[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[VRRP] A newly proposed draft



Hi, all:
 
We just proposed a new draft about a simplified vrrp protocol in IETF 76, which aims to reduce the overhead brought by vrrp signaling packets in certain cases. Could you please give us some comments and let us know whether you like the proposed idea. The draft is appended with the email.
 
Thank you in advance.
 
BR
 
Dacheng
 Network working group                                    Qiang Zhang 
 Internet Draft                                           Dacheng Zhang 
 Category: Standards Track                             
 Created: October 19, 2009                 Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd 
 Expires: April 2010                                                              
  
                                       
              Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (SVRRP) 
                                       
                       draft-zhang-vrrp-svrrp-00.txt 


 Status of this Memo 

    This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with 
    the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 

    Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 
    Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that 
    other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
    Drafts. 

    Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six 
    months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents 
    at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 
    material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 

    The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at   
    http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. 

    The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at   
    http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 

    This Internet-Draft will expire on April 19, 2010. 

 Copyright Notice 

    Copyright (c) 2009 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 in effect on the date of 
    publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info). 
    Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your 
    rights and restrictions with respect to this document. 



  
  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 1] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

 Abstract 

    In this document, we propose a simplified VRRP protocol called the 
    Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (SVRRP).The design 
    objective of SVRRP is to specify an election protocol that 
    dynamically assigns responsibility for a virtual router to one of 
    the SVRRP routers on a LAN, which is exactly as same as that of VRRP. 
    However, SVRRP executions do not exchange signaling packets and need 
    the assistance of VRRP to perform their functionality appropriately. 
    This approach can be used to improve the efficiency of VRRP routers 
    in certain scenarios.  

    Conventions used in this document 

    The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 
    "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 
    document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [RFC2119]. 

 Table of Contents 

     
    1. Introduction...................................................2 
    2. Terminology....................................................3 
    3. Motivating Scenario............................................3 
    4. SVRRP..........................................................4 
    5. IANA Considerations............................................7 
    6. Acknowledgments................................................7 
    7. References.....................................................7 
    Authors' Addresses................................................8 
     
 1. Introduction 

    In many typical scenarios (e.g., a VRRP router supporting multiple 
    VLANs), a VRRP router needs to backup multiple virtual routes (VRs) 
    simultaneously. In order to maintain the state of a VRRP instance 
    (execution) for the election of a VR, the router needs to exchange 
    VRRP signaling packets with other routers involved in the same 
    selection. The bandwidth consumed by the router in transporting VRRP 
    signaling packets is proportional to the number of the VRs which it 
    supports. In order to improve the efficiency of the VRRP routers in 
    such scenarios, a simplified VRRP, called Slave VRRP (SVRRP) is 
    proposed. SVRRP need not exchange signaling messages. Actually, the 
    state of a SVRRP instance is determined by another VRRP instance 
    (which is referred to as a MVRRP instance in this case). Therefore, 
    a VRRP router executing SVRRP needs in addition to execute MVRRP. 
    This solution is based on the fact that the states of a set of VRRP 
    instances located on a VRRP router are always identical and 


  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 2] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

    transferred in a synchronized way, e.g., when they share a same 
    physical interface. 

     

 2. Terminology 

    MVRRP  Router:  a  router  running  the  Management  Virtual  Router 
    Redundancy Protocol.  

    SVRRP Router: a router running the Slave Virtual Router Redundancy 
    Protocol.  

    VRRP instance: a VRRP execution on a router for the backup of a 
    virtual router. 

    MVRRP instance: a MVRRP execution on a router for the backup of a 
    virtual router.       

    SVRRP instance: a SVRRP execution on a router for the backup of a 
    virtual router. 

    VRRP backup group (VRRP BG): a collection of VRRP instances for the 
    backup of a same virtual router. 

    MVRRP backup group (MVRRP BG): a collection of MVRRP instances for 
    the backup of a same virtual router. 

    SVRRP backup group (SVRRP BG): a collection of SVRRP instances for 
    the backup of a same virtual router. 

    Broadcast_Timer:  a  global  timer  that  fire  to  trigger  sending 
    gratuitous ARP for SVRRP instances in Master. 

    Broadcast_interval: the interval of a Broadcast_Timer, default is 
    300 seconds. 

 3. Motivating Scenario 

    Figure 1 illustrates a motivating scenario where multiple hosts 
    belonging to different VLANs connect to two VRRP routers (Router1 
    and Router2) through a switch. The packets from the hosts are routed 
    to a same physical interface (e.g., Interface1) of the master VRRP 
    router (e.g., Router1). Moreover, the physical interface is divided 
    into multiple sub-interfaces; each is used to deal with the packets 
    in a VLAN.  

