wdiff draft-amante-irs-topology-use-cases-00.txt draft-amante-irs-topology-use-cases-01.txt

Internet Engineering Task Force S. Amante
Internet-Draft Level 3 Communications, Inc.
Intended status: Informational J. Medved
Expires: April 5, 2013
Internet-Draft Cisco Systems, Inc.
Intended status: Informational T. Nadeau
Expires: February 17, 2014 Juniper Networks
October 2, 2012
S. Amante

August 16, 2013

Topology API Use Cases
draft-amante-irs-topology-use-cases-00
draft-amante-irs-topology-use-cases-01

Abstract

This document describes use cases for gathering routing, forwarding
and policy information, (hereafter referred to as topology
information), about the network and reflecting changes to the
topology back into the network and related systems. network. It describes several applications
that need to view or change the topology of the underlying physical or logical
network. This document further demonstrates a need for a "Topology
Manager" and related functions that collects topology data from
network elements and other data sources, coalesces the collected data
into a coherent view of the overall network topology, and normalizes
the network topology view for use by clients -- namely, applications
that consume or want to
change topology information.

Status of this This Memo

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2
1.1. Statistics Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4
1.2. Inventory Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. The Orchestration, Collection & Presentation Framework . . . . . . 7
3.1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. The Topology Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3. The Policy Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4. Orchestration Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 10
4. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 11
4.1. Virtualized Views of the Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 11
4.1.1. Capacity Planning and Traffic Engineering . . . . . . 11
4.1.1.1. Present Mode of Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.2. Services Provisioning
4.1.1.2. Proposed Mode of Operation . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.2. Services Provisioning . . . . . 15
4.1.3. Rapid IP Renumbering, AS Migration . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.1.4. . 14
4.1.3. Troubleshooting & Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 14
4.2. Path Computation Element (PCE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 15
4.3. ALTO Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 16
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 17
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 17
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 17
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 17
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 18
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 18
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 18

1. Introduction

In today's networks, a variety of applications, such as Traffic
Engineering, Capacity Planning, Security Auditing or Services
Provisioning (for example, Virtual Private Networks), have a common
need to acquire and consume network topology information.
Unfortunately, all of these applications are (typically) vertically
integrated: each uses its own proprietary normalized view of the
network and proprietary data collectors, interpreters and adapters,
which speak a variety of protocols, (SNMP, CLI, SQL, etc.) directly
to network elements and to back-office systems. While some of the
topological information can be distributed using routing protocols,
unfortunately it is not desirable for some of these applications to
understand or participate in routing protocols.

This approach is incredibly inefficient for several reasons. First,
developers must write duplicate 'network discovery' functions, which
then become challenging to maintain over time, particularly as/when
new equipment are first introduced to the network. Second, since
there is no common "vocabulary" to describe various components in the
network, such as physical links, logical links, or IP prefixes, each
application has its own data model. To solve this, some solutions
have distributed this information in the normalized form of routing
distribution. However, this information still does not contain
"inactive" topological information, thus not containing information
considered to be part of a network's inventory.

These limitations lead to applications being unable to easily
exchange information with each other. For example, applications
cannot share changes with each other that are (to be) applied to the
physical and/or logical network, such as installation of new physical
links, or deployment of security ACL's. Each application must
frequently poll network elements and other data sources to ensure
that it has a consistent representation of the network so that it can
carry out its particular domain-specific tasks. In other cases,
applications that cannot speak routing protocols must use proprietary
CLI or other management interfaces which represent the topological
information in non-standard formats or worse, semantic models.

Overall, the software architecture described above at best results in
incredibly
inefficient use of both software developer resources and network
resources, and at worst, it results in some applications simply not
having access to this information.

Figure 1 is an illustration of how individual applications collect
data from the underlying network. Applications retrieve inventory,
network topology, state and statistics information by communicating
directly with underlying Network Elements as well as with
intermediary proxies of the information. In addition, applications
transmit changes required of a Network Element's configuration and/or
state directly to individual Network Elements, (most commonly using
CLI or Netconf). It is important to note that the "data models" or
semantics of this information contained within Network Elements are
largely proprietary with respect to most configuration and state
information, hence why a proprietary CLI is often the only choice to
reflect changes in a NE's configuration or state. This remains the
case even when standards-based mechanisms such as Netconf are used
which provide a standard syntax model, but still often lack due to
the proprietary semantics associated with the internal representation
of the information.

