One document matched: draft-kothari-henderickx-l2vpn-vpls-multihoming-00.txt




Network Working Group                                         B. Kothari
Internet-Draft                                               K. Kompella
Updates: 4761 (if approved)                             Juniper Networks
Intended status: Standards Track                           W. Henderickx
Expires: January 7, 2010                                        F. Balus
                                                          Alcatel-Lucent
                                                            July 6, 2009


         BGP based Multi-homing in Virtual Private LAN Service
         draft-kothari-henderickx-l2vpn-vpls-multihoming-00.txt

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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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Abstract

   Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is a Layer 2 Virtual Private
   Network (VPN) that gives its customers the appearance that their
   sites are connected via a Local Area Network (LAN).  It is often
   required for the Service Provider (SP) to give the customer redundant
   connectivity to some sites, often called "multi-homing".  This memo
   shows how multi-homing can be offered in the context of BGP-based
   VPLS.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  General Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.2.  Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.1.  Scenarios  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.2.  VPLS Multi-homing Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.  Multi-homing Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.1.  Provisioning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.2.  Multi-homing NLRI  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.3.  VPLS Preference  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     3.4.  Designated Forwarder Election  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       3.4.1.  BGP Advertisement for VPLS Multi-homing  . . . . . . .  9
       3.4.2.  Tie-breaking Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       3.4.3.  DF Election on PEs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   4.  Use of Route Origin Extended Community . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   5.  BGP based VPLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.1.  BGP Local Preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.2.  Multi-AS VPLS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
       5.2.1.  Inter-AS Method (b): EBGP Redistribution of VPLS
               Information between ASBRs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
       5.2.2.  Method (c): Multi-Hop EBGP Redistribution of VPLS
               Information between ASes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   6.  MAC Flush Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     6.1.  MAC List FLush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     6.2.  Implicit MAC Flush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   7.  Backwards Compatibility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     7.1.  BGP based VPLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     7.2.  BGP Auto-discovery with LDP for signaling  . . . . . . . . 20
   8.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   9.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   10. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
   11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26



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1.  Introduction

   Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is a Layer 2 Virtual Private
   Network (VPN) that gives its customers the appearance that their
   sites are connected via a Local Area Network (LAN).  It is often
   required for a Service Provider (SP) to give the customer redundant
   connectivity to one or more sites, often called "multi-homing".
   [RFC4761] explains how VPLS can be offered using BGP for auto-
   discovery and signaling; section 3.5 of that document describes how
   multi-homing can be achieved in this context.
   [I-D.ietf-l2vpn-signaling] explains how VPLS can be offered using BGP
   for auto-discovery and [RFC4762] explains how VPLS can be offered
   using LDP for signaling.  This document provides a VPLS multi-homing
   solution when BGP is used for auto-discovery as described in either
   [RFC4761] or [I-D.ietf-l2vpn-signaling].

   Section 2 lays out some of the scenarios for multi-homing, other ways
   that this can be achieved, and some of the expectations of BGP-based
   multi-homing.  Section 3 defines the components of BGP-based multi-
   homing, and the procedures required to achieve this.  Section 8 may
   someday discuss security considerations.

1.1.  General Terminology

   Some general terminology is defined here; most is from [RFC4761] or
   [RFC4364].  Terminology specific to this memo is introduced as needed
   in later sections.

   A "Customer Edge" (CE) device, typically located on customer
   premises, connects to a "Provider Edge" (PE) device, which is owned
   and operated by the SP.  A "Provider" (P) device is also owned and
   operated by the SP, but has no direct customer connections.  A "VPLS
   Edge" (VE) device is a PE that offers VPLS services.

   A VPLS domain represents a bridging domain per customer.  A Route
   Target community as described in [RFC4360] is typically used to
   identify all the PE routers participating in a particular VPLS
   domain.  A VPLS site is a grouping of ports on a PE that belong to
   the same VPLS domain.  A site is uniquely identified by a site ID,
   also called as VE ID.  Sites are referred to as local or remote
   depending on whether they are configured on the PE router in context
   or on one of the remote PE routers (network peers).

