Internet DRAFT - draft-marques-l3vpn-end-system

draft-marques-l3vpn-end-system






Network Working Group                                         P. Marques
Internet-Draft                                          Contrail Systems
Intended status: Standards Track                                 L. Fang
Expires: January 31, 2013                                  Cisco Systems
                                                                  P. Pan
                                                           Infinera Corp
                                                               A. Shukla
                                                        Juniper Networks
                                                            M. Napierala
                                                               AT&T Labs
                                                                N. Bitar
                                                                 Verizon
                                                             August 2012


                    BGP-signaled end-system IP/VPNs.
                   draft-marques-l3vpn-end-system-07

Abstract

   This document describes a solution in which the control plane
   protocol specified in BGP/MPLS IP VPNs [RFC4364] is used to provide a
   Virtual Network service to end-systems.  These end-systems may be
   used to provide network services or may directly host end-to-end
   applications.

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 http://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 January 31, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the







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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://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
     1.1.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   2.  Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3.  Applicability of BGP IP VPNs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.  Virtual network end-points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.  VPN Forwarder  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   6.  XMPP signaling protocol  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7.  End-System Route Server behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   8.  Operational Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     11.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     11.2.  Informational References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

1.  Introduction

   This document describes the requirements for a network virtualization
   solution that provides an IP service to end-system virtual
   interfaces.  It then discusses how the BGP IP VPNs [RFC4364] control
   plane can be used to provide a solution that meets these
   requirements.  Subsequent sections provide a detailed discussion of
   the control and forwarding plane components.

   In BGP IP VPNs, Customer Edge (CE) interfaces connect to a Provider
   Edge (PE) device which provides both the control plane and VPN
   encapsulation functions required to implement a Virtual Network
   service.  This document decouples the control plane and forwarding
   functionality of the PE device in order to enable the forwarding
   functionality to be implemented in multiple devices.  For instance,
   the forwarding function can be implemented directly on the operating
   system of application servers or network appliances.

1.1.  Terminology

   This document makes use of the following terms:

   End-System Route Server A software application that implements the
      control plane functionality of a BGP IP VPN PE device and a XMPP
      server that interacts with VPN Forwarders.

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   Virtual Interface An interface in an end-system that is used by a
      virtual machine or by applications.  It performs the role of a CE
      interface in a BGP IP VPN network.

   VPN Forwarder The forwarding component of a BGP IP VPN PE device.
      This functionality may be co-located with the virtual interface or
      implemented by an external device.

2.  Requirements

   Network Virtualization is used in both service provider as well as
   enterprise networks to support multi-tenancy, network-based access
   control.  It may also be used to facilitate end-system mobility.

   Multi-tenancy allows a physical network to provide services to
   multiple "customers" or "tenants", whether these are external
   entities in the case of a Service Provider providing managed VPN
   services or internal departments sharing an IT facility.  Multi-
   tenancy requires isolation of traffic and routing information between
   tenants.

   Within a tenant, it is often required to create multiple distinct
   virtual networks, in order to be able to provide network-based access
   control.  In this service model, each virtual network behaves as a
   "Closed User Group" (CUG) of end-systems that are allowed to exchange
   traffic freely, while traffic between virtual networks is subject to
   access controls.  This scenario can be found in both enterprise
   campus networks, branch offices and data-centers.

   It is often the case when network access control is used, that the
   traffic patterns are such that there is significantly more traffic
   crossing a CUG boundary than staying within such boundary.  As an
   example, in campus networks it is common to segregate users into CUGs
   based on some classification such as the user's department.  Campus
   networks often see traffic patterns in which almost all the traffic
   flows northbound to the data-center or internet boundaries.  Similar
   traffic patterns can be found in multi-tier applications in IT data-
   centers.

   End-systems are often configured to expect the concept of IP subnet
   to match its closed user group.  A network virtualization solution
   should be able to provide this concept of IP subnet regardless of
   whether the underlying implementation uses a multi-access network or
   not.

   End-system virtual interfaces should be able to directly access
   multiple closed user groups without needing to traverse a gateway.
   Network access policy should allow this access whether the source and
   destination CUGs for a particular traffic flow belong to the same
   tenant or different tenants.  It is often the case that
   infrastructure services are provided to multiple tenants.  One such
   example is voice-over-IP gateway services for branch offices.


