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Re: [lisp] OPS-Dir review of draft-ietf-lisp-introduction-11

2015-02-13 10:54:05
Hi David

Thanks for your comments, I am parsing them and I´ll suggest new text
aiming to address them ASAP.

I would also like to better understand [A] before doing this.

With LISP an EID-preifx can have an arbitrary length and can move (i.e.,
change its RLOC bindings), in the specific case of a VM/mobile node the
EID-prefix should be /32 or /128 (IPv4 or IPv6 respectively). What doesn't
work is the mobility of a node (assigned with a /32 or /128) *within* a
coarser EID-prefix, in this case you need to split the prefix into more
specifics and register them independently in the Mapping System,
effectively creating new EID-prefixes.

Please let me know if this clarifies your comment, in this case I will
suggest new text for Section 5.

Albert



On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 12:07 AM, Black, David 
<david(_dot_)black(_at_)emc(_dot_)com> wrote:

Dino - thanks for the response.

On the major issues, it looks like both [A] and [B] involve only the text
in this draft and nothing beyond, which is good news.  I have a simple text
suggestion for [A], but it looks like [B] is going to require some careful
editing, as one of the primary causes is that the draft is sloppy in using
the same symbol "G" to represent both EID and RLOC multicast groups.

On the minor issues, I have text suggestions for three of the four, and
I'd like to temporarily defer further discussion the IPv6 UDP zero
checksum "tarpit" in favor of resolving everything else first.

On the nits/editorial comments, all the suggestions in your email are fine
with me.  FWIW, I regard that portion of a review as almost entirely
subject to the draft authors' discretion (and editorial taste).

[A] EID mobility vs. EID prefixes

... from the start of the LISP design (circa 2007), an prefix is what
moves.
And a specific EID is simply a /32 or /128 prefix. Here is a practical
example:

A statement that the mobility use cases need to employ /32 and /128
prefixes,
and not anything coarser should suffice.  That should be added to Section
5.

[B] LISP Multicast vs. EID/RLOC separate

- 6. Multicast

This is interesting, multicast addresses (G) look like they're an
exception

They are really not.

My concern is that as I read the draft, it leaves me with the strong
impression
that the same multicast addresses (G) are being used in both the overlay
(as EIDs) and the underlay (as RLOCs).  From your response, I conclude
that this
is not the case (and I have no argument with that).  Rather, Section 6
needs to
bluntly state that multicast addresses are mapped between EID and RLOC
space at
both ITRs and ETRs, so that the following inference is obvious from the
text
(it's currently not obvious):

So it makes perfect sense to register multicast addresses to the mapping
system as EIDs and they can map to RLOCs of sites that have joined the
group.

As part of this, I strongly recommend moving away from use of "G" to refer
to
multicast groups in both the overlay and underlay.  Careful use of G-EID
and G-RLOC would significantly improve clarity.

---
If the above are done for [A] and [B] in Sections 5 and 6, then the text
for the
use cases in Section 7 should not need further attention.
---

-- Minor Issues --

There seems to be an implicit assumption that the end host and its
ITR (xTR) are in the same domain or Autonomous System.  For
incremental

This is true when you call the domain a "LISP site". But if the site is
unchanged and one uses PITRs, maybe even close to the site, like in a PE
router, then the PITR is definitely in another AS.

Looking at the text, it seems that "LISP site" and "domain" are the same
concept for this draft.  That would be useful to state, IMHO but I'll leave
the decision on whether to do so to you and the draft authors.

On rereading, my concerns seem to be triggered mostly by this sentence in
Section 3.2:

   The edge consists of LISP sites (e.g., an
   Autonomous System) that use EID addresses.

I think a small change to the last sentence in that paragraph would resolve
my concern without distracting from the narrative:

OLD
   EIDs do not
   contain inter-domain topological information and because of this,
   EIDs are usually routable at the edge (within LISP sites) or in the
   non-LISP Internet.
NEW
   EIDs do not
   contain inter-domain topological information and because of this,
   EIDs are usually routable at the edge (within LISP sites) or in the
   non-LISP Internet; see Section 3.5 for discussion of LISP site
   internetworking with non-LISP sites and domains in the Internet.

Despite multiple  mentions of incremental deployment, I did not
see a discussion of how that might be accomplished.

There are PxTRs and NATs. And references to the LISP interworking RFC.

