Internet Engineering Task Force D. Katz
Internet-Draft Juniper Networks
Updates: 5880 (if approved) D. Ward
Intended status: Standards Track Cisco Systems
Expires: December 20, 2018 S. Pallagatti, Ed.
Individual contributor
G. Mirsky, Ed.
ZTE Corp.
June 18, 2018

BFD for Multipoint Networks
draft-ietf-bfd-multipoint-18

Abstract

This document describes extensions to the Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) protocol for its use in multipoint and multicast networks.

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 December 20, 2018.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2018 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

The Bidirectional Forwarding Detection protocol [RFC5880] specifies a method for verifying unicast connectivity between a pair of systems. This document defines a method for using BFD to provide verification of multipoint or multicast connectivity between a multipoint sender (the "head") and a set of one or more multipoint receivers (the "tails").

As multipoint transmissions are inherently unidirectional, this mechanism purports only to verify this unidirectional connectivity. Although this seems in conflict with the "Bidirectional" in BFD, the protocol is capable of supporting this use case. Use of BFD in Demand mode enables a tail monitor availability of a multipoint path even without the existence of some kind of a return path to the head. As an option, if a return path from a tail to the head exists, the tail may notify the head of the lack of multipoint connectivity. Details of tail notification to the head are outside the scope of this document and are discussed in [I-D.ietf-bfd-multipoint-active-tail].

This application of BFD allows for the tails to detect a lack of connectivity from the head. For some applications such detection of the failure at the tail is useful. For example, use of multipoint BFD to enable fast failure detection and faster failover in multicast VPN described in [I-D.ietf-bess-mvpn-fast-failover]. Due to unidirectional nature, virtually all options and timing parameters are controlled by the head.

Throughout this document, the term "multipoint" is defined as a mechanism by which one or more systems receive packets sent by a single sender. This specifically includes such things as IP multicast and point-to-multipoint MPLS.

Term "connectivity" in this document is not being used in the context of connectivity verification in transport network but as an alternative to "continuity", i.e., the existence of a forwarding path between the sender and the receiver.

This document effectively updates and extends the base BFD specification [RFC5880].

2. Keywords

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

3. Goals

The primary goal of this mechanism is to allow tails to rapidly detect the fact that multipoint connectivity from the head has failed.

Another goal is for the mechanism to work on any multicast technology.

A further goal is to support multiple, overlapping point-to-multipoint paths, as well as multipoint-to-multipoint paths, and to allow point-to-point BFD sessions to operate simultaneously among the systems participating in Multipoint BFD.

It is not a goal for this protocol to verify point-to-point bi-directional connectivity between the head and any tail. This can be done independently (and with no penalty in protocol overhead) by using point-to-point BFD.

4. Overview

The heart of this protocol is the periodic transmission of BFD Control packets along a multipoint path, from the head to all tails on the path. The contents of the BFD packets provide the means for the tails to calculate the detection time for path failure. If no BFD Control packets are received by a tail for a detection time, the tail declares the path to having failed. For some applications this is the only mechanism necessary; the head can remain ignorant of the tails.

The head of a multipoint BFD session may wish to be alerted to the tails' connectivity (or lack thereof). Details of how the head keeps track of tails and how tails alert their connectivity to the head are outside scope of this document and are discussed in [I-D.ietf-bfd-multipoint-active-tail].

Although this document describes a single head and a set of tails spanned by a single multipoint path, the protocol is capable of supporting (and discriminating between) more than one multipoint path at both heads and tails, as described in Section 5.7 and Section 5.13.2. Furthermore, the same head and tail may share multiple multipoint paths, and a multipoint path may have multiple heads.

5. Protocol Details

This section describes the operation of Multipoint BFD in detail.

5.1. Multipoint BFD Control Packets

Multipoint BFD Control packets (packets sent by the head over a multipoint path) are explicitly marked as such, via the setting of the M bit [RFC5880]. This means that Multipoint BFD does not depend on the recipient of a packet to know whether the packet was received over a multipoint path. This can be useful in scenarios where this information may not be available to the recipient.

5.2. Session Model

Multipoint BFD is modeled as a set of sessions of different types. The elements of procedure differ slightly for each type.

The head has a session of type MultipointHead, as defined in Section 5.4.1, that is bound to a multipoint path. Multipoint BFD Control packets are sent by this session over the multipoint path, and no BFD Control packets are received by it.

Each tail has a session of type MultipointTail, as defined in Section 5.4.1, associated with a multipoint path. These sessions receive BFD Control packets from the head over the multipoint path.

5.3. Session Failure Semantics

The semantics of session failure is subtle enough to warrant further explanation.

