One document matched: draft-yavatkar-sbm-ethernet-00.txt


  Internet Engineering Task Force                 Raj Yavatkar
  INTERNET-DRAFT                                  Ema Patki
  draft-yavatkar-sbm-ethernet-00.txt                 Intel Corporation

                                                  Don Hoffman
                                                     Sun Microsystems, Inc

                                                  June 1996
                                                  Expires:  December 1, 1996

                      SBM (Subnet Bandwidth Manager):
               A Proposal for Admission Control over Ethernet

                            Status of this Memo

  This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are working documents of
  the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working
  groups.  Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as
  Internet-Drafts.

  Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may
  be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time.  It is
  inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them
  other than as ``work in progress.''

  To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
  ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
  Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au
  (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West
  Coast).

  This document is a product of the ISSLL subgroup of the Integrated Services
  working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force.  Comments are solicited
  and should be addressed to the working group's mailing list at
  issll@mercury.lcs.mite.edu, and/or the author(s).

                                  Abstract

  This document outlines an architecture for RSVP-based admission control over
  an IEEE 802.3 ethernet environment. The proposed architecture is designed to
  work with the current generation of Ethernet infrastructure (NICs, bridges,
  hubs, and switches) and should be considered as a first step towards
  discovering solutions for implementation of IntServ capabilities over
  Ethernet.  This draft is intended as a starting point for discussions in
  ISSLL meeting to be held at the Montreal IETF meeting in June 1996.












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  1. Introduction

  Under RSVP, an end-to-end reservation of resources involves two steps. First,
  a sender specifies its traffic characteristics in a PATH message that
  traverses all the links along the path of a data flow. Receiver(s) are
  responsible for reservation of resources and request a reservation using a
  RESERVE message that traverses, in reverse, the path taken by the PATH
  message. As the RESERVE message traverses the reverse path, each intermediate
  RSVP node (a host or a router) reserves resources on its downstream
  interface. As part of the reservation procedure, the RSVP node invokes (and
  relies on) an admission control procedure that is specific to the underlying
  medium (e.g., a point-to-point link, Token Ring or Ethernet) of the interface
  to ensure that adequate resources are available and can be reserved over that
  link. The RSVP protocol itself does not specify the admission control
  procedure and separate specifications are needed for each type service and
  type of link-level medium.

  The purpose of this document is to propose an architecture for RSVP-based
  admission control over Ethernet. We make the following assumptions:

          - No explicit support for integrated services is assumed from
            Ethernet NICs, switches, hubs, or bridges. However, we identify
            possible avenues for such support later in the document.

          - In the absence of any policing or traffic shaping mechanism for
            limiting outgoing traffic on an end-system, our goal is to provide an
            administrative control over the maximum amount of RSVP-capable
            traffic admitted on any segment of a LAN. Thus, we assume that all
            the RSVP nodes on a LAN will utilize the proposed admission control
            procedure to reserve bandwidth in advance of sending any RSVP-enabled
            data flows and will not send/forward such traffic if the reservation
            request fails. Thus, if all the multimedia traffic on a LAN is sent
            using RSVP for resource reservation, the proposed architecture would
            restrict the total multimedia traffic on any LAN segment within the
            bounds desired by a LAN administrator.

          - No prior limit is assumed on the amount of best effort traffic on a
            LAN until additional mechanisms can be incorporated in end-systems to
            restrict the amount of best effort traffic generated. However, we do
            assume that best-effort traffic is rate-adaptive and uses a "slow
            start" type congestion control mechanism to limit the amount of
            traffic sent.

          - One of our goals is to propose a design that is stateless and fault
            tolerant. Therefore, we make use of soft state (state information
            that can be easily reconstructed in case of failure) and rely on IP
            multicast for state discovery and propagation.










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  2. Overview

  2.1 Terminology

  Our architecture is based on a logical entity called an SBM (Subnet Bandwidth
  Manager) responsible for handling admission control requests. We assume that
  a Designated SBM (DSBM) exists for each LAN segment (called a Managed Segment
  or MS) and services reservation requests (manages bandwidth) for that
  segment. An SBM is an application-level entity that uses UDP as its transport
  protocol and understands RSVP messages. The architecture makes no assumptions
  about the number of SBMs within a LAN; an SBM may act as a DSBM for one or
  more segments, or a single DSBM may exist for each LAN segment.

  2.1 Basic Algorithm

  Figure 1 - Example Managed Segment.

