Movatterモバイル変換


[0]ホーム

URL:


[RFC Home] [TEXT|PDF|HTML] [Tracker] [IPR] [Errata] [Info page]

HISTORIC
Errata Exist
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)                            E. DaviesRequest for Comments: 5773                              Folly ConsultingCategory: Historic                                              A. DoriaISSN: 2070-1721                                                      LTU                                                           February 2010Analysis of Inter-Domain Routing Requirements and HistoryAbstract   This document analyzes the state of the Internet domain-based routing   system, concentrating on Inter-Domain Routing (IDR) and also   considering the relationship between inter-domain and intra-domain   routing.  The analysis is carried out with respect toRFC 1126 and   other IDR requirements and design efforts looking at the routing   system as it appeared to be in 2001 with editorial additions   reflecting developments up to 2006.  It is the companion document to   "A Set of Possible Requirements for a Future Routing Architecture"   (RFC 5772), which is a discussion of requirements for the future   routing architecture, addressing systems developments and future   routing protocols.  This document summarizes discussions held several   years ago by members of the IRTF Routing Research Group (IRTF RRG)   and other interested parties.  The document is published with the   support of the IRTF RRG as a record of the work completed at that   time, but with the understanding that it does not necessarily   represent either the latest technical understanding or the technical   consensus of the research group at the date of publication.Status of This Memo   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is   published for the historical record.   This document defines a Historic Document for the Internet community.   This document is a product of the Internet Research Task Force   (IRTF).  The IRTF publishes the results of Internet-related research   and development activities.  These results might not be suitable for   deployment.  This RFC represents the individual opinion(s) of one or   more members of the Routing Research Group of the Internet Research   Task Force (IRTF).  Documents approved for publication by the IRSG   are not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; seeSection 2   of RFC 5741.   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained athttp://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5773.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 1]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010Copyright Notice   Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the   document authors.  All rights reserved.   This document is subject toBCP 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.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 2]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010Table of Contents1. Provenance of This Document .....................................42. Introduction ....................................................52.1. Background .................................................73. Historical Perspective ..........................................73.1. The Legacy ofRFC 1126 .....................................73.1.1. General Requirements ................................83.1.2. "Functional Requirements" ..........................133.1.3. "Non-Goals" ........................................213.2. ISO OSI IDRP, BGP, and the Development of Policy Routing ..253.3. Nimrod Requirements .......................................303.4. PNNI ......................................................324. Recent Research Work ...........................................334.1. Developments in Internet Connectivity .....................334.2. DARPA NewArch Project .....................................344.2.1. Defending the End-to-End Principle .................35   5. Existing Problems of BGP and the Current Inter-/Intra-Domain      Architecture ...................................................355.1. BGP and Auto-Aggregation ..................................365.2. Convergence and Recovery Issues ...........................36      5.3. Non-Locality of Effects of Instability and           Misconfiguration ..........................................375.4. Multi-Homing Issues .......................................375.5. AS Number Exhaustion ......................................385.6. Partitioned ASs ...........................................395.7. Load Sharing ..............................................405.8. Hold-Down Issues ..........................................40      5.9. Interaction between Inter-Domain Routing and           Intra-Domain Routing ......................................405.10. Policy Issues ............................................425.11. Security Issues ..........................................425.12. Support of MPLS and VPNS .................................435.13. IPv4/IPv6 Ships in the Night .............................43      5.14. Existing Tools to Support Effective Deployment of            Inter-Domain Routing .....................................44           5.14.1. Routing Policy Specification Language RPSL                   (RFC 2622 andRFC 2650) and RIPE NCC Database                   (RIPE 157) ........................................446. Security Considerations ........................................457. Acknowledgments ................................................458. Informative References .........................................46Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 3]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20101.  Provenance of This Document   In 2001, the IRTF Routing Research Group (IRTF RRG) chairs, Abha   Ahuja and Sean Doran, decided to establish a sub-group to look at   requirements for inter-domain routing (IDR).  A group of well-known   routing experts was assembled to develop requirements for a new   routing architecture.  Their mandate was to approach the problem   starting from a blank slate.  This group was free to take any   approach, including a revolutionary approach, in developing   requirements for solving the problems they saw in inter-domain   routing.  Their eventual approach documented requirements for a   complete future routing and addressing architecture rather than just   the requirements for IDR.   Simultaneously, an independent effort was started in Sweden with a   similar goal.  A team, calling itself Babylon, with participation   from vendors, service providers, and academia, assembled to   understand the history of inter-domain routing, to research the   problems seen by the service providers, and to develop a proposal of   requirements for a follow-on to the current routing architecture.   This group's approach required an evolutionary approach starting from   current routing architecture and practice.  In other words, the group   limited itself to developing an evolutionary strategy and   consequently assumed that the architecture would probably remain   domain-based.  The Babylon group was later folded into the IRTF RRG   as Sub-Group B to distinguish it from the original RRG Sub-Group A.   This document, which was a part of Sub-Group B's output, provides a   snapshot of the state of Inter-Domain Routing (IDR) at the time of   original writing (2001) with some minor updates to take into account   developments since that date, bringing it up to date in 2006.  The   development of the new requirements set was then motivated by an   analysis of the problems that IDR has been encountering in the recent   past.  This document is intended as a counterpart to the Routing   Requirements document ("A Set of Possible Requirements for a Future   Routing Architecture"), which documents the requirements for future   routing systems as captured separately by the IRTF RRG Sub-Groups A   and B [RFC5772].   The IRTF RRG supported publication of this document as a historical   record of the work completed on the understanding that it does not   necessarily represent either the latest technical understanding or   the technical consensus of the research group at the time of   publication.  The document has had substantial review by members of   the Babylon team, members of the IRTF RRG, and others over the years.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 4]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20102.  Introduction   For the greater part of its existence, the Internet has used a   domain-oriented routing system whereby the routers and other nodes   making up the infrastructure are partitioned into a set of   administrative domains, primarily along ownership lines.  Individual   routing domains (also known as Autonomous Systems (ASs)), which maybe   a subset of an administrative domain, are made up of a finite,   connected set of nodes (at least in normal operation).  Each routing   domain is subject to a coherent set of routing and other policies   managed by a single administrative authority.  The domains are   interlinked to form the greater Internet, producing a very large   network: in practice, we have to treat this network as if it were   infinite in extent as there is no central knowledge about the whole   network of domains.  An early presentation of the concept of routing   domains can be found in Paul Francis' OSI routing architecture paper   from 1987 [Tsuchiya87] (Paul Francis was formerly known as Paul   Tsuchiya).   The domain concept and domain-oriented routing has become so   fundamental to Internet-routing thinking that it is generally taken   as an axiom these days and not even defined again (cf., [NewArch03]).   The issues discussed in the present document notwithstanding, it has   proved to be a robust and successful architectural concept that   brings with it the possibility of using different routing mechanisms   and protocols within the domains (intra-domain) and between the   domains (inter-domain).  This is an attractive division, because   intra-domain protocols can exploit the well-known finite scope of the   domain and the mutual trust engendered by shared ownership to give a   high degree of control to the domain administrators, whereas inter-   domain routing lives in an essentially infinite region featuring a   climate of distrust built on a multitude of competitive commercial   agreements and driven by less-than-fully-public policies from each   component domain.  Of course, like any other assumption that has been   around for a very long time, the domain concept should be reevaluated   to make sure that it is still helping!   It is generally accepted that there are major shortcomings in the   inter-domain routing of the Internet today and that these may result   in severe routing problems within an unspecified period of time.   Remedying these shortcomings will require extensive research to tie   down the exact failure modes that lead to these shortcomings and   identify the best techniques to remedy the situation.  Comparatively,   intra-domain routing works satisfactorily, and issues with intra-   domain routing are mainly associated with the interface between   intra- and inter-domain routing.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 5]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010      Reviewer's Note: Even in 2001, there was a wide difference of      opinion across the community regarding the shortcomings of inter-      domain routing.  In the years between writing and publication,      further analysis, changes in operational practice, alterations to      the demands made on inter-domain routing, modifications made to      BGP and a recognition of the difficulty of finding a replacement      may have altered the views of some members of the community.   Changes in the nature and quality of the services that users want   from the Internet are difficult to provide within the current   framework, as they impose requirements never foreseen by the original   architects of the Internet routing system.   The kind of radical changes that have to be accommodated are   epitomized by the advent of IPv6 and the application of IP mechanisms   to private commercial networks that offer specific service guarantees   beyond the best-effort services of the public Internet.  Major   changes to the inter-domain routing system are inevitable to provide   an efficient underpinning for the radically changed and increasingly   commercially-based networks that rely on the IP protocol suite.   Current practice stresses the need to separate the concerns of the   control plane and the forwarding plane in a router: this document   will follow this practice, but we still use the term "routing" as a   global portmanteau to cover all aspects of the system.   This document provides a historical perspective on the current state   of inter-domain routing and its relationship to intra-domain routing   inSection 3 by revisiting the previous IETF requirements document   intended to steer the development of a future routing system.  These   requirements, which informed the design of the Border Gateway   Protocol (BGP) in 1989, are contained inRFC 1126 -- "Goals and   Functional Requirements for Inter-Autonomous System Routing"   [RFC1126].Section 3 also looks at some other work on requirements for domain-   based routing that was carried out before and afterRFC 1126 was   published.  This work fleshes out the historical perspective and   provides some additional insights into alternative approaches that   may be instructive when building a new set of requirements.   The motivation for change and the inspiration for some of the   requirements for new routing architectures derive from the problems   attributable to the current domain-based routing system that are   being experienced in the Internet today.  These will be discussed inSection 5.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 6]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20102.1.  Background   Today's Internet uses an addressing and routing structure that has   developed in an ad hoc, more or less upwards-compatible fashion.  The   structure has progressed from supporting a non-commercial Internet   with a single administrative domain to a solution that is able to   control today's multi-domain, federated Internet, carrying traffic   between the networks of commercial, governmental, and not-for-profit   participants.  This is not achieved without a great deal of 24/7   vigilance and operational activity by network operators: Internet   routing often appears to be running close to the limits of stability.   As well as directing traffic to its intended endpoint, inter-domain   routing mechanisms are expected to implement a host of domain-   specific routing policies for competing, communicating domains.  The   result is not ideal, particularly as regards inter-domain routing   mechanisms, but it does a pretty fair job at its primary goal of   providing any-to-any connectivity to many millions of computers.   Based on a large body of anecdotal evidence, but also on a growing   body of experimental evidence [Labovitz02] and analytic work on the   stability of BGP under certain policy specifications [Griffin99], the   main Internet inter-domain routing protocol, BGP version 4 (BGP-4),   appears to have a number of problems.  