1.2.  Conventions

   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 [RFC2119].



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2.  Background

   This section describes various scenarios where multi-homing may be
   required, and the implications thereof.  It also describes some of
   the singular properties of VPLS multi-homing, and what that means
   from both an operational point of view and an implementation point of
   view.  There are other approaches for providing multi-homing such as
   Spanning Tree Protocol, and this document specifies use of BGP for
   multi-homing.  Comprehensive comparison among the approaches is
   outside the scope of this document.

2.1.  Scenarios

   The most basic scenario is shown in Figure 1.

   CE1 is a VPLS CE that is dual-homed to both PE1 and PE2 for redundant
   connectivity.

                             ...............
                            .               .    ___ CE2
                      ___ PE1                .  /
                     /    :                  PE3
                  __/    :       Service      :
              CE1 __     :       Provider    PE4
                    \     :                   : \___ CE3
                     \___ PE2                .
                            .               .
                             ...............

                           Figure 1: Scenario 1

   CE1 is a VPLS CE that is dual-homed to both PE1 and PE2 for redundant
   connectivity.  However, CE4, which is also in the same VPLS domain,
   is single-homed to just PE1.

              CE4 -------    ...............
                         \  .               .    ___ CE2
                      ___ PE1                .  /
                     /    :                  PE3
                  __/    :       Service      :
              CE1 __     :       Provider    PE4
                    \     :                   : \___ CE3
                     \___ PE2                .
                            .               .
                             ...............

                           Figure 2: Scenario 2




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2.2.  VPLS Multi-homing Considerations

   The first (perhaps obvious) fact about a multi-homed VPLS CE, such as
   CE1 in Figure 1 is that if CE1 is an Ethernet switch or bridge, a
   loop has been created in the customer VPLS.  This is a dangerous
   situation for an Ethernet network, and the loop must be broken.  Even
   if CE1 is a router, it will get duplicates every time a packet is
   flooded, which is clearly undesirable.

   The next is that (unlike the case of IP-based multi-homing) only one
   of PE1 and PE2 can be actively sending traffic, either towards CE1 or
   into the SP cloud.  That is to say, load balancing techniques will
   not work.  All other PEs MUST choose the same designated forwarder
   for a multi-homed site.  Call the PE that is chosen to send traffic
   to/from CE1 the "designated forwarder".

   In Figure 2, CE1 and CE4 must be dealt with independently, since CE1
   is dual-homed, but CE4 is not.

































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3.  Multi-homing Operation

   This section describes procedures for electing a designated forwarder
   among the set of PEs that are multi-homed to a customer site.  The
   procedures described in this section are applicable to BGP based
   VPLS, LDP based VPLS or a VPLS that contains a mix of both BGP and
   LDP signaled PWs.

3.1.  Provisioning Model

   Figure 1 shows a customer site, CE1, multi-homed to two VPLS PEs, PE1
   and PE2.  In order for all VPLS PEs within the same VPLS domain to
   elect one of the multi-homed PEs as the designated forwarder, an
   indicator that the PEs are multi-homed to the same customer site is
   required.  This is achieved by assigning the same multi-homed site ID
   (MH-Site-ID) on PE1 and PE2 for CE1.  When remote VPLS PEs receive
   NLRI advertisement from PE1 and PE2 for CE1, the two NLRI
   advertisements for CE1 are identified as candidates for designated
   forwarder selection due to the same MH-Site-ID.  Thus, same
   MH-Site-ID SHOULD be assigned on all VPLS PEs that are multi-homed to
   the same customer site.

   Note that a VE-ID=0 or MH-Site-ID=0 is invalid and a PE should only
   discard such an advertisement.

