Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) L. Dunbar

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) L. Dunbar
Request for Comments: 8380 D. Eastlake 3rd
Category: Standards Track Huawei
ISSN: 2070-1721 R. Perlman
Dell/EMC
May 2018

Directory-Assisted
Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) Encapsulation

Abstract

This document describes how data center networks can benefit from
non-RBridge nodes performing TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of
Lots of Links) encapsulation with assistance from a directory
service.

Status of This Memo

This is an Internet Standards Track document.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8380.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.

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RFC 8380 Directory-Assisted TRILL Encap May 2018

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Conventions Used in This Document ...............................2
3. Directory Assistance to Non-RBridge .............................3
4. Source Nickname in Encapsulation by Non-RBridge Nodes ...........6
5. Benefits of a Non-RBridge Performing TRILL Encapsulation ........6
5.1. Avoid Nickname Exhaustion Issue ............................6
5.2. Reduce MAC Tables for Switches on Bridged LANs .............6
6. Manageability Considerations ....................................7
7. Security Considerations .........................................7
8. IANA Considerations .............................................9
9. References .....................................................9
9.1. Normative References .....................................10
9.2. Informative References ...................................10
Acknowledgments ...................................................10
Authors' Addresses.................................................10

1. Introduction

This document describes how data center networks can benefit from
non-RBridge nodes performing TRILL encapsulation with assistance from
a directory service and specifies a method for them to do so.

[RFC7067] and [RFC8171] describe the framework and methods for edge
RBridges to get (MAC and VLAN) <-> Edge RBridge mapping from a
directory service instead of flooding unknown destination MAC
addresses across a TRILL domain. If it has the needed directory
information, any node, even a non-RBridge node, can perform the TRILL
data packet encapsulation. This document describes the benefits of
and a scheme for non-RBridge nodes performing TRILL encapsulation.

2. Conventions Used in This Document

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

AF: Appointed Forwarder RBridge port [RFC8139].

Bridge: A device compliant with IEEE 802.1Q. In this document,
Bridge is used interchangeably with Layer 2 switch.

DA: Destination Address.

ES-IS: End System to Intermediate System [RFC8171].

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Host: A physical server or a virtual machine running
applications. A host usually has at least one IP address
and at least one MAC address.

IS-IS: Intermediate System to Intermediate System [RFC7176].

SA: Source Address.

TRILL-EN: TRILL Encapsulating Node. A node that performs the TRILL
encapsulation but doesn't participate in an RBridge's IS-IS
routing.

VM: Virtual Machine.

3. Directory Assistance to Non-RBridge

With directory assistance [RFC7067] [RFC8171], a non-RBridge node can
learn if a data packet needs to be forwarded across the RBridge
domain and, if so, the corresponding egress RBridge.

Suppose the RBridge domain boundary starts at network switches (not
virtual switches embedded on servers). (See Figure 1 for a high-
level diagram of a typical data center network.) A directory can
assist virtual switches embedded on servers to encapsulate with a
proper TRILL header by providing the nickname of the egress RBridge
edge to which the destination is attached. The other information
needed to encapsulate can be learned either by listening to TRILL
ES-IS and/or IS-IS Hellos [RFC7176] [RFC8171], which will indicate
the MAC address and nickname of appropriate local edge RBridges, or
by configuration.

If it is not known whether a destination is attached to one or more
edge RBridges, based on the directory, the non-RBridge node can
forward the data frames natively, i.e., not encapsulating with any
TRILL header. Or, if the directory is known to be complete, the non-
RBridge node can discard such data frames.

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\ +-----------+ +-----------+ /
\ +/----------+ | +/----------+ | TRILL /
\ |Aggregation| | |Aggregation| | Domain /
\ | 11 | + --- | N1 | + /
\ +-----------+/ +-----------+/ /
\ / \ / \ /
\ / \ / \ /
Top- \ +---+ +---+ +---+ +---+ /
of- --> \- |T11|... |T1x| |T21| .. |T2y|---/
Rack +---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
Switches | | | |
+-|-+ +-|-+ +-|-+ +-|-+
| |... | V | | V | .. | V | <- vSwitch
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
| |... | V | | V | .. | V |
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
| |... | V | | V | .. | V |
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+

Figure 1: TRILL Domain in a Typical Data Center Network

When a TRILL-encapsulated data packet reaches the ingress RBridge,
that RBridge simply performs the usual TRILL processing and forwards
the pre-encapsulated packet to the RBridge that is specified by the
egress nickname field of the TRILL header. When an ingress RBridge
receives a native Ethernet frame in an environment with complete
directory information, the ingress RBridge doesn't flood or forward
the received data frames when the destination MAC address in the
Ethernet data frames is unknown.