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   Independently, but often associated with the previous two functions,
   IP mobility is another network function that can be implemented using
   network virtualization.  By abstracting the externally visible
   network address from the underlying infrastructure address, mobility
   can be implemented without having to recur to home agents or large L2
   broadcast domains.  Alternative techniques that are used in both
   Service Provider as well as enterprise networks.

   IP Mobility requires the ability to "move" a device without
   disrupting its TCP (or UDP) transport sessions.  These sessions often
   deploy second or sub-second keepalives to detect application failure.
   Experience with failure restoration in Service Provider networks
   shows that fast-failure restoration often requires the pre-
   provisioning of a restoration path.

   IP Mobility can be a result of devices physically moving (e.g., a
   WiFi enabled laptop) or workload being diverted between physical
   systems such as network appliances or application servers.

3.  Applicability of BGP IP VPNs

   BGP IP VPNs [RFC4364] is the industry de-facto standard for providing
   "closed user group" functionality in WAN environments.  It is used by
   service providers in environments where several millions of routes
   are present.  It supports both isolated VPNs as well as overlapping
   VPNs (often referred to as "extranets").

   In its traditional usage in Service Provider networks, BGP IP VPN
   functionality is implemented in a Provider Edge (PE) device that
   combines both BGP signaling as well as VRF-based forwarding
   functions.  In practice, most PE devices in current use are multi-
   component systems with the signaling and forwarding functionality
   actually implemented in different processors attached to an internal
   network.

   This document assumes a similar separation of functionality in which
   software appliances, the End-System Route Servers, implement the
   control plane functionality of a PE device and a VPN Forwarder
   implements the forwarding function usually found in a PE device
   "line-card".  The VPN Forwarder functionality may be co-located with
   the end-system virtual interface (e.g., implemented in the hypervisor
   switch or host OS network drivers). It may also be external to the
   end-system residing in a data-center switch or specialized appliance.

   Operationally, BGP IP VPN technology has several important
   characteristics:

      It has a high-level of aggregation between customer interfaces and
      managed entities (Provider Edge devices).





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      It defines VPNs as policies, allowing an interface to directly
      exchange traffic with multiple VPNs and allowing for the topology
      of the virtual network to be modified by modifying the policy
      configuration.

      It scales horizontally in terms of event propagation.  By
      increasing the number of signaling devices implementing the PE
      control plane, it is possible to decrease the load on each
      signaling device when it comes to propagating events that
      originate in a specific location and must be propagated across the
      network.

   The last point is particularly relevant to the convergence
   characteristics required for large scale deployments.  BGP's
   hierarchical route distribution capabilities allow a deployment to
   divide the workload by increasing the number of End-System Route
   Servers.

   As an example consider a topology in which 100 End-System Route
   Servers are deployed in a network each serving a subset of the VPN
   forwarding elements.  The Route Servers inter-connect to two top-
   level BGP Route Reflectors [RFC4456].

   If an event (i.e.  a VPN route change) needs to be propagated from a
   specific end-system to 10.000 clients randomly distributed across the
   network, each of the End-System Route Servers must generate 100
   updates to its respective downstream clients.

   By modifying this topology such that another 100 End-System Route
   Servers are added, then each Route Server is now responsible to
   generate 50 client updates.  This example illustrates the linear
   scaling properties of BGP: doubling the number of Route Servers (i.e.
   the processing capacity) reduces in half the number of updates
   generated by each (i.e.  load at each processing node).

   The same horizontal scaling techniques can be applied to the Route
   Reflector layer in the example above by subsetting the VPN Route
   space according to some pre-defined criteria (for instance VPN route
   target) and using a pair of Route Reflectors per subset.

   In the previous example we assumed a dense membership in which all
   Route Servers have local clients that are interested in a particular
   event.  BGP also optimizes the route distribution for sparse events.











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   The Route Target Constraint [RFC4684] extension, builds an optimal
   distribution tree for message propagation based on VPN membership.
   It ensures that only the PEs with local receivers for a particular
   event do receive it also decreasing the total load on the upstream
   BGP speaker.

   In the WAN environment, BGP IP VPN control plane scaling is focused
   not primarily on route convergence times but on memory footprint of
   embedded devices.  While memory footprint does not have a similar
   linear scaling behavior, memory technology available to software
   appliances is often at 10x the scale of what is commonly found in WAN
   environments.

   The functionality present in the BGP IP VPN control plane addresses
   the requirements specified in the previous section.  Specifically, it
   supports multiple potentially overlapping "groups", regular or "hub
   and spoke" topologies and the scaling characteristics necessary.

