RFC9572: Updates to EVPN Broadcast, Unknown Unicast, or Multicast (BUM) Procedures
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Related keywords:
(inter-AS segmentation)
(inter-region segmentation)
(per-region I-PMSI)
(selective multicast forwarding)
(tunnel segmentation)
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Z. Zhang
Request for Comments: 9572 W. Lin
Updates: 7432 Juniper Networks
Category: Standards Track J. Rabadan
ISSN: 2070-1721 Nokia
K. Patel
Arrcus
A. Sajassi
Cisco Systems
May 2024
Updates to EVPN Broadcast, Unknown Unicast, or Multicast (BUM)
Procedures
Abstract
This document specifies updated procedures for handling Broadcast,
Unknown Unicast, or Multicast (BUM) traffic in Ethernet VPNs (EVPNs),
including selective multicast and segmentation of provider tunnels.
This document updates RFC 7432.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9572.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2024 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
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Requirements Language
1.2. Terminology
2. Tunnel Segmentation
2.1. Reasons for Tunnel Segmentation
3. Additional Route Types of EVPN NLRI
3.1. Per-Region I-PMSI A-D Route
3.2. S-PMSI A-D Route
3.3. Leaf A-D Route
4. Selective Multicast
5. Inter-AS Segmentation
5.1. Differences from Section 7.2.2 of RFC 7117 when Applied to
EVPNs
5.2. I-PMSI Leaf Tracking
5.3. Backward Compatibility
5.3.1. Designated ASBR Election
6. Inter-Region Segmentation
6.1. Area/AS vs. Region
6.2. Per-Region Aggregation
6.3. Use of S-NH-EC
6.4. Ingress PE's I-PMSI Leaf Tracking
7. Multihoming Support
8. IANA Considerations
9. Security Considerations
10. References
10.1. Normative References
10.2. Informative References
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
[RFC7117] specifies procedures for multicast in the Virtual Private
LAN Service (VPLS multicast), using both inclusive tunnels and
selective tunnels with or without inter-AS segmentation, similar to
the Multicast VPN (MVPN) procedures specified in [RFC6513] and
[RFC6514]. [RFC7524] specifies inter-area tunnel segmentation
procedures for both VPLS multicast and MVPNs.
[RFC7432] specifies BGP MPLS-based Ethernet VPN (EVPN) procedures,
including those handling Broadcast, Unknown Unicast, or Multicast
(BUM) traffic. [RFC7432] refers to [RFC7117] for details but leaves
a few feature gaps related to selective tunnel and tunnel
segmentation (Section 2.1).
This document aims to fill in those gaps by covering the use of
selective and segmented tunnels in EVPNs. In the same way that
[RFC7432] refers to [RFC7117] for details, this document only
specifies differences from relevant procedures provided in [RFC7117]
and [RFC7524], rather than repeating the text from those documents.
Note that these differences are applicable to EVPNs only and are not
updates to [RFC7117] or [RFC7524].
MVPN, VPLS, and EVPN technologies all need to discover other Provider
Edges (PEs) in the same L3/L2 VPN and announce the inclusive tunnels.
MVPN technology introduced the Inclusive P-Multicast Service
Interface (I-PMSI) concept and uses I-PMSI Auto-Discovery (A-D)
routes for that purpose. EVPN technology uses Inclusive Multicast
Ethernet Tag (IMET) A-D routes, but VPLS technology just adds a PMSI
Tunnel Attribute (PTA) to an existing VPLS A-D route for that
purpose. For selective tunnels, they all do use the same term:
Selective PMSI (S-PMSI) A-D routes.
This document often refers to the I-PMSI concept, which is the same
for all three technologies. For consistency and convenience, an
EVPN's IMET A-D route and a VPLS's VPLS A-D route carrying a PTA for
BUM traffic purposes may each be referred to as an I-PMSI A-D route,
depending on the context.
1.1. Requirements Language
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.
1.2. Terminology
It is assumed that the reader is familiar with concepts and
terminologies related to MVPN technology [RFC6513] [RFC6514], VPLS
multicast [RFC7117], and EVPN technology [RFC7432]. For convenience,
the following terms are briefly explained.
AS: Autonomous System
PMSI [RFC6513]: P-Multicast Service Interface. A conceptual
interface for a PE to send customer multicast traffic to all or
some PEs in the same VPN.
I-PMSI: Inclusive PMSI. Enables traffic to be sent to all PEs in
the same VPN.
S-PMSI: Selective PMSI. Enables traffic to be sent to some of the
PEs in the same VPN.
I/S-PMSI A-D Route: Auto-Discovery route used to announce the
tunnels that instantiate an I/S-PMSI.
Leaf Auto-Discovery (A-D) Route [RFC6513]: For explicit leaf-
tracking purposes. Triggered by I/S-PMSI A-D routes and targeted
at the triggering route's (re-)advertiser. Its Network Layer
Reachability Information (NLRI) embeds the entire NLRI of the
triggering PMSI A-D route.
