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draft-ietf-mpls-soft-preemption-01.txt                    October, 2003 


          
                                                        Matthew R. Meyer 
                                                         Global Crossing 
                                                           Denver Maddux 
                                                             Nitrous.net 
                                                   Jean-Philippe Vasseur 
                                                     Cisco Systems, Inc. 
                                                       Curtis Villamizar 
                                                           Avici Systems  
                                                           Amir Birjandi  
                                                                     MCI 
IETF Internet Draft 
Expires: April, 2004                                                
October, 2003 
 
 
 
                                     
                                     
                <draft-ietf-mpls-soft-preemption-01.txt> 
                                     
                                     
                MPLS Traffic Engineering Soft preemption 
 
 
Status of this Memo 
 
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all 
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. 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." 
 
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. 
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.









  
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draft-ietf-mpls-soft-preemption-01.txt                    October, 2003 


 
 
Abstract 
 
This draft documents MPLS TE Soft Preemption, a suite of protocol 
modifications extending the concept of preemption with the goal of 
reducing/eliminating traffic disruption of preempted TE LSPs.  
Initially MPLS RSVP-TE was defined supporting only immediate LSP 
displacement upon preemption.  The utilization of a preemption pending 
flag helps more gracefully mitigate the re-route process of preempted 
LSPs.  For the brief period soft preemption is activated, reservations 
(though not necessarily traffic levels) are in effect over-provisioned 
until the LSP can be re-routed.  For this reason, the feature is 
primarily but not exclusively interesting in packet oriented MPLS 
networks with Diff-Serv and TE capabilities. 
 
 
1. Terminology 
  
CSPF - Constraint-based Shortest Path First. 
 
Hard Preemption - Process whereby one LSP is intrusively displaced by a 
better priority LSP. 
 
LER - Label Edge Router 
 
LSR - Label Switch Router 
 
LSP - An MPLS Label Switched Path 
 
Make Before Break - Technique used to non-intrusively alter the path of 
an LSP.  The ingress LER First signals, sharing the bandwidth with the 
primary LSP (to avoid double booking), then switches forwarding over to 
a new path. Finally the old path state is torn down. 
 
Preemption Pending flag - This flag is set on an IPv4 or IPv6 RSVP Resv 
RRO sub-object to signal to the TE LSP ingress LER that the TE LSP is 
about to be preempted and must be re-signaled (in a non disruptive 
fashion, with make before break) along another path. The flag can be 
set for Path RRO as well. 
 
Soft Preemption Desired Flag - This flag is set on an IPv4 or IPv6 Path 
RRO sub-object to indicate to LSRs along the path that, should the LSP 
need to be preempted, soft preemption should be used if supported.   
 
TE LSP - Traffic Engineering Label Switched Path 
     




  
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2. Motivations 
 
Initially MPLS RSVP-TE was defined supporting only a method of TE LSP 
preemption which immediately tore down TE LSPs, disregarding the 
preempted in-transit traffic. This simple but abrupt process nearly 
guarantees preempted traffic will be discarded, if only briefly, until 
the RSVP Path Error message reaches and is processed by the ingress LER 
and a new forwarding path can be established.  In cases of actual 
resource contention this might be helpful, however preemption is 
triggered by mere reservation contention and reservations may not 
reflect forwarding plane contention up to the moment.  The result is 
that traffic is often needlessly being discarded.   
 
The intrusive or hard preemption may be a requirement to protect 
traffic in a network without Diff-Serv, but in a Diff-Serv enabled 
architecture one need not rely exclusively upon preemption to enforce a 
preference for the most valued traffic since the marking and queuing 
disciplines should already be aligned for those purposes. Moreover, 
even in non Diff-Serv aware networks, depending on the TE LSP sizing 
rules, reservation contention may not accurately reflect forwarding 
plane congestion. 
 
 
3. Introduction 
 
In an MPLS RSVP-TE enabled network hard preemption provides no 
mechanism to allow preempted TE LSPs to be handled in a make-before-
break fashion: the hard preemption scheme instead utilizes a very 
intrusive method that can cause traffic disruption for a potentially 
large amount of TE LSPs.  The consequences of disruptive preemption 
make periodic automated mechanisms like TE LSP dynamic resizing less 
palatable when high network stability is sought. This draft proposes 
the use of additional signaling and accounting mechanisms to alert the 
ingress LER of the preemption that is pending and allow for temporary 
over-provisioning while the preempted tunnel is re-routed in a non 
disruptive fashion (make-before-break) by the ingress LER. During the 
period that the tunnel is being re-routed, link capacity is over-
provisioned on links where soft preemption has occurred. Optionally the 
egress LER may be signaled as well to more efficiently deal with any 
simultaneous soft preemptions. 
 
