the default VC in the FIB with this new value, and replies to
- the Egress with an Acknowledgment message.
-
- d) ISR1 creates an upstream VC to each of its upstream neighbors,
- ISR2 and ISR3, and updates the corresponding VCIB entry. It
- forwards the Establishment message to each upstream neighbor,
- with its own ISR ID appended to the ISR ID path and with the VC
- label to use.
-
- e) When ISR1 receives each acknowledgment from each upstream
- neighbor, it updates the VCIB and splices the corresponding
- upstream VC to its Egress downstream VC.
-
- All upstream nodes recursively follow the same procedures as ISR1,
- until all Ingress nodes have been added to the VC path to the Egress.
-
- The Egress ISR is responsible for periodically sending refresh VC
- Establishment messages, to prevent VC timeouts. If a refresh is not
- received in the allotted time, VCs are unspliced and discarded.
-
-
- 9. Establishment Trigger Example
-
-
- +---+
- +-X-> | 2 | ---> ........
- | +---+ .
- +---+ +---+ --> +--------+
- .... | 4 | ---> | 1 | | Egress |
- +---+ +---+ --> +--------+
- | +---+ .
- +---> | 3 | ---> ........
- +---+
- Example: ISR1 changes routes from ISR2 to ISR3
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- a) ISR1 learns of a new path to the Egress via ISR3 from the
- routing protocols. It removes the FIB and VCIB entries for the
- next hop ISR2/Egress. ISR1 creates a new FIB entry for the next
- hop ISR3/Egress with a default VC to the next hop.
-
- b) ISR1 sends a Trigger message to new downstream node ISR3
- requesting an Establish message for the VC path to the Egress.
-
- c) ISR3 creates an upstream VC, updates its corresponding VCIB
- entry, and replies with an Establish message to ISR1, containing
- the full ISR ID path and the VC label.
-
- d) ISR1 verifies that the Establish message was received from the
- expected next hop (ISR3), and that the ISR ID path is loop free.
- It then creates a new VCIB entry and downstream VC to ISR3 with
- the given VC label, and replaces the default VC in the FIB with
- this new value.
-
- e) ISR1 sends an Acknowledgment message to ISR3.
-
- f) ISR3 receives the Acknowledgment, updates the VCIB and splices
- its ISR1 upstream VC to its downstream VC.
-
- g) ISR1 appends its ISR ID to the Establish message, and forwards
- the message to ISR4 with the upstream VC label.
-
- h) ISR4 verifies the Establish message, updates the VCIB, and
- unsplices the current VC to ISR1/Egress from its upstream
- node(s), and sends an Acknowledgment to ISR1.
-
- i) ISR1 receives the Acknowledgment, updates the VCIB and splices
- the ISR4 upstream VC to the ISR3 downstream VC.
-
- j) ISR4 appends its ISR ID to the path, and forwards the
- establishment message to its upstream neighbors with a VC label.
- When ISR4 receives an Acknowledgment from an upstream neighbor,
- it updates the VCIB and splices the upstream VC to the ISR1
- downstream VC.
-
- All upstream nodes recursively follow the same procedure as ISR4,
- until all ingress nodes have been updated.
-
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- 10. TTL Decrement
-
- In order to comply with the requirements for IPv4 routers, the IP
- datagram Time-To-Live (TTL) field must be decremented on each hop it
- traverses [9]. Currently, switched packets within ATM cannot
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- decrement the TTL. However, ARIS can decrement TTLs appropriately by
- maintaining a hop-count per egress identifier. This hop-count is
- calculated by including a hop-count field in the Establish message,
- which is incremented at each ISR as it traverses the upstream path.
- Before forwarding a packet on a VC, an ingress ISR decrements the TTL
- by the hop-count plus one. If the decrement value is greater than or
- equal to the TTL of the packet, the packet is forwarded hop-by-hop.