IMET A-D Route [RFC7432]: Inclusive Multicast Ethernet Tag A-D
route. The EVPN equivalent of an MVPN Intra-AS I-PMSI A-D route
used to announce the tunnels that instantiate an I-PMSI.
SMET A-D Route [RFC9251]: Selective Multicast Ethernet Tag A-D
route. The EVPN equivalent of an MVPN Leaf A-D route, but
unsolicited and untargeted.
PMSI Tunnel Attribute (PTA): An optional transitive BGP attribute
that may be attached to PMSI/Leaf A-D routes to provide
information for a PMSI tunnel.
IBGP: Internal BGP (BGP connection between internal peers).
EBGP: External BGP (BGP connection between external peers).
RT: Route Target. Controls route importation and propagation.
2. Tunnel Segmentation
MVPN provider tunnels and EVPN/VPLS BUM provider tunnels, which are
referred to as MVPN/EVPN/VPLS provider tunnels in this document for
simplicity, can be segmented for technical or administrative reasons,
which are summarized in Section 2.1 of this document. [RFC6513] and
[RFC6514] cover MVPN inter-AS segmentation, [RFC7117] covers VPLS
multicast inter-AS segmentation, and [RFC7524] (seamless MPLS
multicast) covers inter-area segmentation for both MVPNs and VPLSs.
With tunnel segmentation, different segments of an end-to-end tunnel
may have different encapsulation overheads. However, the largest
overhead of the tunnel caused by an encapsulation method on a
particular segment is not different from the case of a non-segmented
tunnel with that encapsulation method. This is similar to the case
of a network with different link types.
There is a difference between MVPN and VPLS multicast inter-AS
segmentation (the VPLS approach is briefly described in Section 5.1).
For simplicity, EVPNs will use the same procedures as those for
MVPNs. All ASBRs can re-advertise their choice of the best route.
Each can become the root of its intra-AS segment and inject traffic
it receives from its upstream, while each downstream PE/ASBR will
only pick one of the upstream ASBRs as its upstream. This is also
the behavior even for VPLS in the case of inter-area segmentation.
For inter-area segmentation, [RFC7524] requires the use of the Inter-
Area Point-to-Multipoint (P2MP) Segmented Next-Hop Extended Community
(S-NH-EC) and the setting of the Leaf Information Required (L) flag
in the PTA in certain situations. In the EVPN case, the requirements
around the S-NH-EC and the L flag in the PTA differ from [RFC7524] to
make the segmentation procedures transparent to ingress and egress
PEs.
[RFC7524] assumes that segmentation happens at area borders.
However, it could be at "regional" borders, where a region could be a
sub-area, or even an entire AS plus its external links (Section 6.1);
this would allow for more flexible deployment scenarios (e.g., for
single-area provider networks). This document extends the inter-area
segmentation concept to inter-region segmentation for EVPNs.
2.1. Reasons for Tunnel Segmentation
Tunnel segmentation may be required and/or desired for administrative
and/or technical reasons.
For example, an MVPN/VPLS/EVPN may span multiple providers, and the
end-to-end provider tunnels have to be segmented at and stitched by
the ASBRs. Different providers may use different tunnel technologies
(e.g., provider A uses ingress replication [RFC7988], provider B uses
RSVP-TE P2MP [RFC4875], and provider C uses Multipoint LDP (mLDP)
[RFC6388]). Even if they use the same tunnel technology (e.g., RSVP-
TE P2MP), it may be impractical to set up the tunnels across provider
boundaries.
The same situations may apply between the ASes and/or areas of a
single provider. For example, the backbone area may use RSVP-TE P2MP
tunnels while non-backbone areas may use mLDP tunnels.
Segmentation can also be used to divide an AS/area into smaller
regions, so that control plane state and/or forwarding plane state/
burden can be limited to that of individual regions. For example,
instead of ingress-replicating to 100 PEs in the entire AS, with
inter-area segmentation [RFC7524], a PE only needs to replicate to
local PEs and Area Border Routers (ABRs). The ABRs will further
replicate to their downstream PEs and ABRs. This not only reduces
the forwarding plane burden, but also reduces the leaf-tracking
burden in the control plane.
In the case of tunnel aggregation, smaller regions provide the
benefit of making it easier to find congruence among the segments of
different constituent (service) tunnels and the resulting aggregation
(base) tunnel in a region. This leads to better bandwidth
efficiency, because the more congruent they are, the fewer leaves of
the base tunnel need to discard traffic when a service tunnel's
segment does not need to receive the traffic (yet it is receiving the
traffic due to aggregation).
Another advantage of the smaller region is smaller Bit Index Explicit
Replication (BIER) subdomains [RFC8279]. With BIER, packets carry a
BitString, in which the bits correspond to edge routers that need to
receive traffic. Smaller subdomains means that smaller BitStrings
can be used without having to send multiple copies of the same
packet.