These problems are discussed   in more detail inSection 5.  Additionally, the hierarchical nature   of the inter-domain routing problem appears to be changing as the   connectivity between domains becomes increasingly meshed [RFC3221],   which alters some of the scaling and structuring assumptions on which   BGP-4 is built.  Patches and fix-ups may relieve some of these   problems, but others may require a new architecture and new   protocols.3.  Historical Perspective3.1.  The Legacy ofRFC 1126RFC 1126 [RFC1126] outlined a set of requirements that were intended   to guide the development of BGP.      Editors' Note: When this document was reviewed by Yakov Rekhter,      one of the designers of BGP, his view was that "While some people      expected a set of requirements outlined inRFC 1126 to guide the      development of BGP, in reality the development of BGP happened      completely independently ofRFC 1126.  In other words, from the      point of view of the development of BGP,RFC 1126 turned out to be      totally irrelevant".  On the other hand, it appears that BGP, as      currently implemented, has met a large proportion of these      requirements, especially for unicast traffic.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 7]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   While the network is demonstrably different from what it was in 1989,   having:   o  moved from single to multiple administrative control,   o  increased in size by several orders of magnitude, and   o  migrated from a fairly tree-like connectivity graph to a meshier      style   many of the same requirements remain.  As a first step in setting   requirements for the future, we need to understand the requirements   that were originally set for the current protocols.  In charting a   future architecture, we must first be sure to do no harm.  This means   a future domain-based routing system has to support, as its base   requirement, the level of function that is available today.   The following sections each relate to a requirement, or non-   requirement listed inRFC 1126.  In fact, the section names are   direct quotes from the document.  The discussion of these   requirements covers the following areas:   Explanation:       Optional interpretation for today's audience of                      the original intent of the requirement.   Relevance:         Is the requirement ofRFC 1126 still relevant, and                      to what degree?  Should it be understood                      differently in today's environment?   Current practice:  How well is the requirement met by current                      protocols and practice?3.1.1.  General Requirements3.1.1.1.  "Route to Destination"   Timely routing to all reachable destinations, including multi-homing   and multicast.   Relevance:         Valid, but requirements for multi-homing need                      further discussion and elucidation.  The                      requirement should include multiple-source                      multicast routing.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 8]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Current practice:  Multi-homing is not efficient, and the proposed                      inter-domain multicast protocol Border Gateway                      Multicast Protocol (BGMP) [RFC3913] is an add-on                      to BGP following many of the same strategies but                      not integrated into the BGP framework.                         Editors' Note: Multicast routing has moved on                         again since this was originally written.  By                         2006, BGMP had been effectively superseded.                         Multicast routing now uses Multi-protocol BGP                         [RFC4760], the Multicast Source Discovery                         Protocol (MSDP) [RFC3618], and Protocol                         Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode (PIM-SM)                         [RFC2362], [RFC4601], especially the Source                         Specific Multicast (SSM) subset.3.1.1.2.  "Routing is Assured"   This requires that a user be notified within a reasonable time period   after persistent attempts, about inability to provide a service.   Relevance:         Valid.   Current practice:  There are ICMP messages for this; but, in many                      cases, they are not used, either because of fears                      about creating message storms or uncertainty about                      whether the end system can do anything useful with                      the resulting information.  IPv6 implementations                      may be able to make better use of the information                      as they may have alternative addresses that could                      be used to exploit an alternative routing.3.1.1.3.  "Large System"   The architecture was designed to accommodate the growth of the   Internet.   Relevance:         Valid.  Properties of Internet topology might be                      an issue for future scalability (topology varies                      from very sparse to quite dense at present).                      Instead of setting out to accommodate growth in a                      specific time period, indefinite growth should be                      accommodated.  On the other hand, such growth has                      to be accommodated without making the protocols                      too expensive -- trade-offs may be necessary.Davies & Doria                  Historic                        [Page 9]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Current practice:  Scalability of the current protocols will not be                      sufficient under the current rate of growth.                      There are problems with BGP convergence for large                      dense topologies, problems with the slow speed of                      routing information propagation between routers in                      transit domains through the intra-domain protocol,                      for example, when a failure requires traffic to be                      redirected to an alternative exit point from the                      domain (seeSection 5.9), limited support for                      hierarchy, etc.3.1.1.4.  "Autonomous Operation"   This requirement encapsulates the need for administrative domains   ("Autonomous Systems" - AS) to be able to operate autonomously as   regards setting routing policy:   Relevance:         Valid.  There may need to be additional                      requirements for adjusting policy decisions to the                      global functionality and for avoiding                      contradictory policies.  This would decrease the                      possibility of unstable routing behavior.                      There is a need for handling various degrees of                      trust in autonomous operations, ranging from no                      trust (e.g., between separate ISPs) to very high                      trust where the domains have a common goal of                      optimizing their mutual policies.                      Policies for intra-domain operations should, in                      some cases, be revealed, using suitable                      abstractions.   Current practice:  Policy management is in the control of network                      managers, as required, but there is little support                      for handling policies at an abstract level for a                      domain.                      Cooperating administrative entities decide about                      the extent of cooperation independently.  This can                      lead to inconsistent, and potentially incompatible                      routing policies being applied in notionally                      cooperating domains.  As discussed in Sections                      5.2, 5.3, and 5.10, lack of coordination combined                      with global range of effects of BGP policies                      results in occasional disruption of Internet                      routing over an area far wider than the domains                      that are not cooperating effectively.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 10]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.1.5.  "Distributed System"   The routing environment is a distributed system.  The distributed   routing environment supports redundancy and diversity of nodes and   links.  Both the controlling rule sets, which implement the routing   policies, and the places where operational control is applied,   through decisions on path selection, are distributed (primarily in   the routers).   Relevance:         Valid.RFC 1126 is very clear that we should not                      be using centralized solutions, but maybe we need                      a discussion on trade-offs between common                      knowledge and distribution (i.e., to allow for                      uniform policy routing, e.g., Global System for                      Mobile Communications (GSM) systems are in a sense                      centralized, but with hierarchies).   Current practice:  Routing is very distributed, but lacking the                      ability to consider optimization over several hops                      or domains.                         Editors' Note: Also, coordinating the                         implementation of a set of routing policies                         across a large domain with many routers running                         BGP is difficult.  The policies have to be                         turned into BGP rules and applied individually                         to each router, giving opportunities for                         mismatch and error.3.1.1.6.  "Provide A Credible Environment"   The routing environment and services should be based upon mechanisms   and information that exhibit both integrity and security.  That is,   the routers should always be working with credible data derived   through the reliable operation of protocols.  Security from unwanted   modification and influence is required.   Relevance:         Valid.   Current practice:  BGP provides a limited mechanism for                      authentication and security of peering sessions,                      but this does not guarantee the authenticity or                      validity of the routing information that is                      exchanged.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 11]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010                      There are certainly security problems with the                      current practice.  The Routing Protocol Security                      Requirements (rpsec) working group has been                      struggling to agree on a set of requirements for                      BGP security since early 2002.                         Editors' Note: Proposals for authenticating BGP                         routing information using certificates were                         under development by the Secure Inter-Domain                         Routing (sidr) working group from 2006 through                         2008.3.1.1.7.  "Be A Managed Entity"   This requires that the routing system provides adequate information   on the state of the network to allow resource, problem, and fault   management to be carried out effectively and expeditiously.  The   system must also provide controls that allow managers to use this   information to make informed decisions and use it to control the   operation of the routing system.   Relevance:         The requirement is reasonable, but we might need                      to be more specific on what information should be                      available, e.g., to prevent routing oscillations.   Current practice:  All policies are determined locally, where they                      may appear reasonable but there is limited global                      coordination through the routing policy databases                      operated by the Internet registries (AfriNIC,                      APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, RIPE, etc.).                      Operators are not required to register their                      policies; even when policies are registered, it is                      difficult to check that the actual policies in use                      in other domains match the declared policies.                      Therefore, a manager cannot guarantee to design                      and implement policies that will interoperate with                      those of other domains to provide stable routing.                         Editors' Note: Operators report that management                         of BGP-based routing remains a function that                         needs highly-skilled operators and continual                         attention.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 12]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.1.8.  "Minimize Required Resources"   Relevance:         Valid.  However, the paragraph states that                      assumptions on significant upgrades shouldn't be                      made.  Although this is reasonable, a new                      architecture should perhaps be prepared to use                      upgrades when they occur.   Current practice:  Most bandwidth is consumed by the exchange of the                      Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI).                      Usage of processing cycles ("Central Processor                      Usage" - CPU) depends on the stability of the                      Internet.  Both phenomena have a local nature, so                      there are not scaling problems with bandwidth and                      CPU usage.  Instability of routing increases the                      consumption of resources in any case.  The number                      of networks in the Internet dominates memory                      requirements -- this is a scaling problem.3.1.2.  "Functional Requirements"3.1.2.1.  "Route Synthesis Requirements"3.1.2.1.1.  "Route around failures dynamically"   Relevance:         Valid.  Should perhaps be stronger.  Only                      providing a best-effort attempt may not be enough                      if real-time services are to be provided for.                      Detection of failures may need to be faster than                      100 ms to avoid being noticed by end-users.   Current practice:  Latency of fail-over is too high; sometimes                      minutes or longer.3.1.2.1.2.  "Provide loop free paths"   Relevance:         Valid.  Loops should occur only with negligible                      probability and duration.   Current practice:  Both link-state intra-domain routing and BGP                      inter-domain routing (if correctly configured) are                      forwarding-loop-free after having converged.                      