-
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- 11. Multipath Considerations
-
- Many IP routing protocols such as OSPF support the notion of equal-
- cost multipath routes, in which a router maintains multiple next hops
- for one destination prefix when two or more equal-cost paths to the
- prefix exist. Unfortunately, because of limitations in most ATM
- switching hardware, each path needs its own VC. Therefore, ingress
- ISRs may maintain a number of VCs to one egress ISR, each VC
- representing a different equal-cost path to the egress. In this
- case, the ingress ISR will make multipath decisions for traffic on
- behalf of all downstream ISRs.
-
- Each ISR that receives multiple (legal) Establishment messages from
- downstream ISRs with different paths to the same egress identifier
- can choose one of four different approaches for sending Establishment
- messages upstream. One approach is to send multiple Establishment
- messages upstream, preserving multiple VCs to the egress ISR. Each
- Establishment message requires an additional numeric identifier to be
- able to distinguish multiple distinct VCs to the destination, so that
- successive Establishment messages for distinct VCs are not
- misinterpreted as consecutive replacements of the same VC. When
- multiple Establishment VCs are preserved upstream, they require
- distinct VPI/VCI assignments, which works against conservation of
- VCs.
-
- Another approach, that conserves VCs at the cost of switching
- performance, is to originate one Establishment message upstream, and
- to forward datagrams at the IP network layer on the multipath point
- ISR.
-
- A third approach is to propagate only one Establishment message from
- the downstream ISRs to the upstream ISRs, and ignore the content of
- other VC Establishment messages. This conserves VCs and maintains
- switching performance, but may not balance loads across downstream
- links as well as the first two approaches, even if VCs are
- selectively dropped.
-
- The final approach is to propagate one Establishment message that
- carries the content of all downstream Establishment messages, so that
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- only one upstream VC is created to the multipath point. This
- requires that the ATM switching hardware on the multipath ISR be
- capable of correctly distributing the traffic of upstream VCs onto
- multiple downstream VCs. Furthermore, the Establishment message to
- send upstream must concatenate the ISR ID lists from downstream
- messages, in order to preserve the VC loop-free property. The ISR ID
- list concatenation is similar to using AS_SETs for aggregation in the
- BGP protocol. This final approach has the benefit of both VC
- conservation and performance, although it requires a slightly more
- complex implementation.
-
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- 12. BGP Interactions with ARIS
-
- The BGP implementation of the ISR uses the NEXT_HOP attribute as the
- egress identifier. When the BGP border ISR injects routes into the
- BGP mesh, it may use its own IP address or the address of its
- external BGP peer as the value of the NEXT_HOP attribute. This
- choice of NEXT_HOP attribute value creates different Establishment
- behaviors with ARIS.
-
- If the BGP border ISR uses its own IP address as the NEXT_HOP
- attribute in its injected routes, then all of these BGP routes share
- the same egress identifier. This approach establishes only one tree
- to the BGP border ISR, and the ISR must forward traffic at the IP
- layer towards its external BGP neighbors.
-
- If the BGP border ISR uses the external BGP peer as the NEXT_HOP
- attribute in its injected routes, then the BGP routes from each
- unique external BGP neighbor share the same egress identifier. This
- approach establishes one VC tree per external BGP neighbor of the BGP
- border ISR. The BGP border ISR can switch traffic directly to its
- external BGP neighbors.
-
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- 13. OSPF Interactions with ARIS
-
- The OSPF protocol exchanges five types of "link state advertisements"
- to create OSPF routing tables. All types of advertisements contain
- an "Advertising Router" field, which identifies the OSPF Router ID of
- the router that originates the advertisement. The ISR uses this OSPF
- Router ID as the egress identifier.
-
- The use of the OSPF Router ID as an egress identifier allows a new
- level of destination prefix abstraction. In a typical network, a
- router may be connected to several LANs (Ethernets, Token Rings,
- etc.), and may communicate to remote networks outside of its routing
- domain via adjacent routers. The remote destination networks may be
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- injected into the link state routing domain via static configuration,
- or via other routing protocols (such as RIP or BGP). These local and
- remote networks may be represented in the router forwarding tables as
- many destination prefixes, which cannot be aggregated into shorter
- prefixes (even when using CIDR [10]). Router labels (OSPF Router ID)
- provide a compact means to represent a number of destination prefixes
- that exit the link state routing domain at the same egress router.