  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 3] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

    Because in principle a VR acts as a default router for hosts on a 
    shared LAN, each of the routers should generate a VRRP instance for 
    every VLAN respectively. As mentioned previously, a VRRP instance 
    needs to maintain a state machine and periodically exchange 
    signaling packets with others in the same VRRP back group. When the 
    number of VRRP instances supported by a VRRP router is large, the 
    resource ( e.g, bandwidth, CPU, memory )occupied in transporting and 
    processing signaling packets may influence the performance of the 
    router negatively.   
      +--------+                                                                  
      |  host1 +------------\                                                             
      +--------+            |     
       VLAN1                |                                                                 
      - - - - - -           |                   Interface1             
                           +----------+               +---------+                       
                           |          |     /---------+ Router1 +----/                  
      +--------+           |          |     |         +---------+    |                  
      |  host2 +-----------| switch   +-----|                        |      
      +--------+           |          |     |                        |-----  
             .             |          |     |                        |      
             .             +----------+     |         +---------+    |                                   
      - - - - - -           |               \---------+ Router2 +----\                  
         VLANn              |                         +---------+                       
      +--------+            |                                                           
      |  hostn +------------/                                                            
      +--------+                                                                  
                       Figure 1. Motivating Scenario 

    In this scenario, all the VRs share the same physical interface; the 
    states of the VRRP instances located on a same VRRP router are 
    always identical and change in a concurrent way. Therefore, it can 
    be effective to select a VRRP BG as the MVRRP BG while the instances 
    in other VRRP BGs are implemented with SVRRP. The state of a MVRRP 
    instance is shared by the SVRRP instances on the same VRRP router, 
    and any change in the state of the MVRRP instance can trigger 
    identical changes in the states of the corresponding SVRRP instances. 
    Therefore, Router1 and Router2 only need to exchange VRRP signaling 
    packets for the MVRRP BG, irrespective of how may VRs they are 
    supporting.  

 4. SVRRP 

    4.1.  State Transition Diagram 

     
     
     
     
  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 4] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

                          +---------------+ 
               +--------->|               |<-------------+ 
               |          |  Initialize   |              | 
               |   +------|               |----------+   | 
               |   |      +---------------+          |   | 
               |   |                                 |   | 
               |   V                                 V   | 
       +---------------+                       +---------------+ 
       |               |---------------------->|               | 
       |    Master     |                       |    Backup     | 
       |               |<----------------------|               | 
       +---------------+                       +---------------+ 
     

    4.2.  State Descriptions 

    In the state descriptions below, the state names are identified by 
    {state-name}, and the packets are identified by all upper case 
    characters.  

    There are two key events in the SVRRP state machine, the Startup 
    event and the Shutdown event. A Startup event arises when the 
    associated interface is available and the associate MVRRP instance 
    is in the {Backup} or the {Master} state. A Shutdown event arises 
    when the interface is unavailable or the associated MVRRP instance 
    is in the {Initialize} state. 

    4.2.1.  Initialize 

    A SVRRP instance in this state just waits for a Startup event. If a 
    Startup event is received, then: 

       -  If State of MVRRP is {Master} 

         -  If broadcast_timer is inactive, then: 

             o set broadcast_timer to broadcast_interval.   

             endif 

          o  Broadcast a gratuitous ARP request containing the virtual 

             router MAC address for each IP address associated with the 

             virtual router. 


  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 5] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

          o  Transition to the {Master} state. 

          else 

          o  Transition to the {Backup} state 

          endif 

    4.2.2.  Backup 

          While in this state, MUST discard ADVERTISEMENT received. 

       -  If receiving a Shutdown event: 

          o  Transition to the {Initialize} state 

          endif 

       -  If the state of the associated MVRRP instance is transferred 
    into Master. then: 

          o  Broadcast a gratuitous ARP request containing the virtual 

             router MAC address for each IP address associated with the 

             virtual router. 

          o  Transition to the {Master} state 

          endif 

    4.2.3.  Master 

       While in this state, a SVRRP instance must discard the received 
    ADVERTISEMENT packets and periodically send gratuitous ARP packets 
    according to Broadcast_timer in order to update a cache of MAC 
    address of switch and/or hosts. 

     

        -  If a Shutdown event is received, then: 

          o  Transition to the {Initialize} state  

          endif 


  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 6] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

        -  If the state of the associated MVRRP instance is transferred 
    into Backup, then: 

          o  Transition to the {Backup} state 

          endif 

        -  If the Broadcast_timer fires, then: 

          o  Broadcast a gratuitous ARP request containing the virtual 

             router MAC address for each IP address associated with the 

             virtual router. 

          endif 
     

 5. IANA Considerations 

    No such considerations. 

 6. Acknowledgments 

    Thank Peter Smith for his kindly revision and precious comments.  

 7. References 

    [RFC3768] R. Hinden, Ed., " Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol 
    (VRRP)", RFC 3768, April 2004. 

    [RFC2338] S. Knight, D. Weaver, D. Whipple, R. Hinden, D. Mitzel, P. 
    Hunt, P. Higginson, M. Shand, A. Lindem, " Virtual Router Redundancy 
    Protocol" RFC 2338, April 1998. 

     










  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 7] 

 Internet-Draft Slave Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol October 2009 
     

 Authors' Addresses 

    Qiang Zhang 
    Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd 
    Huihong Building, No.91 Baixia Rd., 
    Baixia District  
    Nanjing, 210001 
    P.R. China 
    Email: njzq at huawei.com 
     
     
    Dacheng Zhang 
    Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd 
    KuiKe Building, No.9 Xinxi Rd., 
    Hai-Dian District  
    Beijing, 100085 
    P.R. China 
    Email: zhangdacheng at huawei.com 
     
     
     


























  
  
 Zhang.                  Expires April 19, 2010                 [Page 8]