   The BGP IP VPN control plane supports not only the definition of
   "closed user-groups" (VPNs in its terminology) but also the
   propagation of inter-VPN traffic policies [RFC5575].  An application
   of that mechanism to "end-system" VPNs is presented in [I-D.marques-
   sdnp-flow-spec].

   Note that the signaling protocol itself is rather agnostic of the
   encapsulation used on the wire as long as this encapsulation has the
   ability to carry a 20 bit label.

   Several network environments use a network infrastructure that is
   only capable of providing an IP unicast service.  In order to support
   them, implementations of this document should support the MPLS in GRE
   [RFC4023] encapsulation.  Other encapsulations are possible,
   including UDP based encapsulations.

4.  Virtual network end-points

   This document assumes that end-systems support one or more virtual
   network interfaces in addition to a physical interface that is
   associated with the underlying network infrastructure.  Virtual
   network interfaces can be associated with a restricted list of
   applications via OS-dependent mechanisms, a Virtual Machine (VM), or
   they can be used to provide network connectivity to all user
   applications in the same way that a "VPN tunnel" interface is used to
   provide access between an end-system (e.g., a laptop) and a remote
   corporate network.

   From an IP address assignment point of view, a virtual network
   interface is addressed out of the virtual IP topology and associated
   with a "closed user group" or VPN, while the physical interface of
   the machine is addressed in the network infrastructure topology.  As
   a security measure, it is recommended that virtual and infrastructure
   topologies never be allowed to exchange traffic directly.



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   Both static and dynamic IP address allocation can be supported.  The
   later assumes that the VPN Forwarder implements a DHCP relay or DHCP
   proxy functionality.

   A virtual network interface is connected to a VPN Forwarder.  This
   VPN Forwarder MAY be co-located in the end-system or external.

   Traffic that ingresses or egresses through a virtual network
   interface is routed at the VPN Forwarder which acts as the first-hop
   router (in the virtual topology). The IP configuration on the client
   side of this virtual network interface (e.g., in the guest OS) can
   follow one of two models:

      point-to-point interface model.

      multipoint interface model.

   In a point-to-point interface model, the VPN client routing table
   (e.g., on the guest OS) contains the following routing entires: a
   host route to the local IP address, a host route to the first-hop
   router via the virtual interface and a default route to the first-hop
   router.  This is the model typically used in "VPN tunnel"
   configurations or other access technologies such as cable deployments
   or DSL. When this model is used, the first-hop router IP address is a
   link-local address that is the same on all first-hop routers across a
   specific deployment.  This first-hop IP address should not change
   when a virtual interface moves between different machines.

   In a multi-point interface model, the VPN client routing table (e.g.,
   on the guest OS) contains the following routing entires: a host route
   to the local IP address, a subnet route to the local interface and
   optionally a default route to a specific router address within that
   subnet.  In this model, the VPN client IP stack will issue address
   resolution requests for any IP addresses it considers to be directly
   attached to the subnet.  The VPN Forwarder shall answer all address
   resolution requests with a virtual MAC address which SHOULD be the
   same across all VPN Forwarders in a specific deployment.  This
   virtual MAC address SHALL default to the VRRP [RFC5798] virtual
   router MAC address for Virtual Router Identifier (VRID) 1.

   When the virtual topology first-hop router resides on the same
   physical machine, the host OS is responsible to map the virtual
   interface with a VPN specific routing table (without taking L2
   addresses into consideration). In this case the mac-addresses known
   to the guest OS are not used on the wire.

   When the virtual topology first-hop router resides in an external
   system (e.g., the first hop-switch) the virtual interface shall be
   identified by the combination of the mac-address assigned to physical
   interface of the end-system and a 802.1Q VLAN tag.  The first-hop
   switch should use a virtual router MAC address to answer any address
   resolution queries.


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   Whenever an external VPN Forwarder is used and resiliency is desired,
   the external VPN Forwarder should be redundant.  It is desirable to
   use VRRP as a mechanism to control the flow of traffic between the
   end-system and the external VPN Forwarder.  VRRP already defines the
   necessary procedures to elect a single forwarder for a LAN.

   This specification uses the VRRP virtual router MAC address as the
   default L2 address for the VPN Forwarder as a client virtual
   interface may move between locations where redundancy may not be
   present.

   While the VRRP Virtual Router MAC will be used to answer any address
   resolution request made by the virtual interface client (e.g., the
   guest VM) this does not imply that a single default router is elected
   per virtual IP subnet.  The ingress VPN Forwarder will perform an IP
   forwarding decision based on the destination IP address of the
   (payload) traffic.