When all end nodes attached to an ingress RBridge pre-encapsulate
with a TRILL header for traffic across the TRILL domain, the ingress
RBridge doesn't need to encapsulate any native Ethernet frames to the
TRILL domain. The attached nodes can be connected to multiple edge
RBridges by having multiple ports or through a bridged LAN. All
RBridge edge ports connected to one bridged LAN can receive and
forward pre-encapsulated traffic; this can greatly improve the
overall network utilization. However, it is still necessary to, for
example, designate AF ports to be sure that multi-destination packets
from the TRILL campus are only egressed through one RBridge.

Item 8 of Section 4.6.2 of the TRILL base protocol specification
[RFC6325] specifies that an RBridge port can be configured to accept
TRILL-encapsulated frames from a neighbor that is not an RBridge.

When a TRILL frame arrives at an RBridge whose nickname matches the
destination nickname in the TRILL header of the frame, the processing
is exactly as normal: as specified in [RFC6325], the RBridge

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decapsulates the received TRILL frame and forwards the decapsulated
frame to the target attached to its edge ports. When the destination
MAC address of the decapsulated Ethernet frame is not in the egress
RBridge's local MAC attachment tables, the egress RBridge floods the
decapsulated frame to all attached links in the frame's VLAN, or
drops the frame (if the egress RBridge is configured with that
policy).

We call a node that, as specified herein, only performs TRILL
encapsulation, but doesn't participate in RBridge's IS-IS routing, a
TRILL Encapsulating Node (TRILL-EN). The TRILL Encapsulating Node
can pull (MAC and VLAN) <-> Edge RBridge mapping from directory
servers [RFC8171]. In order to do this, a TRILL-EN MUST support
TRILL ES-IS [RFC8171].

Upon receiving or locally generating a native Ethernet frame, the
TRILL-EN checks the (MAC and VLAN) <-> Edge RBridge mapping and
performs the corresponding TRILL encapsulation if the mapping entry
is found as shown in Figure 2. If the destination MAC address and
VLAN of the received Ethernet frame doesn't exist in the mapping
table and there is no positive reply from pull requests to a
directory, the Ethernet frame is dropped or is forwarded in native
form to an edge RBridge, depending on the TRILL-EN configuration.

+------------+--------+---------+---------+--+-------+---+
|OuterEtherHd|TRILL HD| InnerDA | InnerSA |..|Payload|FCS|
+------------+--------+---------+---------+--+-------+---+
|
| |<Inner Ether Header> |
|
|
| +-------+ TRILL +------+
| | RB1 |---------->| RB2 | Decapsulate
| +-------+ domain +------+ TRILL header
v ^ |
+---------->| |
| V
+--------+ +--------+
Non-RBridge node: |TRILL-EN| |TRILL-EN|
Encapsulate TRILL | 1 | | 2 |
Header for data +--------+ +--------+
Frames to traverse TRILL domain.

Figure 2: Data Frames from a TRILL-EN

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4. Source Nickname in Encapsulation by Non-RBridge Nodes

The TRILL header includes a Source RBridge's Nickname (ingress) and
Destination RBridge's Nickname (egress). When a TRILL header is
added to a data packet by a TRILL-EN, the ingress RBridge nickname
field in the TRILL header is set to a nickname of the AF for the data
packet's VLAN. The TRILL-EN determines the AF by snooping on IS-IS
Hellos from the edge RBridges on the link with the TRILL-EN in the
same way that the RBridges on the link determine the AF [RFC8139]. A
TRILL-EN is free to send the encapsulated data frame to any of the
edge RBridges on its link.

5. Benefits of a Non-RBridge Performing TRILL Encapsulation

This section summarizes the benefits of having a non-RBridge node
perform TRILL encapsulation.