Ok, can we just say so in Section 3.5?  Adding the following sentence
to the end of the section would suffice:

   PITRs, PETRs and LISP-NAT support incremental deployment of LISP
   by providing significant flexibility in location of the boundaries
   between the LISP and non-LISP portions of the network, and making
   it reasonable to change those boundaries over time.

- 3.3.1.  LISP Encapsulation

   the source port is selected by
   the ITR and ignored on reception.

Please mention multipathing (e.g., ECMP and LAG) as possible
influences
on how source ports are selected, as this imposes some limits on what
an
ITR can reasonably do.

ECMP/LAG don't influence which source port is selected. It is a 5-tuple
hash
of the inner header that selects a source port that influences how an
underlay
router would load-split traffic.

Please state that a 5-tuple hash is used.  ECMP/LAG is among the important
reasons why, but that doesn't need to be stated if you prefer not to.  An
example of something that needs to be excluded is that using a random
number generator to set the source port would be wrong - I could suggest
citing draft-ietf-dart-dscp-rtp for related discussion (and lots more
details), but I don't think that's necessary.

-- IPv6 zero UDP checksum

My head spins every time I hear about this subject. This subject has been
talked about from 100s of people for a decade. We have CRC on links, we
have
apps that use TCP and UDP checksums. Nuf said.

Understood - there's more than one set of scars on this one :-(.  Let's
come back
to this topic after we've resolved everything else, and please keep in mind
that I tagged this as a minor issue, not a major one (e.g., the above
changes
for [A] and [B] are far more important, IMHO).

Thanks,
--David

-----Original Message-----
From: Dino Farinacci [mailto:farinacci(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 2:19 PM
To: Joel M. Halpern
Cc: Black, David; Albert Cabellos; Damien Saucez; 
ops-dir(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org;
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; lisp(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: [lisp] OPS-Dir review of draft-ietf-lisp-introduction-11

I will leave most of these for the authors to comment on.

See my comments inline. Thanks David for your detailed review and
commentary.

With regard to your question about incremental deployment, that is the
domain of the LISP Deployment document, and was deliberately only lightly
covered here.  I am not sure what we can do to address your comment
without
duplicating the entirety of that document.

That is the risk we may have with many of your comments. We have a lot of
detail in the already 9 published RFCs  and this document really is to
take
all that detail and summarize as an easily understandable description of
a
cohesive design.

With regard to UDP Zero, this was approved by the IESG and published
as an
RFC.  It is part of the way the protocol is defined.  If there are
specific
changes you would like to see in the explanatory text, I am sure

Definitely agreed. In fact we instigated UDP zero. And I continually
talk to
hardware engineers and they all believe we made the right decision. So
hats
off to the IETF for being practical.

we could include them.  If you are looking for a change in the
behavior,
this document can not make changes to the LISP behavior.

Yes, an important point.

I found a couple of major issues that I hope arise from the
summarization of LISP in this draft, as opposed to being problems in
the actual LISP protocols.  I also found a few minor issues, the most
important of which is the need for additional security considerations
discussion on misdelivery, with particular attention to VPNs.

Thanks a ton.

-- Major issues --

[A] EID mobility vs. EID prefixes

- 5. Mobility

I understand how this works when mapping is per-EID, but how does
this work
when the EID of the system that moves is part of an EID prefix, as
discussed
in Section 3.4.1?  Even if the answer is a long version of "Don't do
that!"
it should be explained.

No, from the start of the LISP design (circa 2007), an prefix is what
moves.
And a specific EID is simply a /32 or /128 prefix. Here is a practical
example:

You have a cluster of servers that communicate together for a particular
application. They application cluster is running in a set of VMs. Those
VMs
are assigned EIDs from a common power-of-2 EID-prefix. Those VMs are
currently
running in a brick-and-mortar data center. Now there is a desire to move
the
VM cluster to a cloud provider. What is moved is the EID-prefix of the
cluster. The mapping system is told that the EID-prefix is changing its
RLOC-
set from the brick-and-mortar xTRs to the cloud providers xTRs.


- 7.4.  LISP for Virtual Machine Mobility in Data Centers

I don't understand how this works when EID prefixes are used, as each
VM
has its own EID or EIDs, hence the entire prefix range does not move
when
the VM moves.

For OPS-Dir, this EID prefix issue [A] falls under A.1.1 in Appendix A
of RFC 5706:  Has deployment been discussed? and specifically under:

       *  Is the proposed specification deployable?  If not, how could
          it be improved?

as EID prefixes appear to be undeployable for Mobility and VM Mobility
usage.

See above example.