3. Additional Route Types of EVPN NLRI
[RFC7432] defines the format of EVPN NLRI as follows:
+-----------------------------------+
| Route Type (1 octet) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Length (1 octet) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Route Type specific (variable) |
+-----------------------------------+
So far, eight route types have been defined in [RFC7432], [RFC9136],
and [RFC9251]:
+=======+=========================================+
| Value | Description |
+=======+=========================================+
| 1 | Ethernet Auto-discovery |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 2 | MAC/IP Advertisement |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 3 | Inclusive Multicast Ethernet Tag |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 4 | Ethernet Segment |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 5 | IP Prefix |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 6 | Selective Multicast Ethernet Tag Route |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 7 | Multicast Membership Report Synch Route |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
| 8 | Multicast Leave Synch Route |
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
Table 1: Pre-existing Route Types
This document defines three additional route types:
+=======+=============================+
| Value | Description |
+=======+=============================+
| 9 | Per-Region I-PMSI A-D route |
+-------+-----------------------------+
| 10 | S-PMSI A-D route |
+-------+-----------------------------+
| 11 | Leaf A-D route |
+-------+-----------------------------+
Table 2: New Route Types
The "Route Type specific" field of the Type 9 and Type 10 EVPN NLRIs
starts with a Type 1 RD (Route Distinguisher), whose Administrator
sub-field MUST match that of the RD in all current EVPN routes that
are not Leaf A-D routes (Section 3.3), i.e., non-Leaf A-D routes from
the same advertising router for a given EVPN instance (EVI).
3.1. Per-Region I-PMSI A-D Route
The per-region I-PMSI A-D route has the following format. Its usage
is discussed in Section 6.2.
+-----------------------------------+
| RD (8 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Ethernet Tag ID (4 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Region ID (8 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
The Region ID identifies the region and is encoded in the same way
that an EC is encoded, as detailed in Section 6.2.
3.2. S-PMSI A-D Route
The S-PMSI A-D route has the following format:
+-----------------------------------+
| RD (8 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Ethernet Tag ID (4 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Multicast Source Length (1 octet) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Multicast Source (variable) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Multicast Group Length (1 octet) |
+-----------------------------------+
| Multicast Group (variable) |
+-----------------------------------+
|Originator's Addr Length (1 octet) |
+-----------------------------------+
|Originator's Addr (4 or 16 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
Other than the addition of the Ethernet Tag ID and Originator's Addr
Length fields, it is identical to the S-PMSI A-D route as defined in
[RFC7117]. The procedures specified in [RFC7117] also apply
(including wildcard functionality), except that the granularity level
is per Ethernet Tag.
3.3. Leaf A-D Route
The Route Type specific field of a Leaf A-D route consists of the
following:
+-----------------------------------+
| Route Key (variable) |
+-----------------------------------+
|Originator's Addr Length (1 octet) |
+-----------------------------------+
|Originator's Addr (4 or 16 octets) |
+-----------------------------------+
A Leaf A-D route is originated in response to a PMSI route, which
could be an IMET A-D route, a per-region I-PMSI A-D route, an S-PMSI
A-D route, or some other types of routes that may be defined in the
future that trigger Leaf A-D routes. The Route Key is the NLRI of
the route for which this Leaf A-D route is generated.
The general procedures for Leaf A-D routes were first specified in
[RFC6514] for MVPNs. The principles therein apply to VPLSs and EVPNs
as well. [RFC7117] provides details regarding VPLS multicast, and
this document points out some specifics for EVPNs, e.g., in
Section 5.
4. Selective Multicast
[RFC9251] specifies procedures for EVPN selective forwarding of IP
multicast traffic using SMET routes. It assumes that selective
forwarding is always used with ingress replication for all flows
(though the same signaling can also be used for an ingress PE to
learn the set of egress PEs for selective forwarding with BIER). A
Network Virtualization Edge (NVE) proxies the IGMP/MLD state ("MLD"
stands for "Multicast Listener Discovery") that it learns on its
Attachment Circuits (ACs) to (C-S,C-G) or (C-*,C-G) SMET routes that
are advertised to other NVEs, and a receiving NVE converts the SMET
routes back to IGMP/MLD messages and sends them out of its ACs. The
receiving NVE also uses the SMET routes to identify which NVEs need
to receive traffic for a particular (C-S,C-G) or (C-*,C-G) to achieve
selective forwarding using ingress replication or BIER.
With the above procedures, selective forwarding is done for all
flows, and the SMET routes are advertised for all flows. It is
possible that an operator may not want to track all those (C-S, C-G)
or (C-*,C-G) states on the NVEs, and the multicast traffic pattern
allows inclusive forwarding for most flows while selective forwarding
is needed only for a few high-rate flows. For that reason, or for
tunnel types other than ingress replication or BIER, S-PMSI/Leaf A-D
procedures defined for selective multicast for VPLS in [RFC7117] are
used. Other than the fact that different route types and formats are
specified with an EVPN SAFI for S-PMSI A-D and Leaf A-D routes
(Section 3), all procedures specified in [RFC7117] with respect to
selective multicast apply to EVPNs as well, including wildcard
procedures. In a nutshell, a source NVE advertises S-PMSI A-D routes
to announce the tunnels used for certain flows, and receiving NVEs
either join the announced PIM/mLDP tunnel or respond with Leaf A-D
routes if the L flag is set in the S-PMSI A-D route's PTA (so that
the source NVE can include them as tunnel leaves).