However, convergence time for BGP can be very                      long, and poorly designed routing policies may                      result in a number of BGP speakers engaging in a                      cyclic pattern of advertisements and withdrawals                      that never converges to a stable result [RFC3345].                      Part of the reason for long convergence times isDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 13]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010                      the non-locality of the effects of changes in BGP                      advertisements (seeSection 5.3).  Modifying the                      inter-domain routing protocol to make the effects                      of changes less global, and convergence a more                      local condition, might improve performance,                      assuming a suitable modification could be                      developed.3.1.2.1.3.  "Know when a path or destination is unavailable"   Relevance:         Valid to some extent, but there is a trade-off                      between aggregation and immediate knowledge of                      reachability.  It requires that routing tables                      contain enough information to determine that the                      destination is unknown or a path cannot be                      constructed to reach it.   Current practice:  Knowledge about lost reachability propagates                      slowly through the networks due to slow                      convergence for route withdrawals.3.1.2.1.4.  "Provide paths sensitive to administrative policies"   Relevance:         Valid.  Policy control of routing has become                      increasingly important as the Internet has turned                      into a business.   Current practice:  Supported to some extent.  Policies can only be                      applied locally in an AS and not globally.  Policy                      information supplied has a very small probability                      of affecting policies in other ASs.  Furthermore,                      only static policies are supported; between static                      policies and policies dependent upon volatile                      events of great celerity, there should exist                      events of which routing should be aware.  Lastly,                      there is no support for policies other than route-                      properties (such as AS-origin, AS-path,                      destination prefix, Multi-Exit Discriminator-                      values (MED-values), etc).                         Editors' Note: Subsequent to the original issue                         of this document, mechanisms that acknowledge                         the business relationships of operators have                         been developed such as the NOPEER community                         attribute [RFC3765].  However, the level of                         usage of this attribute is apparently not very                         great.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 14]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.2.1.5.  "Provide paths sensitive to user policies"   Relevance:         Valid to some extent, as they may conflict with                      the policies of the network administrator.  It is                      likely that this requirement will be met by means                      of different bit-transport services offered by an                      operator, but at the cost of adequate                      provisioning, authentication, and policing when                      utilizing the service.   Current practice:  Not supported in normal routing.  Can be                      accomplished to some extent with loose source                      routing, resulting in inefficient forwarding in                      the routers.  The various attempts to introduce                      Quality of Service (QoS -- e.g., Integrated                      Services and Differentiated Services (Diffserv))                      can also be seen as means to support this                      requirement, but they have met with limited                      success in terms of providing alternate routes as                      opposed to providing improved service on the                      standard route.                         Editors' Note: From the standpoint of a later                         time, it would probably be more appropriate to                         say "total failure" rather than "limited                         success".3.1.2.1.6.  "Provide paths which characterize user quality-of-service            requirements"   Relevance:         Valid to some extent, as they may conflict with                      the policies of the operator.  It is likely that                      this requirement will be met by means of different                      bit-transport services offered by an operator, but                      at the cost of adequate provisioning,                      authentication, and policing when utilizing the                      service.  It has become clear that offering to                      provide a particular QoS to any arbitrary                      destination from a particular source is generally                      impossible: QoS, except in very "soft" forms such                      as overall long-term average packet delay, is                      generally associated with connection-oriented                      routing.   Current practice:  Creating routes with specified QoS is not                      generally possible at present.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 15]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.2.1.7.  "Provide autonomy between inter- and intra-autonomous system            route synthesis"   Relevance:         Inter- and intra-domain routing should stay                      independent, but one should notice that this, to                      some extent, contradicts the previous three                      requirements.  There is a trade-off between                      abstraction and optimality.   Current practice:  Inter-domain routing is performed independently of                      intra-domain routing.  Intra-domain routing is                      however, especially in transit domains, very                      interrelated with inter-domain routing.3.1.2.2.  "Forwarding Requirements"3.1.2.2.1.  "Decouple inter- and intra-autonomous system forwarding            decisions"   Relevance:         Valid.   Current practice:  As explained inSection 3.1.2.1.7, intra-domain                      forwarding in transit domains is dependent on                      inter-domain forwarding decisions.3.1.2.2.2.  "Do not forward datagrams deemed administratively            inappropriate"   Relevance:         Valid, and increasingly important in the context                      of enforcing policies correctly expressed through                      routing advertisements but flouted by rogue peers                      that send traffic for which a route has not been                      advertised.  On the other hand, packets that have                      been misrouted due to transient routing problems                      perhaps should be forwarded to reach the                      destination, although along an unexpected path.   Current practice:  At stub domains (i.e., domains that do not provide                      any transit service for any other domains but that                      connect directly to one or more transit domains),                      there is packet filtering, e.g., to catch source                      address spoofing on outgoing traffic or to filter                      out unwanted incoming traffic.  Filtering can in                      particular reject traffic (such as unauthorized                      transit traffic) that has been sent to a domain                      even when it has not advertised a route for such                      traffic on a given interface.  The growing class                      of "middleboxes" (midboxes, e.g., Network AddressDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 16]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010                      Translators -- NATs) is quite likely to apply                      administrative rules that will prevent the                      forwarding of packets.  Note that security                      policies may deliberately hide administrative                      denials.  In the backbone, intentional packet                      dropping based on policies is not common.3.1.2.2.3.  "Do not forward datagrams to failed resources"   Relevance:         Unclear, although it is clearly desirable to                      minimize the waste of forwarding resources by                      discarding datagrams that cannot be delivered at                      the earliest opportunity.  There is a trade-off                      between scalability and keeping track of                      unreachable resources.  The requirement                      effectively imposes a requirement on adjacent                      nodes to monitor for failures and take steps to                      cause rerouting at the earliest opportunity, if a                      failure is detected.  However, packets that are                      already in-flight or queued on a failed link                      cannot generally be rescued.   Current practice:  Routing protocols use both internal adjacency                      management sub-protocols (e.g., "hello" protocols)                      and information from equipment and lower-layer                      link watchdogs to keep track of failures in                      routers and connecting links.  Failures will                      eventually result in the routing protocol                      reconfiguring the routing to avoid (if possible) a                      failed resource, but this is generally very slow                      (30s or more).  In the meantime, datagrams may                      well be forwarded to failed resources.  In general                      terms, end hosts and some non-router middleboxes                      do not participate in these notifications, and                      failures of such boxes will not affect the routing                      system.3.1.2.2.4.  "Forward datagram according to its characteristics"   Relevance:         Valid.  This is necessary in enabling                      differentiation in the network, based on QoS,                      precedence, policy or security.   Current practice:  Ingress and egress filtering can be done based on                      policy.  Some networks discriminate on the basis                      of requested QoS.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 17]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.2.3.  "Information Requirements"3.1.2.3.1.  "Provide a distributed and descriptive information base"   Relevance:         Valid.  However, an alternative arrangement of                      information bases, possibly with an element of                      centralization for the domain (as mentioned inSection 3.1.1.5) might offer some advantages                      through the ability to optimize across the domain                      and respond more quickly to changes and failures.   Current practice:  The information base is distributed, but it is                      unclear whether it supports all necessary routing                      functionality.3.1.2.3.2.  "Determine resource availability"   Relevance:         Valid.  It should be possible to determine the                      availability and levels of availability of any                      resource (such as bandwidth) needed to carry out                      routing.  This prevents needing to discover                      unavailability through failure.  Resource location                      and discovery is arguably a separate concern that                      could be addressed outside the core routing                      requirements.   Current practice:  Resource availability is predominantly handled                      outside of the routing system.3.1.2.3.3.  "Restrain transmission utilization"   Relevance:         Valid.  However, certain requirements in the                      control plane, such as fast detection of faults                      may be worth consumption of more resources.                      Similarly, simplicity of implementation may make                      it cheaper to "back haul" traffic to central                      locations to minimize the cost of routing if                      bandwidth is cheaper than processing.   Current practice:  BGP messages probably do not ordinarily consume                      excessive resources, but might during erroneous                      conditions.  In the data plane, the nearly                      universal adoption of shortest-path protocols                      could be considered to result in minimization of                      transmission utilization.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 18]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.2.3.4.  "Allow limited information exchange"   Relevance:         Valid.  But perhaps routing could be improved if                      certain information (especially policies) could be                      available either globally or at least for a wider-                      defined locality.                         Editors' Note: Limited information exchange                         would be potentially compatible with a more                         local form of convergence than BGP tries to                         achieve today.  Limited information exchange is                         potentially incompatible with global                         convergence.   Current practice:  Policies are used to determine which reachability                      information is exported, but neighbors receiving                      the information are not generally aware of the                      policies that resulted in this export.3.1.2.4.  "Environmental Requirements"3.1.2.4.1.  "Support a packet-switching environment"   Relevance:         Valid, but routing system should, perhaps, not be                      limited to this exclusively.   Current practice:  Supported.3.1.2.4.2.  "Accommodate a connection-less oriented user transport            service"   Relevance:         Valid, but routing system should, perhaps, not be                      limited to this exclusively.   Current practice:  Accommodated.3.1.2.4.3.  "Accommodate 10K autonomous systems and 100K networks"   Relevance:         No longer valid.  Needs to be increased --                      potentially indefinitely.  It is extremely                      difficult to foresee the future size expansion of                      the Internet, so the Utopian solution would be to                      achieve an Internet whose architecture is scale                      invariant.  Regrettably, this may not be                      achievable without introducing undesirable                      complexity and a suitable trade-off between                      complexity and scalability is likely to be                      necessary.