+---------------+
+----------------+ |
| Applications |-+
+----------------+
^ ^ ^
SQL, RPC, ReST # | * SQL, RPC, ReST ...
########################
########################## | ************************ **********************
# | *
+------------+ | +------------+
| Statistics | | | Inventory |
| Collection | | | Collection |
+------------+ | +------------+
^ | NETCONF, I2RS, SNMP, ^
| | CLI, TL1, ... |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+
+------------------------+-----------------------+
| | |
V V V
+----------------+ +----------------+ +----------------+
| Network Element| | Network Element| | Network
+---------------+ +---------------+ +---------------+
|Network Element| |Network Element| |Network Element|
| +------------+ +-----------+ | | +-----------+ | | +-----------+ |
| |Information| |<-LLDP->| +------------+ |Information| |<-LMP->| +------------+ |Information| |
| | Data Model | | | | Data Model | | | | Data Model | |
| +------------+ +-----------+ | | +------------+ +-----------+ | | +------------+ +-----------+ |
+----------------+ +----------------+ +----------------+
+---------------+ +---------------+ +---------------+

Figure 1: Applications getting topology data

Figure 1 shows how current management interfaces such as NETCONF,
SNMP, CLI, etc. are used to transmit or receive information to/from
various Network Elements. The figure also shows that protocols such
as LLDP and LMP participate in topology discovery, specifically to
discover adjacent network elements.

The following sections describe the "Statistics Collection" and
"Inventory Collection" functions.

1.1. Statistics Collection

In Figure 1, "Statistics Collection" is a dedicated infrastructure
that collects statistics from Network Elements. It periodically
polls Network Elements (for
example, every 5-minutes) polls Network Elements for octets
transferred per interface, per LSP, etc. Collected statistics are
stored and collated, (for example, to provide hourly, daily, weekly
95th-percentile figures), collated within the a statistics data warehouse. Applications
typically query the statistics data warehouse rather than poll
Network Elements directly to get the appropriate set of link
utilization figures for their analysis.

1.2. Inventory Collection

"Inventory Collection" is a network function responsible for
collecting network element component and state (i.e.: interface up/
down, SFP/XFP optics inserted into physical port, etc.) information directly from network elements, Network
Elements, as well as for storing inventory information about physical
network assets that are not retrievable from network elements, (hereafter Network Elements. The
collected data is hereafter referred to as a inventory asset
database). the 'Inventory Asset
Database. Examples of information collected from Network Elements
are: interface up/down status, the type of SFP/XFP optics inserted
into physical port, etc.

The Inventory Collection from network elements commonly function may use SNMP and CLI to acquire
inventory information. information from Network Elements. The information housed
in the Inventory Manager is retrieved by applications using via a variety
of protocols: SQL, RPC, REST etc. Inventory information, retrieved
from Network Elements, is periodically updated in the Inventory
Collection system on a periodic basis to reflect changes in the physical and/or logical
network assets. The polling interval to retrieve updated information
is varied depending on scaling constraints of the Inventory
Collection systems and expected intervals at which changes to the
physical and/or logical assets are expected to occur.

Examples of changes in network inventory that need be learned by the
Inventory Collection function are as follows:

o Discovery of new Network Elements. These elements may or may not
be actively used in the network (i.e.: provisioned but not yet
activated).

o Insertion or removal of line cards or other modules, i.e.: such as
optics modules, during service or equipment provisioning.

o Changes made to a specific Network Element through a management
interface by a field technician.

o Indication of an NE's physical location and associated cable run
list, at the time of installation.

o Insertion of removal of cables that result in dynamic discovery of
a new or lost adjacent neighbor, etc.

1.3. Requirements Language
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]

2. Terminology

The following briefly defines some of the terminology used within
this document.

Inventory Manager: Describes Manager is a function of collecting network
element that collects Network Element
inventory and state information directly from network
elements, Network Elements and potentially
from associated offline inventory databases,
via standards-based data models. Components contained in this
super set might databases. Inventory
information may only be visible or invisible to at a specific network
layer, i.e.: layer; for
example, a physical link is visible within the IGP, however
the but a Layer-2
switch through which the physical link traverses is unknown to the
Layer-3 IGP. .

Policy Manager: Describes Manager is a function of attaching that attaches metadata to network
components/attributes. Such metadata is likely to may include security,
routing, L2 VLAN ID, IP numbering, etc. policies that policies, which enable the
Topology Manager to: a) assemble

* Assemble a normalized view of the network for clients to access; b) allow (or
upper-layer applications

* Allow clients (or, upper-
layer (or upper-layer applications) read-only vs. read-write access to
information collected from various network layers and/or
network components, etc.

The Policy Manager function may be a sub-component of the Topology
Manager or it may be a standalone. This will be determined as the work with IRS
evolves. standalone function.

Topology Manager: Network components (inventory, etc.) are retrieved
from the Inventory Manager and synthesized with is a function that collects topological information
from
the Policy Manager into cohesive, normalized views a variety of sources in the network
layers. The Topology Manager exposes and provides a normalized views
view of the network via standards-based data models to Clients, or higher-
layer applications, topology to act upon in a read-only and/or read-write
fashion. The Topology Manager may also push information back into
the Inventory Manager clients and/or Network Elements to execute changes
to the network's behavior, configuration or state. higher-layer
applications.

Orchestration Manager: Describes Manager is a function of stitching that stitches together
resources (i.e.: compute, storage)
resources, such as compute or storage, and/or services with the
network or vice-versa. The To realize a complete service, the
Orchestration Manager relies on the capabilities provided by the other
"Managers" listed above in
order to realize a complete service. above.

Normalized Topology Data Model: A data model that Information Model is constructed and
represented using an open, standards-based
information model that is
consistent between implementations.