MultipointHead sessions cannot fail (since they are controlled administratively).

If a MultipointTail session fails, it means that the tail definitely has lost contact with the head (or the head has been administratively disabled) and the tail should take appropriate action.

5.4. State Variables

Multipoint BFD introduces some new state variables and modifies the usage of a few existing ones.

5.4.1. New State Variable Values

A number of new values of the state variable bfd.SessionType are added to the base BFD [RFC5880] and base S-BFD [RFC7880] specifications in support of Multipoint BFD.

5.4.2. State Variable Initialization and Maintenance

Some state variables defined in section 6.8.1 of [RFC5880] need to be initialized or manipulated differently depending on the session type.

5.5. State Machine

The BFD state machine works slightly differently in the multipoint application. In particular, since there is a many-to-one mapping, three-way handshakes for session establishment and teardown are neither possible nor appropriate. As such, there is no Init state. Sessions of type MultipointHead MUST NOT send BFD control packets with the State field being set to INIT, and those packets MUST be ignored on receipt.

The following diagram provides an overview of the state machine for session type MultipointTail. The notation on each arc represents the state of the remote system (as received in the State field in the BFD Control packet) or indicates the expiration of the Detection Timer.

			     DOWN, ADMIN DOWN,
                    +------+  TIMER               +------+
               +----|      |<---------------------|      |----+
          DOWN,|    | DOWN |                      |  UP  |    |UP
    ADMIN DOWN,+--->|      |--------------------->|      |<---+
         TIMER      +------+          UP          +------+
			
			

5.6. Session Establishment

Unlike point-to-point BFD, Multipoint BFD provides a form of the discovery mechanism for tails to discover the head. The minimum amount of a priori information required both on the head and tails is the binding to the multipoint path over which BFD is running. The head transmits Multipoint BFD packets on that path, and the tails listen for BFD packets on that path. All other information MAY be determined dynamically.

A session of type MultipointHead is created for each multipoint path over which the head wishes to run BFD. This session runs in the Active role , per section 6.1 [RFC5880]. Except when administratively terminating BFD service, this session is always in state Up and always operates in Demand mode. No received packets are ever demultiplexed to the MultipointHead session. In this sense, it is a degenerate form of a session.

Sessions on the tail MAY be established dynamically, based on the receipt of a Multipoint BFD Control packet from the head, and are of type MultipointTail. Tail sessions always take the Passive role, per section 6.1 [RFC5880].

5.7. Discriminators and Packet Demultiplexing

The use of Discriminators is somewhat different in Multipoint BFD than in Point-to-point BFD.

The head sends Multipoint BFD Control packets over the multipoint path via the MultipointHead session with My Discr set to a value bound to the multipoint path, and with Your Discr set to zero.

IP and MPLS multipoint tails MUST demultiplex BFD packets based on a combination of the source address, My Discriminator and the identity of the multipoint path which the Multipoint BFD Control packet was received from. Together they uniquely identify the head of the multipoint path. Bootstrapping BFD session to multipoint MPLS LSP in case of penultimate hop popping may use control plane, e.g., as described in [I-D.ietf-bess-mvpn-fast-failover], and is outside the scope of this document.

Note that, unlike point-to-point sessions, the My Discriminator value on MultipointHead session MUST NOT be changed during the life of a session. This is a side effect of the more complex demultiplexing scheme.

5.8. Packet consumption on tails

BFD packets received on tails for an IP multicast group MUST be consumed by tails and MUST NOT be forwarded to receivers. Nodes with the BFD session of type MultipointTail MUST identify packets received on an IP multipoint path as BFD control packet if the destination UDP port value equals 3784.

For multipoint LSPs, when IP/UDP encapsulation of BFD control packets is used, MultipointTail MUST expect destination UDP port 3784. Destination IP address of BFD control packet MUST be in 127.0.0.0/8 range for IPv4 or in 0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:7F00:0/104 range for IPv6. The use of these destination addresses is consistent with the explanations and usage in [RFC8029]. Packets identified as BFD packets MUST be consumed by MultipointTail and demultiplexed as described in Section 5.13.2. Use of other types of encapsulation of the BFD control message over multipoint LSP is outside the scope of this document.

5.9. Bringing Up and Shutting Down Multipoint BFD Service

Because there is no three-way handshake in Multipoint BFD, a newly started head (that does not have any previous state information available) SHOULD start with bfd.SessionState set to Down and bfd.RequiredMinRxInterval MUST be set to zero in the MultipointHead session. The session SHOULD remain in this state for a time equal to (bfd.DesiredMinTxInterval * bfd.DetectMult). This will ensure that all MultipointTail sessions are reset (so long as the restarted head is using the same or a larger value of bfd.DesiredMinTxInterval than it did previously).