- The association between destination prefixes and router labels is an
- easy by-product of the normal SPF computation.
-
- The one exception to using the OSPF Router ID is when ISRs receive an
- AS external link advertisement with a non-zero forwarding address.
- The OSPF protocol uses the forwarding address to allow traffic to
- bypass the router that originates the advertisement. Since the OSPF
- Router ID refers to the bypassed router, it is inadequate as an
- egress identifier in this case. Instead, the ARIS protocol must use
- the forwarding address as the egress identifier.
-
- Using the forwarding address as the egress identifier provides
- significant benefits. Since the AS external forwarding address and
- the BGP NEXT_HOP attribute are both external IP addresses, they are
- compatible types of egress identifiers, which may allow BGP and OSPF
- routes to share the same VC. Further, the OSPF AS boundary ISR can
- switch traffic directly to its external neighbors, just like BGP.
-
- The ISR identifies itself as an OSPF egress when the ISR is an area
- border router or an AS boundary router, or when it is directly
- attached to a LAN.
-
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- 14. IP Multicast Interactions with ARIS
-
- The ARIS protocol can be used to setup VCs for IP multicast traffic,
- in particular for multicast protocols using Reverse Path Multicasting
- (RPM). The typical RPM forwarding information base maps a source IP
- network address and multicast group pair, (S,G), to an expected
- incoming interface and a set of outgoing interfaces. The ISR extends
- the forwarding information base to include one egress identifier per
- (S,G).
-
- The current choice of egress identifier is the (S,G) pair itself.
- This egress identifier creates one source-based VC tree per source
- address and group pair. The VC tree carries traffic from the ingress
- ISR to all egress ISRs, using multicast switching within intermediate
- ISRs. Egress ISRs for multicast are similar to egress ISRs for the
- unicast case, except that multicast egress ISRs are determined by
- group membership location, instead of egress point reachability. An
- ISR becomes an egress for a particular (S,G) when it forwards traffic
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- from a source S to a group G over a non-ISR link.
-
- Having multicast VCs set up on the basis of (S,G) works well with the
- IGMPv3 Group-Source messages, since these IGMP messages can create
- unique trees for each sender within the same group [11].
-
- An alternative egress identifier choice is to use the "ingress" of
- the source address S in the (S,G) pair. This choice creates one
- ingress-based VC tree for all of the sources of a group that share a
- given ingress, instead of one for each of the sources. This permits
- a greater amount of VC aggregation in the ISR cloud. The ingress of
- a source address is calculated in a similar fashion to calculating an
- egress identifier for a destination prefix. Unfortunately, one cannot
- calculate useful ingress identifiers for DVMRP, for the same reason
- that one cannot calculate useful egress identifiers for RIP.
- Furthermore, since some protocols permit source-specific multicast
- pruning, the multicast distribution tree for a particular group may
- differ according to source address, even if sources share the same
- ingress point. However, the advantages this approach offers with
- regards to VC conservation on those protocols capable of supporting
- the ingress of source may outweigh the disadvantages of wasting
- bandwidth by sending traffic to leaf networks where a particular
- source may be filtered.
-
- Based on the topology of the multicast distribution tree, there may
- be multiple egress ISRs for the egress identifier (S,G). Each ISR
- can send one multicast Establishment message to the one upstream ISR
- on the path back toward the source address. The ISR ID lists of
- multicast downstream ISRs, with the current ISR ID, are concatenated
- (like BGP AS_SETs) before sending the Establishment message to the
- upstream ISR.
-
- The observant reader may note that ARIS uses a multicast scheme to
- build unicast VCs, and a unicast scheme to build multicast VCs.