Data of the network topology.

Information Model Abstraction: The notion that one is able to
represent the same set of elements in a data an information model at
different levels of "focus" in order to limit the amount of
information exchanged in order to convey this information.

Multi-Layer Topology: Topology is commonly referred to using the OSI
protocol layering model. For example, Layer 3 represents routed
topologies that typically use IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. It is
envisioned that, eventually, multiple layers of the network may be
represented in a single, normalized view of the network to certain
applications, (i.e.: Capacity Planning, Traffic Engineering, etc.)

Network Element (NE): (NE) refers to a network device that typically is
addressable (but not always), and hosts. or a host. It is sometimes referred
to as Nodes. a 'Node'.

Links: Every NE contains at least 1 link. These are used to connect
the NE to other NEs in the network. Links may be in a variety of
states including
states, such as up, down, administratively down, internally
testing, or dormant. Links are often synonymous with network
ports on NEs.

3. The Orchestration, Collection & Presentation Framework

3.1. Overview

Section 1 demonstrates the need for a network function that would
provide a common, standard-based standards-based topology view to applications.
Such topology collection/management/presentation function would be a
part of a wider framework, framework that would should also include policy management
and orchestration. The framework is shown in Figure 2.

+---------------+
+----------------+ |
| Applications |-+
+----------------+
Websockets, ReST, XMPP, ...
^ Websockets, ReST, XMPP, ...
+-------------------------+-------------------------+ XMPP...
+------------------------+-------------------------+
| | |
+------------+ +-------------------------+ +------------------------+ +-------------+
| Policy |<----| Topology Manager |---->|Orchestration|
| Manager | | +---------------------+ +--------------------+ | | Manager |
+------------+ | |Topology Information| | +-------------+
| | Topology Data Model | | +-------------+
| +---------------------+ +--------------------+ |
+-------------------------+
+------------------------+
^ ^ ^
Websockets, ReST, XMPP # | * Websockets, ReST, XMPP
########################
####################### | ************************
# | *
+------------+ | +------------+
| Statistics | | | Inventory |
| Collection | | | Collection |
+------------+ | +------------+
^ | IRS, I2RS, NETCONF, SNMP, ^
| | TL1 ... |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+
+------------------------+------------------------+
| | |
V V V
+----------------+ +----------------+ +----------------+
| Network
+---------------+ +---------------+ +---------------+
|Network Element| | Network |Network Element| | Network |Network Element|
| +------------+ +-----------+ | | +-----------+ | | +-----------+ |
| |Information| |<-LLDP->| +------------+ |<-LMP->| +------------+ |Information| |<-LMP-->| |Information| |
| | Data Model | | | | Data Model | | | | Data Model | |
| +------------+ +-----------+ | | +------------+ +-----------+ | | +------------+ +-----------+ |
+----------------+ +----------------+ +----------------+
+---------------+ +---------------+ +---------------+

Figure 2: Topology Manager

The following sections describe in detail the Topology Manager,
Policy Manager and Orchestration Manager functions.

3.2. The Topology Manager

The Topology Manager is responsible for retrieving a function that collects topological
information from a variety of sources in the network via and provides a variety
cohesive, abstracted view of sources. the network topology to clients and/or
higher-layer applications. The first
most obvious source topology view is the based on a
standards-based, normalized topology information model.

Topology information sources can be:

o The "live" Layer 3 IGP or an equivalent mechanism.
"Live" IGP mechanism that provides
information about links that are components of the active topology, in other words
topology. Active topology links that are present in the Link State
Database (LSDB) and are eligible for forwarding. The
second source of topology Layer 3 IGP
information is the can be obtained by listening to IGP updates flooded
through an IGP domain, or from Network Elements.

o The Inventory Collection
system, which system that provides information for
network components not visible within the Layer 3 IGP's LSDB,
(i.e.: links or nodes, or properties of those links or nodes, at
lower layers of the network).

o The Topology Manager would synthesize retrieved information into
cohesive, abstracted views of the network using a standards-based,
normalized topology data model. Statistics Collection system that provides traffic
information, such as traffic demands or link utilizations.

The Topology Manager can then expose
these data models provides topology information to Clients, Clients or
higher-layer applications using via a northbound interface, which would be a protocol/API commonly used by
higher-layer applications to retrieve and update information.
Examples of such protocols are as ReST,
Websockets, or XMPP. Topology
Manager's clients would be able to act upon the information in a
read-only and/or read-write fashion, (based on policies defined
within the Policy Manager).

Clients may request changes to the network topology by publishing
changes within data models and sending those to the Topology Manager.

The Topology Manager internally validates the requested changes
against various constraints and, if the changes are permitted, the
Topology Manager updates associated Managers (Policy or Inventory
Managers), communicates those changes to the individual network
elements and, finally, verifies that those configurations were
properly received and executed by the network elements.