 
4. RSVP extensions 
 
4.1. SESSION-ATTRIBUTES Flags 
 
To explicitly signal the desire for a TE LSP to benefit from the soft 
preemption mechanism (and so not to be hard preempted), the following 

  
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flag of the SESSION-ATTRIBUTE object (for both the C-Type 1 and 7) is 
defined: 
                
Soft preemption desired:  0x40  
 
 
4.2. RRO IPv4/IPv6 Sub-Object Flags 
 
To report that a soft preemption is pending for an LSP, a flag is 
defined in the IPv4/IPv6 sub-object carried in the RRO object message 
defined in RFC3209.  This flag is called the preemption pending (PPend) 
flag. A compliant LSR MUST support the RRO object, as defined in RFC 
3209. 
 
RRO IPv4 and IPv6 sub-object address 
 
These two sub-objects currently have the following flags defined in RFC 
3209 and [FAST-REROUTE]: 
 
  Local protection available: 0x01 
        Indicates that the link downstream of this node is protected 
        via a local repair mechanism, which can be either one-to-one or 
        facility backup. 
 
  Local protection in use: 0x02 
        Indicates that a local repair mechanism is in use to maintain 
        this tunnel (usually in the face of an outage of the link it 
        was previously routed over, or an outage of the neighboring 
        node). 
 
  Bandwidth protection: 0x04 
        The PLR will set this when the protected LSP has a backup path 
        which is guaranteed to provide the desired bandwidth specified 
        in the FAST_REROUTE object or the bandwidth of the protected 
        LSP, if no FAST_REROUTE object was included. The PLR may set 
        this whenever the desired bandwidth is guaranteed; the PLR MUST 
        set this flag when the desired bandwidth is guaranteed and the 
        "bandwidth protection desired" flag was set in the 
        SESSION_ATTRIBUTE object. If the requested bandwidth is not 
        guaranteed, the PLR MUST NOT set this flag. 
 
  Node protection: 0x08 
        The PLR will set this when the protected LSP has a backup path 
        which provides protection against a failure of the next LSR 
        along the protected LSP. The PLR may set this whenever node 
        protection is provided by the protected LSP's backup path; the 
        PLR MUST set this flag when the node protection is provided and 
        the "node protection desired" flag was set in the 
        SESSION_ATTRIBUTE object. If node protection is not provided, 
        the PLR MUST NOT set this flag. Thus, if a PLR could only setup 

  
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        a link-protection backup path, the "Local protection available" 
        bit will be set but the "Node protection" bit will 
        be cleared. 
 
 
 
Soft preemption makes use of the Preemption pending flag defined here: 
 
  Preemption pending: 0x10 
        The preempting node sets this flag if a pending preemption is 
        in progress for the TE LSP. This indicates to the ingress LER 
        of this LSP that it SHOULD be re-routed. 
         
4.3. Use of the RRO IPv4/IPv6 Sub-Object in Path message 
 
An LSR MAY use the Preemption pending flag in the IPv4/IPv6 RRO sub-
object carried in a PATH RRO message to simultaneously alert downstream 
LSRs that the LSP was soft preempted upstream.  This information could 
be used by the downstream LSR to bias future soft preemption candidates 
toward LSPs already soft preempted elsewhere in their path. 
 
5. Mode of operation 
 
R0-----1G--R1--155--R2          LSP1:        LSP2: 
        | \         | 
        |  \        155        R0-->R1      R1<--R2 
        |   \       |                 \      | 
       155  1G      R3                 V     V 
        |     \     |                 R5     R4 
        |      \    155 
        |       \   | 
        R4------1G--R5 
 
Fig 1. 
 
In the network depicted above in figure 1, consider the following 
conditions: 
 
-Reservable BW on R0-R1, R1-R5 and R4-R5 is 1Gb/sec 
-Reservable BW on R1-R2, R1-R4, R2-R3, R3-R5 is 155 Mb/sec. 
Bandwidths and costs are identical in both directions 
-Each circuit has an IGP metric of 10 and IGP metric is used by CSPF 
-Two TE tunnels are defined: 
        -LSP1: 155 Mb, setup/hold priority 0 tunnel path R0-R1-R5. 
        -LSP2: 155 Mb, setup/hold priority 7 tunnel path R2-R1-R4. 
Both TE LSPs are signaled with the Soft Preemption bit of their 
SESSION-ATTRIBUTE object set. 
-Circuit R1-R5 fails. 
-Soft Preemption is functional. 
 

