MPLS Working Group L. Andersson Internet-Draft Bronze Dragon Consulting Updates: 3032, 7274 (if approved) K. Kompella Intended status: Informational Juniper Networks Expires: August 23, 2019 A. Farrel Old Dog Consulting February 19, 2019 Special Purpose Label terminology draft-andersson-mpls-spl-terminology-00 Abstract This document discusses and recommends a terminology that may be used when MPLS Special Purpose Labels (SPL) are specified and documented. Note: The rest of the text in this section is not really part of the abstract even though the text is placed here. It is working notes. Note: At least at the moment it is not the intention to take this document to an RFC, but it might be polled to become a wg document to see if the MPLS working group agree on the proposed terminology. Note: The changes we propose are minor, but we might have to progress the document to RFC since there is a proposed change to the "Special- Purpose Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label Values" registry. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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." This Internet-Draft will expire on August 23, 2019. Andersson, et al. Expires August 23, 2019 [Page 1] Internet-Draft SPL Terminology February 2019 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1. GMPLS Special Purpose Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Terminology and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Introduction RFC 7274 [RFC7274] made some changes to the terminology used for MPLS Special Purpose Labels, but did not define consistent terminology. One thing that RFC 7274 did was to deprecate use use of the term "reserved labels" when describing a range of labels allocated from a registry maintained by IANA. The term "Reserved" in such a registry means "set aside, not to be used", but that range of labels was available for allocation according to the policies set out in the registry. The name "Special Purpose Labels" was introduced in RFC 7274 in place of the previous term, and the abbreviation SPL was recommended. At the time of posting this Internet-Draft, the IETF is in the process of allocating the very first SPLs from the Extended SPL range [I-D.ietf-mpls-sfc]. This document discusses and recommends terminology and abbreviations to be used when talking about and documentating Special Purpose Labels. Andersson, et al. Expires August 23, 2019 [Page 2] Internet-Draft SPL Terminology February 2019 2. Background Two sets of SPLs are defined for use in MPLS: The range of SPLs 0-15 is specified in RFC 3032 [RFC3032]. The range of SPLs 0-1048575 is specified in RFC 7274 [RFC7274]. * the values 0-15 has been reserved never to be allocated * the values 15-239 are available for allocation * the values 240-255 are for experimental use * the values 256-1048575 are currently not available for allocation, and a standard tracks RFC will be needed to make the entire range or part of it available for allocation 2.1. GMPLS Special Purpose Labels Note that IANA maintains a registry called "Special Purpose Generalized Label Values". Labels in that registry have special meaning when present in certain signalling objects, are 32 bits long, and are not to be confused with MPLS forwarding plane labels. This document does not make any changes to the registry or how labels from that registry are described. 3. Terminology and Abbreviations IANA maintains a name space for 'Special-Purpose Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label Values' code points [SPL-NAME-SPACE]. Within this name space there are two registries. One is called the 'Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values' registry [rSPL]. The other is called 'Extended Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values' registry [eSPL]. The difference in the name of the name space and the first registry is only that the MPLS abbrfeviation is expanded. This document changes the name of the first registry to 'Regular Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values', but leaves the name of the latter registry unchanged as 'Extended Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values'. The following conventions will be used in specifications and when talking about SPLs o Collectively, the two ranges are known as Special Purpose Labels (SPL). Andersson, et al. Expires August 23, 2019 [Page 3] Internet-Draft SPL Terminology February 2019 o The special purpose labels from the lower range will be called Regular Special Purpose Labels (rSPL). o The special purpose labels from the higher range will be called Extended Special Purpose Labels (eSPL). o The combination of the Extension Label (XL) (value 15 which is an rSPL, but that is also called xSPL) and an eSPL is called a Composite Special Purpose Label (cSPL). This results in a label stacks such as the illustrative examples shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2. 0 31 | MPLS Label Stack entry | +--------+--------+--------+--------+ | MPLS Label Stack entry | +--------+--------+--------+--------+ rSPL | Regular SPL | +--------+--------+--------+--------+ | MPLS Label Stack entry (cont.) | Figure 1: Example of Label Stack 0 31 | MPLS Label Stack entry | +--------+--------+--------+--------+ | MPLS Label Stack entry | +--------+--------+--------+--------+ xSPL | Extension Label (XL) | <--+ +--------+--------+--------+--------+ |--- cSPL eSPL | Extended SPL | <--+ +--------+--------+--------+--------+ | MPLS Label Stack entry (cont.) | Figure 2: Example of Label Stack Andersson, et al. Expires August 23, 2019 [Page 4] Internet-Draft SPL Terminology February 2019 4. Security Considerations This document is entirely about terminology for SPLs and does not effect the forwarding in the MPLS data plane, nor does it have any effect on how LSPs are establsihed by an MPLS control plane or by a centralized controller. The doucment describes a terminology to be used when describing and specifying the use of SPLs. This document does not aim to describe existing implementations of SPLs or the potential vulnerabilities of SPLs. 5. IANA Considerations We request that the name of the IANA registry that today is called "Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values" is changed to "Regular Special- Purpose MPLS Label Values". 6. Acknowledgements - - 7. References 7.1. Normative References [eSPL] "Extended Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values", . [RFC3032] Rosen, E., Tappan, D., Fedorkow, G., Rekhter, Y., Farinacci, D., Li, T., and A. Conta, "MPLS Label Stack Encoding", RFC 3032, DOI 10.17487/RFC3032, January 2001, . [RFC7274] Kompella, K., Andersson, L., and A. Farrel, "Allocating and Retiring Special-Purpose MPLS Labels", RFC 7274, DOI 10.17487/RFC7274, June 2014, . [rSPL] "Special-Purpose MPLS Label Values", . Andersson, et al. Expires August 23, 2019 [Page 5] Internet-Draft SPL Terminology February 2019 [SPL-NAME-SPACE] "Special-Purpose Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label Values", . 7.2. Informative References [I-D.ietf-mpls-sfc] Farrel, A., Bryant, S., and J. Drake, "An MPLS-Based Forwarding Plane for Service Function Chaining", draft- ietf-mpls-sfc-05 (work in progress), February 2019. Authors' Addresses Loa Andersson Bronze Dragon Consulting Email: loa@pi.nu Kireeti Kompella Juniper Networks Email: kireeti@juniper.net Adrian Farrel Old Dog Consulting Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk Andersson, et al. Expires August 23, 2019 [Page 6]