It is envisioned that the Topology Manager will ultimately contain topology information for multiple
layers of the network: Transport, Ethernet and IP/MPLS IP/MPLS, as well as
information for multiple (IGP) Layer 3 IGP areas and/or and multiple Autonomous
Systems (ASes). This allows the Topology Manager to
stitch together a holistic view of several layers of the network,
which is an important requirement, particularly for upper-layer The topology information can be used by higher-level
applications, such as Traffic Engineering, Capacity Planning and Provisioning Clients
(applications)
Provisioning. Such applications are typically used to design,
augment and optimize IP/MPLS networks
that networks, and require knowledge of
underlying Shared Risk Link Groups (SRLG) within the Transport and/or
Ethernet layers of the network.

The Topology Manager must have the ability be able to discover and
communicate with network elements who Network Elements that
are not only active and visible
within in the "live" L3 IGP's Link State Database (LSDB) of an (LSDB).
Such Network Elements can either be inactive, or active IGP, but also
network elements who are active, but invisible to a
in the L3 LSDB (e.g.: L2 Ethernet switches, ROADM's, etc.) or Network
Elements that are part of the in an underlying
Transport network. This requirement will influence the choice of
protocols needed by the Topology Manager to communicate to/from
network elements at the various network layers.

It is also important to recognize that the Topology Manager will be
gleaning not only (relatively) transport network).

In addition static inventory information collected from the Inventory
Manager, i.e.: what linecards, interface types, etc. are
actively inserted into network elements, but the Topology Manager will also collect dynamic inventory
information, as well. With respect to the latter, network elements
are expected to rely on
information. For example, Network Elements utilize various Link
Layer Discovery Protocols (i.e.: LLDP, LMP, etc.) that will aid in to automatically identifying an
identify adjacent node, port, etc. at the far-side of a link. nodes and ports. This information is then can be pushed to
or pulled by the Topology Manager in order for it to have create an accurate
representation of the physical topology of the network. network

3.3. The Policy Manager

The Policy Manager is the function used to enforce and program
policies applicable to network component/attribute data. Policy
enforcement is a network-wide function that can be consumed by
various network elements Network Elements and services services, including the Inventory
Manager, the Topology Manager or and other network elements. Network Elements. Such
policies are likely to encompass the following. following:

o Logical Identifier Numbering Policies

* Correlation of IP prefix to link based on type of link (P-P, type, such as
P-P, P-PE, PE-CE, etc.) or PE-CE.

* Correlation of IP Prefix to IGP Area

* Layer-2 VLAN ID assignments, etc.

o Routing Configuration Policies

* OSPF Area or IS-IS Net-ID to Node (Type) Correlation

* BGP routing policies, i.e.: such as nodes designated for injection of
aggregate routes, max-prefix policies, or AFI/SAFI to node
correlation, etc.
correlation..

o Security Policies

* Access Control Lists

* Rate-limiting

o Network Component/Attribute Data Access Policies. Client's
(upper-layer application) read-only or read-write access to Network Components/Attributes
contained in the "Inventory Manager" as well as Policies contained
within the "Policy Manager" itself.

The Policy Manager function may be either a sub-component of the
Topology or Orchestration Manager or it may be a standalone. This will be
determined as the work with IRS evolves. standalone component.

3.4. Orchestration Manager

The Orchestration Manager provides the ability to stitch together
resources (i.e.: compute, (such as compute or storage) and/or services with the
network or vice-versa. Examples of 'generic' services may include
the following:

o Application-specific Load Balancing
o Application-specific Network (Bandwidth) Optimization

o Application or End-User specific Class-of-Service

o Application or End-User specific Network Access Control

The above services could then enable coupling of resources with the
network to realize the following:

o Network Optimization: Creation and Migration of Virtual Machines
(VM's) so they are adjacent to storage in the same DataCenter.

o Network Access Control: Coupling of available (generic) compute
nodes within the appropriate point of the data-path to perform
firewall, NAT, etc. functions on data traffic.

The Orchestration Manager is expected to will exchange data information models with the
Topology Manager, the Policy Manager and the Inventory Manager functions. Manager. In
addition, the Orchestration Manager is expected to must support publish and
subscribe capabilities to those functions, as well as to Clients,
to enable scalability with respect to event notifications. Clients.

The Orchestration Manager may receive requests from Clients
(applications) for immediate access to specific network resources.
However, Clients may request to schedule future appointments to
reserve appropriate network resources when, for example, a special
event is scheduled to start and end.

Finally, the Orchestration Manager should have the flexibility to
determine what network layer(s) may be able to satisfy a given
Client's request, based on constraints received from the Client as
well as those constraints learned from the Policy and/or and Topology
Manager functions. Managers.
This could allow the Orchestration Manager to, for example, satisfy a
given service request for a given Client using the optical network
(via OTN service) if there is insufficient IP/
MPLS IP/MPLS capacity at the
specific moment the Client's request is received.

The operational model is shown in the following figure.

TBD.