An optimization to the procedures provided in [RFC7117] may be
applied. Even if a source NVE sets the L flag to request Leaf A-D
routes, an egress NVE MAY omit the Leaf A-D route if it has already
advertised a corresponding SMET route, and the source NVE MUST use
that in lieu of the Leaf A-D route.
The optional optimizations specified for MVPNs in [RFC8534] are also
applicable to EVPNs when the procedures for S-PMSI/Leaf A-D routes
are used for EVPN selective multicast forwarding.
5. Inter-AS Segmentation
5.1. Differences from Section 7.2.2 of RFC 7117 when Applied to EVPNs
The first paragraph of Section 7.2.2.2 of [RFC7117] says:
| ... The best route procedures ensure that if multiple ASBRs, in an
| AS, receive the same Inter-AS A-D route from their EBGP neighbors,
| only one of these ASBRs propagates this route in Internal BGP
| (IBGP). This ASBR becomes the root of the intra-AS segment of the
| inter-AS tree and ensures that this is the only ASBR that accepts
| traffic into this AS from the inter-AS tree.
The above VPLS behavior requires complicated VPLS-specific procedures
for the ASBRs to reach agreement. For EVPNs, a different approach is
used; the above text from [RFC7117] is not applicable to EVPNs.
With the different approach for EVPNs/MVPNs, each ASBR will re-
advertise its received Inter-AS A-D route to its IBGP peers and
becomes the root of an intra-AS segment of the inter-AS tree. The
intra-AS segment rooted at one ASBR is disjoint from another intra-AS
segment rooted at another ASBR. This is the same as the procedures
for S-PMSI routes in [RFC7117] itself.
The following bullet in Section 7.2.2.2 of [RFC7117] does not apply
to EVPNs.
| * If the ASBR uses ingress replication to instantiate the intra-
| AS segment of the inter-AS tunnel, the re-advertised route MUST
| NOT carry the PMSI Tunnel attribute.
The following bullet in Section 7.2.2.2 of [RFC7117]:
| * If the ASBR uses a P-multicast tree to instantiate the intra-AS
| segment of the inter-AS tunnel, the PMSI Tunnel attribute MUST
| contain the identity of the tree that is used to instantiate
| the segment (note that the ASBR could create the identity of
| the tree prior to the actual instantiation of the segment).
| If, in order to instantiate the segment, the ASBR needs to know
| the leaves of the tree, then the ASBR obtains this information
| from the A-D routes received from other PEs/ASBRs in the ASBR's
| own AS.
is changed to the following when applied to EVPNs:
| * The PTA MUST specify the tunnel for the segment. If and only
| if, in order to establish the tunnel, the ASBR needs to know
| the leaves of the tree, then the ASBR MUST set the L flag to 1
| in the PTA to trigger Leaf A-D routes from egress PEs and
| downstream ASBRs. It MUST be (auto-)configured with an import
| RT, which controls acceptance of Leaf A-D routes by the ASBR.
Accordingly, the following paragraph in Section 7.2.2.4 of [RFC7117]:
| If the received Inter-AS A-D route carries the PMSI Tunnel
| attribute with the Tunnel Identifier set to RSVP-TE P2MP LSP, then
| the ASBR that originated the route MUST establish an RSVP-TE P2MP
| LSP with the local PE/ASBR as a leaf. This LSP MAY have been
| established before the local PE/ASBR receives the route, or it MAY
| be established after the local PE receives the route.
is changed to the following when applied to EVPNs:
| If the received Inter-AS A-D route has the L flag set in its PTA,
| then a receiving PE MUST originate a corresponding Leaf A-D route.
| A receiving ASBR MUST originate a corresponding Leaf A-D route if
| and only if one of the following conditions is met: (1) it
| received and imported one or more corresponding Leaf A-D routes
| from its downstream IBGP or EBGP peers or (2) it has non-null
| downstream forwarding state for the PIM/mLDP tunnel that
| instantiates its downstream intra-AS segment. The targeted ASBR
| for the Leaf A-D route, which (re-)advertised the Inter-AS A-D
| route, MUST establish a tunnel to the leaves discovered by the
| Leaf A-D routes.
5.2. I-PMSI Leaf Tracking
An ingress PE does not set the L flag in its IMET A-D route's PTA,
even with Ingress Replication tunnels or RSVP-TE P2MP tunnels. It
does not rely on the Leaf A-D routes to discover leaves in its AS,
and Section 11.2 of [RFC7432] explicitly states that the L flag must
be set to 0.