[B] LISP Multicast vs. EID/RLOC separate

- 6. Multicast

This is interesting, multicast addresses (G) look like they're an
exception

They are really not. Since multicast addresses *identify* a group of
receivers, it is very much an EID and aheres to the definition of an EID.
Multicast addresses never had topological signficance but the state
representing a distribution tree does tell you were the members are (but
the
identity of the members are not know in multicast).

So it makes perfect sense to register multicast addresses to the mapping
system as EIDs and they can map to RLOCs of sites that have joined the
group.
See draft-farinacci-signal-free-multicast as just one example. RFC6831
and
draft-farinacci-lisp-mr-signaling are other examples.

to the EID/RLOC separation as the same destination IP multicast
address
is used for both purposes.  This could use some more discussion, as
it's
unexpected based on the contents of the draft up to this point.

I believe the level of detail we have in the introduction document is at
the
right level or we'll err on having way too many details crop in.

- 7.2.  LISP for IPv6 Co-existence

   LISP encapsulations allows to transport packets using EIDs from a
   given address family (e.g., IPv6) with packets from other address
   families (e.g., IPv4).

How does that work for multicast traffic, where the destination
address
(G) has to be the same in both the inner and outer headers?  Are ETRs
and ITRs expected to map IPv6 multicast addresses to IPv4 and v.v.?

The mapping system can map an (S-EID-ipv6, group-ipv6) 2-tuple to a RLOC
set
that looked like this (ipv4-multicast, ipv4-unicast) mean the ITR that
receives the packet from S-EID-ipv6 would replicate the packet and
multicast
encapsulate to ipv4-multicast and unicast encapsualte to ipv4-unicast.

- 7.3.  LISP for Virtual Private Networks

This also has multicast problems, as there is only one instance of
each
multicast address (G) in the underlay network.  I think I can figure
out
how

You can map from EID-G to RLOC-G one to one. But we have seen over the
last
decade in a half that with general multicast deployment that many-to-1 is
desirable. Hence, now that we have a way to map with a network-based
database,
we can map multiple EID-Gs to a single (or multiple) RLOC-Gs.

to make multicast work for this use case, but it's not immediately
obvious,
and the result when the same underlay multicast address is used by
more
than one VPN could well deliver some traffic to ETRs that have to
discard

This is a necessary evil when the underlay is state challenged. But it
is a
state/bandwidth tradeoff. We have found with MVPN deployment that the
network
admin configures the underly or simply unicasts.

it because the Instance ID is wrong (and that excessive delivery is a
security consideration, see minor issue on Section 8 below).  I think
an
explanation is in order.

There are just too many combinations to make a high-level description
simple
to understand. The current introduction text does a find job providing
references for someone to go off and get the details.

-- Minor Issues --

There seems to be an implicit assumption that the end host and its
ITR (xTR) are in the same domain or Autonomous System.  For
incremental

This is true when you call the domain a "LISP site". But if the site is
unchanged and one uses PITRs, maybe even close to the site, like in a PE
router, then the PITR is definitely in another AS. But note I said PITR
and
not ITR. The reason being is because an ITR is configured with database-
mapping prefixes that is uses to encapsulate packets from such addresses.
Versus the PITR being an ITR with *no database-mappings* providing a
much more
larger/or more aggregtable service.

deployment, I don't think that's always the case, but I think that
only
has editorial impact on this document, as I don't think any of the
fundamental LISP mechanisms are affected.  The authors should look for
use of "domain" and "Autonomous System" and ensure that the text is
generalized to the case where the end host and ITR are more widely
separated.

We are overloaded with terms that create topological or organization
boundary.
Hence why we created "LISP site" which is also the same as a "LISP VPN
site".
Where a "LISP site" that has multiple tennants would be multiple "LISP
VPN
sites".

Despite multiple  mentions of incremental deployment, I did not
see a discussion of how that might be accomplished.  There is some

There are PxTRs and NATs. And references to the LISP interworking RFC.

useful content in Section 3.5, but that's at best an incomplete
explanation.  This is an OPS-Dir review concern - it falls under
A.1.3 in Appendix A of RFC 5706: Has the migration path been
discussed?

- 3.3.1.  LISP Encapsulation

   the source port is selected by
   the ITR and ignored on reception.

Please mention multipathing (e.g., ECMP and LAG) as possible
influences
on how source ports are selected, as this imposes some limits on what
an
ITR can reasonably do.

ECMP/LAG don't influence which source port is selected. It is a 5-tuple
hash
of the inner header that selects a source port that influences how an
underlay
router would load-split traffic.