                         Host                    Host
          _______        ===       -------       ===
         |       |      | C |     | SBM   |     | B |
         | Router|      |   |      - /----      |   |
         |_R2____|       ===        /            ===
          |               |        /              |
          |               |       /               |
     ==============================================================LAN
                      |                                   |
                      |                                   |
                     ===                                __|_____
                    | A |                              | Router |
                    |   |                              |  R1    |
                     ===                               |________|
                    Host

  Figure 1 shows an example topology with hosts and routers interconnected
  across a LAN. For the purpose of this discussion, we ignore the actual
  physical topology of the LAN and a single SBM is assumed to be the DSBM for
  the entire LAN. The basic SBM algorithm works as follows:


          1. As part of its initial configuration, DSBM obtains information such
             as maximum bandwidth that can be reserved on each LAN segment
             under its control. Configuration is likely to be static with the
             current Ethernet devices. Future work may allow for dynamic
             discovery of this information. Section 3 discusses some of these
             issues in more detail.

          2. At the start, an RSVP node (RSVP-capable hosts and routers are
             referred to as an "RSVP node") discovers and binds to its DSBM
             using a "SBM Discovery Protocol" (described in section 2.3).

          3. As in conventional RSVP processing, Path messages from a sender
             are sent/forwarded to potential receivers using the destination
             session address or using the standard RSVP encapsulation. For
             example, if the sender to a session is outside the LAN and router



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             R1 (see Figure 1) is on the path to the receivers, R1 will forward
             its PATH message to the session address.

          4. When a receiver (say, host A) wishes to make a reservation request
             for a session, it sends a RSVP RESERVE message to its DSBM using
             that DSBM's unicast address. The RESERVE message must contain an
             additional, new RSVP object called LAN_PHOP object. This object
             specifies the IP address of the PHOP (previous hop) associated
             with the RESERVE message and has the same structure as the
             RSVP_HOP object.

          5. The DSBM processes the RESERVE message based on the bandwidth
             available and returns an RSVP_ERROR to the requestor (host A) if
             the request cannot be granted. In case of a successful
             reservation, DSBM forwards the RESERVE message towards the PHOP
             specified in the LAN_PHOP object.  The DSBM merges reservation
             requests for the same session as and when possible using the rules
             similar to the conventional RSVP processing.


          6. The RESERVE message eventually reaches the original PHOP on
             that MS (as specified in the LAN_PHOP object) if all reservation
             requests within the MS succeed.


  2.2 Changes to conventional RSVP operation

  The SBM algorithm requires following changes to the RSVP operation on part of
  RSVP end-nodes:

          - Outgoing RESERVE messages on an Ethernet interface are
            unicast to the DSBM.

          - RESERVE messages sent to a DSBM contain a new, additional object
            called LAN_PHOP that specifies the IP address of the PHOP for the
            RESERVE message.

          - RESERVE message are sent from an RSVP node to the DSBM, and not
            the PHOP.


  2.3 Discovering and Binding to a DSBM

  DSBM listens to a well-known SBM multicast transport address (SBM_GRP -- a
  combination of reserved UDP port and an IP multicast address) and an RSVP
  node locates its DSBM by multicasting a LOCATE_SBM request to SBM_GRP with a
  restricted multicast scope (multicast TTL=1). After the initial handshake
  between the DSBM and an RSVP node, the RSVP node is considered bound to its
  DSBM.

  2.4 More than one active SBM on a LAN segment

  For the sake of redundancy and fault tolerance, it is possible to have more
  than one active SBM on any LAN segment that can act as a backup DSBM if



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  necessary. In such a case, exactly one SBM acts as the DSBM at any time and
  is elected using an DSBM election algorithm. Once a DSBM is elected, other
  SBMs stay around and step in to elect a new DSBM if the previously elected
  DSBM terminates or crashes for some reason. The election algorithm works as
  follows.

  When a SBM comes up on an IP subnet, it announces its willingness to be a
  DSBM by periodically multicasting a DSBM WILLING message to the SBM_GRP
  address with restricted multicast scope (TTL=1).  If another SBM exists on
  the same subnet and considers itself a current or a better choice, it
  replies to the new SBM via a multicast I_AM_DSBM  message to the same group.
  Ties between candidate DSBMs may be broken based on a priority field in the
  I_AM_DSBM message (priority specified by the network administrator) or simply
  based on IP address ordering. (e.g. candidate with the lower IP address
  wins). If the new SBM does not hear a response from a better choice within K
  periodic announcements, it declares itself to be the SBM by multicasting a
  I_AM_DSBM message.

  In order to avoid SBMs sending simultaneous I_AM_DSBM messages, the SBM waits
  for a random time before declaring itself SBM. The designated SBM of the MS
  periodically multicasts the I_AM_DSBM message. Other SBMs in the MS listen to
  the periodic announcements and assume that the SBM has terminated functioning
  if they do not hear K successive periodic announcements. In that case, all
  the SBMs initiate the election algorithm to elect a new DSBM.