An implementation of [RFC7432] might have used the Originating
Router's IP Address field of the IMET A-D routes to determine the
leaves or might have used the Next Hop field instead. Within the
same AS, both will lead to the same result.
With segmentation, an ingress PE MUST determine the leaves in its AS
from the BGP next hops in all its received IMET A-D routes, so it
does not have to set the L flag to request Leaf A-D routes. PEs
within the same AS will all have different next hops in their IMET
A-D routes (and hence will all be considered as leaves), and PEs from
other ASes will have the next hop in their IMET A-D routes set to
addresses of ASBRs in this local AS; hence, only those ASBRs will be
considered as leaves (as proxies for those PEs in other ASes). Note
that in the case of ingress replication, when an ASBR re-advertises
IMET A-D routes to IBGP peers, it MUST advertise the same label for
all those routes for the same Ethernet Tag ID and the same EVI.
Otherwise, duplicated copies will be sent by the ingress PE and
received by egress PEs in other regions. For the same reason, when
an ingress PE builds its flooding list, if multiple routes have the
same (nexthop, label) tuple, they MUST only be added as a single
branch in the flooding list.
5.3. Backward Compatibility
The above procedures assume that all PEs are upgraded to support the
segmentation procedures:
* An ingress PE uses the Next Hop and not the Originating Router's
IP Address to determine leaves for the I-PMSI tunnel.
* An egress PE sends Leaf A-D routes in response to I-PMSI routes,
if the PTA has the L flag set by the re-advertising ASBR.
* In the case of ingress replication, when an ingress PE builds its
flooding list, multiple I-PMSI routes may have the same (nexthop,
label) tuple, and only a single branch for those routes will be
added in the flooding list.
If a deployment has legacy PEs that do not support the above, then a
legacy ingress PE would include all PEs (including those in remote
ASes) as leaves of the inclusive tunnel and try to send traffic to
them directly (no segmentation), which is either undesirable or
impossible; a legacy egress PE would not send Leaf A-D routes so the
ASBRs would not know to send external traffic to them.
If this backward-compatibility problem needs to be addressed, the
following procedure MUST be used (see Section 6.2 for per-PE/AS/
region I-PMSI A-D routes):
* An upgraded PE indicates in its per-PE I-PMSI A-D route that it
supports the new procedures. This is done by setting a flag bit
in the EVPN Multicast Flags Extended Community.
* All per-PE I-PMSI A-D routes are restricted to the local AS and
not propagated to external peers.
* The ASBRs in an AS originate per-region I-PMSI A-D routes and
advertise them to their external peers to specify tunnels used to
carry traffic from the local AS to other ASes. Depending on the
types of tunnels being used, the L flag in the PTA may be set, in
which case the downstream ASBRs and upgraded PEs will send Leaf
A-D routes to pull traffic from their upstream ASBRs. In a
particular downstream AS, one of the ASBRs is elected, based on
the per-region I-PMSI A-D routes for a particular source AS, to
send traffic from that source AS to legacy PEs in the downstream
AS. The traffic arrives at the elected ASBR on the tunnel
announced in the best per-region I-PMSI A-D route for the source
AS, as selected by the ASBR from all the routes that it received
over EBGP or IBGP sessions. The election procedure is described
in Section 5.3.1.
* In an ingress/upstream AS, if and only if an ASBR has active
downstream receivers (PEs and ASBRs), which are learned either
explicitly via Leaf A-D routes or implicitly via PIM Join or mLDP
label mapping, the ASBR originates a per-PE I-PMSI A-D route
(i.e., a regular IMET route) into the local AS and stitches
incoming per-PE I-PMSI tunnels into its per-region I-PMSI tunnel.
Via this process, it gets traffic from local PEs and sends the
traffic to other ASes via the tunnel announced in its per-region
I-PMSI A-D route.
Note that even if there are no backward-compatibility issues, the use
of per-region I-PMSI A-D routes provides the benefit of keeping all
per-PE I-PMSI A-D routes in their local ASes, greatly reducing the
flooding of the routes and their corresponding Leaf A-D routes (when
needed) and reducing the number of inter-AS tunnels.
5.3.1. Designated ASBR Election
When an ASBR re-advertises a per-region I-PMSI A-D route into an AS
in which a designated ASBR needs to be used to forward traffic to the
legacy PEs in the AS, it MUST include a Designated Forwarder (DF)
Election EC. The EC and its use are specified in [RFC8584]. The AC-
DF bit in the DF Election EC MUST be cleared. If it is known that no
legacy PEs exist in the AS, the ASBR MUST NOT include the EC and MUST
remove the DF Election EC if one is carried in the per-region I-PMSI
A-D routes that it receives. Note that this is done for each set of
per-region I-PMSI A-D routes with the same NLRI.
Based on the procedures specified in [RFC8584], an election algorithm
is determined according to the DF Election ECs carried in the set of
per-region I-PMSI routes of the same NLRI re-advertised into the AS.