5.1. Avoid Nickname Exhaustion Issue

For a large data center with hundreds of thousands of virtualized
servers, setting the TRILL boundary at the servers' virtual switches
will create a TRILL domain with hundreds of thousands of RBridge
nodes; this could lead to TRILL nickname exhaustion and challenges to
IS-IS. On the other hand, setting the TRILL boundary at aggregation
switches that have many virtualized servers attached can limit the
number of RBridge nodes in a TRILL domain, but introduces the issue
of having very large (MAC and VLAN) <-> Edge RBridge mapping tables
that need to be maintained by edge RBridges.

Allowing non-RBridge nodes to pre-encapsulate data frames with TRILL
headers makes it possible to have a TRILL domain with a reasonable
number of RBridge nodes in a large data center. All the TRILL-ENs
attached to one RBridge can be represented by one TRILL nickname,
which can avoid the nickname exhaustion problem.

5.2. Reduce MAC Tables for Switches on Bridged LANs

When hosts in a VLAN (or subnet) span across multiple edge RBridges
and each edge RBridge has multiple VLANs enabled, the switches on the
bridged LANs attached to the edge RBridges are exposed to all MAC
addresses among all the VLANs enabled.

For example, for an Access Switch with 40 physical servers attached,
where each server has 100 VMs, there are 4000 hosts under the Access
Switch. If indeed hosts/VMs can be moved anywhere, the worst case
for the Access Switch is when all those 4000 VMs belong to different
VLANs, i.e., the Access Switch has 4000 VLANs enabled. If each VLAN

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has 200 hosts, this Access Switch's MAC table potentially has
200 * 4000 = 800,000 entries.

If the virtual switches on servers pre-encapsulate the data frames
destined for hosts attached to remote edge RBridges, the outer MAC
destination address of those TRILL-encapsulated data frames will be
the MAC address of a local RBridge edge, i.e., the ingress RBridge.
The switches on the local bridged LAN don't need to keep the MAC
entries for remote hosts attached to other edge RBridges.

But the TRILL traffic from nodes attached to other RBridges is
decapsulated and has the true source and destination MACs. One
simple way to prevent local bridges from learning remote hosts' MACs
and adding to their MAC tables, if that would be a problem, is to
disable this data-plane learning on local bridges. With the
assistance of a directory, the local bridges can be pre-configured
with MAC addresses of local hosts. The local bridges can always send
frames with unknown destination MAC addresses to the ingress RBridge.
In an environment where a large number of VMs are instantiated in one
server, the number of remote MAC addresses could be very large. If
it is not feasible to disable learning and pre-configure MAC tables
for local bridges and all important traffic is IP, one effective
method to minimize local bridges' MAC table size is to use the
server's MAC address to hide MAC addresses of the attached VMs. That
is, the server acting as an edge node uses its own MAC address in the
source MAC address field of the packets originated from a host (or
VM). When the Ethernet frame arrives at the target edge node (the
egress), the target edge node can send the packet to the
corresponding destination host based on the packet's IP address.
Very often, the target edge node communicates with the embedded VMs
via a Layer 2 virtual switch. In this case, the target edge node can
construct the proper Ethernet header with the assistance of the
directory. The information from the directory includes the proper
mapping of host IP to MAC.

6. Manageability Considerations

Directory assistance [RFC8171] is required to make it possible for a
non-TRILL node to pre-encapsulate packets destined towards remote
RBridges. TRILL-ENs have the same configuration options as any pull
directory client. See Section 4 of [RFC8171].

7. Security Considerations

If the TRILL-ENs are not trusted, they can forge arbitrary ingress
and egress nicknames in the TRILL Headers of the TRILL Data packets
they construct. With data-plane learning, decapsulating a TRILL Data
packet at an egress RBridge associates the inner source MAC address

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with the ingress nickname in the TRILL Header (assuming that MAC
address is unicast). Thus, if those ingress nicknames are forged,
incorrect learning will occur and future traffic destined for the
inner source MAC will be sent to the wrong RBridge for egress.
Because of this, an RBridge port should not be configured to accept
encapsulated TRILL data frames on a link were it does not have an
RBridge adjacency unless the end stations on that link are trusted.