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 19]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Current Practice:  Supported, but perhaps reaching its limit.  Since                      the original version of this document was written                      in 2001, the number of ASs advertised has grown                      from around 8000 to 20000, and almost 35000 AS                      numbers have been allocated by the regional                      registries [Huston05].  If this growth continues,                      the original 16-bit AS space in BGP-4 will be                      exhausted in less than 5 years.  Planning for an                      extended AS space is now an urgent requirement.                         Editors' Note: At the time of publication, 32-                         bit AS numbers have been introduced and are                         being deployed.3.1.2.4.4.  "Allow for arbitrary interconnection of autonomous systems"   Relevance:         Valid.  However, perhaps not all interconnections                      should be accessible globally.   Current practice:  BGP-4 allows for arbitrary interconnections.3.1.2.5.  "General Objectives"3.1.2.5.1.  "Provide routing services in a timely manner"   Relevance:         Valid, as stated before.  It might be acceptable                      for a more complex service to take longer to                      deliver, but it still has to meet the                      application's requirements -- routing has to be at                      the service of the end-to-end principle.                         Editors' Note: Delays in setting up connections                         due to network functions such as NAT boxes are                         becoming increasingly problematic.  The routing                         system should try to keep any routing delay to                         a minimum.   Current practice:  More or less, with the exception of convergence                      and fault robustness.3.1.2.5.2.  "Minimize constraints on systems with limited resources"   Relevance:         Valid.   Current practice:  Systems with limited resources are typically stub                      domains that advertise very little information.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 20]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.2.5.3.  "Minimize impact of dissimilarities between autonomous            systems"   Relevance:         Important.  This requirement is critical to a                      future architecture.  In a domain-based routing                      environment where the internal properties of                      domains may differ radically, it will be important                      to be sure that these dissimilarities are                      minimized at the borders.   Current: practice: For the most part, this capability is not really                      required in today's networks since the intra-                      domain attributes are broadly similar across                      domains.3.1.2.5.4.  "Accommodate the addressing schemes and protocol mechanisms            of the autonomous systems"   Relevance:         Important, probably more so than whenRFC 1126 was                      originally developed because of the potential                      deployment of IPv6, wider usage of MPLS, and the                      increasing usage of VPNs.   Current practice:  Only one global addressing scheme is supported in                      most autonomous systems, but the availability of                      IPv6 services is steadily increasing.  Some global                      backbones support IPv6 routing and forwarding.3.1.2.5.5.  "Must be implementable by network vendors"   Relevance:         Valid, but note that what can be implemented today                      is different from what was possible whenRFC 1126                      was written: a future domain-based routing                      architecture should not be unreasonably                      constrained by past limitations.   Current practice:  BGP was implemented and meets a large proportion                      of the original requirements.3.1.3.  "Non-Goals"RFC 1126 also included a section discussing non-goals.  This section   discusses the extent to which these are still non-goals.  It also   considers whether the fact that they were non-goals adversely affects   today's IDR system.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 21]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.3.1.  "Ubiquity"   The authors ofRFC 1126 were explicitly saying that IP and its inter-   domain routing system need not be deployed in every AS, and a   participant should not necessarily expect to be able to reach a given   AS, possibly because of routing policies.  In a sense, this "non-   goal" has effectively been achieved by the Internet and IP protocols.   This requirement reflects a different worldview where there was   serious competition for network protocols, which is really no longer   the case.  Ubiquitous deployment of inter-domain routing in   particular has been achieved and must not be undone by any proposed   future domain-based routing architecture.  On the other hand:   o  ubiquitous connectivity cannot be reached in a policy-sensitive      environment and should not be an aim.         Editors' Note: It has been pointed out that this statement         could be interpreted as being contrary to the Internet mission         of providing universal connectivity.  The fact that limits to         connectivity will be added as operational requirements in a         policy-sensitive environment should not imply that a future         domain-based routing architecture contains intrinsic limits on         connectivity.   o  it must not be required that the same routing mechanisms are used      throughout, provided that they can interoperate appropriately.   o  the information needed to control routing in a part of the network      should not necessarily be ubiquitously available, and it must be      possible for an operator to hide commercially sensitive      information that is not needed outside a domain.   o  the introduction of IPv6 reintroduces an element of diversity into      the world of network protocols, but the similarities of IPv4 and      IPv6 as regards routing and forwarding make this event less likely      to drive an immediate diversification in routing systems.  The      potential for further growth in the size of the network enabled by      IPv6 is very likely to require changes in the future: whether this      results in the replacement of one de facto ubiquitous system with      another remains to be seen but cannot be a requirement -- it will      have to interoperate with BGP during the transition.   Relevance:         De facto essential for a future domain-based                      routing architecture, but what is required is                      ubiquity of the routing system rather than                      ubiquity of connectivity and it must be capable of                      a gradual takeover through interoperation with the                      existing system.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 22]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Current practice:  De facto ubiquity achieved.3.1.3.2.  "Congestion control"   Relevance:         It is not clear if this non-goal was to be applied                      to routing or forwarding.  It is definitely a non-                      goal to adapt the choice of route when there is                      transient congestion.  However, to add support for                      congestion avoidance (e.g., Explicit Congestion                      Notification (ECN) and ICMP messages) in the                      forwarding process would be a useful addition.                      There is also extensive work going on in traffic                      engineering that should result in congestion                      avoidance through routing as well as in                      forwarding.   Current practice:  Some ICMP messages (e.g., source quench) exist to                      deal with congestion control, but these are not                      generally used as they either make the problem                      worse or there is no mechanism to reflect the                      message into the application that is providing the                      source.3.1.3.3.  "Load splitting"   Relevance:         This should neither be a non-goal nor an explicit                      goal.  It might be desirable in some cases and                      should be considered as an optional architectural                      feature.   Current practice:  Can be implemented by exporting different prefixes                      on different links, but this requires manual                      configuration and does not consider actual load.                         Editors' Note: This configuration is carried                         out extensively as of 2006 and has been a                         significant factor in routing table bloat.  If                         this need is a real operational requirement, as                         it seems to be for multi-homed or otherwise                         richly connected sites, it will be necessary to                         reclassify this as a real and important goal.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 23]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20103.1.3.4.  "Maximizing the utilization of resources"   Relevance:         Valid.  Cost-efficiency should be striven for; we                      note that maximizing resource utilization does not                      always lead to the greatest cost-efficiency.   Current practice:  Not currently part of the system, though often a                      "hacked in" feature done with manual                      configuration.3.1.3.5.  "Schedule to deadline service"   This non-goal was put in place to ensure that the IDR did not have to   meet real-time deadline goals such as might apply to Constant Bit   Rate (CBR) real-time services in ATM.   Relevance:         The hard form of deadline services is still a non-                      goal for the future domain-based routing                      architecture, but overall delay bounds are much                      more of the essence than was the case whenRFC1126 was written.   Current practice:  Service providers are now offering overall                      probabilistic delay bounds on traffic contracts.                      To implement these contracts, there is a                      requirement for a rather looser form of delay                      sensitive routing.3.1.3.6.  "Non-interference policies of resource utilization"   The requirement inRFC 1126 is somewhat opaque, but appears to imply   that what we would today call QoS routing is a non-goal and that   routing would not seek to control the elastic characteristics of   Internet traffic whereby a TCP connection can seek to utilize all the   spare bandwidth on a route, possibly to the detriment of other   connections sharing the route or crossing it.   Relevance:         Open Issue.  It is not clear whether dynamic QoS                      routing can or should be implemented.  Such a                      system would seek to control the admission and                      routing of traffic depending on current or recent                      resource utilization.  This would be particularly                      problematic where traffic crosses an ownership                      boundary because of the need for potentially                      commercially sensitive information to be made                      available outside the ownership boundary.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 24]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Current practice:  Routing does not consider dynamic resource                      availability.  Forwarding can support service                      differentiation.3.2.  ISO OSI IDRP, BGP, and the Development of Policy Routing   During the decade before the widespread success of the World Wide   Web, ISO was developing the communications architecture and protocol   suite Open Systems Interconnection (OSI).  For a considerable part of   this time, OSI was seen as a possible competitor for and even a   replacement for the IP suite as this basis for the Internet.  The   technical developments of the two protocols were quite heavily   interrelated with each providing ideas and even components that were   adapted into the other suite.   During the early stages of the development of OSI, the IP suite was   still mainly in use on the ARPANET and the relatively small scale   first phase NSFNET.  This was effectively a single administrative   domain with a simple tree-structured network in a three-level   hierarchy connected to a single logical exchange point (the NSFNET   backbone).  In the second half of the 1980s, the NSFNET was starting   on the growth and transformation that would lead to today's Internet.   It was becoming clear that the backbone routing protocol, the   Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) [RFC0904], was not going to cope even   with the limited expansion being planned.  EGP is an "all informed"   protocol that needed to know the identities of all gateways, and this   was no longer reasonable.  With the increasing complexity of the   NSFNET and the linkage of the NSFNET network to other networks, there   was a desire for policy-based routing that would allow administrators   to manage the flow of packets between networks.  The first version of   the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP-1) [RFC1105] was developed as a   replacement for EGP with policy capabilities -- a stopgap EGP version   3 had been created as an interim measure while BGP was developed.   BGP was designed to work on a hierarchically structured network, such   as the original NSFNET, but could also work on networks that were at   least partially non-hierarchical where there were links between ASs   at the same level in the hierarchy (we would now call these "peering   arrangements") although the protocol made a distinction between   different kinds of links (links are classified as upwards, downwards,   or sideways).  ASs themselves were a "fix" for the complexity that   developed in the three-tier structure of the NSFNET.   Meanwhile, the OSI architects, led by Lyman Chapin, were developing a   much more general architecture for large-scale networks.  They had   recognized that no one node, especially an end-system (host), could   or should attempt to remember routes from "here" to "anywhere" --   this sounds obvious today, but was not so obvious 20 years ago.  They   were also considering hierarchical networks with independentlyDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 25]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   administered domains -- a model already well entrenched in the   public-switched telephone network.  