The algorithm is then applied to a candidate list, which is the set
of ASBRs that re-advertised the per-region I-PMSI routes of the same
NLRI carrying the DF Election EC.
6. Inter-Region Segmentation
6.1. Area/AS vs. Region
[RFC7524] addresses MVPN/VPLS inter-area segmentation and does not
explicitly cover EVPNs. However, if "area" is replaced by "region"
and "ABR" is replaced by "RBR" (Regional Border Router), then
everything still works and can be applied to EVPNs as well.
A region can be a sub-area, or it can be an entire AS, including its
external links. Instead of automatically defining a region based on
IGP areas, a region would be defined as a BGP peer group. In fact,
even with a region definition based on an IGP area, a BGP peer group
listing the PEs and ABRs in an area is still needed.
Consider the following example diagram for inter-AS segmentation:
--------- ------ ---------
/ \ / \ / \
/ \ / \ / \
| PE1 o ASBR1 -- ASBR2 ASBR3 -- ASBR4 o PE2 |
\ / \ / \ /
\ / \ / \ /
--------- ------ ---------
AS 100 AS 200 AS 300
|-----------|--------|---------|--------|------------|
segment1 segment2 segment3 segment4 segment5
The inter-AS segmentation procedures specified so far ([RFC6513],
[RFC6514], [RFC7117], and Section 5 of this document) require all
ASBRs to be involved, and ingress replication is used between two
ASBRs in different ASes.
In the above diagram, it's possible that ASBR1/4 does not support
segmentation, and the provider tunnels in AS 100/300 can actually
extend across the external link. In this case, the inter-region
segmentation procedures can be used instead -- a region is the entire
AS100 plus the ASBR1-ASBR2 link or the entire AS300 plus the
ASBR3-ASBR4 link. ASBR2/3 would be the RBRs, and ASBR1/4 will just
be a transit core router with respect to provider tunnels.
As illustrated in the diagram below, ASBR2/3 will establish a
multihop EBGP session, either with a Route Reflector (RR) or directly
with PEs in the neighboring AS. I/S-PMSI A-D routes from ingress PEs
will not be processed by ASBR1/4. When ASBR2 re-advertises the
routes into AS 200, it changes the next hop to its own address and
changes its PTA to specify the tunnel type/identification in its own
AS. When ASBR3 re-advertises I/S-PMSI A-D routes into the
neighboring AS 300, it changes the next hop to its own address and
changes its PTA to specify the tunnel type/identification in the
neighboring region. Now, the segment is rooted at ASBR3 and extends
across the external link to PEs.
--------- ------ ---------
/ RR....\.mh-ebpg / \ mh-ebgp/....RR \
/ : \ `. / \ .' / : \
| PE1 o ASBR1 -- ASBR2 ASBR3 -- ASBR4 o PE2 |
\ / \ / \ /
\ / \ / \ /
--------- ------ ---------
AS 100 AS 200 AS 300
|-------------------|----------|---------------------|
segment 1 segment 2 segment 3
6.2. Per-Region Aggregation
Notice that every I/S-PMSI route from each PE will be propagated
throughout all the ASes or regions. They may also trigger
corresponding Leaf A-D routes, depending on the types of tunnels used
in each region. This may result in too many routes and corresponding
tunnels. To address this concern, the I-PMSI routes from all PEs in
an AS/region can be aggregated into a single I-PMSI route originated
from the RBRs, and traffic from all those individual I-PMSI tunnels
will be switched into the single I-PMSI tunnel. This is like the
MVPN Inter-AS I-PMSI route originated by ASBRs.
The MVPN Inter-AS I-PMSI A-D route can be better called a "per-AS
I-PMSI A-D route", to be compared against the (per-PE) Intra-AS
I-PMSI A-D routes originated by each PE. In this document, we will
call it a "per-region I-PMSI A-D route" in cases where we want to
apply aggregation at the regional level. The per-PE I-PMSI routes
will not be propagated to other regions. If multiple RBRs are
connected to a region, then each will advertise such a route, with
the same Region ID and Ethernet Tag ID (Section 3.1). Similar to the
per-PE I-PMSI A-D routes, RBRs/PEs in a downstream region will each
select the best route from all those re-advertised by the upstream
RBRs and hence will only receive traffic injected by one of them.
MVPNs do not aggregate S-PMSI routes from all PEs in an AS like they
do for I-PMSI routes, because the number of PEs that will advertise
S-PMSI routes for the same (S,G) or (*,G) is small. This is also the
case for EVPNs, i.e., there are no per-region S-PMSI routes.
Notice that per-region I-PMSI routes can also be used to address
backward-compatibility issues, as discussed in Section 5.3.
The Region ID in the per-region I-PMSI route's NLRI is encoded like
an EC. For example, the Region ID can encode an AS number or area ID
in the following EC format:
* For a two-octet AS number, a Transitive Two-Octet AS-specific EC
of sub-type 0x09 (Source AS), with the Global Administrator sub-
field set to the AS number and the Local Administrator sub-field
set to 0.