   VRRP router election is only relevant in selecting the VPN Forwarder
   associated with a specific machine, when external forwarders are in
   use.

5.  VPN Forwarder

   In this solution, the Host OS/Hypervisor in the end-system must
   participate in the virtual network service.  Given an end-system with
   multiple virtual interfaces, these virtual interfaces must be mapped
   onto the network by the guest OS such that applications on one
   virtual interface are not allowed to impersonate another virtual
   interface.

   When VPN forwarder functionality is implemented by the Host OS/
   Hypervisor, intermediate systems in the network do not require any
   knowledge of the virtual network topology.  This can simplify the
   design and operation of the physical network.

   When it is not possible or desirable to add the VPN forwarding
   functionality to the end-system, it may be implemented by an external
   system, typically located as close as possible to the end-system
   itself.

   Both models, co-located and external VPN Forwarder can co-exist in a
   deployment.

   In order to implement the BGP IP VPN Forwarder functionality a device
   MUST implement the following functionality:

      Support for multiple "Virtual Routing and Forwarding" (VRF)
      tables;





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         VRF route entries map prefixes in the virtual network topology
         to a next-hop containing a infrastructure IP address and a
         20-bit label allocated by the destination Forwarder.  The VRF
         table lookup follows the standard IP lookup (best-match)
         algorithm.

      Associate an end-system virtual interface with a specific VRF
      table;

         When the the Forwarder is co-located with the end-system, this
         association is implemented by an internal mechanism.  When the
         Forwarder is external the association is performed using the
         mac-address of the end-system and a IEEE 802.1Q tag that
         identifies the virtual interface within the end-system.

      Encapsulate outgoing traffic (end-system to network) according to
      the result of the VRF lookup;

      Associate incoming packets (network to end-system) to a VRF
      according to the 20-bit label contained immediately after the GRE
      header;

   The VPN Forwarder MAY support the ability to associate multiple
   virtual interfaces with the same VRF. When that is the case, locally
   originated routes, that is IP routes to the local virtual interfaces
   SHALL NOT be used to forward outbound traffic (from the virtual
   interfaces to the outside) unless a route advertisement has been
   received that matches that specific IP prefix and next-hop
   information.

   As an example, if a given VRF contains two virtual interfaces,
   "veth0" and "veth1", with the addresses 10.0.1.1/32 and 10.0.1.2/32
   respectively, the initial forwarding state must be initialized such
   that traffic from either of these interfaces does not match the
   other's routing table entry.  It may for instance match a default
   route advertised by a remote system.  Traffic received from other VPN
   Forwarders, however, must be delivered to the correct local
   interface.  If at a subsequent stage a route is received from the
   Route Server such that 10.0.1.2/32 has a next-hop with the IP address
   of the local host and the correct label, the system may subsequently
   install a local routing table entry that delivers traffic directly to
   the "veth1" interface.

   The 20-bit label which is associated with a virtual-interface is of
   local significance only and SHOULD be allocated by the VPN Forwarder.

   When an external VPN Forwarder is used the end-system MUST associate
   each virtual interface with a VLAN [IEEE.802-1Q] that is unique on
   the end-system.  The switching infrastructure MUST be configured such
   that multi-destination frames sourced from an end-system are only
   delivered to VPN Forwarders used by this end-system and not to other
   end-systems.


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6.  XMPP signaling protocol

   End-System Route Servers must be aware of VPN membership on each
   Forwarder as well as what IP addresses are currently associated with
   each virtual interface.

   VPN Forwarders must receive VPN route information from which to
   populate their forwarding tables.  External VPN Forwarders also need
   to receive the virtual interface and IP address events from the end-
   system for which they are VPN forwarders.  In this case the end-
   system assigns an 802.1Q VLAN tag to each virtual interface and
   communicates that information to the Forwarder.

   In order to exchange this information this specification uses the
   XMPP [RFC6120] protocol along with the PubSub Collection Nodes
   [pubsub] extension.

   When an external VPN Forwarder is used, end-systems establish XMPP
   sessions with VPN Forwarders.  VPN forwarders (both co-located and
   external) establish XMPP sessions with End-System Route Servers.  VPN
   Forwarders act as an XMPP clients of a End-System Route Server.
   External VPN Forwarders act as XMPP servers for end-systems which are
   associated with them.  These sessions are persistent and MUST use the
   XMPP Ping [xmpp-ping] extension in order to detect end-system
   failures.