Multipoint BFD service is brought up by administratively setting bfd.SessionState to Up in the MultipointHead session.

The head of a multipoint BFD session may wish to shut down its BFD service in a controlled fashion. This is desirable because the tails need not wait a detection time prior to declaring the multipoint session to be down (and taking whatever action is necessary in that case).

To shut down a multipoint session in a controlled fashion the head MUST administratively set bfd.SessionState in the MultipointHead session to either Down or AdminDown and SHOULD set bfd.RequiredMinRxInterval to zero. The session SHOULD send BFD Control packets in this state for a period equal to (bfd.DesiredMinTxInterval * bfd.DetectMult). Alternatively, the head MAY stop transmitting BFD Control packets and not send any more BFD Control packets with the new state (Down or AdminDown). Tails will declare the multipoint session down only after the detection time interval runs out.

5.10. Timer Manipulation

Because of the one-to-many mapping, a session of type MultipointHead SHOULD NOT initiate a Poll Sequence in conjunction with timer value changes. However, to indicate a change in the packets, MultipointHead session MUST send packets with the P bit set. MultipointTail session MUST NOT reply if the packet has M and P bits set and bfd.RequiredMinRxInterval set to 0. Because the Poll Sequence is not used, the tail cannot negotiate down MultpointHead's transmit interval. If the value of Desired Min TX Interval in the BFD Control packet received by MultipointTail is too high (that determination may change in time based on the current environment) it must be handled by the implementation and may be controlled by local policy, e.g., close the MultipointTail session.

The MultipointHead, when changing the transmit interval to a higher value, MUST send BFD control packets with P bit set at the old transmit interval before using the higher value in order to avoid false detection timeouts at the tails. MultipointHead session MAY also wait some amount of time before making the changes to the transmit interval (through configuration).

Change in the value of bfd.RequiredMinRxInterval is outside the scope of this document and is discussed in [I-D.ietf-bfd-multipoint-active-tail].

5.11. Detection Times

Multipoint BFD is inherently asymmetric. As such, each session type has a different approach to detection times.

Since MultipointHead sessions never receive packets, they do not calculate a detection time.

MultipointTail sessions cannot influence the transmission rate of the MultipointHead session using the Required Min Rx Interval field because of its one-to-many nature. As such, the detection time calculation for a MultipointTail session does not use bfd.RequiredMinRxInterval. The detection time is calculated as the product of the last received values of Desired Min TX Interval and Detect Mult.

The value of bfd.DetectMult may be changed at any time on any session type.

5.12. State Maintenance for Down/AdminDown Sessions

The length of time session state is kept after the session goes down determines how long the session will continue to send BFD Control packets (since no packets can be sent after the session is destroyed).

5.12.1. MultipointHead Sessions

When a MultipointHead session transitions to states Down or AdminDown, the state SHOULD be maintained for a period equal to (bfd.DesiredMinTxInterval * bfd.DetectMult) to ensure that the tails more quickly detect the session going down (by continuing to transmit BFD Control packets with the new state).

5.12.2. MultipointTail Sessions

MultipointTail sessions MAY be destroyed immediately upon leaving Up state, since tail will transmit no packets.

Otherwise, MultipointTail sessions SHOULD be maintained as long as BFD Control packets are being received by it (which by definition will indicate that the head is not Up).

5.13. Base Specification Text Replacement

The following sections are meant to replace the corresponding sections in the base specification [RFC5880] in support of BFD for multipoint networks while not changing processing for point-to-point BFD.

5.13.1. Reception of BFD Control Packets

The following procedure replaces the entire section 6.8.6 of [RFC5880].

When a BFD Control packet is received, the following procedure MUST be followed, in the order specified. If the packet is discarded according to these rules, processing of the packet MUST cease at that point.

5.13.2. Demultiplexing BFD Control Packets

This section is part of the replacement for [RFC5880] section 6.8.6, separated for clarity.

5.13.3. Transmitting BFD Control Packets

The following procedure replaces the entire section 6.8.7 of [RFC5880].

BFD Control packets MUST be transmitted periodically at the rate determined according to [RFC5880] section 6.8.2, except as specified in this section.

A system MUST NOT transmit any BFD Control packets if bfd.RemoteDiscr is zero and the system is taking the Passive role.

A system MUST NOT transmit any BFD Control packets if bfd.SessionType is MultipointTail.