3.2.  Multi-homing NLRI

   Section 3.2.2 in [RFC4761] describes the encoding of VPLS BGP NLRI.
   For multi-homing operation, the same NLRI is used for identifying the
   multi-homed customers sites.  VE ID is part of the VPLS NLRI.  In
   addition, VE block offset, VE block size and label base are also
   encoded in the NLRI.  For multi-homing operation, MH-Site-ID is
   encoded in the VE ID field of the NLRI.  In addition, the NLRI for
   the MH-Site-ID SHOULD have the block offset, block size and label
   base as zero.  Thus, the NLRI contains 2 octets indicating the
   length, 8 octets for Route Distinguisher, 2 octets for MH-Site-ID and
   7 octets padded with zero.

   Figure 2 shows two customer sites, CE1 and CE4, connected to PE1 with
   CE1 multi-homed to PE1 and PE2.  CE4 does not require special
   addressing being associated with the base VPLS instance identified by
   the VSI-ID for LDP VPLS and VE-ID for BGP VPLS.  However, CE1 which
   is multi-homed to PE1 and PE2 requires configuration of MH-Site-ID
   and both PE1 and PE2 SHOULD assign the same MH-Site-ID and the NLRI
   SHOULD have the block offset, block size and label base as zero.

   It is valid to have non-zero block offset, block size and label base
   in the VPLS NLRI for a multi-homed site.  However, multi-homing



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   operations in such a case are outside the scope of this document.

3.3.  VPLS Preference

   When multiple PEs are assigned the same site ID for multi-homing, it
   is often desired to be able to control the selection of a particular
   PE as the designated forwarder.  A VE preference is introduced in
   this document that can be used to accomplish this.  A VE preference
   indicates a degree of preference for a particular customer site.
   Absence of this preference will still elect a designated forwarder
   based on the algorithm explained in Section 3.4.

   Section 3.2.4 in [RFC4761] describes the Layer2 Info Extended
   Community that carries control information about the pseudowires.
   The last two octets that were reserved now carries VE preference as
   shown in Figure 3.



                      +------------------------------------+
                      | Extended community type (2 octets) |
                      +------------------------------------+
                      |  Encaps Type (1 octet)             |
                      +------------------------------------+
                      |  Control Flags (1 octet)           |
                      +------------------------------------+
                      |  Layer-2 MTU (2 octet)             |
                      +------------------------------------+
                      |  VE Preference (2 octets)          |
                      +------------------------------------+



                 Figure 3: Layer2 Info Extended Community

   A VE preference is a 2-octets unsigned integer.  A value of zero
   indicates absence of VE preference and is not a valid preference
   value.  This interpretation is required for backwards compatibility.
   Implementations using Layer2 Info Extended Community as described in
   (Section 3.2.4) [RFC4761] MUST set the last two octets as zero since
   it was a reserved field.

3.4.  Designated Forwarder Election

   BGP-based multi-homing for VPLS relies on BGP DF election and VPLS DF
   election.  The net result of doing both BGP and VPLS DF election is
   that of electing a single designated forwarder (DF) among the set of
   PEs to which a customer site is multi-homed.  All the PEs that are



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   elected as non-designated forwarders MUST keep their attachment
   circuit to the multi-homed CE in blocked status (no forwarding).

   In order to explain how these two DF election algorithms work, one
   must refer to the format of the VPLS NLRI.  In addition to what is
   carried in the NLRI, a VPLS advertisement contains some attributes,
   such as Local Preference (LP) that are used in DF election algorithm.
   A VPLS advertisement might contain a Route Origin Extended Community
   (RO) (see section Section 4).  Finally, the VPLS domain (DOM) is
   needed; this is not carried explicitly in a VPLS advertisement, but
   is derived, typically from BGP policies applied on Route Targets
   carried in the advertisement.  In addition to these fields in the
   advertisement, there are three derived fields called AC-Status, PE-ID
   and PREF.

   The following are the three entities that are used in DF tie-breaking
   rules.

