One document matched: draft-ietf-pwe3-redundancy-09.xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<!DOCTYPE rfc SYSTEM "rfc2629.dtd">
<?rfc toc="yes"?>
<?rfc tocompact="yes"?>
<?rfc tocdepth="3"?>
<?rfc tocindent="yes"?>
<?rfc symrefs="yes"?>
<?rfc sortrefs="yes"?>
<?rfc comments="yes"?>
<?rfc inline="yes"?>
<?rfc compact="yes"?>
<?rfc subcompact="no"?>
<rfc category="info" docName="draft-ietf-pwe3-redundancy-09" ipr="trust200902">
  <front>
    <title abbrev="PW Redundancy">Pseudowire Redundancy</title>

    <author fullname="Praveen Muley" initials="P." surname="Muley">
      <organization>Alcatel-Lucent</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street></street>

          <city></city>

          <region></region>

          <code></code>

          <country></country>
        </postal>

        <email>praveen.muley@alcatel-lucent.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Mustapha Aissaoui" initials="M." surname="Aissaoui">
      <organization>Alcatel-Lucent</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street></street>

          <city></city>

          <region></region>

          <code></code>

          <country></country>
        </postal>

        <email>mustapha.aissaoui@alcatel-lucent.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Matthew Bocci" initials="M." surname="Bocci">
      <organization>Alcatel-Lucent</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street></street>

          <city></city>

          <region></region>

          <code></code>

          <country></country>
        </postal>

        <email>matthew.bocci@alcatel-lucent.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date day="27" month="June" year="2012" />

    <abstract>
      <t>This document describes a framework comprised of a number of
      scenarios and associated requirements for pseudowire (PW) redundancy. A
      set of redundant PWs is configured between provider edge (PE) nodes in
      single -segment PW applications, or between terminating PE (T-PE) nodes
      in multi-segment PW applications. In order for the PE/T-PE nodes to
      indicate the preferred PW to use for forwarding PW packets to one
      another, a new PW status is required to indicate the preferential
      forwarding status of active or standby for each PW in the redundant
      set.</t>
    </abstract>

    <note title="Requirements Language">
      <t>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 <xref
      target="RFC2119">RFC 2119</xref>.</t>
    </note>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <section title="Introduction">
      <t>The objective of pseudowire (PW) redundancy is to maintain
      connectivity across the packet switched network (PSN) used by the
      emulated service if a component in the path of the emulated service
      fails or a backup component is activated. For example, PW redundancy
      will enable the correct PW to be used for forwarding emulated service
      packets when the connectivity of an attachment circuit (AC) changes due
      to the failure of an AC, or when a pseudowire (PW) or packet switched
      network (PSN) tunnel fails due to the failure of a provider edge (PE)
      node.</t>

      <t>PW redundancy uses redundant ACs, PEs, and PWs to eliminate single
      points of failure in the path of an emulated service. This is achieved
      while ensuring that only one path between a pair of customer edge nodes
      (CEs) is active at any given time. Mechanisms that rely on more than one
      active path between the CEs e.g. 1+1 protection switching, are out of
      scope of this document because they may require a permanent bridge to
      provide traffic replication as well as support for a 1+1 protection
      switching protocol in the CEs.</t>

      <t>Protection for a PW segment can be provided by the PSN layer. This
      may be a resource reservation protocol with traffic engineering
      (RSVP-TE) labeled switched path (LSP) with a fast-reroute (FRR) backup
      or an end-to-end backup LSP. These mechanisms can restore PSN
      connectivity rapidly enough to avoid triggering protection by PW
      redundancy. PSN protection mechanisms cannot protect against the failure
      of a PE node or the failure of the remote AC. Typically, this is
      supported by dual-homing a customer edge (CE) node to different PE nodes
      which provide a pseudowire emulated service across the PSN. A set of PW
      mechanisms is therefore required that enables a primary and one or more
      backup PWs to terminate on different PE nodes. An important requirement
      is that changes occurring on the dual-homed side of the network due to
      the failure of an AC or PE are not propagated to the ACs on the other
      side of the network. Furthermore, failures in the PSN are not propagated
      to the attached CEs.</t>