A system MUST NOT periodically transmit BFD Control packets if Demand mode is active on the remote system (bfd.RemoteDemandMode is 1, bfd.SessionState is Up, and bfd.RemoteSessionState is Up) and a Poll Sequence is not being transmitted.

A system MUST NOT periodically transmit BFD Control packets if bfd.RemoteMinRxInterval is zero.

If bfd.SessionType is MultipointHead, the transmit interval MUST be set to bfd.DesiredMinTxInterval (this should happen automatically, as bfd.RemoteMinRxInterval will be zero).

If bfd.SessionType is not MultipointHead, the transmit interval MUST be recalculated whenever bfd.DesiredMinTxInterval changes, or whenever bfd.RemoteMinRxInterval changes, and is equal to the greater of those two values. See [RFC5880] sections 6.8.2 and 6.8.3 for details on transmit timers.

A system MUST NOT set the Demand (D) bit if bfd.SessionType is MultipointTail.

A system MUST NOT set the Demand (D) bit if bfd.SessionType PointToPoint unless bfd.DemandMode is 1, bfd.SessionState is Up, and bfd.RemoteSessionState is Up.

If bfd.SessionType is PointToPoint or MultipointHead, a BFD Control packet SHOULD be transmitted during the interval between periodic Control packet transmissions when the contents of that packet would differ from that in the previously transmitted packet (other than the Poll and Final bits) in order to more rapidly communicate a change in state.

The contents of transmitted BFD Control packets MUST be set as follows:

6. Assumptions

If authentication is in use, the head and all tails may be configured to have a common authentication key in order for the tails to validate multipoint BFD Control packets.

Shared keys in multipoint scenarios allow any tail to spoof the head from the viewpoint of any other tail. For this reason, using shared keys to authenticate BFD Control packets in multipoint scenarios is a significant security exposure unless all tails can be trusted not to spoof the head. Otherwise, asymmetric message authentication would be needed, e.g., protocols that use Timed Efficient Stream Loss-Tolerant Authentication (TESLA) as described in [RFC4082].

7. IANA Considerations

This document has no actions for IANA.

8. Security Considerations

The same security considerations as those described in [RFC5880] apply to this document. Additionally, implementations that create MultpointTail sessions dynamically upon receipt of Multipoint BFD Control packets MUST implement protective measures to prevent an infinite number of MultipointTail sessions being created. Below are listed some points to be considered in such implementations.

9. Contributors

Rahul Aggarwal of Juniper Networks and George Swallow of Cisco Systems provided the initial idea for this specification and contributed to its development.

10. Acknowledgments

Authors would also like to thank Nobo Akiya, Vengada Prasad Govindan, Jeff Haas, Wim Henderickx, Gregory Mirsky and Mingui Zhang who have greatly contributed to this document.

11. References

11.1. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997.
[RFC5880] Katz, D. and D. Ward, "Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)", RFC 5880, DOI 10.17487/RFC5880, June 2010.
[RFC7880] Pignataro, C., Ward, D., Akiya, N., Bhatia, M. and S. Pallagatti, "Seamless Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (S-BFD)", RFC 7880, DOI 10.17487/RFC7880, July 2016.
[RFC8029] Kompella, K., Swallow, G., Pignataro, C., Kumar, N., Aldrin, S. and M. Chen, "Detecting Multiprotocol Label Switched (MPLS) Data-Plane Failures", RFC 8029, DOI 10.17487/RFC8029, March 2017.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017.

11.2. Informational References

[I-D.ietf-bess-mvpn-fast-failover] Morin, T., Kebler, R. and G. Mirsky, "Multicast VPN fast upstream failover", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-fast-failover-03, May 2018.
[I-D.ietf-bfd-multipoint-active-tail] Katz, D., Ward, D., Networks, J. and G. Mirsky, "BFD Multipoint Active Tails.", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-bfd-multipoint-active-tail-08, June 2018.
[RFC4082] Perrig, A., Song, D., Canetti, R., Tygar, J. and B. Briscoe, "Timed Efficient Stream Loss-Tolerant Authentication (TESLA): Multicast Source Authentication Transform Introduction", RFC 4082, DOI 10.17487/RFC4082, June 2005.

Authors' Addresses

Dave Katz Juniper Networks 1194 N. Mathilda Ave. Sunnyvale, California 94089-1206 USA EMail: dkatz@juniper.net
Dave Ward Cisco Systems 170 West Tasman Dr. San Jose, California 95134 USA EMail: wardd@cisco.com
Santosh Pallagatti (editor) Individual contributor EMail: santosh.pallagatti@gmail.com
Greg Mirsky (editor) ZTE Corp. EMail: gregimirsky@gmail.com