Figure 3: Overall Reference Model

4. Use Cases

4.1. Virtualized Views of the Network

4.1.1. Capacity Planning and Traffic Engineering
4.1.1.1. Present Mode of Operation

When performing Traffic Engineering and/or Capacity Planning of an
IP/MPLS IP
/MPLS network, it is important to account for SRLG's that exist
within the underlying physical, optical and Ethernet networks.
Currently, it's quite common to create and/or take "snapshots", "snapshots" at infrequent intervals,
intervals that comprise the inventory data of the underlying physical
and optical layer networks. This inventory data is then needs to be massaged or normalized
to conform to the data import requirements of sometimes separate Traffic
Engineering and/or Capacity Planning tools. This process is error-prone error-
prone and inefficient, particularly as the underlying network
inventory information changes due to introduction of, for example, of new network
element makes or models, linecards, line cards, capabilities, etc. at the optical
and/or Ethernet layers etc..

The present mode of the underlying network.

This operation is inefficient with respect to the time and expense consumed by
software developer, Capacity Planning and Traffic Engineering
resources to normalize and sanity check underlying network inventory
information, before it can be consumed by IP/MPLS Software
Development, Capacity Planning and Traffic Engineering applications. resources.
Due to this inefficiency, the underlying physical network inventory information,
information (containing SRLG and corresponding critical network asset information), used by the
IP/MPLS Capacity Planning and TE applications
assets information) is not updated frequently, thus exposing the
network to, at minimum, inefficient utilization and, at worst,
critical impairments.

4.1.1.2. Proposed Mode of Operation

First, the Inventory Manager function is required that will, first, will extract inventory information from
network elements -- and potentially associated offline inventory databases. Information
extracted from inventory databases to acquire will include physical cross-
connects and other information that is not available directly from
network elements -- at the physical, optical, Ethernet and IP/MPLS
layers of the network via standards-based data models. Data elements. Standards-based information models and associated
vocabulary will be required to represent not only components inside
or directly connected to network elements, but also to represent
components of a physical layer path (i.e.: cross-connect panels,
etc.) The aforementioned inventory data will comprise the complete set of inactive
and active network components.

A Statistics Collection Function is

Second, the Topology Manager will augment the inventory information
with topology information obtained from Network Elements and other
sources, and provide an IGP-based view of the active topology of the
network. The Topology Manager will also required. As stated above,
it include non-topology dynamic
information from IGPs, such as Available Bandwidth, Reserved
Bandwidth, Traffic Engineering (TE) attributes associated with links,
etc.

Finally, the Statistics Collector will collect utilization statistics
from Network Elements, and archive and aggregate them in a statistics
data warehouse. Summaries of
these figures Selected statistics and other dynamic data may be
distributed through IGP routing protocols
([I-D.ietf-isis-te-metric-extensions] and

[I-D.ietf-ospf-te-metric-extensions]) and then need to collected at the
Statistics Collection Function via BGP-LS
([I-D.ietf-idr-ls-distribution]). Statistics summaries then will be
exposed in normalized data information models to the Topology Manager so it can easily acquire historical link and LSP
utilization figures that Manager,
which can be used use them to, for example, build trended utilization models
to forecast expected changes to the physical
and/or and logical network components to accommodate network growth.

The Topology Manager function may then augment the Inventory Manager
information by communicating directly with Network Elements to reveal
the IGP-based view of the active topology of the network. This will
allow the Topology Manager to include dynamic information from the
IGP, such as Available Bandwidth, Reserved Bandwidth, etc. Traffic
Engineering (TE) attributes associated with links, contained with the
Traffic Engineering Database (TED) on Network Elements.
components.

It is important to recognize that extracting topology information
from the network solely via an IGP, (such as IS-IS from Network Elements and IGPs (IS-IS TE or
OSPF TE), is inadequate for this use case. First, IGP's IGPs only expose
the active components (e.g. vertices of the SPF tree) of the IP network;
unfortunately, they
network, and are not aware of "hidden" or inactive interfaces within
IP/MPLS network elements, (e.g.: unused linecards or such as unused
ports), line cards or ports. IGPs
are also not aware of components that reside at a lower layer lower than IP/MPLS, e.g. IP
/MPLS, such as Ethernet switches, or Optical transport systems, etc. This occurs
frequently during the course of maintenance, augment and optimization
activities on the network. systems.
Second, IGP's only convey SRLG information that have been first
applied within the a router's configurations, either manually or
programatically. As mentioned previously, this SRLG information in
the IP/MPLS network is subject to being infrequently updated and, as
a result, may inadequately account for critical, underlying network
fate sharing properties that are necessary to properly design
resilient circuits and/or paths through the network.

In this use case, the Inventory Manager will need to be capable of
using a variety of existing protocols such as: NETCONF, CLI, SNMP,
TL1, etc. depending on the capabilities of the network elements. The
Topology Manager will need to be capable of communicating via an IGP
from a (set of) Network Elements. It is important to consider that
to acquire topology information from Network Elements will require
read-only access to the IGP. However, the end result of the
computations performed by the Capacity Planning Client may require
changes to various IGP attributes, (e.g.: IGP metrics, TE link-
colors, etc.) These may be applied directly by devising a new
capability to either: a) inject information into the IGP that
overrides the same information injected by the originating Network
Element; or, b) allowing the Topology and/or Inventory Manager the
ability to write changes to the Network Element's configuration in
order to have it adjust the appropriate IGP attribute(s) and re-flood
them throughout the IGP. It would be desirable to have a single
mechanism (data model or protocol) that allows the Topology Manager
to read and write IGP attributes.