      <t>In cases where PSN protection mechanisms are not able to recover from
      a PSN failure, or where a failure of a switching PE (S-PE) may occur, a
      set of mechanisms that support the operation of a primary and one or
      more backup PWs via a different set of S-PEs or diverse PSN tunnels is
      therefore required. For multi-segment PWs (MS-PWs), the paths of these
      PWs are diverse in that they are switched at different S-PE nodes.</t>

      <t>In both of these cases, PW redundancy is important to maximise the
      resiliency of the emulated service. It supplements PSN protection
      techniques and can operate in addition to, or instead of those
      techniques when they are not available.</t>

      <t>This document describes a framework for these applications and its
      associated operational requirements. The framework utilizes a new PW
      status, called the Preferential Forwarding Status of the PW. This is
      separate from the operational states defined in RFC4446 <xref
      target="RFC4446"></xref>. The mechanisms for PW redundancy are modeled
      on general protection switching principles.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Terminology">
      <t><list style="symbols">
          <t>Up PW: A PW which has been configured (label mapping exchanged
          between PEs) and is not in any of the PW or AC defect states
          specified in <xref target="RFC4446"></xref>. Such a PW is available
          for forwarding traffic.</t>

          <t>Down PW: A PW that has either not been fully configured, or has
          been configured and is in any one of the PW or AC defect states
          specified in <xref target="RFC4446"></xref>. Such a PW is not
          available for forwarding traffic.</t>

          <t>Active PW: An up PW used for forwarding Operations,
          Administration and Maintenance (OAM), user plane and control plane
          traffic.</t>

          <t>Standby PW: An up PW that is not used for forwarding user traffic
          but may forward OAM and specific control plane traffic.</t>

          <t>PW Endpoint: A PE where a PW terminates on a point where native
          service processing is performed, e.g., A single-segment PW (SS-PW)
          PE, a multi-segment pseudowire (MS-PW) terminating PE (T-PE), or a
          hierarchical VPLS MTU-s or PE-rs.</t>

          <t>Primary PW: The PW which a PW endpoint activates (i.e. uses for
          forwarding) in preference to any other PW when more than one PW
          qualifies for the active state. When the primary PW comes back up
          after a failure and qualifies for the active state, the PW endpoint
          always reverts to it. The designation of primary is performed by
          local configuration for the PW at the PE and is only required when
          revertive behaviour is used and is not applicable when non-revertive
          protection switching is used.</t>

          <t>Secondary PW: When it qualifies for the active state, a secondary
          PW is only selected if no primary PW is configured or if the
          configured primary PW does not qualify for active state (e.g., is
          down). By default, a PW in a redundancy PW set is considered
          secondary. There is no revertive mechanism among secondary PWs.</t>

          <t>Revertive protection switching: Traffic will be carried by the
          primary PW if all of the following is true: It is up, a
          wait-to-restore timer expires, and the primary PW is made the active
          PW.</t>

          <t>Non-revertive protection switching: Traffic will be carried by
          the last PW selected as a result of previous active PW entering the
          operationally down state.</t>

          <t>Manual selection of a PW: The ability to manually select the
          primary/secondary PWs.</t>

          <t>MTU-s: A hierarchical virtual private LAN service multi-tenant
          unit switch, as defined in RFC4762 <xref
          target="RFC4762"></xref>.</t>

          <t>PE-rs: A hierarchical virtual private LAN service switch, as
          defined in RFC4762.</t>

          <t>n-PE: A network facing provider edge node, as defined in RFC4026
          <xref target="RFC4026"></xref>.</t>

          <t>1:1 protection: One specific subset of a path for an emulated
          service, consisting of a standby PW and/or AC, protects another
          specific subset of a path for the emulated service. User traffic is
          transmitted over only one specific subset of the path at a time.</t>

          <t>N:1 protection: N specific subsets of paths for an emulated
          service, consisting of standby PWs and/or ACs, protect another
          specific subset of the path for the emulated service. User traffic
          is transmitted over only one specific subset of the path at a
          time.</t>