This led to a vision of a network   with multiple independent administrative domains with an arbitrary   interconnection graph and a hierarchy of routing functionality.  This   architecture was fairly well established by 1987 [Tsuchiya87].  The   architecture initially envisaged a three-level routing functionality   hierarchy in which each layer had significantly different   characteristics:   1.  *End-system to intermediate system (IS) routing (host to       router)*, in which the principal functions are discovery and       redirection.   2.  *Intra-domain IS-IS routing (router to router)*, in which "best"       routes between end-systems in a single administrative domain are       computed and used.  A single algorithm and routing protocol would       be used throughout any one domain.   3.  *Inter-domain IS-IS routing (router to router)*, in which routes       between routing domains within administrative domains are       computed (routing is considered separately between administrative       domains and routing domains).   Level 3 of this hierarchy was still somewhat fuzzy.  Tsuchiya says:      The last two components, Inter-Domain and Inter-Administration      routing, are less clear-cut.  It is not obvious what should be      standardized with respect to these two components of routing.  For      example, for Inter-Domain routing, what can be expected from the      Domains?  By asking Domains to provide some kind of external      behavior, we limit their autonomy.  If we expect nothing of their      external behavior, then routing functionality will be minimal.      Across administrations, it is not known how much trust there will      be.  In fact, the definition of trust itself can only be      determined by the two or more administrations involved.      Fundamentally, the problem with Inter-Domain and Inter-      Administration routing is that autonomy and mistrust are both      antithetical to routing.  Accomplishing either will involve a      number of tradeoffs which will require more knowledge about the      environments within which they will operate.   Further refinement of the model occurred over the next couple of   years and a more fully formed view is given by Huitema and Dabbous in   1989 [Huitema90].  By this stage, work on the original IS-IS link-   state protocol, originated by the Digital Equipment Corporation   (DEC), was fairly advanced and was close to becoming a DraftDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 26]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   International Standard.  IS-IS is of course a major component of   intra-domain routing today and inspired the development of the Open   Shortest Path First (OSPF) family.  However, Huitema and Dabbous were   not able to give any indication of protocol work for Level 3.  There   are hints of possible use of centralized route servers.   In the meantime, the NSFNET consortium and the IETF had been   struggling with the rapid growth of the NSFNET.  It had been clear   since fairly early on that EGP was not suitable for handling the   expanding network and the race was on to find a replacement.  There   had been some intent to include a metric in EGP to facilitate routing   decisions, but no agreement could be reached on how to define the   metric.  The lack of trust was seen as one of the main reasons that   EGP could not establish a globally acceptable routing metric: again   this seems to be a clearly futile aim from this distance in time!   Consequently, EGP became effectively a rudimentary path-vector   protocol that linked gateways with Autonomous Systems.  It was   totally reliant on the tree-structured network to avoid routing   loops, and the all-informed nature of EGP meant that update packets   became very large.  BGP version 1 [RFC1105] was standardized in 1989,   but it had been in development for some time before this and had   already seen action in production networks prior to standardization.   BGP was the first real path-vector routing protocol and was intended   to relieve some of the scaling problems as well as providing policy-   based routing.  Routes were described as paths along a "vector" of   ASs without any associated cost metric.  This way of describing   routes was explicitly intended to allow detection of routing loops.   It was assumed that the intra-domain routing system was loop-free   with the implication that the total routing system would be loop-free   if there were no loops in the AS path.  Note that there were no   theoretical underpinnings for this work, and it traded freedom from   routing loops for guaranteed convergence.   Also, the NSFNET was a government-funded research and education   network.  Commercial companies that were partners in some of the   projects were using the NSFNET for their research activities, but it   was becoming clear that these companies also needed networks for   commercial traffic.  NSFNET had put in place "acceptable use"   policies that were intended to limit the use of the network.   However, there was little or no technology to support the legal   framework.   Practical experience, IETF IAB discussion (centered in the Internet   Architecture Task Force) and the OSI theoretical work were by now   coming to the same conclusions:   o  Networks were going to be composed out of multiple administrative      domains (the federated network),Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 27]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   o  The connections between these domains would be an arbitrary graph      and certainly not a tree,   o  The administrative domains would wish to establish distinctive,      independent routing policies through the graph of Autonomous      Systems, and   o  Administrative domains would have a degree of distrust of each      other that would mean that policies would remain opaque.   These views were reflected by Susan Hares' (working for Merit   Networks at that time) contribution to the Internet Architecture   (INARC) workshop in 1989, summarized in the report of the workshop   [INARC89]:      The rich interconnectivity within the Internet causes routing      problems today.  However, the presenter believes the problem is      not the high degree of interconnection, but the routing protocols      and models upon which these protocols are based.  Rich      interconnectivity can provide redundancy which can help packets      moving even through periods of outages.  Our model of interdomain      routing needs to change.  The model of autonomous confederations      and autonomous systems [RFC0975] no longer fits the reality of      many regional networks.  The ISO models of administrative domain      and routing domains better fit the current Internet's routing      structure.      With the first NSFNET backbone, NSF assumed that the Internet      would be used as a production network for research traffic.  We      cannot stop these networks for a month and install all new routing      protocols.  The Internet will need to evolve its changes to      networking protocols while still continuing to serve its users.      This reality colors how plans are made to change routing      protocols.   It is also interesting to note that the difficulties of organizing a   transition were recognized at this stage and have not been seriously   explored or resolved since.   Policies would primarily be interested in controlling which traffic   should be allowed to transit a domain (to satisfy commercial   constraints or acceptable use policies), thereby controlling which   traffic uses the resources of the domain.  The solution adopted by   both the IETF and OSI was a form of distance vector hop-by-hop   routing with explicit policy terms.  The reasoning for this choice   can be found in Breslau and Estrin's 1990 paper [Breslau90]   (implicitly -- because some other alternatives are given such as a   link state with policy suggestion, which, with hindsight, would haveDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 28]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   even greater problems than BGP on a global scale network).   Traditional distance-vector protocols exchanged routing information   in the form of a destination and a metric.  The new protocols   explicitly associated policy expressions with the route by including   either a list of the source ASs that are permitted to use the route   described in the routing update, and/or a list of all ASs traversed   along the advertised route.   Parallel protocol developments were already in progress by the time   this paper was published: BGP version 2 [RFC1163] in the IETF and the   Inter-Domain Routing Protocol (IDRP) [ISO10747], which would be the   Level 3 routing protocol for the OSI architecture.  IDRP was   developed under the aegis of the ANSI XS3.3 working group led by   Lyman Chapin and Charles Kunzinger.  The two protocols were very   similar in basic design, but IDRP has some extra features, some of   which have been incorporated into later versions of BGP; others may   yet be so, and still others may be seen to be inappropriate.  Breslau   and Estrin summarize the design of IDRP as follows:      IDRP attempts to solve the looping and convergence problems      inherent in distance vector routing by including full AD      (Administrative Domain -- essentially the equivalent of what are      now called ASs) path information in routing updates.  Each routing      update includes the set of ADs that must be traversed in order to      reach the specified destination.  In this way, routes that contain      AD loops can be avoided.      IDRP updates also contain additional information relevant to      policy constraints.  For instance, these updates can specify what      other ADs are allowed to receive the information described in the      update.  In this way, IDRP is able to express source specific      policies.  The IDRP protocol also provides the structure for the      addition of other types of policy related information in routing      updates.  For example, User Class Identifiers (UCI) could also be      included as policy attributes in routing updates.      Using the policy route attributes IDRP provides the framework for      expressing more fine grained policy in routing decisions.      However, because it uses hop-by-hop distance vector routing, it      only allows a single route to each destination per-QOS to be      advertised.  As the policy attributes associated with routes      become more fine grained, advertised routes will be applicable to      fewer sources.  This implies a need for multiple routes to be      advertised for each destination in order to increase the      probability that sources have acceptable routes available to them.      This effectively replicates the routing table per forwarding      entity for each QoS, UCI, source combination that might appear inDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 29]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010      a packet.  Consequently, we claim that this approach does not      scale well as policies become more fine grained, i.e., source or      UCI specific policies.   Over the next three or four years, successive versions of BGP (BGP-2   [RFC1163], BGP-3 [RFC1267], and BGP-4 [RFC1771]) were deployed to   cope with the growing and by now commercialized Internet.  From BGP-2   onwards, BGP made no assumptions about an overall structure of   interconnections allowing it to cope with today's dense web of   interconnections between ASs.  BGP version 4 was developed to handle   the change from classful to classless addressing.  For most of this   time, IDRP was being developed in parallel, and both protocols were   implemented in the Merit gatedaemon routing protocol suite.  During   this time, there was a movement within the IETF that saw BGP as a   stopgap measure to be used until the more sophisticated IDRP could be   adapted to run over IP instead of the OSI connectionless protocol   Connectionless Network Protocol (CLNP).  However, unlike its intra-   domain counterpart IS-IS, which has stood the test of time, and   indeed proved to be more flexible than OSPF, IDRP was ultimately not   adopted by the market.  By the time the NSFNET backbone was   decommissioned in 1995, BGP-4 was the inter-domain routing protocol   of choice and OSI's star was already beginning to wane.  IDRP is now   little remembered.   A more complete account of the capabilities of IDRP can be found in   Chapter 14 of David Piscitello and Lyman Chapin's book "Open Systems   Networking: TCP/IP and OSI", which is now readable on the Internet   [Chapin94].   IDRP also contained quite extensive means for securing routing   exchanges, much of it based on X.509 certificates for each router and   public-/private-key encryption of routing updates.   Some of the capabilities of IDRP that might yet appear in a future   version of BGP include the ability to manage routes with explicit QoS   classes and the concept of domain confederations (somewhat different   from the confederation mechanism in today's BGP) as an extra level in   the hierarchy of routing.3.3.  Nimrod Requirements   Nimrod as expressed by Noel Chiappa in his early document, "A New IP   Routing and Addressing Architecture" [Chiappa91] and later in the   NIMROD working group documents [RFC1753] and [RFC1992] established a   number of requirements that need to be considered by any new routing   architecture.  The Nimrod requirements tookRFC 1126 as a starting   point and went further.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 30]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   The three goals of Nimrod, quoted from [RFC1992], were as follows:   1.  To support a dynamic internetwork of _arbitrary size_ (our       emphasis) by providing mechanisms to control the amount of       routing information that must be known throughout an       internetwork.   2.  To provide service-specific routing in the presence of multiple       constraints imposed by service providers and users.   3.  To admit incremental deployment throughout an internetwork.   It is certain that these goals should be considered requirements for   any new domain-based routing architecture.   o  As discussed in other sections of this document, the rate of      growth of the amount of information needed to maintain the routing      system is such that the system may not be able to scale up as the      Internet expands as foreseen.  And yet, as the services and      constraints upon those services grow, there is a need for more      information to be maintained by the routing system.  One of the      key terms in the first requirements is "control".  While      increasing amounts of information need to be known and maintained      in the Internet, the amounts and kinds of information that are      distributed can be controlled.  This goal should be reflected in      the requirements for the future domain-based architecture.   o  If anything, the demand for specific services in the Internet has      grown since 1996 when the Nimrod architecture was published.      Additionally, the kinds of constraints that service providers need      to impose upon their networks and that services need to impose      upon the routing have also increased.  