* For a four-octet AS number, a Transitive Four-Octet AS-specific EC
of sub-type 0x09 (Source AS), with the Global Administrator sub-
field set to the AS number and the Local Administrator sub-field
set to 0.
* For an area ID, a Transitive IPv4-Address-specific EC of any sub-
type, with the Global Administrator sub-field set to the area ID
and the Local Administrator sub-field set to 0.
The use of other EC encodings MAY be allowed as long as they uniquely
identify the region and the RBRs for the same region use the same
Region ID.
6.3. Use of S-NH-EC
[RFC7524] specifies the use of the S-NH-EC because it does not allow
ABRs to change the BGP next hop when they re-advertise I/S-PMSI A-D
routes to downstream areas. That behavior is only to be consistent
with the MVPN Inter-AS I-PMSI A-D routes, whose next hop must not be
changed when they're re-advertised by the segmenting ABRs for reasons
specific to MVPNs. For EVPNs, it is perfectly fine to change the
next hop when RBRs re-advertise the I/S-PMSI A-D routes, instead of
relying on the S-NH-EC. As a result, this document specifies that
RBRs change the BGP next hop when they re-advertise I/S-PMSI A-D
routes and do not use the S-NH-EC. This provides the advantage that
neither ingress PEs nor egress PEs need to understand/use the S-NH-
EC, and a consistent procedure (based on BGP next hops) is used for
both inter-AS and inter-region segmentation.
If a downstream PE/RBR needs to originate Leaf A-D routes, it
constructs an IP-based Route Target Extended Community by placing the
IP address carried in the Next Hop of the received I/S-PMSI A-D route
in the Global Administrator field of the extended community, with the
Local Administrator field of this extended community set to 0, and
also setting the Extended Communities attribute of the Leaf A-D route
to that extended community.
Similar to [RFC7524], the upstream RBR MUST (auto-)configure an RT
with the Global Administrator field set to the Next Hop in the re-
advertised I/S-PMSI A-D route and with the Local Administrator field
set to 0. Using this technique, the mechanisms specified in
[RFC4684] for constrained BGP route distribution can be used along
with this specification to ensure that only the needed PE/ABR will
have to process a particular Leaf A-D route.
6.4. Ingress PE's I-PMSI Leaf Tracking
[RFC7524] specifies that when an ingress PE/ASBR (re-)advertises a
VPLS I-PMSI A-D route, it sets the L flag to 1 in the route's PTA.
Similar to the inter-AS case, this is actually not really needed for
EVPNs. To be consistent with the inter-AS case, the ingress PE does
not set the L flag in its originated I-PMSI A-D routes, and it
determines the leaves based on the BGP next hops in its received
I-PMSI A-D routes, as specified in Section 5.2.
The same backward-compatibility issue exists, and the same solution
as that for the inter-AS case applies, as specified in Section 5.3.
7. Multihoming Support
To support multihoming with segmentation, Ethernet Segment Identifier
(ESI) labels SHOULD be allocated from a "Domain-wide Common Block"
(DCB) [RFC9573] for all tunnel types, including Ingress Replication
tunnels [RFC7988]. Via means outside the scope of this document, PEs
know that ESI labels are from a DCB, and existing multihoming
procedures will then work "as is" (whether a multihomed Ethernet
Segment spans segmentation regions or not).
Not using DCB-allocated ESI labels is outside the scope of this
document.
8. IANA Considerations
IANA has assigned the following new EVPN route types in the "EVPN
Route Types" registry:
+=======+=============================+===========+
| Value | Description | Reference |
+=======+=============================+===========+
| 9 | Per-Region I-PMSI A-D route | RFC 9572 |
+-------+-----------------------------+-----------+
| 10 | S-PMSI A-D route | RFC 9572 |
+-------+-----------------------------+-----------+
| 11 | Leaf A-D route | RFC 9572 |
+-------+-----------------------------+-----------+
Table 3: New Route Types
IANA has assigned one flag bit from the "Multicast Flags Extended
Community" registry created by [RFC9251]:
+=====+======================+===========+===================+
| Bit | Name | Reference | Change Controller |
+=====+======================+===========+===================+
| 8 | Segmentation Support | RFC 9572 | IETF |
+-----+----------------------+-----------+-------------------+
Table 4: New Multicast Flag
9. Security Considerations
The procedures specified in this document for selective forwarding
via S-PMSI/Leaf A-D routes are based on the same procedures as those
used for MVPNs [RFC6513] [RFC6514] and VPLS multicast [RFC7117]. The
procedures for tunnel segmentation as specified in this document are
based on similar procedures used for MVPN inter-AS tunnel
segmentation [RFC6514] and inter-area tunnel segmentation [RFC7524],
as well as procedures for VPLS multicast inter-AS tunnel segmentation
[RFC7117]. When applied to EVPNs, they do not introduce new security
concerns beyond those discussed in [RFC6513], [RFC6514], [RFC7117],
and [RFC7524]. They also do not introduce new security concerns
compared to [RFC7432].