  
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When the circuit R1-R5 fails, R1 detects the failure and sends an 
updated IGP LSA/LSP and Path Error message to all the ingress LERs 
having a TE LSP traversing the failed link (R0 in the example above). 
Either form of notification may arrive at the ingress LERs first.  Upon 
receiving the link failure notification, ingress LER R0 triggers a TE 
LSP re-route of LSP1, and re-signals LSP1 along shortest path available 
satisfying the TE LSP constraints: R0-R1-R4-R5 path. The Resv messages 
for LSP1 travel in the upstream direction (from the destination to the 
ingress LER -- R5 to R0 in this example). LSP2 is soft preempted at R1 
as it has a numerically lower priority value and both bandwidth 
reservations cannot be satisfied on the R1-R4 link. 
 
Instead of sending a path tear for LSP2 upon preemption as with hard 
preemption (which would result in an immediate traffic disruption for 
LSP2), R1s local BW accounting for LSP2 is zeroed and a preemption 
pending flagged Resv RRO for LSP2 is issued upstream toward the ingress 
LER, R2. Optionally, R1 MAY simultaneously send a soft preemption 
flagged Path RRO notifying downstream LSRs of LSP2s soft preemption.  
If more than one soft preempted LSP has the same ingress LER (egress 
LER), these soft preemption Resv (Path) messages MAY be bundled 
together (see RFC2961). 
 
The preempting node MUST immediately send a Resv message with the 
Preemption pending RRO flag set for each soft preempted TE LSP.  The 
node MAY use the occurrence of soft preemption to trigger an immediate 
IGP update or influence the scheduling of an IGP update.  
 
Should a refresh event for LSP2 arrive before LSP2 is re-routed, soft 
preempting nodes such as R1 MUST continue to refresh the LSP.  Resv 
messages with the RRO Preemption pending flag set SHOULD be sent in 
reliable mode (RFC 2961). 
 
Upon reception of the Resv with the Preemption pending flag set, the 
ingress LER (of LSP2 in this case) MAY update the working copy of the 
TE-DB before running CSPF for the new LSP.  In the case that Diff-Serv 
[DIFF-MPLS] & TE [RSVP-TE]are deployed (as opposed to Diff-Serv-aware 
TE [DS-TE]), receiving preemption pending may imply to a ingress LER 
that the available bandwidth for the affected priority level and 
greater has been exhausted for the indicated node interface.  An 
ingress LER MAY choose to reduce or zero available BW for the implied 
priority range until more accurate information is available (i.e. a new 
IGP TE update is received). 
 
In the case that reservation availability is restored at the point of 
preemption (R1) the point of preemption MAY issue a Resv message with 
the Preemption pending flag unset to signal restoration to the 
ingress LER.  This implies that a ingress LER might have delayed or 
been unsuccessful in re-signaling. 
 
After the ingress LER has successfully established a new LSP, the old 
path MUST be torn down. 
  
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draft-ietf-mpls-soft-preemption-01.txt                    October, 2003 


 
As a result of 'soft preemption', no traffic will be needlessly black-
holed due to mere reservation contention.  If loss is to occur, it will 
be due only to an actual traffic congestion scenario and 
according to the operators Diff-Serv (if Diff-Serv is deployed) and 
queuing scheme. 
 
 
6. Selection of the preempted TE LSP at a preempting mid-point 
 
When a numerically lower priority TE LSP is signaled that requires the 
preemption of a set of numerically higher priority LSPs, the node where 
preemption is to occur has to make a decision on the set of TE LSP, 
candidates for preemption. This decision is a local decision and 
various algorithms can be used, depending on the objective. See 
[PREEMPT-EXP]. 
 
As already mentioned, soft preemption causes a temporary link over-
provisioning condition while the soft preempted TE LSPs are re-routed 
by their respective ingress LERs.  In order to reduce this over-
provisioning exposure, a preempting LSR MAY limit the number of soft 
preempt-able TE LSPs to the subset of TE LSP that have explicitly 
requested soft preemption via signaling, setting their Soft Preemption 
desired bit in the SESSION-ATTRIBUTE of their RSVP Path messages. This 
way, the preempting LSR could apply hard preemption to the remaining TE 
LSPs that have not explicitly requested soft preemption, sending a Path 
Error message to their ingress LER and immediately removing the 
corresponding local states.  This would help reducing the temporarily 
elevated over-provisioning ratio on the links where soft preemption 
occurs.  
 
Optionally, a midpoint LSR upstream or downstream from a soft 
preempting node MAY choose to cache the LSPs soft preempted state. In 
the event a local preemption is needed, the relevant priority level 
LSPs from the cache are soft preempted first, followed by the normal 
soft and hard preemption selection process for the given priority. 
 
