Paul Francis wrote:
Ok, I'll dig back into RFC5036. I was assuming that, since the external router is the target of the tunnel, but since the border router detunnels,then this meant PHP.
Since the border router is the first one which assigns a label to a prefix, I think it qualifies as ultimate hop. Just in case: I assume that the draft doesn't require speaking LDP to an external peer, right?
terminology). I.e. it means that a border VA router must not advertise implicit (or explicit) null label for FECs corresponding to externalnext-hops.I'm afraid that I'm not up enough on MPLS terminology to even know what the above means. My bad. I'll figure it out.
It simply means that a border router must assign a separate non null label for each external next-hop to be able avoid doing L3 lookup for any of egressing packets and switch the packets solely on that label. I think this is what you intended in your draft.
I think that there might be some implementation difficulties when there're multiple external next-hops on a multiple access link, but I'll leave this to others, who are far more knowledgeable than me about current implementations, to comment.
Also section 3.2.3 implies that external next-hops must be carried inside AS' IGP, and IMHO the draft should explicitly say so.Good point---will add this in the next version. BTW, of course another approach would be to use stacked labels, with the outer label targeting the border router, and the inner label identifying the external peer. I'd love to hear what people think of this as an alternative (or additional) approach.
Well, you might need to extend LDP to be able to do that. Probably, procedures outlined in Kireeti Kompella's presentation (http://www.isocore.com/mpls2007/cd/Presentations/132%20Kireeti%20Kompella.pdf) might help. Though I'm not sure about standardization status of this approach.
Another problem is mixing legacy hop-by-hop forwarding and VA. Consider the following topology. 10 A--------B | | |100 | 10 | | C--------D------E 10 10 A, B, D are VA routers. A is APR. B and E are legacy routers capable of only hop-by-hop forwarding, i.e. not doing MPLS. Link metrics are shown. Packets ingress the topology at A. They get forwarded to B as plain IP since B is not an LSR. B forwards plain IP packets to D. D is a VA router and has suppressed the specific routes, thus it sends the packets back to A.Yes. This is why the draft states (clearly, I hope!) that legacy routers must at least do MPLS. If this is a problem (i.e., there are legacy routers that don't do MPLS), then I believe that there is a way around this problem, but it is a bit complex and I'd like to avoid it.
As I read the draft you still reserve a possibility of throwing hop-by-hop forwarding routers into the mix (section 2.1 and 3.2.1). IMHO, it is the best to avoid complexities of such configuration and strictly require all the routers to do MPLS.
PF-- dg
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