10. References
10.1. 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,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC6513] Rosen, E., Ed. and R. Aggarwal, Ed., "Multicast in MPLS/
BGP IP VPNs", RFC 6513, DOI 10.17487/RFC6513, February
2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6513>.
[RFC6514] Aggarwal, R., Rosen, E., Morin, T., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP
Encodings and Procedures for Multicast in MPLS/BGP IP
VPNs", RFC 6514, DOI 10.17487/RFC6514, February 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6514>.
[RFC7117] Aggarwal, R., Ed., Kamite, Y., Fang, L., Rekhter, Y., and
C. Kodeboniya, "Multicast in Virtual Private LAN Service
(VPLS)", RFC 7117, DOI 10.17487/RFC7117, February 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7117>.
[RFC7432] Sajassi, A., Ed., Aggarwal, R., Bitar, N., Isaac, A.,
Uttaro, J., Drake, J., and W. Henderickx, "BGP MPLS-Based
Ethernet VPN", RFC 7432, DOI 10.17487/RFC7432, February
2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7432>.
[RFC7524] Rekhter, Y., Rosen, E., Aggarwal, R., Morin, T.,
Grosclaude, I., Leymann, N., and S. Saad, "Inter-Area
Point-to-Multipoint (P2MP) Segmented Label Switched Paths
(LSPs)", RFC 7524, DOI 10.17487/RFC7524, May 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7524>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8534] Dolganow, A., Kotalwar, J., Rosen, E., Ed., and Z. Zhang,
"Explicit Tracking with Wildcard Routes in Multicast VPN",
RFC 8534, DOI 10.17487/RFC8534, February 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8534>.
[RFC8584] Rabadan, J., Ed., Mohanty, S., Ed., Sajassi, A., Drake,
J., Nagaraj, K., and S. Sathappan, "Framework for Ethernet
VPN Designated Forwarder Election Extensibility",
RFC 8584, DOI 10.17487/RFC8584, April 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8584>.
[RFC9251] Sajassi, A., Thoria, S., Mishra, M., Patel, K., Drake, J.,
and W. Lin, "Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and
Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Proxies for Ethernet
VPN (EVPN)", RFC 9251, DOI 10.17487/RFC9251, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9251>.
[RFC9573] Zhang, Z., Rosen, E., Lin, W., Li, Z., and IJ. Wijnands,
"MVPN/EVPN Tunnel Aggregation with Common Labels",
RFC 9573, DOI 10.17487/RFC9573, May 2024,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9573>.
10.2. Informative References
[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, DOI 10.17487/RFC4684,
November 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4684>.
[RFC4875] Aggarwal, R., Ed., Papadimitriou, D., Ed., and S.
Yasukawa, Ed., "Extensions to Resource Reservation
Protocol - Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) for Point-to-
Multipoint TE Label Switched Paths (LSPs)", RFC 4875,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4875, May 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4875>.
[RFC6388] Wijnands, IJ., Ed., Minei, I., Ed., Kompella, K., and B.
Thomas, "Label Distribution Protocol Extensions for Point-
to-Multipoint and Multipoint-to-Multipoint Label Switched
Paths", RFC 6388, DOI 10.17487/RFC6388, November 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6388>.
[RFC7988] Rosen, E., Ed., Subramanian, K., and Z. Zhang, "Ingress
Replication Tunnels in Multicast VPN", RFC 7988,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7988, October 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7988>.
[RFC8279] Wijnands, IJ., Ed., Rosen, E., Ed., Dolganow, A.,
Przygienda, T., and S. Aldrin, "Multicast Using Bit Index
Explicit Replication (BIER)", RFC 8279,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8279, November 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8279>.
[RFC9136] Rabadan, J., Ed., Henderickx, W., Drake, J., Lin, W., and
A. Sajassi, "IP Prefix Advertisement in Ethernet VPN
(EVPN)", RFC 9136, DOI 10.17487/RFC9136, October 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9136>.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Eric Rosen, John Drake, and Ron Bonica for their
comments and suggestions.
Contributors
The following people also contributed to this document through their
earlier work in EVPN selective multicast.
Junlin Zhang
Huawei Technologies
Huawei Bld., No. 156 Beiqing Rd.
Beijing
100095
China
Email: jackey.zhang@huawei.com
Zhenbin Li
Huawei Technologies
Huawei Bld., No. 156 Beiqing Rd.
Beijing
100095
China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
Authors' Addresses
Zhaohui Zhang
Juniper Networks
Email: zzhang@juniper.net
Wen Lin
Juniper Networks
Email: wlin@juniper.net
Jorge Rabadan
Nokia
Email: jorge.rabadan@nokia.com
Keyur Patel
Arrcus
Email: keyur@arrcus.com
Ali Sajassi
Cisco Systems
Email: sajassi@cisco.com