Once the Topology Manager function has assembled a normalized view of the
topology and synthesized associated metadata associated with each component of the topology (link type, link properties, statistics, intra-layer
relationships, etc.), topology,
it can then expose this information via its northbound API to Clients. In this use case that means the Capacity
Planning and Traffic Engineering applications, which are not required
to know innate details of individual network elements, but do applications. The applications only
require generalized information about the node nodes and links that comprise
the network, e.g.: links used to interconnect nodes, SRLG information
(from the underlying network), utilization rates of each link over
some period of time, etc. In this case, it is important

Note that any
Client client/application that understands both the web services Topology
Manager's northbound API and the normalized
data its topology information model can
communicate with the Topology Manager in order to
understand the network Manager. Note also that topology
information that was may be provided by
network elements Network Elements from potentially different
vendors, all of which
likely represent that topology information internally using may use different information models. If the a Client had gone directly
wanted to the network elements
themselves, retrieve topology information directly from Network
Elements, it would have to translate and then normalize these different representations for itself. However, in this case, the
Topology Manager has done that for it.

When this information is consumed by the
representations.

A Traffic Engineering
application, it application may run a variety of CSPF
algorithms the result of
which is likely that create a list of RSVP LSP's TE tunnels that need to be
(re-)established, or torn down, in the network to globally optimize
the packing efficiency of physical links throughout the network. The
end result of the Traffic Engineering application is "pushing" out to
the Topology Manager, via a standard data model to be defined here, a
list of RSVP LSP's and their associated characteristics, (i.e.: head
and tail-end LSR's, bandwidth, priority, preemption, etc.). The
Topology Manager
TE tunnels are then would consume this information and carry out
those instructions by speaking directly to programmed into the network elements, perhaps
via PCEP Extensions for Stateful PCE [I-D.ietf-pce-stateful-pce],
which in turn initiates RSVP signaling either directly or
through a controller. Programming of TE tunnels into the network to
establish the LSP's.

After this information is consumed by
outside the scope of this document.

A Capacity Planning
application, it application may run a variety of algorithms the
result of which is a list of new inventory that is required to be purchased (or,
redeployed) for
purchase or redeployment, as well as associated work orders for field
technicians to augment the network for expected growth. It would be ideal if
this information was also "pushed" back into the Topology and, in
turn, Inventory Manager as "inactive" links and/or nodes, so that as
new equipment is installed it can be automatically correlated with
original design and work order packages associated with that augment.

4.1.2. Services Provisioning

Beyond Capacity Planning and Traffic Engineering applications, having
a normalized view of just the IP/MPLS layer of the network is still
very important for other mission critical applications applications, such as
Security Auditing and IP/MPLS Services Provisioning, (e.g.: L2VPN,
L3VPN, etc.). With respect to the latter, these types of
applications should not need a detailed understanding of, for
example, SRLG information, assuming that the underlying MPLS Tunnel
LSP's are known to account for the resiliency requirements of all
services that ride over them. Nonetheless, for both types of
applications it is critical that they to have a common and up-to-date
normalized view of the IP/MPLS network in order to easily to, for example, instantiate
new services at the appropriate places optimal locations in the network, in the case of
VPN services, or to validate that ACL's are configured properly
proper ACL configuration to protect associated routing, signaling and
management protocols on the
network, with respect to Security Auditing.

For this use case, what is most commonly needed by a network.

A VPN Service Provisioning application is as follows. First, must perform the following
resource selection operations:

o Identify Service PE's need to
be identified in all markets/cities where the customer has
identified they want service. Next, does their exist one, service

o Identify one or more, more existing Servies PE's in each city with
connectivity to the access network(s), e.g.: SONET/
TDM, SONET/TDM, used to
deliver the PE-CE tail circuits to the Service's PE.
Finally, does

o Determine that the Services PE have available capacity on both the
PE-CE access interface and its uplinks to terminate the tail circuit?
If this were to be generalized, this would be considered an Resource
Selection function. Namely, the
circuit

The VPN Provisioning application would iteratively query the Topology
Manager to narrow down the scope of resources to the set of Services PE's
PEs with the appropriate uplink bandwidth and access circuit
capability plus capacity to realize the requested VPN service. Once
the VPN Provisioning application has a candidate list of resources it then
requests programming of the Topology Manager to
go about configuring the Services Service PE's and associated access
circuits to realize the set up a customer's VPN service.

4.1.3. Rapid IP Renumbering, AS Migration

A variety of reasons exist for service into the "rapid renumbering" of IPv4/IPv6
prefixes and ASN's in an IP/MPLS network. Perhaps the most common
reason is as a result
Programming of mergers, acquisitions or divestitures of
companies, organizations or divisions.