          <t>1+1 protection: One specific subset of a path for an emulated
          service, consisting of a standby PW and/or AC, protects another
          specific subset of a path for the emulated service. Traffic is
          permanently duplicated at the ingress node on both the currently
          active and standby subsets of the paths.</t>
        </list></t>

      <t>This document uses the term ‘PE’ to be synonymous with
      both PEs as per RFC3985<xref target="RFC3985"></xref> and T-PEs as per
      RFC5659 <xref target="RFC5659"></xref>.</t>

      <t>This document uses the term ‘PW’ to be synonymous with
      both PWs as per RFC3985 and SS-PWs, MS-PWs, and PW segments as per
      RFC5659.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Reference Models">
      <t>The following sections show the reference architecture of the PE for
      PW redundancy and the usage of the architecture in different topologies
      and applications.</t>

      <section title="PE Architecture">
        <t><xref target="pe-arch"></xref> shows the PE architecture for PW
        redundancy when more than one PW in a redundant set is associated with
        a single AC. This is based on the architecture in Figure 4b of RFC3985
        <xref target="RFC3985"></xref>. The forwarder selects which of the
        redundant PWs to use based on the criteria described in this
        document.</t>

        <t><figure anchor="pe-arch" title="PE Architecture for PW redundancy">
            <artwork><![CDATA[           +----------------------------------------+
           |                PE Device               |
           +----------------------------------------+
  Single   |                 |        Single        | PW Instance
   AC      |                 +      PW Instance     X<===========>
           |                 |                      |
           |                 |----------------------|
   <------>o                 |        Single        | PW Instance
           |    Forwarder    +      PW Instance     X<===========>
           |                 |                      |
           |                 |----------------------|
           |                 |        Single        | PW Instance
           |                 +      PW Instance     X<===========>
           |                 |                      |
           +----------------------------------------+
]]></artwork>
          </figure></t>
      </section>

      <section title="PW Redundancy Network Reference Scenarios">
        <t>This section presents a set of reference scenarios for PW
        redundancy. These reference scenarios represent example network
        topologies that illustrate the use of PW redundancy. They can be
        combined together to create more complex or comprehensive topologies,
        as required by a particular application or deployment.</t>

        <section title="PW Redundancy for AC and PE Protection: One Dual-Homed CE with Redundant SS-PWs">
          <t><xref target="one-multi-homed-ce"></xref> illustrates an
          application of single segment pseudowire redundancy where one of the
          CEs is dual-homed. This scenario is designed to protect the emulated
          service against a failure of one of the PEs or ACs attached to the
          multi-homed CE. Protection against failures of the PSN tunnels is
          provided using PSN mechanisms such as MPLS fast reroute, so that
          these failures do not impact the PW.</t>

          <t>CE1 is dual-homed to PE1 and PE3. A dual homing control protocol,
          the details of which are outside the scope of this document, enables
          the PEs and CEs to determine which PE (PE1 or PE3) should forward
          towards CE1, and therefore which AC CE1 should use to forward
          towards the PSN.</t>

          <t><figure anchor="one-multi-homed-ce"
              title="One Dual-Homed CE and Redundant SS-PWs">
              <artwork><![CDATA[         |<-------------- Emulated Service ---------------->|
         |                                                  |
         |          |<------- Pseudo Wire ------>|          |
         |          |                            |          |
         |          |    |<-- PSN Tunnels-->|    |          |
         |          V    V                  V    V          |
         V    AC    +----+                  +----+     AC   V
   +-----+    |     | PE1|==================|    |     |    +-----+
   |     |----------|....|...PW1.(active)...|....|----------|     |
   |     |          |    |==================|    |          | CE2 |
   | CE1 |          +----+                  |PE2 |          |     |
   |     |          +----+                  |    |          +-----+
   |     |          |    |==================|    |
   |     |----------|....|...PW2.(standby)..|    |
   +-----+    |     | PE3|==================|    |
              AC    +----+                  +----+
]]></artwork>
            </figure>In this scenario, only one of the PWs should be used for
          forwarding between PE1 / PE3, and PE2. PW redundancy determines
          which PW to make active based on the forwarding state of the ACs so
          that only one path is available from CE1 to CE2. This requires an
          additional PW state that reflects this forwarding state, which is
          separate from the operational status of the PW. This is the
          ‘Preferential Forwarding Status’.</t>