   A VPN Forwarder MAY connect to multiple End-System Route Servers for
   reliability.  In this case it SHOULD publish its information to each
   of the Route Servers.  It MAY choose to subscribe to VPN routing
   information once only from one of the available gateways.

   The information advertised by an XMPP client SHOULD be deleted after
   a configurable timeout, when the session closes.  This timeout should
   default to 60 seconds.

                   +---------+             +--------+
                   |    RS   | ----------- |  BGP   |
                   +---------+             +--------+
                   //          \          /
                 XMPP           \        /
                 //              \      /
   +------------+                 \    /
   | end-system |                  \  /
   +------------+                   \/
                 \\                 /\
                 XMPP              /  \
                   \\             /    \
                   +---------+   /      \  +--------+
                   |    RS   | ----------- |  BGP   |
                   +---------+             +--------+




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   The figure above represents a typical configuration in which an end-
   system with a co-located VPN Forwarder is directly connected to two
   End-System Routes Servers, which are in turn connected to multiple
   BGP speakers which may be other L3VPN PEs or BGP route reflectors.

   In deployment the number of End-System Route Servers used will depend
   on the desired Route Server to VPN Forwarder ratio which affects the
   convergence time of event propagation.

   The XMPP "jid" used by the client shall be a 6-byte value that
   uniquely identifies it in its administrative domain.  This
   specification recommends the use of the MAC address of one of the
   physical ethernet interfaces.

   Each VPN shall be identified by a 128 octet ASCII character string.

   When external Forwarders are used, its control software operates as a
   XMPP server processing requests from end-systems and as a client of
   one or more End-System Route Servers.  The control software relays to
   the End-System Route Server(s) VPN membership messages it receives
   from the end-system.  VPN routing information received from the Route
   Server(s) SHOULD NOT be propagated to the end-system.

   When a virtual interface is created on a end-system, the host
   operating-system software shall generate an XMPP Subscribe message to
   its server (the End-System Route Server or external VPN Forwarder).

   Subscription request from co-located VPN Forwarder to Route Server:

   <iq type='set'
       from='01020304abcd@domain.org'
       to='network-control.domain.org'
       id='sub1'>
     <pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
       <subscribe node='vpn-customer-name'/>
     </pubsub>
   </iq>

   The request above, instructs the End-System Route Server to start
   populating the client's VRF table with any routing information that
   is available for this VPN.  The XMPP node 'vpn-customer-name' is
   assumed to be a collection which is implicitly created by the End-
   System Route Server.  Creation of a virtual interface may precede any
   IP address becoming active on the interface, as it is the case with
   VM instantiation.

   Subscription request from end-system to external VPN Forwarder:







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   <iq type='set'
       from='01020304abcd@domain.org'
       to='network-control.domain.org'
       id='sub1'>
     <pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
       <subscribe node='vpn-customer-name'/>
       <options>
         <x xmlns='jabber:x:data' type='submit'>
           <field var='vpn#vlan_id'><value>vlan-id</value></field>
         </x>
       </options>
     </pubsub>
   </iq>

   When an external VPN Forwarder is used the end-system should include
   the VLAN identifier it assigned to the virtual interface as a
   subscription option.

   When a IP address is added to a virtual interface, the end-system
   will generate an XMPP Publish request.

   Publish request from VPN Forwarder to End-System Route Server:

   <iq type='set'
       from='01020304abcd@domain.org'  <!-- system-id@domain.org -->
       to='network-control.domain.org'
       id='request1'>
     <pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
       <publish node='01020304abcd:vpn-ip-address/32'>
         <item>
           <entry xmlns='http://ietf.org/protocol/bgpvpn'>
             <nlri af='1'>'vpn-ip-address/32'</nlri>
         <next-hop af='1'>'infrastructure-ip-address'</next-hop>
             <version id='1'>  <!-- non-decreasing interface version # -->
         <label>10000</label>  <!-- 20 bit number -->
           </entry>
          </item>
       </publish>
     </pubsub>
   </iq>
   
   <iq type='set'
       from='01020304abcd@domain.org'
       to='network-control.domain.org'
       id='request2'>
     <pubsub xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub'>
       <collection node='vpn-customer-name'>
         <associate node='01020304abcd:vpn-ip-address/32'/>
       </collection>
     </pubsub>
   </iq>



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   The End-System Route Server will convert the information received in
   a the 'publish' request into the corresponding BGP route information
   such that:.