   1.  AC-Status (ACS): This indicates the attachment circuit status.
       ACS = 1 indicates that attachment circuit is down and ACS = 0
       indicates that attachment circuit is up.

   2.  PREF: This indicates the PE preference.

   3.  PE-ID: This indicates the loopback address of the PE that
       originated the NLRI.

   The following sections describe the formats of the VPLS NLRI and
   specifies what constitutes a prefix for DF election algorithm.  In
   addition, the derivation of the three entities used in DF election
   algorithm are described.

3.4.1.  BGP Advertisement for VPLS Multi-homing

   The VPLS NLRI as described in Section 3.2.2 in [RFC4761] contains
   Route Distinguisher, VE-ID, VE Block Offset, VE Block Size, Label
   Base.  These components are referred as RD, VE-ID, VBO, VBS and LB,
   respectively.  In addition, a VPLS advertisement in case of BGP based
   VPLS contains control flag (CF) and VE Preference (VP).  'D' bit in
   the control flags is described in [I-D.kothari-l2vpn-auto-site-id]).
   CF:D refers to the value of the 'D' bit in the control flags.

   As explained in Section 3.2, MH-Site-ID is encoded as VE-ID.
   However, for purposes of explaining path selection rules for VPLS
   NLRIs, this section uses VE-ID to refer to site ID and does not
   differentiate a MH NLRI from a non-MH NLRI that contains non-zero
   block offset, block size and label base in the VPLS NLRI.




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   Table 1 shows how to set the value of ACS.  Table 2 shows how to set
   the value of PREF based on VP and LP.  The Table 3 shows how to set
   the value of PE-ID.

                       +--------------------+-----+
                       | Control Flags (CF) | ACS |
                       +--------------------+-----+
                       |      CF:D = 1      |  1  |
                       |                    |     |
                       |      CF:D = 0      |  0  |
                       +--------------------+-----+

                                  Table 1

   +-------------+-------------+---------------+-----------------------+
   |    Valid    |    Valid    |  Valid values |        Comment        |
   |  values for |  values for |    for PREF   |                       |
   |      VP     |      LP     |               |                       |
   +-------------+-------------+---------------+-----------------------+
   |      0      |      0      |       0       |       malformed       |
   |             |             |               | advertisement, unless |
   |             |             |               |         CF:D=1        |
   |             |             |               |                       |
   |      0      |     1 to    |       LP      |       backwards       |
   |             |   (2^16-1)  |               |     compatibility     |
   |             |             |               |                       |
   |      0      |   2^16 to   |    (2^16-1)   |       backwards       |
   |             |   (2^32-1)  |               |     compatibility     |
   |             |             |               |                       |
   |      >0     |  LP same as |       VP      |     Implementation    |
   |             |      VP     |               |      supports VP      |
   |             |             |               |                       |
   |      >0     |   LP != VP  |       0       |       malformed       |
   |             |             |               |     advertisement     |
   +-------------+-------------+---------------+-----------------------+

                                  Table 2














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   +---------+---------------+-----------------------------------------+
   |    RO   |     PE-ID     |                 Comment                 |
   | Present |               |                                         |
   +---------+---------------+-----------------------------------------+
   |   Yes   |     Global    |       Source PE as specified in RO      |
   |         | Administrator |                                         |
   |         |  sub-field of |                                         |
   |         |       RO      |                                         |
   |         |               |                                         |
   |    No   |      BGP      |      Source PE as specified by BGP      |
   |         |   Identifier  |   Identifier.  If a route carries the   |
   |         |               |    ORIGINATOR_ID attribute, then the    |
   |         |               |  ORIGINATOR_ID SHOULD be treated as the |
   |         |               |  BGP Identifier of the BGP speaker that |
   |         |               |        has advertised the route.        |
   +---------+---------------+-----------------------------------------+

                                  Table 3

   Taken all together, this yields:

                   <RD, VE-ID, VBO, VBS, LB; DOM, ACS, PE-ID, PREF>

3.4.1.1.  BGP DF Election

   An advertisement

           ADV = <RD, VE-ID, VBO, VBS, LB; DOM, ACS, PE-ID, PREF>

   is discarded if DOM is not of interest to the BGP speaker.
   Otherwise, ADV is put into the bucket for <DOM, RD, VE-ID, VBO>.  In
   other words, the information in BGP DF election consists of <DOM, RD,
   VE-ID, VBO> and only advertisements with exact same <DOM, RD, VE-ID,
   VBO, DOM> are candidates for DF election.