Any changes made to the      network in the last half-decade have not significantly improved      this situation.   o  The ability to incrementally deploy any new routing architecture      within the Internet is still an absolute necessity.  It is      impossible to imagine that a new routing architecture could      supplant the current architecture on a flag day.   At one point in time, Nimrod, with its addressing and routing   architectures, was seen as a candidate for IPng.  History shows that   it was not accepted as the IPng, having been ruled out of the   selection process by the IESG in 1994 on the grounds that it was "too   much of a research effort" [RFC1752], although input for the   requirements of IPng was explicitly solicited from Chiappa [RFC1753].   Instead, IPv6 has been put forth as the IPng.  Without entering a   discussion of the relative merits of IPv6 versus Nimrod, it isDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 31]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   apparent that IPv6, while it may solve many problems, does not solve   the critical routing problems in the Internet today.  In fact, in   some sense, it exacerbates them by adding a requirement for support   of two Internet protocols and their respective addressing methods.   In many ways, the addition of IPv6 to the mix of methods in today's   Internet only points to the fact that the goals, as set forth by the   Nimrod team, remain as necessary goals.   There is another sense in which the study of Nimrod and its   architecture may be important to deriving a future domain-based   routing architecture.  Nimrod can be said to have two derivatives:   o  Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), in that it took the notion      of forwarding along well-known paths.   o  Private Network-Node Interface (PNNI), in that it took the notion      of abstracting topological information and using that information      to create connections for traffic.   It is important to note, that whilst MPLS and PNNI borrowed ideas   from Nimrod, neither of them can be said to be an implementation of   this architecture.3.4.  PNNI   The Private Network-Node Interface (PNNI) routing protocol was   developed under the ATM Forum's auspices as a hierarchical route   determination protocol for ATM, a connection-oriented architecture.   It is reputed to have developed several of its methods from a study   of the Nimrod architecture.  What can be gained from an analysis of   what did and did not succeed in PNNI?   The PNNI protocol includes the assumption that all peer groups are   willing to cooperate, and that the entire network is under the same   top administration.  Are there limitations that stem from this "world   node" presupposition?  As discussed in [RFC3221], the Internet is no   longer a clean hierarchy, and there is a lot of resistance to having   any sort of "ultimate authority" controlling or even brokering   communication.   PNNI is the first deployed example of a routing protocol that uses   abstract map exchange (as opposed to distance-vector or link-state   mechanisms) for inter-domain routing information exchange.  One   consequence of this is that domains need not all use the same   mechanism for map creation.  What were the results of this   abstraction and source-based route calculation mechanism?Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 32]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Since the authors of this document do not have experience running a   PNNI network, the comments above are from a theoretical perspective.   Further research on these issues based on operational experience is   required.4.  Recent Research Work4.1.  Developments in Internet Connectivity   The work commissioned from Geoff Huston by the Internet Architecture   Board [RFC3221] draws a number of conclusions from the analysis of   BGP routing tables and routing registry databases:   o  The connectivity between provider ASs is becoming more like a      dense mesh than the tree structure that was commonly assumed to be      commonplace a couple of years ago.  This has been driven by the      increasing amounts charged for peering and transit traffic by      global service providers.  Local direct peering and Internet      exchanges are becoming steadily more common as the cost of local      fibre connections drops.   o  End-user sites are increasingly resorting to multi-homing onto two      or more service providers as a way of improving resiliency.  This      has a knock-on effect of spectacularly fast depletion of the      available pool of AS numbers as end-user sites require public AS      numbers to become multi-homed and corresponding increase in the      number of prefixes advertised in BGP.   o  Multi-homed sites are using advertisement of longer prefixes in      BGP as a means of traffic engineering to load spread across their      multiple external connections with further impact on the size of      the BGP tables.   o  Operational practices are not uniform, and in some cases lack of      knowledge or training is leading to instability and/or excessive      advertisement of routes by incorrectly configured BGP speakers.   o  All these factors are quickly negating the advantages in limiting      the expansion of BGP routing tables that were gained by the      introduction of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and      consequent prefix aggregation in BGP.  It is also now impossible      for IPv6 to realize the worldview in which the default-free zone      would be limited to perhaps 10,000 prefixes.   o  The typical "width" of the Internet in AS hops is now around five,      and much less in many cases.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 33]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   These conclusions have a considerable impact on the requirements for   the future domain-based routing architecture:   o  Topological hierarchy (e.g., mandating a tree-structured      connectivity) cannot be relied upon to deliver scalability of a      large Internet routing system.   o  Aggregation cannot be relied upon to constrain the size of routing      tables for an all-informed routing system.4.2.  DARPA NewArch Project   DARPA funded a project to think about a new architecture for future   generation Internet, called NewArch (seehttp://www.isi.edu/newarch/).  Work started in the first half of 2000   and the main project finished in 2003 [NewArch03].   The main development is to conclude that as the Internet becomes   mainstream infrastructure, fewer and fewer of the requirements are   truly global but may apply with different force or not at all in   certain parts of the network.  This (it is claimed) makes the   compilation of a single, ordered list of requirements deeply   problematic.  Instead, we may have to produce multiple requirement   sets with support for differing requirement importance at different   times and in different places.  This "meta-requirement" significantly   impacts architectural design.   Potential new technical requirements identified so far include:   o  Commercial environment concerns such as richer inter-provider      policy controls and support for a variety of payment models   o  Trustworthiness   o  Ubiquitous mobility   o  Policy driven self-organization ("deep auto-configuration")   o  Extreme short-timescale resource variability   o  Capacity allocation mechanisms   o  Speed, propagation delay, and delay/bandwidth product issues   Non-technical or political "requirements" include:   o  Legal and Policy drivers such asDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 34]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010      *  Privacy and free/anonymous speech      *  Intellectual property concerns      *  Encryption export controls      *  Law enforcement surveillance regulations      *  Charging and taxation issues   o  Reconciling national variations and consistent operation in a      worldwide infrastructure   The conclusions of the work are now summarized in the final report   [NewArch03].4.2.1.  Defending the End-to-End Principle   One of the participants in DARPA NewArch work (Dave Clark) with one   of his associates has also published a very interesting paper   analyzing the impact of some of the new requirements identified in   NewArch (seeSection 4.2) on the end-to-end principle that has guided   the development of the Internet to date [Clark00].  Their primary   conclusion is that the loss of trust between the users at the ends of   end-to-end has the most fundamental effect on the Internet.  This is   clear in the context of the routing system, where operators are   unwilling to reveal the inner workings of their networks for   commercial reasons.  Similarly, trusted third parties and their   avatars (mainly midboxes of one sort or another) have a major impact   on the end-to-end principles and the routing mechanisms that went   with them.  Overall, the end-to-end principles should be defended so   far as is possible -- some changes are already too deeply embedded to   make it possible to go back to full trust and openness -- at least   partly as a means of staving off the day when the network will ossify   into an unchangeable form and function (much as the telephone network   has done).  The hope is that by that time, a new Internet will appear   to offer a context for unfettered innovation.5.  Existing Problems of BGP and the Current Inter-/Intra-Domain    Architecture   Although most of the people who have to work with BGP today believe   it to be a useful, working protocol, discussions have brought to   light a number of areas where BGP or the relationship between BGP and   the intra-domain routing protocols in use today could be improved.   BGP-4 has been and continues to be extended since it was originally   introduced in [RFC1771] and the protocol as deployed has been   documented in [RFC4271].  This section is, to a large extent, a wishDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 35]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   list for the future domain-based routing architecture based on those   areas where BGP is seen to be lacking, rather than simply a list of   problems with BGP.  The shortcomings of today's inter-domain routing   system have also been extensively surveyed in "Architectural   Requirements for Inter-Domain Routing in the Internet" [RFC3221],   particularly with respect to its stability and the problems produced   by explosions in the size of the Internet.5.1.  BGP and Auto-Aggregation   The initial stability followed by linear growth rates of the number   of routing objects (prefixes) that was achieved by the introduction   of CIDR around 1994, has now been once again been replaced by near-   exponential growth of number of routing objects.  The granularity of   many of the objects advertised in the default-free zone is very small   (prefix length of 22 or longer): this granularity appears to be a by-   product of attempts to perform precision traffic engineering related   to increasing levels of multi-homing.  At present, there is no   mechanism in BGP that would allow an AS to aggregate such prefixes   without advance knowledge of their existence, even if it was possible   to deduce automatically that they could be aggregated.  Achieving   satisfactory auto-aggregation would also significantly reduce the   non-locality problems associated with instability in peripheral ASs.   On the other hand, it may be that alterations to the connectivity of   the net as described in [RFC3221] andSection 2.5.1 may limit the   usefulness of auto-aggregation.5.2.  Convergence and Recovery Issues   BGP today is a stable protocol under most circumstances, but this has   been achieved at the expense of making the convergence time of the   inter-domain routing system very slow under some conditions.  This   has a detrimental effect on the recovery of the network from   failures.   The timers that control the behavior of BGP are typically set to   values in the region of several tens of seconds to a few minutes,   which constrains the responsiveness of BGP to failure conditions.   In the early days of deployment of BGP, poor network stability and   router software problems lead to storms of withdrawals closely   followed by re-advertisements of many prefixes.  To control the load   on routing software imposed by these "route flaps", route-flap   damping was introduced into BGP.  Most operators have now implemented   a degree of route-flap damping in their deployments of BGP.  This   restricts the number of times that the routing tables will be   rebuilt, even if a route is going up and down very frequently.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 36]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Unfortunately, route-flap damping responds to multiple flaps by   increasing the route suppression time exponentially, which can result   in some parts of the Internet being unreachable for hours at a time.   There is evidence ([RFC3221] and measurements by some of the Sub-   Group B members [Jiang02]) that in today's network, route flap is   disproportionately associated with the fine-grained prefixes (length   22 or longer) associated with traffic engineering at the periphery of   the network.  Auto-aggregation, as previously discussed, would tend   to mask such instability and prevent it being propagated across the   whole network.  Another question that needs to be studied is the   continuing need for an architecture that requires global convergence.   Some of our studies (unpublished) show that, in some localities at   least, the network never actually reaches stability; i.e., it never   really globally converges.  Can a global, and beyond, network be   designed with the requirement of global convergence?5.3.  Non-Locality of Effects of Instability and Misconfiguration   There have been a number of instances, some of which are well   documented, of a mistake in BGP configuration in a single peripheral   AS propagating across the whole Internet and resulting in misrouting   of most of the traffic in the Internet.   Similarly, a single route flap in a single peripheral AS can require   route table recalculation across the entire Internet.   This non-locality of effects is highly undesirable, and it would be a   considerable improvement if such effects were naturally limited to a   small area of the network around the problem.  This is another   argument for an architecture that does not require global   convergence.5.4.  Multi-Homing Issues   As discussed previously, the increasing use of multi-homing as a   robustness technique by peripheral networks requires that multiple   routes have to be advertised for such domains.  These routes must not   be aggregated close in to the multi-homed domain as this would defeat   the traffic engineering implied by multi-homing and currently cannot   be aggregated further away from the multi-homed domain due to the   lack of auto-aggregation capabilities.  Consequentially, the default-   free zone routing table is growing exponentially, as it was before   CIDR.   