Inside the network of an Enterprise or Service Provider, there
already exist protocols such as DHCP or SLAAC to support rapid
renumbering of hosts, (i.e.: servers, laptops, tablets, etc.). These
are PEs is outside the scope of this document. However, there still exists
a critical need to quickly renumber network infrastructure, namely:
router interfaces, management interfaces, etc. in order to: a) avoid
overlapping RFC 1918 addresses in previously separate domains; b)
allow for (better) aggregation of IP prefixes within areas/domains of
an IGP; c) allow for more efficient utilization of globally unique
IPv4 addresses, which are in limited supply; d) realize business
synergies of combining two different AS'es into one, etc.

The set of IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes that have been configured on point-
to-point, LAN, Loopback, Tunnel, Management, PE-CE and other
interfaces would be gathered from all network elements by the
Inventory Manager function. Similarly, the set of ASN's that have
been configured on individual NE's, as the global BGP Autonomous
System Number, and the PE-CE interfaces is also acquired from the
Inventory Manager. Afterward, an "inventory" report of the total
number, based on type, of IPv4/IPv6 prefixes could be quickly
assembled to understand how much address space is required to
accommodate the existing network, but also future growth plans.
Next, a new IP prefix and ASN would be assigned to the overall
network. An operator may then decide to manually carve up the IP
prefix into sub-prefixes that are assigned to various functions or
interface types in the network, i.e.: all Loopback interface
addresses are assigned from a specific GUA IPv4/IPv6 prefix. Other
rules may be crafted by the operator so that, for example, GUA IPv4/
IPv6 prefixes for interfaces within each IGP area are assigned out of
contiguous address space so that they may be (easily) summarized
within the IGP configuration. Finally, the set of ASN's, IP
prefixes, rules and/or policies governing how their are to be
assigned are encoded in a data model/schema an sent to a Topology
Manager (TM). The Topology Manager is then responsible for
communicating changes to the Inventory Manager and/or Network
Elements in a proper sequence, or order of operations, so as to not
lose network connectivity from the Topology Manager to the network
elements.

This function could be extended further whereby the Orchestration
Manager would be used in order to automatically create a list of IP
addresses and their associated DNS names, which would then be
"pushed" to Authoritative DNS servers so that interface names would
get updated in DNS automatically. In addition, the Orchestration
Manager function could notify a "Infrastructure Security" application
that IP prefixes on the network has changed so that it then updates
ACL's used to, for example, protect IP/MPLS routing and signaling
protocols used on the network.

4.1.4.

4.1.3. Troubleshooting & Monitoring
Once the Topology Manager has a normalized view of several layers of
the network, it's then possible to more easily it can expose a richer rich set of data to network operators when
who are performing diagnosis, troubleshooting and repairs on the
network. Specifically, there is a need to (rapidly) assemble a
current, accurate and comprehensive network diagram of a L2VPN or
L3VPN service for a particular customer when either: a) attempting to
diagnose a service fault/error; or, b) attempting to augment the
customer's existing service. Information that may be assembled into
a comprehensive picture could include physical and logical components
related specifically to that customer's service, i.e.: VLAN's or
channels used by the PE-CE access circuits, CoS policies, historical
PE-CE circuit utilization, etc. The Topology Manager would assemble
this information, on behalf of each of the network elements and other
data sources in and associated with the network, and could would present
this information in a vendor-
independent vendor-independent data model to applications
to be displayed allowing the operator (or, potentially, the customer
through a SP's Web portal) to visualize the information.

4.2. Path Computation Element (PCE)

As described in [RFC4655] a PCE can be used to compute MPLS-TE paths
within a "domain" (such as an IGP area) or across multiple domains
(such as a multi-area AS, or multiple ASes).

o Within a single area, the PCE offers enhanced computational power
that may not be available on individual routers, sophisticated
policy control and algorithms, and coordination of computation
across the whole area.

o If a router wants to compute a MPLS-TE path across IGP areas its
own TED lacks visibility of the complete topology. That means
that the router cannot determine the end-to-end path, and cannot
even select the right exit router (Area Border Router - ABR) for
an optimal path. This is an issue for large-scale networks that
need to segment their core networks into distinct areas, but which
still want to take advantage of MPLS-TE.

The PCE presents a computation server that may have visibility into
more than one IGP area or AS, or may cooperate with other PCEs to
perform distributed path computation. The PCE needs access to the
topology and the Traffic Engineering Database (TED) for the area(s)
it serves, but [RFC4655] does not describe how this is achieved.
Many implementations make the PCE a passive participant in the IGP so
that it can learn the latest state of the network, but this may be
sub-optimal when the network is subject to a high degree of churn, or
when the PCE is responsible for multiple areas.

The following figure shows how a PCE can get its TED information
using a Topology Server.