3.4.1.2.  VPLS DF Election

   An advertisement

           ADV = <RD, VE-ID, VBO, VBS, LB; DOM, ACS, PE-ID, PREF>

   is discarded if DOM is not of interest to the VPLS PE.  Otherwise,
   ADV is put into the bucket for <DOM, VE-ID>.  In other words, all
   advertisements for a particular VPLS domain that have the same VE-ID
   are candidates for VPLS DF election.






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3.4.2.  Tie-breaking Rules

   This section describes the tie-breaking rules for both LDP based VPLS
   using BGP-AD and BGP based VPLS.  Both BGP and VPLS DF election
   algorithms are described in two stages.  For each algorithm, the
   first stage divides all received VPLS advertisements into buckets of
   relevant and comparable advertisements.  In this stage,
   advertisements may be discarded as not being relevant to DF election.
   The second stage picks a single "winner" from each bucket by
   repeatedly applying a tie-breaking algorithm on a pair of
   advertisements from that bucket.  The tie-breaking rules are such
   that the order in which advertisements are picked from the bucket
   does not affect the final result.  Note that this is a conceptual
   description of the process; an implementation MAY choose to realize
   this differently as long as the semantics are preserved.

   Given two advertisements ADV1 and ADV2, the following tie-breaking
   rules MUST be applied in the given order.

   1.  if (ACS1 != 1) AND (ACS2 == 1) ADV1 wins; stop
       if (ACS1 == 1) AND (ACS2 != 1) ADV2 wins; stop
       else continue

   2.  if (PREF1 > PREF2) AD1 wins; stop;
       else if (PREF1 < PREF2) AD2 wins; stop;
       else continue

   3.  if (PE-ID1 < PE-ID2) AD1 wins; stop;
       else if (PE-ID1 > PE-ID2) AD2 wins; stop;
       else AD1 and AD2 are from the same VPLS PE;

   For BGP DF election, if there is no winner and AD1 and AD2 are from
   the same PE, BGP DF election should simply consider this as an
   update.

   For VPLS DF election, if there is no winner and AD1 and AD2 are from
   the same PE, a VPLS PE MUST retain both AD1 and AD2.

   Note that if an advertisement has VE-ID = 0, it MUST be discarded.

   For VPLS NLRIs, the above rules supercede the tie breaking rules
   described in (Section 9.1.2.2) [RFC4271]

3.4.3.  DF Election on PEs

   DF election algorithm MUST be run by all multi-homed VPLS PEs.  In
   addition, egress PEs SHOULD also run the DF election algorithm.  As a
   result of the DF election, multi-homed PEs that lose the DF election



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   for a MH-Site-ID MUST put the ACs associated with the MH-Site-ID in
   non-forwarding state.

   DF election result on the egress PEs can be used in traffic
   forwarding decision.  Figure 2 shows two customer sites, CE1 and CE4,
   connected to PE1 with CE1 multi-homed to PE1 and PE2.  If PE1 is the
   designated forwarder for CE1, based on the DF election result, PE3
   can chose to not send unknown unicast and multicast traffic to PE2 as
   PE2 is not the designated forwarder for any customer site and it has
   no other single homed sites connected to it.









































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4.  Use of Route Origin Extended Community

   Due to lack of information about the PEs that originate the VPLS
   NLRIs in inter-AS operations, Route Origin Extended Community
   [RFC4360] is used to carry the source PE's IP address.