 
7. Interoperability 
 
Backward compatibility should be assured as long as the implementation 
followed the recommendation set forth in RFC 3209. "The presence of an 
unrecognized subobject which is not encountered in a node's ERO 
processing SHOULD be ignored.  It is passed forward along with the rest 
of the remaining ERO stack."  An LSR without soft preemption 
capabilities but that followed the aforementioned recommendation will 
simply ignore the RRO Preemption Pending flag and treat the Resv 
message as a regular Resv refresh message. As a consequence, the soft 
preempted TE LSP will not be re-routed with make before break by the 
ingress LER.  
 
  
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draft-ietf-mpls-soft-preemption-01.txt                    October, 2003 


To guard against a situation where bandwidth over-provisioning will 
last forever, a local timer (soft preemption expiration timer) MUST be 
started on the preemption node, upon soft preemption. When this timer 
expires, the soft preempted TE LSP will be torn down and the preempting 
node SHOULD send a Path Error. This timer MAY be configurable. 
Optionally, an implementation MAY choose to Hard preempt TE LSP for 
which the Soft preemption desired bit has not been set. The current 
hard preemption scheme can be emulated with a soft preemption 
expiration timer set to zero. 
 
 
8. Management 
 
Both the point of preemption and the ingress LER SHOULD provide some 
form of accounting internally and to the user with regard to which TE 
LSPs and how much capacity is over-provisioned due to soft preemption. 
 
 
9. Security Considerations 
 
The practice described in this draft does not raise specific security 
issues beyond those of existing TE. 
 
 
10. Acknowledgment 
 
The authors would like to thank Carol Iturralde, Dave Cooper for their 
valuable comments. 
 
 
11. Intellectual Property 
 
The contributor represents that he has disclosed the existence of any 
proprietary or intellectual property rights in the contribution that 
are reasonably and personally known to the contributor.  The 
contributor does not represent that he personally knows of all 
potentially pertinent proprietary and intellectual property rights 
owned or claimed by the organization he represents (if any) or third 
parties. 
 
 
References 
 
[TE-REQ] Awduche et al, Requirements for Traffic Engineering over MPLS, 
RFC2702, September 1999. 
 
[OSPF-TE] Katz, Yeung, Traffic Engineering Extensions to OSPF, draft-
katz-yeung-ospf-traffic-09.txt, October 2002.  
 
[ISIS-TE] Smit, Li, IS-IS extensions for Traffic Engineering, draft-
ietf-isis-traffic-04.txt, December 2002. 
  
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[RSVP-TE] Awduche et al, "RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP Tunnels",  
RFC3209, December 2001. 
 
[DS-TE] Le Faucheur et al, "Requirements for support of Diff-Serv-aware 
MPLS Traffic Engineering", RFC3564, July  2003. 
 
[DS-TE-PROT] Le Faucheur et al, "Protocol extensions for support of   
Diff-Serv-aware MPLS Traffic Engineering", draft-ietf-tewg-diff-te-
proto-05.txt, September 2003 
 
[FAST-REROUTE] Pan, P. et al., "Fast Reroute Extentions to 
RSVP-TE for LSP Tunnels", Internet Draft, draft-ietf-mpls-rsvp-lsp-
fastreroute-03.txt 
, December, 2003 
 
[REFRESH-REDUCTION] Berger et al, "RSVP Refresh Overhead Reduction 
Extensions", RFC 2961, April 2001. 
 
[PREEMPT-EXP]DE Oliviera, JP. Vasseur, L.Chen and C. Scoglio " LSP Preemption Polcies for MPLS Traffic Engineering", daft-deoliviera-diff-te-preemption-02.txt, October 2003  
 
[DIFF-MPLS]  Le Faucheur, F., Wu, L., Davie, B., Davari, S., Vaananen, 
P., Krishnan, R., Cheval, P. and J. Heinanen, "Multi-Protocol Label 
Switching (MPLS) Support of Differentiated Services", RFC 3270, May 
2002. 
 
Matthew R. Meyer 
Global Crossing 
3133 Indian Valley Tr. 
Howell, MI 48855 
USA 
email: mrm@gblx.net 
 
Denver Maddux 
Nitrous.net 
1020 SW 35th St 
Corvallis, OR 97333 
USA 
email: denver@nitrous.net 
 
Jean Philippe Vasseur 
Cisco Systems, Inc. 
300 Beaver Brook Road 
Boxborough , MA - 01719 
USA 
Email: jpv@cisco.com  
 
Curtis Villamizar 
Avici Systems Inc. 
USA 

  
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Email: curtis@avici.com 
 
Amir Birjandi  
MCI 
22001 louden county pky  
Ashburn, VA 20147 
USA 












































  
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PAFTECH AB 2003-20262026-04-23 06:49:24