      It associates the specific request with a local VRF which it
      resolves by using a combination of the originator system-id and
      the collection 'node' attribute.

      It creates a BGP VPN route with a 'Route Distinguisher' (RD) which
      contains the the end-system's 'system-id' value and the specified
      IP prefix and 'label' received from the VPN Forwarder as the
      Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI).

      The BGP next-hop address is set to the address of the VPN
      Forwarder.

      It optionally associates the route with an extended community TDB
      containing a version number of the virtual-interface.

   Update notification from Route Server to VPN Forwarder:

   <message to='system-id@domain.org from='network-control.domain.org>
     <event xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#event'>
       <items node='vpn-customer-name'>
         <item id='ae890ac52d0df67ed7cfdf51b644e901'>
           <entry xmlns='http://ietf.org/protocol/bgpvpn'>
             <nlri af='1'>'vpn-ip-address>/32'</nlri>
         <next-hop af='1'>'infrastructure-ip-address'</next-hop>
             <version id='1'>  <!-- non-decreasing interface version # -->
         <label>10000</label>  <!-- 20 bit number -->
           </entry>
          </item>
         <item >
           ...
         </item>
       </items>
     </event>
   </message>

   Notifications should be generated whenever a VPN route is added,
   modified or deleted.

   Note that the Update from the Route Server to the VPN Forwarder does
   not contain the system-id of the destination end-system.  The "from"
   attribute in the 'message' element contains a "jid" associated with
   the Route Servers in the domain.  The XMPP messages are point-to-
   point in nature, between a Forwarder and Route Server.  Even in the
   case when one XMPP publish request from a Forwarder may cause the
   Route Server to generate one or more event notifications.

   When multiple possible routes exist for a given VPN IP address within
   a VRF it is the responsibility of the Route Server to select the best
   path to advertise to the Forwarder.

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   When routes are withdrawn, the End-System Route Server generates both
   a "collection disassociate" request as well as a node "delete"
   request.

   In situations where an automated system is controlling the
   instantiation of virtual interfaces it may be possible to have that
   system assign a non-decreasing version number for each instantiation
   of that particular interface.  In that case, this number, carried in
   the 'version' field may be used to help gateways select the most
   recent instantiation of an interface during the interval of time
   where multiple routes are present.

7.  End-System Route Server behavior

   End-System Route Servers SHALL support the BGP address families: VPN-
   IPv4 (1, 128), VPN-IPv6 (2, 128) and RT-Constraint (1, 132)
   [RFC4684].

   When an End-System Route Server receives a request to create or
   modify a VPN route it SHALL generate a BGP VPN route advertisement
   with the corresponding information.

   It is assumed that the End-System Route Servers have information
   regarding the mapping between end-system tuple ('system-id', 'vpn-
   customer-names') and BGP Route Targets used to import and export
   information from the associated VRFs.  This mapping is known via an
   out-of-band mechanism not specified in this document.

   Whenever the End-System Route Server receives an XMPP subscription
   request, it SHALL consult its RT-Constraint Routing Information Base
   (RIB).  If the Route Server does not already have locally originated
   route for the route target the corresponds to the vpn-name present in
   the request, it SHALL create one and generate the corresponding BGP
   route advertisement.  This route advertisement should only be
   withdrawn when there are no more downstream XMPP clients subscribed
   to the VPN.

   The 32bit route version number defined in the XML schema is
   advertised into BGP as an Extended community with type TBD.

   End-System Route Servers SHOULD automatically assign a BGP route
   distinguisher per VPN routing table.

8.  Operational Model

   In the simplest case, a VPN is a collection of systems that are
   allowed to exchange traffic with each other and only with each other.
   Since all the forwarding tables in this VPN have the same routing
   entries they are often referred to as symmetrical VPNs.

   In order to better illustrate the operation of the protocol we
   consider a simple example in which "host 1" and "host 2" both contain
   a virtual interface that is a member of the same VPN.

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   Each of these hosts has an XMPP session with an End-System Route
   Server, RS1 and RS2 our example, and these Route Servers are part of
   the same BGP mesh.

   When a virtual interface is created on "host 1", the local XMPP
   client generates a XMPP subscription message to its respective Route
   Server.  This message contains a VPN identifier that has been
   assigned by the provisioning system.  The Route Server maps that
   identifier to a BGP IP VPN configuration which contains the list of
   import and export route targets to be used for that particular VRF.