   To use Route Origin Extended Community for carrying the originator
   VPLS PE's loopback address, the type field of the community MUST be
   set to 0x01 and the Global Administrator sub-field MUST be set to the
   PE's loopback IP address.









































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5.  BGP based VPLS

   This section describes the VPLS operations that pertain to BGP VPLS
   as described in [RFC4761].

5.1.  BGP Local Preference

   Section 3.5 in [RFC4761] describes the use of BGP Local Preference in
   path selection to choose a particular NLRI, where Local Preference
   indicates the degree of preference for a particular VE.  The use of
   Local Preference is inadequate when VPLS PEs are spread across
   multiple ASes as Local Preference is not carried across AS boundary.

   For backwards compatibility, if VE preference as described in
   Section 3.3 is used, then BGP Local Preference MUST be set to the
   value of VE preference.  Note that a Local Preference value of zero
   for a VE is not valid unless 'D' bit in the control flags is set (see
   [I-D.kothari-l2vpn-auto-site-id]).  In addition, Local Preference
   value greater than or equal to 2^16 for VPLS advertisements is not
   valid.

5.2.  Multi-AS VPLS

   Section 3.4 in [RFC4761] describes three methods (a, b and c) to
   connect sites in a VPLS to PEs that are across multiple AS.  Since
   VPLS advertisements in method (a) do not cross AS boundaries, multi-
   homing operations for method (a) remain exactly the same as they are
   within as AS.  However, both for method (b) and (c), VPLS
   advertisements do cross AS boundary.  This section describes the VPLS
   operations for method (b) and method (c).  Consider Figure 4 for
   inter-AS VPLS with multi-homed customer sites.




















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5.2.1.  Inter-AS Method (b): EBGP Redistribution of VPLS Information
        between ASBRs




                            AS1                    AS2
                           ........               ........
            CE2 _______   .        .             .        .
                    ___ PE1         .           .          PE3 --- CE3
                   /    :            .         .            :
                __/    :             :         :             :
            CE1 __     :           ASBR1 --- ASBR2           :
                  \     :            :         :            :
                   \___ PE2         .           .          PE4 ---- CE4
                          .        .             .         .
                           ........                ........


           Assume VE IDs to be:
           CE1: 1
           CE2: 2
           CE3: 3
           CE4: 4

                          Figure 4: Inter-AS VPLS

   A customer has four sites, CE1, CE2, CE3 and CE4.  CE1 is multi-homed
   to PE1 and PE2 in AS1.  CE2 is single-homed to PE1.  CE3 and CE4 are
   also single homed to PE3 and PE4 respectively in AS2.  After running
   DF election algorithm, all four VPLS PEs must elect the same set of
   designated forwarder for all customer sites.  Since BGP Local
   Preference is not carried across AS boundary, VE preference as
   described in Section 3.3 MUST be used for carrying site preference in
   inter-AS VPLS operations.

   As explained in (Section 3.4.2) [RFC4761], ASBR1 will send a VPLS
   NLRI received from PE1 to ASBR2 with new labels and itself as the BGP
   nexthop.  ASBR2 will send the received NLRI from ASBR1 to PE3 and PE4
   with new labels and itself as the BGP nexthop.  Since VPLS PEs use
   BGP Local Preference in DF election, for backwards compatibility,
   ASBR2 MUST set the Local Preference value in the VPLS advertisements
   it sends to PE3 and PE4 to the VE preference value contained in the
   VPLS advertisement it receives from ASBR1.  ASBR1 MUST do the same
   for the NLRIs it sends to PE1 and PE2.  If ASBR1 receives a VPLS
   advertisement without a valid VE preference from a PE within its AS,
   then ASBR1 MUST set the VE preference in the advertisements to the
   Local Preference value before sending it to ASBR2.  Similarly, ASBR2



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   must do the same for advertisements without VE Preference it receives
   from PEs within its AS.  Thus, in method (b), ASBRs MUST update the
   VE and Local Preference based on the advertisements they receive
   either from an ASBR or a PE within their AS.