+----------+
| ----- | TED synchronization via Topology API
| | TED |<-+----------------------------------+
| ----- | |
| | | |
| | | |
| v | |
| ----- | |
| | PCE | | |
| ----- | |
+----------+ |
^ |
| Request/ |
| Response |
v |
Service +----------+ Signaling +----------+ +----------+
Request | Head-End | Protocol | Adjacent | | Topology |
-------->| Node |<------------>| Node | | Manager |
+----------+ +----------+ +----------+

Figure 4: Topology use case: Path Computation Element

4.3. ALTO Server

An ALTO Server [RFC5693] is an entity that generates an abstracted
network topology and provides it to network-aware applications over a
web service based API. Example applications are p2p clients or
trackers, or CDNs. The abstracted network topology comes in the form
of two maps: a Network Map that specifies allocation of prefixes to
PIDs, and a Cost Map that specifies the cost between PIDs listed in
the Network Map. For more details, see [I-D.ietf-alto-protocol].

ALTO abstract network topologies can be auto-generated from the
physical topology of the underlying network. The generation would
typically be based on policies and rules set by the operator. Both
prefix and TE data are required: prefix data is required to generate
ALTO Network Maps, TE (topology) data is required to generate ALTO
Cost Maps. Prefix data is carried and originated in BGP, TE data is
originated and carried in an IGP. The mechanism defined in this
document provides a single interface through which an ALTO Server can
retrieve all the necessary prefix and network topology data from the
underlying network. Note an ALTO Server can use other mechanisms to
get network data, for example, peering with multiple IGP and BGP
Speakers.

The following figure shows how an ALTO Server can get network
topology information from the underlying network using the Topology
API.

+--------+
| Client |<--+
+--------+ |
| ALTO +--------+ +----------+
+--------+ | Protocol | ALTO | Network Topology | Topology |
| Client |<--+------------| Server |<-----------------| Manager |
+--------+ | | | | |
| +--------+ +----------+
+--------+ |
| Client |<--+
+--------+

Figure 5: Topology use case: ALTO Server

5. Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Alia Atlas, Dave Ward, Hannes Gredler,
Stafano Previdi for their valuable contributions and feedback to this
draft.

6. IANA Considerations

This memo includes no request to IANA.

7. Security Considerations

At the moment, the Use Cases covered in this document apply
specifically to a single Service Provider or Enterprise network.
Therefore, network administrations should take appropriate
precautions to ensure appropriate access controls exist so that only
internal applications and end-users have physical or logical access
to the Topology Manager. This should be similar to precautions that
are already taken by Network Administrators to secure their existing
Network Management, OSS and BSS systems.

As this work evolves, it will be important to determine the
appropriate granularity of access controls in terms of what
individuals or groups may have read and/or write access to various
types of information contained with the Topology Manager. It would
be ideal, if these access control mechanisms were centralized within
the Topology Manager itself.

8. References
8.1. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

8.2. Informative References

[I-D.atlas-irs-problem-statement]
Atlas, A., Nadeau, T., and D. Ward, "Interface to the
Routing System Problem Statement",
draft-atlas-irs-problem-statement-00 (work in progress),
July 2012.

[I-D.ietf-alto-protocol]
Alimi, R., Penno, R., and Y. Yang, "ALTO Protocol",
draft-ietf-alto-protocol-13 draft-
ietf-alto-protocol-17 (work in progress),
September 2012. July 2013.

[I-D.ietf-idr-ls-distribution]
Gredler, H., Medved, J., Previdi, S., Farrel, A., and S.
Ray, "North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and TE
Information using BGP", draft-ietf-idr-ls-distribution-03
(work in progress), May 2013.

[I-D.ietf-isis-te-metric-extensions]
Previdi, S., Giacalone, S., Ward, D., Drake, J., Atlas,
A., and C. Filsfils, "IS-IS Traffic Engineering (TE)
Metric Extensions", draft-ietf-isis-te-metric-
extensions-00 (work in progress), June 2013.

[I-D.ietf-ospf-te-metric-extensions]
Giacalone, S., Ward, D., Drake, J., Atlas, A., and S.
Previdi, "OSPF Traffic Engineering (TE) Metric
Extensions", draft-ietf-ospf-te-metric-extensions-04 (work
in progress), June 2013.

[I-D.ietf-pce-stateful-pce]
Crabbe, E., Medved, J., Varga, R., and I. Minei, I., and R. Varga, "PCEP
Extensions for Stateful PCE",
draft-ietf-pce-stateful-pce-01 draft-ietf-pce-stateful-
pce-05 (work in progress), July 2012.

[I-D.ward-irs-framework]
Atlas, A., Nadeau, T., and D. Ward, "Interface to the
Routing System Framework", draft-ward-irs-framework-00
(work in progress), July 2012. 2013.

[RFC4655] Farrel, A., Vasseur, J., and J. Ash, "A Path Computation
Element (PCE)-Based Architecture", RFC 4655, August 2006.

[RFC5693] Seedorf, J. and E. Burger, "Application-Layer Traffic
Optimization (ALTO) Problem Statement", RFC 5693, October
2009.

Authors' Addresses

Shane Amante
Level 3 Communications, Inc.
1025 Eldorado Blvd
Broomfield, CO 80021
USA

Email: shane@level3.net
Jan Medved
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
USA

Email: jmedved@cisco.com

Thomas D. Nadeau
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
USA

Email: tnadeau@juniper.net

Shane Amante