For OPS-Dir, this multipathing concern falls under A.1.4 in Appendix
A of
RFC 5706: Have the Requirements on other protocols and functional
       components been discussed?

   This decision was made because the
   typical transport protocols used by the applications already
include
   a checksum, by neglecting the additional UDP encapsulation checksum
   xTRs can forward packets more efficiently.

Groan!  I have an exquisite set of scars on UDP zero checksums for
IPv6
from working on the MPLS in UDP draft, so I may be overly sensitive to
this concern.  The downside of this efficiency is that there is no
checksum coverage of the IPv6 header when zero UDP checksums are used.
That should at least be mentioned here, with a summary of why that's
ok
- the detailed justification for why that's ok can be left to other
documents.

My head spins every time I hear about this subject. This subject has been
talked about from 100s of people for a decade. We have CRC on links, we
have
apps that use TCP and UDP checksums. Nuf said.


-- Nits/Editorial Comments --

- Top of p.4:

   The initial motivation in the LISP effort is to be find in the

"find" -> "found"

- Section 3.1, first bullet item

We will certainly fixe these. Thanks.


      Devices are assigned with relatively opaque identity
      meaningful addresses that are independent of their topological
      location.

I don't understand "relatively opaque identity meaningful" and
suggest rewriting the sentence.  In particular - opaque to what?
meaningful to what in what manner?

Well beacuse it is as accurate as it can be. If automobiles are going to
be
assigned EIDs from a VIN number allocation from a manufacture, the
address is
relatively opaque. If a VM in a data-center is going to be assigned an
EID
from the set of prefixes already being used and allocated to that
data-center,
then there is a good chance that address is in a power-of-2 block that is
summarizable in the IGP.


- Section 3.2, second paragraph

Judging from the figure, xTRs are the common case, with single-
function ITRs and ETRs being rare.  It might be good to say that
and discuss when ITRs and ETRs that are not xTRs are appropriate
to use.

When you want egress path selection to happen further out in the
toplogical
from the source location, then you put an ITR-only system there. Where
ingress
to the same source (destination in this direction), the ETR can be
closer to
the destination.


- 3rd paragraph on p.7:


   Finally, the LISP architecture emphasizes a cost effective
   incremental deployment.

I'd delete "cost effective" here and look for other occurrences
of "cost" as candidates for deletion.  This is supposed to be
a technical document, so discussion of costs is a bit off-target.

Fair enough.

- First item after Figure 2:

   1.  HostA retrieves the EID_B of HostB, typically querying the DNS
       and obtaining and A or AAAA record.

"and A" -> "an A"  (spelling checkers don't catch everything).

Already noted and will be fixed.


- 3.3.1.  LISP Encapsulation

   On the other hand, Recursive
   tunnels are nested tunnels and are implemented by using multiple
LISP
   encapsulations on a packet.

The above sentence seems out of place in the middle of a paragraph
about
Re-encapsulating tunnels and routers - I suggest moving it down into
its
own paragraph and perhaps adding a sentence about where/how Recursive
tunnels may be useful.

Good suggestion and makes sense.

- 3.3.2.  LISP Forwarding State

   In the LISP architecture, ITRs keep just enough information to
route
   traffic flowing through it.

"it." -> "them."

   Meaning that, ITRs retrieve from the
   LISP Mapping System mappings between EID prefixes and RLOCs that
are
   used to encapsulate packets.

This is the first use of the notion of EID prefixes.  That concept
should
be explained before it is used, although a forward reference to
section
3.4.1 may suffice.  It might be better to rewrite this paragraph in
terms
of EIDs and leave the notion of EID prefixes to section 3.4.1.

Hmm, I'll let Albert and Damien decide if we should state "EID-prefixes"
everywhere instead of just "EID".


- 4.4.  MTU Handling

   Additionally, LISP also recommends inferring reachability of
locators
   by using information provided by the underlay, in particular:

It'd be useful to add a sentence or two about how LISP and the
techniques
in this section interact with host use of PMTUD and PLPMTUD.

This is a lot of detail because in RFC6830 we have 3 positions or
options on
the subject. And we did provide a reference to RFC6830 for this topic.

- Next to last paragraph on p.17:

   Additionally, LISP also recommends inferring reachability of
locators
   by using information provided by the underlay, in particular:

This looks like it's a paragraph early and needs to be moved down to
after the paragraph that follows it.

Agree.

idnits 2.13.01 didn't find any nits.

Thanks,
--David

Thanks again David.

Dino