-
-
- 15. Virtual Path Extension
-
- The ARIS usage of "merged" VC flows requires that ATM switching
- hardware have the capabilty of preventing cell interleaving (see "VC
- Conservation"). Unfortunately, much of the existing ATM switching
- hardware cannot support VC merging. One solution to this problem is
- to use virtual paths (VPs) to egress points, rather than virtual
- circuits (VCs). The virtual path extension merges VPs, creating
- trees of VPs to the egress points, instead of merging VCs. Cell
- interleaving is prevented by the assignment of unique VC identifiers
- (VCIs) within each VP.
-
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- The ISRs within a network are assigned unique VCIs to prevent VCI
- collisions when paths from different ISRs are merged. Each ISR
- requires a block of VCIs as labels to distinguish between cell paths
- to the same egress identifier. By assigning a unique block of VCIs
- to each ISR, ARIS guarantees that an ISR at a network merge point can
- safely merge upstream VP flows for an egress identifier to a single
- downstream VP without VCI collisions.
-
- Although the virtual path extension uses VCs much less efficiently
- than a VC merging implementation, it reduces network latency and
- hardware requirements because frame reassembly and re-segmentation is
- not required on intermediate ISRs. In addition, although this
- variation uses more VC space, the work involved in establishing and
- maintaining switched paths is still O(n).
-
- An alternative approach to the VC merging problem is to use an end-
- to-end VC label upstream allocation. This allows the ingress node to
- choose the downstream VC. In this approach, ISRs acknowledge the
- Establishment message with a label only after they receive an
- Acknowledgment message from their own upstream neighbor. Thus, the
- Establishment message traverses fully to the ingress node before
- being acknowledged. Ingress ISRs immediately acknowledge the
- Establishment message with the VC label. These acknowledgements may
- be merged as they travel downstream to the egress node. This method
- adds latency in the VC set up, and removes the benefits of ARIS VC
- aggregation (O(n**2) versus O(n) VCs). However, it adds the
- flexibility of performing VC-switching instead of VP-switching, which
- also makes switching possible at the routing boundaries.
-
-
- 16. Multiprotocol Support
-
- ARIS is capable of multi-protocol support. Further, the egress
- aggregation feature of ARIS is applicable to those network layer
- topologies (IP, CLNP, IPX) that use a link state routing protocol.
- In particular, integrated IS-IS can calculate routes for CLNP, IP4,
- and IP6 simultaneously (with one Dijkstra calculation), and OSPFv3
- (the new draft of OSPF) can calculate routes for IP4 and IP6
- simultaneously. Both integrated IS-IS and OSPFv3 use a single router
- label to represent a single router that supports multiple network
- layer protocols. In this context, ARIS can minimize switching paths
- by using a single switching path for traffic from multiple network
- protocols destined to the same egress multiprotocol router.
-
-
- 17. ARIS And Frame Switching Technology
-
- The ARIS protocol is easily extendible to other switching
-
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- environments. Though the present document illustrates ARIS in ATM
- cell switching technology, it may later be extended to other
- switching technologies. In fact, ARIS applies well to frame switching
- technology.
-
- While ARIS solves the problem of cell interleaving in the case of ATM
- by Virtual Path switching, it naturally and easily maps to a frame
- switching environment. This is due to the fact that multiple
- upstream flows can be merged into a single downstream flow without
- the problems of cell interleaving.
-
-
- 18. Quality of Service
-
- ARIS can be extended to support Quality of Service (QoS) parameters.
- This will be addressed in a future ARIS revision.
-
-
- 19. ARIS Advantages
-
- The ARIS approach to IP switching offers the following advantages:
-
- o VC aggregation
- - Use of egress identifiers allows many route (CIDR) prefixes
- to map to the same VC
- - Ability to create O(n) ARIS VCs (not O(n**2)) on full mesh,
- where n is the number of nodes in a network.