As with any end station, TRILL-ENs can forge the outer MAC addresses
of packets they send. (See Section 6 of [RFC6325].) Because they
pre-encapsulate, they can also forge inner MAC addresses.

The pre-encapsulation performed by TRILL-ENs also means they can send
data in any VLAN; this means they must be trusted in order to enforce
a security policy based on VLANs. (See Section 6.1 of [RFC6325].)

Use of directory-assisted encapsulation by TRILL-ENs essentially
involves those TRILL-ENs spoofing edge RBridges to which they are
connected; this is another reason that TRILL-ENs should be trusted
nodes. Such spoofing cannot cause persistently looping traffic
because TRILL has a hop count in the TRILL header [RFC6325] so that,
should there be a loop, a TRILL packet caught in that loop (i.e., an
encapsulated frame) will be discarded. (In the potentially more
dangerous case of multidestination packets (as compared with known
unicast) where copies could multiply due to forks in the distribution
tree, a Reverse Path Forwarding Check is also used [RFC6325] to
discard packets that appear to be on the wrong link or when there is
disagreement about the distribution tree.)

The mechanism described in this document requires a TRILL-EN to be
aware of the MAC address(es) of the TRILL edge RBridge(s) to which
the TRILL-EN is attached and the egress RBridge nickname from which
the destination of the packets is reachable. With that information,
TRILL-ENs can learn a substantial amount about the topology of the
TRILL domain. Therefore, there could be a potential security risk
when the TRILL-ENs are not trusted or are compromised.

If the path between the directory and a TRILL-EN is attacked, false
mappings can be sent to the TRILL-EN causing packets from the TRILL-
EN to be sent to wrong destinations, possibly violating security
policy as to which end stations should receive what data. Therefore,
a combination of authentication and encryption is RECOMMENDED between
the directory and TRILL-EN. The entities involved will need to
properly authenticate with each other, provide session encryption,
maintain security patch levels, and configure their systems to allow
minimal access and running processes to protect sensitive
information.

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For added security against the compromise of data due to its
misdelivery for any reason, including the above, end-to-end
encryption and authentication should be considered; that is,
encryption and authentication from source end station to destination
end station.

For Pull Directory and TRILL ES-IS security considerations, see
[RFC8171].

8. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.

9. References

9.1. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

[RFC6325] Perlman, R., Eastlake 3rd, D., Dutt, D., Gai, S., and A.
Ghanwani, "Routing Bridges (RBridges): Base Protocol
Specification", RFC 6325, DOI 10.17487/RFC6325, July 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6325>.

[RFC7176] Eastlake 3rd, D., Senevirathne, T., Ghanwani, A., Dutt,
D., and A. Banerjee, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots
of Links (TRILL) Use of IS-IS", RFC 7176,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7176, May 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7176>.

[RFC8139] Eastlake 3rd, D., Li, Y., Umair, M., Banerjee, A., and F.
Hu, "Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL):
Appointed Forwarders", RFC 8139, DOI 10.17487/RFC8139,
June 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8139>.

[RFC8171] Eastlake 3rd, D., Dunbar, L., Perlman, R., and Y. Li,
"Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL):
Edge Directory Assistance Mechanisms", RFC 8171,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8171, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8171>.

[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

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9.2. Informative References

[RFC7067] Dunbar, L., Eastlake 3rd, D., Perlman, R., and I.
Gashinsky, "Directory Assistance Problem and High-Level
Design Proposal", RFC 7067, DOI 10.17487/RFC7067, November
2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7067>.

Acknowledgments

The following are thanked for their contributions:

Igor Gashinsky
Ben Nevin-Jenkins

Authors' Addresses

Linda Dunbar
Huawei Technologies
5340 Legacy Drive, Suite 175
Plano, TX 75024
United States of America

Phone: +1-469-277-5840
Email: [email protected]

Donald Eastlake 3rd
Huawei Technologies
155 Beaver Street
Milford, MA 01757
United States of America

Phone: +1-508-333-2270
Email: [email protected]

Radia Perlman
Dell/EMC
2010 256th Avenue NE, #200
Bellevue, WA 98007
United States of America

Email: [email protected]

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