   Once the interface is operational, "host 1" will publish any IP
   addresses that are configured on the respective virtual interface.
   This will in turn cause the End-System Route Server to advertise
   these (directly or indirectly) to any other BGP speaker on the
   network which is connected to an attachment point of that VPN.

   +--------+       +------------+       +----------+
   | host 1 | <===> | End-System | <===> | BGP mesh |
   +--------+       |Route Server|       +----------+
                    +------------+

   +----------------+-------------+-------+-----------+
   | VPN IP address | NEXT-HOP    | label | Known via |
   +----------------+-------------+-------+-----------+
   | 10.1.1.1/32    | 192.168.1.1 | 10000 | XMPP      |
   | 10.1.1.2/32    | 192.168.2.1 | 20000 | BGP       |
   +----------------+-------------+-------+-----------+

   VPN Routing table on Route Server

   The figure above represents the contents of the VRF routing table on
   RS1 after the IPv4 address 10.1.1.1 has been added to the virtual
   interface on host 1. It assumes that there is another attachement
   point for this VPN with the IPv4 address of 10.1.1.2. Host 1 has an
   infrastructure IP address of 192.168.1.1 configured on its physical
   interface while host 2 has IP address 192.168.2.1.

   The contents of the VRF routing table in the End-System Route Servers
   are advertised via XMPP Update notifications sent to host 1. This
   information is the used by the host to populate the forwarding table
   associated with that VPN.

                  +--------+                 +--------+
   app -- veth0 --| host 1 |=== [network] ===| host 2 |-- veth0 -- app
                  +--------+                 +--------+
   
    IP pkt  ===> GRE encap  ===> [IP net] ===> GRE decap ===> IP pkt
              [192.168.2.1, 20]               map 20 to veth0





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   +----------------+--------------+-------+
   | VPN IP address | Host address | label |
   +----------------+--------------+-------+
   | 10.1.1.1/32    | localhost    | 10000 |
   | 10.1.1.2/32    | 192.168.2.1  | 20000 |
   +----------------+--------------+-------+

   VRF table on host1

   When an application that uses the virtual interface on host 1
   generates packets with a destination IP address of 10.1.1.2 these are
   routed by the VPN Forwarder implemented in the Host OS.  The packets
   are encapsulated with a GRE header that contains a 20-bit label
   assigned by host 2.

   In the case the virtual interface on host is associated with a guest
   OS, this guest OS has had its address resolution queries answered
   with the Virtual Router MAC address.  As a result, that is the
   address it uses as the destination MAC address in packets it
   originates.  This MAC address is not present on the GRE encapsulated
   packet.

   End-System Route Servers are software applications the implement both
   the BGP IP VPN PE control plane as well as XMPP server functionality.
   These application are not in the forwarding plane and do not need to
   be co-located with a network device.

   Network devices MAY have direct BGP sessions to the End-System Route
   Servers.  For instance, a router or security appliance that supports
   BGP/MPLS IP VPNs over GRE may use its existing functionality to
   inter-operate directly with a collection of Virtual Machines or other
   network appliances that support this specification.

   End-System Route Servers implement the VRF import policy and export
   policy functionality that is associated with PE routers in standard
   BGP IP/VPN deployments.  VPN Forwarders receive forwarding
   information after policy and route selection is applied.  These are
   unqualified routes in a specific VRF rather than VPN routing
   information qualified by a Route Distinguisher and with a set of
   Route Targets.

   A symmetrical VPN uses a vrf import and vrf export polices that
   contain a single route target, where the route target used for both
   import and export is the same.

   Different VPN topologies can be created by manipulating the vrf
   import and export configuration including "hub-and-spoke" topologies
   or overlapping VPNs.






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   An example of a hub-and-spoke VPN configuration is one where all the
   traffic from the VPN clients must be redirected though a middle-box
   for inspection.  Assuming that the virtual interfaces of a particular
   user are configured to be in the VPN "tenant1".  At an initial stage
   this "tenant1" VPN is symmetrical and uses a single Route Target in
   both its import and export policies.  The middle-box functionality
   can be incrementally deployed by defining a new VPN, "tenant1-hub",
   and an associated Route Target.  Accompanied with a change in the
   End-System Route Server configuration such that VPN "tenant1" only
   imports routes with the Route Target associated with the hub.  The
   "hub" VPN is assumed to advertise a prefix that covers all the VPN
   clients IP addresses.  The "hub" VPN imports the VPN routes in order
   for it to be able to generate the XMPP updates to the "hub" end-
   system.  This information is required for the return traffic from the
   hub to the spokes (the VPN clients).  In such a scenario a single
   physical interface can connect the middle-box to the clients in a
   given VPN which appear logically as downstream from it.  Such a
   middle-box would often require connectivity to multiple VPNs, such as
   for instance an "outside" VPN which provides external connectivity to
   one or more "inside" VPNs.