          <t>Consider the example where the AC from CE1 to PE1 is initially
          active and the AC from CE1 to PE3 is initially standby. PW1 is made
          active and PW2 is made standby in order to complete the path to
          CE2.</t>

          <t>On failure of the AC between CE1 and PE1, the forwarding state of
          the AC on PE3 transitions to active. The preferential forwarding
          state of PW2 therefore needs to become active, and PW1 standby, in
          order to reestablish connectivity between CE1 and CE2. PE3 therefore
          uses PW2 to forward towards CE2, and PE2 uses PW2 instead of PW1 to
          forward towards CE1. PW redundancy in this scenario requires that
          the forwarding status of the ACs at PE1 and PE3 be signaled to PE2
          so that PE2 can choose which PW to make active.</t>

          <t>Changes occurring on the dual-homed side of the network due to a
          failure of the AC or PE are not propagated to the ACs on the other
          side of the network. Furthermore, failures in the PSN are not
          propagated to the attached CEs.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="PW Redundancy for AC and PE Protection: Two Dual-Homed CEs with Redundant SS-PWs">
          <t><xref target="multi-multi-homed-ces"></xref> illustrates an
          application of single segment pseudowire redundancy where both of
          the CEs are dual-homed. This scenario is also designed to protect
          the emulated service against failures of the ACs and failures of the
          PEs. Both CE1 and CE2, are dual-homed to their respective PEs, PE1
          and PE2, and PE3 and PE4. A dual homing control protocol, the
          details of which are outside the scope of this document, enables the
          PEs and CEs to determine which PEs should forward towards the CEs,
          and therefore which ACs the CEs should use to forward towards the
          PSN.</t>

          <t>Note that the PSN tunnels are not shown in this figure for
          clarity. However, it can be assumed that each of the PWs shown is
          encapsulated in a separate PSN tunnel. Protection against failures
          of the PSN tunnels is provided using PSN mechanisms such as MPLS
          fast reroute, so that these failures do not impact the PW.</t>

          <figure anchor="multi-multi-homed-ces"
                  title="Two Dual-Homed CEs and Redundant SS-PWs">
            <artwork><![CDATA[      |<-------------- Emulated Service ---------------->| 
      |                                                  | 
      |          |<------- Pseudowire ------->|          | 
      |          |                            |          | 
      |          |    |<-- PSN Tunnels-->|    |          | 
      |          V    V                  V    V          | 
      V    AC    +----+                  +----+     AC   V 
+-----+    |     |....|.......PW1........|....|     |    +-----+ 
|     |----------| PE1|......   .........| PE3|----------|     | 
| CE1 |          +----+      \ /  PW3    +----+          | CE2 | 
|     |          +----+       X          +----+          |     |
|     |          |    |....../ \..PW4....|    |          |     | 
|     |----------| PE2|                  | PE4|--------- |     | 
+-----+    |     |....|.....PW2..........|....|     |    +-----+ 
           AC    +----+                  +----+     AC      
]]></artwork>
          </figure>

          <t>PW1 and PW4 connect PE1 to PE3 and PE4, respectively. Similarly,
          PW2 and PW3 connect PE2 to PE4 and PE3. PW1, PW2, PW3 and PW4 are
          all up. In order to support protection for the emulated service,
          only one PW MUST be selected to forward traffic.</t>

          <t>If a PW has a preferential forwarding status of
          ‘active’, it can be used for forwarding traffic. The
          actual up PW chosen by the combined set of PEs connected to the CEs
          is determined by considering the preferential forwarding status of
          each PW at each PE. The mechanisms for communicating the
          preferential forwarding status are outside the scope of this
          document. Only one PW is used for forwarding.</t>

          <t>The following failure scenario illustrates the operation of PW
          redundancy in <xref target="multi-multi-homed-ces"></xref>. In the
          initial steady state, when there are no failures of the ACs, one of
          the PWs is chosen as the active PW, and all others are chosen as
          standby. The dual-homing protocol between CE1 and PE1/PE2 chooses to
          use the AC to PE2, while the protocol between CE2 and PE3/PE4
          chooses to use the AC to PE4. Therefore the PW between PE2 and PE4
          is chosen as the active PW to complete the path between CE1 and
          CE2.</t>