The longest prefix match routing technique introduced by CIDR, and   implemented in BGP-4, when combined with provider address allocation   is an obstacle to effective multi-homing if load sharing across theDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 37]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   multiple links is required.  If an AS has been allocated, its   addresses from an upstream provider, the upstream provider can   aggregate those addresses with those of other customers and need only   advertise a single prefix for a range of customers.  But, if the   customer AS is also connected to another provider, the second   provider is not able to aggregate the customer addresses because they   are not taken from his allocation, and will therefore have to   announce a more specific route to the customer AS.  The longest match   rule will then direct all traffic through the second provider, which   is not as required.   Example:                                  \       /                                 AS1     AS2                                    \   /                                     AS3                       Figure 1: Address Aggregation   In Figure 1, AS3 has received its addresses from AS1, which means AS1   can aggregate.  But if AS3 wants its traffic to be seen equally both   ways, AS3 is forced to announce both the aggregate and the more   specific route to AS2.   This problem has induced many ASs to apply for their own address   allocation even though they could have been allocated from an   upstream provider further exacerbating the default-free zone route   table size explosion.  This problem also interferes with the desire   of many providers in the default-free zone to route only prefixes   that are equal to or shorter than 20 or 19 bits.   Note that some problems that are referred to as multi-homing issues   are not, and should not be, solvable through the routing system   (e.g., where a TCP load distributor is needed), and multi-homing is   not a panacea for the general problem of robustness in a routing   system [Berkowitz01].      Editors' Note: A more recent analysis of multi-homing can be found      in [RFC4116].5.5.  AS Number Exhaustion   The domain identifier or AS number is a 16-bit number.  When this   paper was originally written in 2001, allocation of AS numbers was   increasing 51% a year [RFC3221] and exhaustion by 2005 was predicted.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 38]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   According to some recent work again by Huston [Huston05], the rate of   increase dropped off after the business downturn, but as of July   2005, well over half the available AS numbers (39000 out of 64510)   had been allocated by IANA and around 20000 were visible in the   global BGP routing tables.  A year later, these figures had grown to   42000 (April 2006) and 23000 (August 2006), respectively, and the   rate of allocation is currently about 3500 per year.  Depending on   the curve-fitting model used to predict when exhaustion will occur,   the pool will run out somewhere between 2010 and 2013.  There appear   to be other factors at work in this rate of increase beyond an   increase in the number of ISPs in business, although there is a fair   degree of correlation between these numbers.  AS numbers are now used   for a number of purposes beyond that of identifying large routing   domains: multi-homed sites acquire an AS number in order to express   routing preferences to their various providers and AS numbers are   used part of the addressing mechanism for MPLS/BGP-based virtual   private networks (VPNs) [RFC4364].  The IETF has had a proposal under   development for over four years to increase the available range of AS   numbers to 32 bits [RFC4893].  Much of the slowness in development is   due to the deployment challenge during transition.  Because of the   difficulties of transition, deployment needs to start well in advance   of actual exhaustion so that the network as a whole is ready for the   new capability when it is needed.  This implies that standardization   needs to be complete and implementations available at least well in   advance of expected exhaustion so that deployment of upgrades that   can handle the longer AS numbers, should be starting around 2008, to   give a reasonable expectation that the change has been rolled out   across a large fraction of the Internet by the time exhaustion   occurs.      Editors' Note: The Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are      planning to move to assignment of the longer AS numbers by default      on 1 January 2009, but there are concerns that significant numbers      of routers will not have been upgraded by then.5.6.  Partitioned ASs   Tricks with discontinuous ASs are used by operators, for example, to   implement anycast.  Discontinuous ASs may also come into being by   chance if a multi-homed domain becomes partitioned as a result of a   fault and part of the domain can access the Internet through each   connection.  It may be desirable to make support for this kind of   situation more transparent than it is at present.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 39]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 20105.7.  Load Sharing   Load splitting or sharing was not a goal of the original designers of   BGP and it is now a problem for today's network designers and   managers.  Trying to fool BGP into load sharing between several links   is a constantly recurring exercise for most operators today.5.8.  Hold-Down Issues   As with the interval between "hello" messages in OSPF, the typical   size and defined granularity (seconds to tens of seconds) of the   "keepalive" time negotiated at start-up for each BGP connection   constrains the responsiveness of BGP to link failures.   The recommended values and the available lower limit for this timer   were set to limit the overhead caused by keepalive messages when link   bandwidths were typically much lower than today.  Analysis and   experiment ([Alaettinoglu00], [Sandiick00] and [RFC4204]) indicate   that faster links could sustain a much higher rate of keepalive   messages without significantly impacting normal data traffic.  This   would improve responsiveness to link and node failures but with a   corresponding increase in the risk of instability, if the error   characteristics of the link are not taken properly into account when   setting the keepalive interval.      Editors' Note: A "fast" liveness protocol has been specified in      [Katz10].   An additional problem with the hold-down mechanism in BGP is the   amount of information that has to be exchanged to re-establish the   database of route advertisements on each side of the link when it is   re-established after a failure.  Currently any failure, however brief   forces a full exchange that could perhaps be constrained by retaining   some state across limited time failures and using revision control,   transaction and replication techniques to resynchronize the   databases.  Various techniques have been implemented to try to reduce   this problem, but they have not yet been standardized.5.9.  Interaction between Inter-Domain Routing and Intra-Domain Routing   Today, many operators' backbone routers run both I-BGP and an intra-   domain protocol to maintain the routes that reach between the borders   of the domain.  Exporting routes from BGP into the intra-domain   protocol in use and bringing them back up to BGP is not recommended   [RFC2791], but it is still necessary for all backbone routers to run   both protocols.  BGP is used to find the egress point and intra-Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 40]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   domain protocol to find the path (next-hop router) to the egress   point across the domain.  This is not only a management problem but   may also create other problems:   o  BGP is a path-vector protocol (i.e., a protocol that uses distance      metrics possibly overridden by policy metrics), whereas most      intra-domain protocols are link-state protocols.  As such, BGP is      not optimized for convergence speed although distance-vector      algorithms generally require less processing power.  Incidentally,      more efficient distance-vector algorithms are available such as      [Xu97].   o  The metrics used in BGP and the intra-domain protocol are rarely      comparable or combinable.  Whilst there are arguments that the      optimizations inside a domain may be different from those for end-      to-end paths, there are occasions, such as calculating the      "topologically nearest" server when computable or combinable      metrics would be of assistance.   o  The policies that can be implemented using BGP are designed for      control of traffic exchange between operators, not for controlling      paths within a domain.  Policies for BGP are most conveniently      expressed in Routing Policy Support Language (RPSL) [RFC2622] and      this could be extended if thought desirable to include additional      policy information.   o  If the NEXT HOP destination for a set of BGP routes becomes      inaccessible because of intra-domain protocol problems, the routes      using the vanished next hop have to be invalidated at the next      available UPDATE.  Subsequently, if the next-hop route reappears,      this would normally lead to the BGP speaker requesting a full      table from its neighbor(s).  Current implementations may attempt      to circumvent the effects of intra-domain protocol route flap by      caching the invalid routes for a period in case the next hop is      restored through the "graceful restart" mechanism.         Editors' Note: This was standardized as [RFC4724].   o  Synchronization between intra-domain and inter-domain routing      information is a problem as long as we use different protocols for      intra-domain and inter-domain routing, which will most probably be      the case even in the future because of the differing requirements      in the two situations.  Some sort of synchronization between those      two protocols would be useful.  In the RFC "IS-IS Transient      Blackhole Avoidance" [RFC3277], the intra-domain protocol side of      the story is covered (there is an equivalent discussion for OSPF).Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 41]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   o  Synchronizing in BGP means waiting for the intra-domain protocol      to know about the same networks as the inter-domain protocol,      which can take a significant period of time and slows down the      convergence of BGP by adding the intra-domain protocol convergence      time into each cycle.  In general, operators no longer attempt      full synchronization in order to avoid this problem (in general,      redistributing the entire BGP routing feed into the local intra-      domain protocol is unnecessary and undesirable but where a domain      has multiple exits to peers and other non-customer networks,      changes in BGP routing that affect the exit taken by traffic      require corresponding re-routing in the intra-domain routing).5.10.  Policy Issues   There are several classes of issues with current BGP policy:   o  Policy is installed in an ad hoc manner in each autonomous system.      There isn't a method for ensuring that the policy installed in one      router is coherent with policies installed in other routers.   o  As described in Griffin [Griffin99] and in McPherson [RFC3345], it      is possible to create policies for ASs, and instantiate them in      routers, that will cause BGP to fail to converge in certain types      of topology   o  There is no available network model for describing policy in a      coherent manner.   Policy management is extremely complex and mostly done without the   aid of any automated procedures.  The extreme complexity means that a   highly-qualified specialist is required for policy management of   border routers.  The training of these specialists is quite lengthy   and needs to involve long periods of hands-on experience.  There is,   therefore, a shortage of qualified staff for installing and   maintaining the routing policies.  Because of the overall complexity   of BGP, policy management tends to be only a relatively small topic   within a complete BGP training course and specialized policy   management training courses are not generally available.5.11.  Security Issues   While many of the issues with BGP security have been traced either to   implementation issues or to operational issues, BGP is vulnerable to   Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.  Additionally, routers   can be used as unwitting forwarders in DDoS attacks on other systems.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 42]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Though DDoS attacks can be fought in a variety of ways, mostly using   filtering methods, it takes constant vigilance.  There is nothing in   the current architecture or in the protocols that serves to protect   the forwarders from these attacks.      Editors' Note: Since the original document was written, the issue      of inter-domain routing security has been studied in much greater      depth.  The rpsec working group has gone into the security issues      in great detail [RFC4593] and readers should refer to that work to      understand the security issues.5.12.  Support of MPLS and VPNS   Recently, BGP has been modified to function as a signaling protocol   for MPLS and for VPNs [RFC4364].  Some people see this overloading of   the BGP protocol as a boon whilst others see it as a problem.  While   it was certainly convenient as a vehicle for vendors to deliver extra   functionality to their products, it has exacerbated some of the   performance and complexity issues of BGP.  Two important problems are   that, the additional state that must be retained and refreshed to   support VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnels and that BGP does not   provide end-to-end notification making it difficult to confirm that   all necessary state has been installed or updated.   It is an open question whether VPN signaling protocols should remain   separate from the route determination protocols.5.13.  IPv4/IPv6 Ships in the Night   The fact that service providers need to maintain two completely   separate networks, one for IPv4 and one for IPv6, has been a real   hindrance to the introduction of IPv6.  When IPv6 does get widely   deployed, it will do so without causing the disappearance of IPv4.   This means that unless something is done, service providers would   need to maintain the two networks in perpetuity (at least on the   foreshortened timescale which the Internet world uses).   It is possible to use a single set of BGP speakers with multi-   protocol extensions [RFC4760] to exchange information about both IPv4   and IPv6 routes between domains, but the use of TCP as the transport   protocol for the information exchange results in an asymmetry when   choosing to use one of TCP over IPv4 or TCP over IPv6.  Successful   information exchange confirms one of IPv4 or IPv6 reachability   between the speakers but not the other, making it possible that   reachability is being advertised for a protocol for which it is not   present.