  2.5 Application Behavior

  This proposal makes no assumptions about any traffic separation or policing
  mechanisms on the MS. Consequently, there are no network enforced mechanisms
  to keep non adaptive traffic intended to be part of a reserved flow, but that
  did not receive a reservation due to admission control, from interfering with
  traffic running with valid reservations. Instead, applications are expected
  to be well behaved and follow the following set of rules in such
  environments:

          - For both unicast and multicast flows, a sender is not to transmit
            any traffic on a RSVP flow until at least one RESERVE has been
            received for that flow. The outgoing flow should be policed at the
            sender to be less than or equal to the maximum flow reserved.
            RESERVE TEARS are indications that the sender should no longer send
            a flow.

          - For multicast flows, the receiver is to leave the session multicast
            group if a reservation error (RESV_ERROR) or a Path Tear (PTEAR) is
            received.

  The final rule may create some difficulty in environments where source
  specific multicast pruning is not implemented (the default case in the
  current MBONE). A reservation error from a path toward any one specific
  sender would result in the receiver dropping all senders, even those with
  fully reserved paths.  Applications running in such environments should
  restrict sessions to a single sender if at all possible.





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  3. Handling Complex LAN Physical Topologies

  The physical topology of a LAN may vary from a single, shared segment to a
  more complex, multi-hop topology (e.g., an interconnected network of bridges,
  hubs, and switches). In such a complex topology, the SBM algorithm should
  handle two cases that may arise:

          - In a multi-hub (or bridged) LAN topology, unicast data flows
            between two entities on the subnet only traverse a subset of LAN
            segments. Similarly, if Ethernet switches/hubs support IP
            multicast traffic filtering, multicast data flows would also
            traverse a subset of segments based on the location of IP
            multicast group members. Thus, the SBM algorithm must reserve
            bandwidth only on affected segments in such cases.

          - Instead of a single SBM acting as a centralized DSBM for the
            entire multi-hop LAN, it may be desirable to deploy many SBMs with
            each SBM responsible for managing bandwidth on a separate portion
            of the LAN. To handle such a case of many DSBMs within a LAN, our
            SBM algorithm must include mechanisms for discovering and
            communicating with peer DSBMs within a LAN.

  In the remainder of this document, we address each of these issues in more
  detail.

  3.1 Discovering Physical Topology of a LAN

  We assume that an SBM can discover the topological information about the
  physical interconnections among hubs, switches, and bridges using a variety
  of methods such as using a static topology configuration database or using
  MIBs and techniques used by network management utilities. Using a static
  topology database is sufficient when the multi-hop LAN uses a star-based
  topology with no alternate, redundant interconnections between bridges and
  hubs. However, when alternate paths exist in a rich topology, bandwidth
  reservation optimizations require access to information that reveals the LAN
  segments traversed between two endpoints. Ideally, a standard interface to
  information such as the spanning tree configuration should be made available
  by IEEE 802.3 (or associated) working groups. Until such an interface is
  available, we propose a topology discovery protocol that relies on the
  "Topology Mapping" section (section 4.0) of the hub MIB WG specification
  being considered in IETF [3].
















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  3.1.1 Topology Discovery Protocol

  Figure 2 -- Alternative representation of the LAN in figure 1.


                              Switch             Host
                               ____               ===
                              | Sw1|             | A |
                              |____|-------------|   |
                                /                 ===
                               /
                              /
                            _/__               ===
                           | Sw2|-------------| C |
                           |____|             |   |
                            /  \               ===
                           /    \             Host
                        __/__   _\___
                       | SW3 | | Sw4 |
                       |_____| |_____|
                        /
                       /
           ===       _/____
          | B |------| Sw5|
          |   |      |____|
           ===
           Host



  As described above, in a multi-hop LAN, a DSBM should identify the relevant
  physical segments on a path between a sender and a receiver and perform
  admission control over one or more such segments. Figure 2 shows an example
  multi-hop  topology. Communication between endpoints (e.g., between hosts A
  and B, or between B and C) requires reservation of bandwidth across only few
  of the LAN segments segments that lie on the path between the two endpoints.

  Given a topology map, the DSBM needs to place the two endpoints on the map
  and identify the LAN segments on the path between them.  An SBM follows the
  following steps to achieve the goal:

          1. The SBM determines the MAC address of the endpoint it wishes to
             place on the map.

          2. The SBM tells all managed hubs in the collision domain to
             watch for packets with that source MAC address.