   In Figure 4, PE1 will send the VPLS advertisements with Route Origin
   Extended Community containing its loopback address.  PE2 will do the
   same.  Even though PE3 receives the VPLS advertisements for VE ID 1
   and 2 from the same BGP nexthop, ASBR2, the source PE address
   contained in the Route Origin Extended Community is different for the
   CE1 and CE2 advertisements, and thus, PE3 creates two PWs, one for
   CE1 (for VE ID 1) and another one for CE2 (for VE ID 2).

5.2.2.  Method (c): Multi-Hop EBGP Redistribution of VPLS Information
        between ASes

   In this method, there is a multi-hop E-BGP peering between the PEs or
   Route Reflectors in AS1 and the PEs or Route Reflectors in AS2.
   There is no VPLS state in either control or data plane on the ASBRs.
   The multi-homing operations on the PEs in this method are exactly the
   same as they are in intra-AS scenario.  However, since Local
   Preference is not carried across AS boundary, the translation of LP
   to VP and vice versa MUST be done by RR, if RR is used to reflect
   VPLS advertisements to other ASes.  This is exactly the same as what
   a ASBR does in case of method (b).  A RR must set the VP to the LP
   value in an advertisement before sending it to other ASes and must
   set the LP to the VP value in an advertisement that it receives from
   other ASes before sending to the PEs within the AS.























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6.  MAC Flush Operations

   In a service provider VPLS network, customer MAC learning is confined
   to PE devices and any intermediate nodes, such as a Route Reflector,
   do not have any for state for MAC addresses.

   Topology changes either in the service provider's network or in
   customer's network can result in the movement of MAC addresses from
   one PE device to another.  Such events can result into traffic being
   dropped due to stale state of MAC addresses on the PE devices.  Age
   out timers that clear the stale state will resume the traffic
   forwarding, but age out timers are typically in minutes, and
   convergence of the order of minutes can severely impact customer's
   service.  To handle such events and expedite convergence of traffic,
   flushing of affected MAC addresses is highly desirable.

   This section describes the scenarios where VPLS flush is desirable
   and the specific VPLS Flush TLVs that provide capability to flush the
   affected MAC addresses on the PE devices.  All operations described
   in this section are in context of a particular VPLS domain and not
   across multiple VPLS domains.  Mechanisms for MAC flush are described
   in [I-D.kothari-l2vpn-vpls-flush] for BGP based VPLS and in [RFC4762]
   for LDP based VPLS.

6.1.  MAC List FLush

   If multiple customer sites are connected to the same PE, PE1 as shown
   in Figure 2, and redundancy per site is desired when multi-homing
   procedures described in this document are in affect, then it is
   desired to flush just the relevant MAC addresses from a particular
   site when the site connectivity is lost.

   To flush particular set of MAC addresses, a PE SHOULD originate a
   flush message with MAC list that contains a list of MAC addresses
   that needs to be flushed.  In Figure 2, if connectivity between CE1
   and PE1 goes down and if PE1 was the designated forwarder for CE1,
   PE1 SHOULD send a list of MAC addresses that belong to CE1 to all its
   BGP peers.

   It is RECOMMENDED that in case of excessive link flap of customer
   attachment circuit in a short duration, a PE should have a means to
   throttle advertisements of flush messages so that excessive flooding
   of such advertisements do not occur.

6.2.  Implicit MAC Flush

   When a connectivity to a customer site is lost, remote PEs learn that
   a particular site is no longer reachable.  In case of BGP based VPLS,



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   a PE either withdraws the VPLS NLRI that it previously advertised for
   the site or it sends a BGP update message for the site's VPLS NLRI
   with the 'D' bit set.  In case of LDP based VPLS, a PE either
   withdraws the PW label previously advertised or sends a PW Status TLV
   with appropriate status bits.