          <t>On failure of the AC between the dual-homed CE1 and PE2, the
          preferential forwarding status of the PWs at PE1, PE2, PE3 and PE4
          needs to change so as to re-establish a path from CE1 to CE2.
          Different mechanisms can be used to achieve this and these are
          beyond the scope of this document. After the change in status, the
          algorithm needs to evaluate and select which PW to forward traffic
          on. In this application, each dual-homing algorithm, i.e., {CE1,
          PE1, PE2} and {CE2, PE3, PE4}, selects the active AC independently.
          There is therefore a need to signal the active status of each AC
          such that the PEs can select a common active PW for forwarding
          between CE1 and CE2.</t>

          <t>Changes occurring on one side of network due to a failure of the
          AC or PE are not propagated to the ACs on the other side of the
          network. Furthermore, failures in the PSN are not propagated to the
          attached CEs. Note that end-to-end native service protection
          switching can also be used to protect the emulated service in this
          scenario. In this case, PW3 and PW4 are not necessary.</t>

          <t>If the CEs do not perform native service protection switching,
          they may instead use load balancing across the paths between the
          CEs.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="PW Redundancy for S-PE Protection: Single-Homed CEs with Redundant MS-PWs">
          <t><xref target="SH-CE-MS-PW"></xref> shows a scenario where both
          CEs are single homed, and MS-PW redundancy is used. The main
          objective is to protect the emulated service against failures of the
          S-PEs.</t>

          <t><figure anchor="SH-CE-MS-PW"
              title="Single-Homed CE with Redundant MS-PWs">
              <artwork><![CDATA[    Native   |<----------- Pseudowires ----------->|  Native  
    Service  |                                     |  Service  
     (AC)    |     |<-PSN1-->|     |<-PSN2-->|     |  (AC)  
       |     V     V         V     V         V     V   |  
       |     +-----+         +-----+         +-----+   |  
+----+ |     |T-PE1|=========|S-PE1|=========|T-PE2|   |   +----+  
|    |-------|......PW1-Seg1.......|.PW1-Seg2......|-------|    |  
| CE1|       |     |=========|     |=========|     |       | CE2|
|    |       +-----+         +-----+         +-----+       |    |  
+----+        |.||.|                          |.||.|       +----+ 
              |.||.|         +-----+          |.||.|             
              |.||.|=========|     |========== .||.|
              |.||...PW2-Seg1......|.PW2-Seg2...||.|             
              |.| ===========|S-PE2|============ |.|       
              |.|            +-----+             |.|             
              |.|============+-----+============= .|            
              |.....PW3-Seg1.|     | PW3-Seg2......|             
               ==============|S-PE3|===============             
                             |     |                             
                             +-----+                            
]]></artwork>
            </figure>CE1 is connected to PE1 and CE2 is connected to PE2.
          There are three multi-segment PWs. PW1 is switched at S-PE1, PW2 is
          switched at S-PE2, and PW3 is switched at S-PE3. This scenario
          provides N:1 protection for the subset of the path of the emulated
          service from T-PE1 to T-PE2.</t>

          <t>Since there is no multi-homing running on the ACs, the T-PE nodes
          advertise 'active' for the preferential forwarding status based on a
          priority for the PW. The priority associates a meaning of 'primary
          PW' and 'secondary PW' to a PW. These priorities MUST be used if
          revertive mode is used and the active PW to use for forwarding
          determined accordingly. The priority can be derived via
          configuration or based on the value of the PW forwarding equivalence
          class (FEC). For example, a lower value of PWid FEC can be taken as
          a higher priority. However, this does not guarantee selection of
          same PW by the T-PEs because of, for example, a mismatch in the
          configuration of the PW priority at each T-PE. The intent of this
          application is for T-PE1 and T-PE2 to synchronize the transmit and
          receive paths of the PW over the network. In other words, both T-PE
          nodes are required to transmit over the PW segment which is switched
          by the same S-PE. This is desirable for ease of operation and
          troubleshooting.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="PW Redundancy for PE-rs Protection in H-VPLS using SS-PWs">
          <t>The following figure (based on the architecture shown in Figure 3
          of <xref target="RFC4762"></xref>) illustrates the application of PW
          redundancy to hierarchical VPLS (H-VPLS). Note that the PSN tunnels
          are not shown for clarity, and only one PW of a PW group is shown. A
          multi-tenant unit switch (MTU-s) is dual-homed to two PE router
          switches (PE-rs). The example here uses SS-PWs and the objective is
          to protect the emulated service against failures of a PE-rs.</t>