          3. The SBM sends an echo datagram ("ping") to the endpoint to cause
             it to transmit. The SBM then uses the hub MIB interface to read
             the group and port of the targeted MAC address from the managed
             hubs. The information obtained identifies the location of the
             endpoint on the map and the LAN segments currently used to reach
             the endpoint.  Similar information can be gathered for the other
             endpoint.



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          4. Once the endpoints and the traversed hops are placed on the
             topology map, the SBM can identify the affected segments between
             the two endpoints assuming a spanning tree topology.

  3.2 Handling Multiple, Peer DSBMs in a LAN

  We assume that each DSBM has information on which LAN segments are under its
  control and needs to communicate with its peer DSBMs whenever admission
  control involves LAN segments that are not under its control. Thus,
  peer-to-peer DSBM communication involves two parts:

          - Discovering peer DSBMs (and information on which segments they
            manage).

          - Coordinating with peer DSBMs when a reservation request involves LAN
            segments under the control of more than one SBM.

  3.2.1 Discovery of Peer SBMs

  All SBMs maintain a local cache of information on peer SBMs and segments
  under their control. The cache is periodically updated to flush outdated
  entries. When an SBM processes a reservation request involving  segment(s)
  that are not under its control, it checks its cache to locate appropriate
  DSBMs for the segment(s) of interest. If no DSBM is known, it multicasts
  (with TTL=1) a PEER_SEARCH query to the SBM_GRP specifying the segment(s) of
  interest. When the appropriate DSBM receives such a request, it multicasts
  its reply to the group giving its unicast address and the list of segments
  under its control. The requesting SBM (and others) then include the
  information in their cache.

  3.2.2 Peer-to-Peer Communication

  When a reservation request involves segments outside the domain of a DSBM, it
  first performs admission control on segments under its control. If the
  admission control succeeds, the DSBM forwards the RSVP RESERVE request to the
  peer DSBM responsible for the next segment(s) on the path towards the
  LAN_PHOP using the peer's unicast address. The peer DSBM will repeat similar
  procedure and forward the RESERVE to the next DSBM if necessary. Finally, the
  DSBM responsible for the final segment for the LAN_PHOP will forward the
  RESERVE to the LAN_PHOP if admission control succeeds up to and including the
  final segment.  If admission control fails at any intervening SBM, that SBM
  sends back an RSVP_ERROR message to its previous peer and the error message
  propagates hop-by-hop (using the information in the reservation state at
  intermediate SBMs) back to the first DSBM  which then communicates the
  RSVP_ERROR back to the RSVP node that initiated the RESERVE.

  DSBMs merge reservation requests (and handle killer reservation problems) for
  the same session on segments under their control according to the rules
  specified in the RSVP specification.







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  4. ADDITIONAL NOTES

  It should be noted that our design allows for one DSBM per switch in a LAN.
  However, our design will benefit from definition of standard interface for
  accessing routing (spanning tree) information available at switches and other
  802.3 medium attachment units.

  We also hope the draft to be a starting point of discussion between IETF and
  IEEE 802.1P/Q subcommittee(s) to identify Level 2 mechanisms that will help
  in implementation of integrated-services capabilities over Ethernets.

                              Acknowledgements

  The authors wish to thank John Flick of HP for explanation of the "Topology
  Mapping" section of the hub MIB specification.










































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  5. References

  [1] R Braden, L Zhang, S Berson, S Herzog, J Wroclaswki,
  "Resource Reservation Protocol", Internet Draft
  draft-ietf-rsvp-spec12.txt,May 1996.

  [2] S.Shenker, "Specification of General Characterization Parameters",
  draft-ietf-intserv-charac-00.txt,Nov 1995

  [3] D Romascanu, "Definitions of Managed Objects for IEEE 802.3
  Repeater Devices", draft-ietf-hubmib-repeater-dev-02.txt,May 1996


  6. Authors' Addresses

          Raj Yavatkar
          Intel Corporation
          MS : JF2-74
          2111 N.E. 25th Avenue,
          Hillsboro, OR 97124
          USA
          phone: +1 503-264-9077
          email: yavatkar@ibeam.intel.com

          Ema Patki
          Intel Corporation
          MS: JF2-74
          2111 N.E. 25th Avenue,
          Hillsboro, OR 97124
          USA
          phone: +1 503-264-0440
          email: epatki@ibeam.intel.com

          Don Hoffman
          Sun Microsystems, Inc.
          MS: UMPK14-305
          2550 Garcia Avenue
          Mountain View, California 94043-1100
          USA
          phone: +1 503-297-1580
          email: don.hoffman@eng.sun.com
















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