   If a remote PE detects that a multi-homed PE has transitioned from
   being a DF to a non-DF, then the remote PE can choose to flush all
   MAC addresses that it learned from the multi-homed PE.










































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7.  Backwards Compatibility

   No forwarding loops are formed when PEs or Route Reflectors that do
   not support procedures defined in this section co exist in the
   network with PEs or Route Reflectors that do support.

7.1.  BGP based VPLS

   As explained in this section, multi-homed PEs to the same customer
   site MUST assign the same MH-Site-ID and SHOULD contain the block
   offset, block size and label base as zero.  Egress PEs that lack
   support of multi-homing operations specified in this document will
   fail to create any PWs for the multi-homed MH-Site-IDs due to the
   label value of zero and thus, the multi-homing NLRI should have no
   impact on the operation of egress VPLS PEs that lack support of
   multi-homing operations specified in this document.

7.2.  BGP Auto-discovery with LDP for signaling

   TBD.































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8.  Security Considerations

   No new security issues are introduced beyond those that are described
   in [RFC4761].















































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9.  IANA Considerations

   At this time, this memo includes no request to IANA.
















































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10.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Yakov Rekhter, Nischal Sheth, and
   Mitali Singh for their insightful comments and probing questions.















































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11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC4761]  Kompella, K. and Y. Rekhter, "Virtual Private LAN Service
              (VPLS) Using BGP for Auto-Discovery and Signaling",
              RFC 4761, January 2007.

   [RFC4447]  Martini, L., Rosen, E., El-Aawar, N., Smith, T., and G.
              Heron, "Pseudowire Setup and Maintenance Using the Label
              Distribution Protocol (LDP)", RFC 4447, April 2006.

   [RFC4446]  Martini, L., "IANA Allocations for Pseudowire Edge to Edge
              Emulation (PWE3)", BCP 116, RFC 4446, April 2006.

   [I-D.ietf-l2vpn-signaling]
              Rosen, E., "Provisioning, Autodiscovery, and Signaling in
              L2VPNs", draft-ietf-l2vpn-signaling-08 (work in progress),
              May 2006.

   [I-D.kothari-l2vpn-vpls-flush]
              Kothari, B. and R. Fernando, "VPLS Flush in BGP-based
              Virtual Private LAN Service",
              draft-kothari-l2vpn-vpls-flush-00 (work in progress),
              October 2008.

   [I-D.kothari-l2vpn-auto-site-id]
              Kothari, B., Kompella, K., and T. IV, "Automatic
              Generation of Site IDs for Virtual Private LAN Service",
              draft-kothari-l2vpn-auto-site-id-01 (work in progress),
              October 2008.

   [I-D.ietf-pwe3-redundancy-bit]
              Muley, P., Bocci, M., and L. Martini, "Preferential
              Forwarding Status bit definition",
              draft-ietf-pwe3-redundancy-bit-01 (work in progress),
              September 2008.

11.2.  Informative References

   [RFC4360]  Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
              Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, February 2006.

   [RFC4364]  Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private
              Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, February 2006.



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   [RFC4456]  Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
              Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
              (IBGP)", RFC 4456, April 2006.

   [RFC4762]  Lasserre, M. and V. Kompella, "Virtual Private LAN Service
              (VPLS) Using Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) Signaling",
              RFC 4762, January 2007.

   [RFC4271]  Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
              Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.









































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Authors' Addresses

   Bhupesh Kothari
   Juniper Networks
   1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
   Sunnyvale, CA  94089
   US

   Email: bhupesh@juniper.net


   Kireeti Kompella
   Juniper Networks
   1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
   Sunnyvale, CA  94089
   US

   Email: kireeti@juniper.net


   Wim Henderickx
   Alcatel-Lucent

   Email: wim.henderickx@alcatel-lucent.be


   Florin Balus
   Alcatel-Lucent

   Email: florin.balus@alcatel-lucent.com





















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