          <t><figure anchor="mtu-dual-homing"
              title="MTU-s Dual Homing in H-VPLS Core ">
              <artwork><![CDATA[  
                                      PE1-rs
                                    +--------+
                                    |  VSI   |
                    Active PW       |   --   |
                     Group..........|../  \..|.
    CE-1                 .          |  \  /  | .
     \                  .           |   --   |  .
      \                .            +--------+   .
       \   MTU-s      .                  .        .     PE3-rs       
        +--------+   .                   .         . +--------+   
        |   VSI  |  .                    .  H-VPlS  .|  VSI   |  
        |   -- ..|..                     .   Core    |.. --   |
        |  /  \  |                       .    PWs    |  /  \  |
        |  \  /..|..                     .           |  \  /  |
        |   --   |  .                    .          .|.. --   |
        +--------+   .                   .         . +--------+
       /              .                  .        .       
      /                .            +--------+   .
     /                  .           |  VSI   |  .
    CE-2                 .          |   --   | .
                          ..........|../  \..|.
                    Standby PW      |  \  /  |
                     Group          |   --   |
                                    +--------+
                                      PE2-rs

]]></artwork>
            </figure>In <xref target="mtu-dual-homing"></xref>, the MTU-s is
          dual homed to PE1-rs and PE2-rs and has spoke PWs to each of them.
          The MTU-s needs to choose only one of the spoke PWs (the active PW)
          to forward traffic to one of the PEs, and sets the other PW to
          standby. The MTU-s can derive the status of the PWs based on local
          policy configuration. PE1-rs and PE2-rs are connected to the H-VPLS
          core on the other side of network. The MTU-s communicates the status
          of its member PWs for a set of virtual switching instances (VSIs)
          that share a common status of active or standby. Here, the MTU-s
          controls the selection of PWs used to forward traffic. Signaling
          using PW grouping with a common group-id in the PWid FEC Element, or
          a Grouping TLV in Generalized PWid FEC Element as defined in <xref
          target="RFC4447"></xref>, to PE1-rs and PE2-rs, is recommended for
          improved scaling.</t>

          <t>Whenever an MTU-s performs a switchover of the active PW group,
          it needs to communicate this status change the PE2-rs. That is, it
          informs PE2-rs that the status of the standby PW group has changed
          to active.</t>

          <t>In this scenario, PE devices are aware of switch overs at the
          MTU-s and could generate MAC Withdraw messages to trigger MAC
          flushing within the H-VPLS full-mesh. By default, MTU-s devices
          should still trigger MAC withdraw messages as defined in <xref
          target="RFC4762"></xref> to prevent two copies of MAC withdraws to
          be sent (one by the MTU-s and another one by the PE-rs'). Mechanisms
          to disable the MAC withdraw trigger in certain devices are out of
          the scope of this document.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="PW Redundancy for PE Protection in a VPLS Ring using SS-PWs ">
          <t>The following figure illustrates the use of PW redundancy for
          dual-homed connectivity between PEs in a VPLS ring topology. As
          above, PSN tunnels are not shown and only one PW of a PW group is
          shown for clarity. The example here uses SS-PWs and the objective is
          to protect the emulated service against failures of a PE on the
          ring.</t>