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 43]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Also, current implementations do not allow a route to be advertised   for both IPv4 and IPv6 in the same UPDATE message, because it is not   possible to explicitly link the reachability information for an   address family to the corresponding next-hop information.  This could   be improved, but currently results in independent UPDATEs being   exchanged for each address family.5.14.  Existing Tools to Support Effective Deployment of Inter-Domain       Routing   The tools available to network operators to assist in configuring and   maintaining effective inter-domain routing in line with their defined   policies are limited, and almost entirely passive.   o  There are no tools to facilitate the planning of the routing of a      domain (either intra- or inter-domain); there are a limited number      of display tools that will visualize the routing once it has been      configured.   o  There are no tools to assist in converting business policy      specifications into the Routing Policy Specification Language      (RPSL) language (seeSection 5.14.1); there are limited tools to      convert the RPSL into BGP commands and to check, post-facto, that      the proposed policies are consistent with the policies in adjacent      domains (always provided that these have been revealed and      accurately documented).   o  There are no tools to monitor BGP route changes in real-time and      warn the operator about policy inconsistencies and/or      instabilities.   The following section summarizes the tools that are available to   assist with the use of RPSL.  Note they are all batch mode tools used   off-line from a real network.  These tools will provide checks for   skilled inter-domain routing configurers but limited assistance for   the novice.5.14.1.  Routing Policy Specification Language RPSL (RFC 2622 andRFC2650) and RIPE NCC Database (RIPE 157)   Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL) [RFC2622] enables a   network operator to describe routes, routers, and Autonomous Systems   (ASs) that are connected to the local AS.   Using the RPSL language (see [RFC2650]) a distributed database is   created to describe routing policies in the Internet as described by   each AS independently.  The database can be used to check the   consistency of routing policies stored in the database.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 44]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   Tools exist [IRRToolSet] that can use the database to (among other   things):   o  Flag when two neighboring network operators specify conflicting or      inconsistent routing information exchanges with each other and      also detect global inconsistencies where possible;   o  Extract all AS-paths between two networks that are allowed by      routing policy from the routing policy database; display the      connectivity a given network has according to current policies.   The database queries enable a partial-static solution to the   convergence problem.  They analyze routing policies of a very limited   part of Internet and verify that they do not contain conflicts that   could lead to protocol divergence.  The static analysis of   convergence of the entire system has exponential time complexity, so   approximation algorithms would have to be used.   The toolset also allows router configurations to be generated from   RPSL specifications.      Editors' Note: The "Internet Routing Registry Toolset" was      originally developed by the University of Southern California's      Information Sciences Institute (ISI) between 1997 and 2001 as the      "Routing Arbiter ToolSet" (RAToolSet) project.  The toolset is no      longer developed by ISI but is used worldwide, so after a period      of improvement by RIPE NCC, it has now been transferred to the      Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) for ongoing maintenance as a      public resource.6.  Security Considerations   As this is an informational document on the history of requirements   in IDR and on the problems facing the current Internet IDR   architecture, it does not as such create any security problems.  On   the other hand, some of the problems with today's Internet routing   architecture do create security problems, and these have been   discussed in the text above.7.  Acknowledgments   The document is derived from work originally produced by Babylon.   Babylon was a loose association of individuals from academia, service   providers, and vendors whose goal was to discuss issues in Internet   routing with the intention of finding solutions for those problems.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 45]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   The individual members who contributed materially to this document   are: Anders Bergsten, Howard Berkowitz, Malin Carlzon, Lenka Carr   Motyckova, Elwyn Davies, Avri Doria, Pierre Fransson, Yong Jiang,   Dmitri Krioukov, Tove Madsen, Olle Pers, and Olov Schelen.   Thanks also go to the members of Babylon and others who did   substantial reviews of this material.  Specifically, we would like to   acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the following   individuals: Loa Andersson, Tomas Ahlstrom, Erik Aman, Thomas   Eriksson, Niklas Borg, Nigel Bragg, Thomas Chmara, Krister Edlund,   Owe Grafford, Susan Hares, Torbjorn Lundberg, David McGrew, Jasminko   Mulahusic, Florian-Daniel Otel, Bernhard Stockman, Tom Worster, and   Roberto Zamparo.   In addition, the authors are indebted to the folks who wrote all the   references we have consulted in putting this paper together.  This   includes not only the references explicitly listed below, but also   those who contributed to the mailing lists we have been participating   in for years.   The editors thank Lixia Zhang, as IRSG document shepherd, for her   help and her perseverance, without which this document would never   have been published.   Finally, it is the editors who are responsible for any lack of   clarity, any errors, glaring omissions or misunderstandings.8.  Informative References   [Alaettinoglu00]              Alaettinoglu, C., Jacobson, V., and H. Yu, "Towards Milli-              Second IGP Convergence", Work in Progress, November 2000.   [Berkowitz01]              Berkowitz, H. and D. Krioukov, "To Be Multihomed:              Requirements and Definitions", Work in Progress,              July 2001.   [Breslau90]              Breslau, L. and D. Estrin, "An Architecture for Network-              Layer Routing in OSI", Proceedings of the ACM symposium on              Communications architectures & protocols , 1990.   [Chapin94]              Piscitello, D. and A. Chapin, "Open Systems Networking:              TCP/IP & OSI", Addison-Wesley Copyright assigned to              authors, 1994, <http://www.interisle.net/OSN/OSN.html>.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 46]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   [Chiappa91]              Chiappa, J., "A New IP Routing and Addressing              Architecture", Work in Progress, 1991.   [Clark00]  Clark, D. and M. Blumenthal, "Rethinking the design of the              Internet: The end to end arguments vs. the brave new              world", August 2000,              <http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/1519>.   [Griffin99]              Griffin, T. and G. Wilfong, "An Analysis of BGP              Convergence Properties", Association for Computing              Machinery Proceedings of SIGCOMM '99, 1999.   [Huitema90]              Huitema, C. and W. Dabbous, "Routeing protocols              development in the OSI architecture",  Proceedings of              ISCIS V Turkey, 1990.   [Huston05]              Huston, G., "Exploring Autonomous System Numbers", The ISP              Column , August 2005,              <http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2005-08/as.html>.   [INARC89]  Mills, D., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Internet Architecture              Workshop: Future of the Internet System Architecture and              TCP/IP Protocols - Report", Internet Architecture Task              Force INARC, 1990, <http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/database/papers/inarc.pdf>.   [IRRToolSet]              Internet Systems Consortium, "Internet Routing Registry              Toolset Project", IRR Tool Set Website, 2006,              <http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/IRRToolSet/>.   [ISO10747]              ISO/IEC, "Protocol for Exchange of Inter-Domain Routeing              Information among Intermediate Systems to support              Forwarding of ISO 8473 PDUs", International Standard              10747 , 1993.   [Jiang02]  Jiang, Y., Doria, A., Olsson, D., and F. Pettersson,              "Inter-domain Routing Stability Measurement", 2002,              <http://psg.com/~avri/papers/paper-yong-hpsr2002-final.pdf>.   [Katz10]   Katz, D. and D. Ward, "Bidirectional Forwarding              Detection", Work in Progress, January 2010.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 47]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   [Labovitz02]              Labovitz, C., Ahuja, A., Farnam, J., and A. Bose,              "Experimental Measurement of Delayed Convergence", NANOG ,              2002.   [NewArch03]              Clark, D., Sollins, K., Wroclawski, J., Katabi, D., Kulik,              J., Yang, X., Braden, R., Faber, T., Falk, A., Pingali,              V., Handley, M., and N. Chiappa, "New Arch: Future              Generation Internet Architecture", December 2003,              <http://www.isi.edu/newarch/iDOCS/final.finalreport.pdf>.   [RFC0904]  Mills, D., "Exterior Gateway Protocol formal              specification",RFC 904, April 1984.   [RFC0975]  Mills, D., "Autonomous confederations",RFC 975,              February 1986.   [RFC1105]  Lougheed, K. and J. Rekhter, "Border Gateway Protocol              (BGP)",RFC 1105, June 1989.   [RFC1126]  Little, M., "Goals and functional requirements for inter-              autonomous system routing",RFC 1126, October 1989.   [RFC1163]  Lougheed, K. and Y. Rekhter, "Border Gateway Protocol              (BGP)",RFC 1163, June 1990.   [RFC1267]  Lougheed, K. and Y. Rekhter, "Border Gateway Protocol 3              (BGP-3)",RFC 1267, October 1991.   [RFC1752]  Bradner, S. and A. Mankin, "The Recommendation for the IP              Next Generation Protocol",RFC 1752, January 1995.   [RFC1753]  Chiappa, J., "IPng Technical Requirements Of the Nimrod              Routing and Addressing Architecture",RFC 1753,              December 1994.   [RFC1771]  Rekhter, Y. and T. Li, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4              (BGP-4)",RFC 1771, March 1995.   [RFC1992]  Castineyra, I., Chiappa, N., and M. Steenstrup, "The              Nimrod Routing Architecture",RFC 1992, August 1996.   [RFC2362]  Estrin, D., Farinacci, D., Helmy, A., Thaler, D., Deering,              S., Handley, M., and V. Jacobson, "Protocol Independent              Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification",RFC 2362, June 1998.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 48]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   [RFC2622]  Alaettinoglu, C., Villamizar, C., Gerich, E., Kessens, D.,              Meyer, D., Bates, T., Karrenberg, D., and M. Terpstra,              "Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL)",RFC 2622,              June 1999.   [RFC2650]  Meyer, D., Schmitz, J., Orange, C., Prior, M., and C.              Alaettinoglu, "Using RPSL in Practice",RFC 2650,              August 1999.   [RFC2791]  Yu, J., "Scalable Routing Design Principles",RFC 2791,              July 2000.   [RFC3221]  Huston, G., "Commentary on Inter-Domain Routing in the              Internet",RFC 3221, December 2001.   [RFC3277]  McPherson, D., "Intermediate System to Intermediate System              (IS-IS) Transient Blackhole Avoidance",RFC 3277,              April 2002.   [RFC3345]  McPherson, D., Gill, V., Walton, D., and A. Retana,              "Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Persistent Route              Oscillation Condition",RFC 3345, August 2002.   [RFC3618]  Fenner, B. and D. Meyer, "Multicast Source Discovery              Protocol (MSDP)",RFC 3618, October 2003.   [RFC3765]  Huston, G., "NOPEER Community for Border Gateway Protocol              (BGP) Route Scope Control",RFC 3765, April 2004.   [RFC3913]  Thaler, D., "Border Gateway Multicast Protocol (BGMP):              Protocol Specification",RFC 3913, September 2004.   [RFC4116]  Abley, J., Lindqvist, K., Davies, E., Black, B., and V.              Gill, "IPv4 Multihoming Practices and Limitations",RFC 4116, July 2005.   [RFC4204]  Lang, J., "Link Management Protocol (LMP)",RFC 4204,              October 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.   [RFC4593]  Barbir, A., Murphy, S., and Y. Yang, "Generic Threats to              Routing Protocols",RFC 4593, October 2006.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 49]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010   [RFC4601]  Fenner, B., Handley, M., Holbrook, H., and I. Kouvelas,              "Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode (PIM-SM):              Protocol Specification (Revised)",RFC 4601, August 2006.   [RFC4724]  Sangli, S., Chen, E., Fernando, R., Scudder, J., and Y.              Rekhter, "Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP",RFC 4724,              January 2007.   [RFC4760]  Bates, T., Chandra, R., Katz, D., and Y. Rekhter,              "Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4",RFC 4760,              January 2007.   [RFC4893]  Vohra, Q. and E. Chen, "BGP Support for Four-octet AS              Number Space",RFC 4893, May 2007.   [RFC5772]  Doria, A., Davies, E., and F. Kastenholz, "A Set of              Possible Requirements for a Future Routing Architecture",RFC 5772, February 2010.   [Sandiick00]              Sandick, H., Squire, M., Cain, B., Duncan, I., and B.              Haberman, "Fast LIveness Protocol (FLIP)", Work              in Progress, February 2000.   [Tsuchiya87]              Tsuchiya, P., "An Architecture for Network-Layer Routing              in OSI", Proceedings of the ACM workshop on Frontiers in              computer communications technology , 1987.   [Xu97]     Xu, Z., Dai, S., and J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, "A More              Efficient Distance Vector Routing Algorithm", Proc IEEE              MILCOM 97, Monterey, California, Nov 1997, <http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/zhengyu.milcom97.pdf>.Davies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 50]

RFC 5773                       IDR History                 February 2010Authors' Addresses   Elwyn B. Davies   Folly Consulting   Soham, Cambs   UK   Phone: +44 7889 488 335   EMail: elwynd@dial.pipex.com   Avri Doria   LTU   Lulea,   971 87   Sweden   Phone: +1 401 663 5024   EMail: avri@acm.orgDavies & Doria                  Historic                       [Page 51]

[8]ページ先頭

©2009-2025 Movatter.jp