-
- o Low VC setup overhead
- - Few VCs to setup due to routing-based and aggregated VCs
- - VC teardown/setup only on internal route changes
-
- o Switches large proportion of traffic
- - All traffic assigned to VCs
- - VCs created independent of traffic patterns
-
- o Guaranteed loop-free VC paths
-
- o Preserves VC's for RSVP flows or standard ATM connections
-
- o Scales to large networks
-
-
- 20. Security Consideration
-
- Security considerations are not addressed in this memo.
-
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- 21. Intellectual Property Considerations
-
- International Business Machines Corporation may seek patent or other
- intellectual property protection for some or all of the aspects
- discussed in the forgoing document.
-
-
- 22. Acknowledgements
-
- The authors wish to acknowledge the following people for their input
- and support: Ed Bowen, Jerry Marin, Wayne Pace, Dean Skidmore, and
- Vijay Srinivasan.
-
-
- 23. References
-
- [1] Juha Heinanen, "Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation
- Layer 5", RFC 1483, Telecom Finland, July 1993
-
- [2] Y. Rekhter, T. Li, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC
- 1771, IBM Corp, Cisco Systems, March 1995
-
- [3] J. Moy, "OSPF Version 2", RFC 1583, Proteon Inc, March 1994
-
- [4] S. Deering, "Host extensions for IP multicasting", RFC 1112,
- Stanford University, August 1989
-
- [5] D. Waitzman, C. Partridge, S. Deering, "Distance Vector
- Multicast Routing Protocol", RFC 1075, BBN, Stanford University,
- November 1988
-
- [6] J. Moy, "Multicast Extensions to OSPF", RFC 1584, Proteon Inc,
- March 1994
-
- [7] S. Deering, D. Estrin, D. Farinacci, V. Jacobson, C. Liu, L.
- Wei, P. Sharma, A. Helmy, "Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse
- Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification", Internet Draft <draft-
- ietf-idmr-pim-spec-02.txt>, Xerox, Cisco Systems, USC, LBL,
- September 1995
-
- [8] D. Estrin, D. Farinacci, V. Jacobson, C. Liu, L. Wei, P. Sharma,
- A. Helmy, "Protocol Independent Multicast-Dense Mode (PIM-DM):
- Protocol Specification", Internet Draft <draft-ietf-idmr-pim-
- dm-spec-01.txt>, USC, Cisco Systems, LBL, January 1996
-
- [9] F. Baker (Editor), "Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers", RFC
- 1812, Cisco Systems, June 1995
-
-
-
-
- Woundy, et al. Expiration: May 1997 [Page 16]
-
-
-
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-
-
- [10] V. Fuller, T. Li, J. Yu, K. Varadhan, "Classless Inter-Domain
- Routing (CIDR): an Address Assignment and Aggregation
- Strategy", RFC 1519, BARRNET, Cisco Systems, MERIT, OARnet,
- September, 1993
-
- [11] B. Cain, S. Deering, A. Thyagarajan, "Internet Group Management
- Protocol Version 3", Internet Draft <draft-cain-igmp-00.txt>,
- University of Delaware, Xerox PARC, August 1995
-
-
- 24. Authors' Addresses
-
- Rick Boivie
- IBM Corp.
- 17 Skyline Drive
- Hawthorne, NY 10532
- Phone: +1 914-784-3251
- Email: rboivie@vnet.ibm.com
-
-
- Nancy Feldman
- IBM Corp.
- 17 Skyline Drive
- Hawthorne, NY 10532
- Phone: +1 914-784-3254
- Email: nkf@vnet.ibm.com
-
-
- Arun Viswanathan
- IBM Corp.
- 17 Skyline Drive
- Hawthorne, NY 10532
- Phone: +1 914-784-3273
- Email: arunv@vnet.ibm.com
-
-
- Richard Woundy
- Continental Cablevision
- The Pilot House - Lewis Wharf
- Boston, MA 02110
- Phone: +1 617-854-3351
- Email: rwoundy@continental.com
-
-
-
-
-
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