          <t><figure anchor="VPLS-Ring"
              title="Redundancy in a VPLS Ring Topology">
              <artwork><![CDATA[ 
            PE1                            PE2
         +--------+                     +--------+ 
         |  VSI   |                     |  VSI   |  
         |   --   |                     |   --   |
   ......|../  \..|.....................|../  \..|.......    
         |  \  /  |     PW Group 1      |  \  /  |
         |   --   |                     |   --   |
         +--------+                     +--------+
              .                              .
              .                              .
VPLS Domain A .                              . VPLS Domain B
              .                              .
              .                              .
              .                              .
         +--------+                     +--------+  
         |  VSI   |                     |  VSI   | 
         |   --   |                     |   --   |
   ......|../  \..|.....................|../  \..|........  
         |  \  /  |     PW Group 2      |  \  /  |
         |   --   |                     |   --   |   
         +--------+                     +--------+
            PE3                            PE4


]]></artwork>
            </figure>In <xref target="VPLS-Ring"></xref>, PE1 and PE3 from
          VPLS domain A are connected to PE2 and PE4 in VPLS domain B via PW
          group 1 and PW group 2. The PEs are connected to each other in such
          a way as to form a ring topology. Such scenarios may arise in
          inter-domain H-VPLS deployments where rapid spanning tree (RSTP) or
          other mechanisms may be used to maintain loop free connectivity of
          the PW groups.</t>

          <t><xref target="RFC4762"></xref> outlines multi-domain VPLS
          services without specifying how multiple redundant border PEs per
          domain and per VPLS instance can be supported. In the example above,
          PW group 1 may be blocked at PE1 by RSTP and it is desirable to
          block the group at PE2 by exchanging the PW preferential forwarding
          status of standby. The details of how PW grouping is achieved and
          used is deployment specific and is outside the scope of this
          document.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="PW Redundancy for VPLS n-PE Protection using SS-PWs">
          <t><figure anchor="vpls-bridge" title="Bridge Module Model">
              <artwork><![CDATA[                       |<----- Provider ----->| 
                                 Core     
                +------+                      +------+ 
                | n-PE |::::::::::::::::::::::| n-PE | 
     Provider   | (P)  |..........   .........| (P)  |  Provider  
     Access     +------+          . .         +------+  Access 
     Network                       X                    Network 
       (1)      +------+          . .         +------+    (2) 
                | n-PE |..........   .........| n-PE | 
                |  (B) |......................| (B)  | 
                +------+                      +------+ 
              

]]></artwork>
            </figure></t>

          <t><figure title="Bridge Module Model">
              <artwork><![CDATA[
]]></artwork>
            </figure></t>

          <t><xref target="vpls-bridge"></xref> shows a scenario with two
          provider access networks. The example here uses SS-PWs and the
          objective is to protect the emulated service against failures of a
          network-facing PE (n-PE).</t>

          <t>Each network has two n-Pes. These n-PEs are connected via a full
          mesh of PWs for a given VPLS instance. As shown in the figure, only
          one n-PE in each access network serves as the primary PE (P) for
          that VPLS instance and the other n-PE serves as the backup PE (B).
          In this figure, each primary PE has two active PWs originating from
          it. Therefore, when a multicast, broadcast, or unknown unicast frame
          arrives at the primary n-PE from the access network side, the n-PE
          replicates the frame over both PWs in the core even though it only
          needs to send the frames over a single PW (shown with :::: in the
          figure) to the primary n-PE on the other side. This is an
          unnecessary replication of the customer frames that consumes
          core-network bandwidth (half of the frames get discarded at the
          receiving n-PE). This issue gets aggravated when there is three or
          more n-PEs per provider, access network. For example if there are
          three n-PEs or four n-PEs per access network, then 67% or 75% of
          core bandwidth for multicast, broadcast and unknown unicast are
          wasted, respectively.</t>

          <t>In this scenario, the n-PEs can communicate the active or standby
          status of the PWs among them. This status can be derived from the
          active or backup state of an n-PE for a given VPLS.</t>
        </section>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Generic PW Redundancy Requirements">
      <t></t>

      <section title="Protection Switching Requirements">
        <t><list style="symbols">
            <t>Protection architectures such as N:1,1:1 or 1+1 are possible.
            1:1 protection MUST be supported. The N:1 protection case is less
            efficient in terms of the resources that must be allocated and
            hence this SHOULD be supported. 1+1 protection MAY be used in the
            scenarios described in the document. However, the details of its
            usage are outside the scope of this document, as it MAY require a
            1+1 protection switching protocol between the CEs.</t>