   The functionality defined in this document in which the BGP IP VPN PE
   functionality is split into its control (End-System Route Servers)
   and forwarding (VPN Forwarder) components is fully interoperable with
   existing BGP IP VPN PEs.

   This makes it possible to reuse existing systems.  For example, at
   the edge of a data-center facility it may be desirable to use an
   existing router or appliance that aggregates IP VPN routing
   information and/or provides IP based services such as stateful packet
   inspection.

   Such a system can be configured, based on existing functionality, to
   suppress more specific routes than a specified aggregate while
   advertising the aggregate with a BGP NEXT_HOP containing the PE's IP
   address and a locally assigned label corresponding to a VRF where the
   more specific routes are present.

9.  Security Considerations

   The signaling protocol defines the access control policies for each
   virtual interface and any guest application associated with it.  It
   is important to secure the end-system access to End-System Route
   Servers and the BGP infrastructure itself.

   The XMPP session between end-systems and the Route Servers MUST use
   mutual authentication.  One possible strategy is to distribute pre-
   signed certificates to end-systems which are presented as proof of
   authorization to the Route Server.





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   BGP sessions MUST be authenticated.  This document recommends that
   BGP speaking systems filter traffic on port 179 such that only IP
   addresses which are known to participate in the BGP signaling
   protocol are allowed.

10.  Acknowledgements

   Yakov Rekhter has contributed to this document by providing detailed
   feedback and suggestions.  The authors would also like to thank
   Thomas Morin for his comments.

11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [RFC4023]  Worster, T., Rekhter, Y. and E. Rosen, "Encapsulating MPLS
              in IP or Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)", RFC 4023,
              March 2005.

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

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

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

   [RFC4684]  Marques, P., Bonica, R., Fang, L., Martini, L., Raszuk,
              R., Patel, K. and J. Guichard, "Constrained Route
              Distribution for Border Gateway Protocol/MultiProtocol
              Label Switching (BGP/MPLS) Internet Protocol (IP) Virtual
              Private Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4684, November 2006.

   [RFC5575]  Marques, P., Sheth, N., Raszuk, R., Greene, B., Mauch, J.
              and D. McPherson, "Dissemination of Flow Specification
              Rules", RFC 5575, August 2009.

   [RFC5798]  Nadas, S., "Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
              Version 3 for IPv4 and IPv6", RFC 5798, March 2010.

   [RFC6120]  Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
              Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, March 2011.

   [xmpp-ping]
              "XMPP Ping", XEP 0199, June 2009.

   [pubsub]   "PubSub Collection Nodes", XEP 0248, September 2010.

11.2.  Informational References

   [I-D.marques-sdnp-flow-spec]

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              Marques, P., Fang, L., Pan, P., Shukla, A. and M.
              Napierala, "Traffic classification in end-system IP
              VPNs.", Internet-Draft draft-marques-sdnp-flow-spec-01,
              April 2012.

   [IEEE.802-1Q]
              Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, "Local
              and Metropolitan Area Networks: Virtual Bridged Local Area
              Networks", IEEE Std 802.1Q-2005, May 2006.

Authors' Addresses

   Pedro Marques
   Contrail Systems
   2350 Mission College Blvd.
   Santa Clara, CA 95054
   
   Email: roque@contrailsystems.com


   Luyuan Fang
   Cisco Systems
   111 Wood Avenue South
   Iselin, NJ 08830
   
   Email: lufang@cisco.com


   Ping Pan
   Infinera Corp
   140 Caspian Ct.
   Sunnyvale, CA 94089
   
   Email: ppan@infinera.com


   Amit Shukla
   Juniper Networks
   1194 N. Mathilda Av.
   Sunnyvale, CA 94089
   
   Email: amit@juniper.net


   Maria Napierala
   AT&T Labs
   200 Laurel Avenue
   Middletown, NJ 07748
   
   Email: mnapierala@att.com





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   Nabil Bitar
   Verizon
   40 Sylvan Rd.
   Waltham, MA 02145
   
   Email: nabil.bitar@verizon.com















































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