            <t>Non-revertive behavior MUST be supported, while revertive
            behavior is OPTIONAL. This avoids the need to designate one PW as
            primary unless revertive behavior is explicitly required.</t>

            <t>Protection switchover can be initiated from a PE e.g. using a
            manual switchover, or a forced switchover, or it may be triggered
            by a signal failure i.e. a defect in the PW or PSN. Manual
            switchover may be necessary if it is required to disable one PW in
            a redundant set. Both methods MUST be supported and signal failure
            triggers MUST be treated with a lower priority than any local or
            far-end forced switch or manual trigger.</t>

            <t>A PE MAY be able to forward packets received from a PW with a
            standby status in order to avoid black holing of in-flight packets
            during switchover. However, in the case of use of VPLS, all VPLS
            application packets received from standby PWs MUST be dropped,
            except for OAM and control plane packets.</t>
          </list></t>

        <t></t>
      </section>

      <section title="Operational Requirements">
        <t><list style="symbols">
            <t>(T-)PEs involved in protecting a PW SHOULD automatically
            discover and attempt to resolve inconsistencies in the
            configuration of primary/secondary PW.</t>

            <t>(T-)PEs involved in protecting a PW SHOULD automatically
            discover and attempt to resolve inconsistencies in the
            configuration of revertive/non-revertive protection switching
            mode.</t>

            <t>(T-)PEs that do not automatically discover or resolve
            inconsistencies in the configuration of primary/secondary,
            revertive/non-revertive, or other parameters MUST generate an
            alarm upon detection of an inconsistent configuration.</t>

            <t>(T-)PEs participating in PW redundancy MUST support the
            configuration of revertive or non-revertive protection switching
            modes if both modes are supported.</t>

            <t>The MIB(s) MUST support inter-PSN monitoring of the PW
            redundancy configuration, including the protection switching
            mode.</t>

            <t>(T-)PEs participating in PW redundancy SHOULD support the local
            invocation of protection switching.</t>

            <t>(T-)PEs participating in PW redundancy SHOULD support the local
            invocation of a lockout of protection switching.</t>
          </list></t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section anchor="IANA" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>This document requires extensions to the Label Distribution Protocol
      (LDP) that are needed for protecting pseudowires. These will inherit at
      least the same security properties as LDP <xref target="RFC5036"></xref>
      and the PW control protocol <xref target="RFC4447"></xref>.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>This document has no actions for IANA.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Major Contributing Authors">
      <t>The editors would like to thank Pranjal Kumar Dutta, Marc Lasserre,
      Jonathan Newton, Hamid Ould-Brahim, Olen Stokes, Dave Mcdysan, Giles
      Heron and Thomas Nadeau who made a major contribution to the development
      of this document.</t>

      <t><figure>
          <artwork><![CDATA[Pranjal Dutta
Alcatel-Lucent  
Email: pranjal.dutta@alcatel-lucent.com 
    
Marc Lasserre 
Alcatel-Lucent 
Email: marc.lasserre@alcatel-lucent.com

Jonathan Newton
Cable & Wireless
Email: Jonathan.Newton@cw.com

Olen Stokes 
Extreme Networks 
Email: ostokes@extremenetworks.com  
    
Hamid Ould-Brahim   
Email: ouldh@yahoo.com

Dave McDysan
Verizon
Email: dave.mcdysan@verizon.com

Giles Heron
Cisco Systems
Email: giles.heron@gmail.com

Thomas Nadeau
Juniper Networks
Email: tnadeau@lucidvision.com
]]></artwork>
        </figure></t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="Acknowledgements" title="Acknowledgements">
      <t>The authors would like to thank Vach Kompella, Kendall Harvey,
      Tiberiu Grigoriu, Neil Hart, Kajal Saha, Florin Balus and Philippe Niger
      for their valuable comments and suggestions.</t>
    </section>
  </middle>

  <back>
    <references title=" Normative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119"?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.4447'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.3985'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.5036'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.4762'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.4446'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.4026'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.5659'?>
    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">
      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.6073'?>
    </references>
  </back>
</rfc>

PAFTECH AB 2003-20262026-04-22 06:56:27