The IETF uses a broad classification of activity into “Areas”, and within each one working groups (WGs) are chartered. For most of the IETF Areas, in addition to working group meetings, there is a general area meeting that is intended to review work across the entire Area. This is a report of the Routing Area meeting held at IETF66.
Routing Area Directorate
The Routing Area Directorate is an advisory group of routing experts selected by the Area Directors. The Area Directors use the feedback from the Directorate while making decisions on a range of topics related to the IETF Routing area.
One of the consistent issues with the IETF is that of ensuring that documents receive adequate and timely peer review. The Area Directors will be putting some effort into the Routing Area Directorate to ensure that directorate members will be a resource for WG chairs to undertake early review of routing drafts prior to the final steps of IESG submission. The Area Director review will also use the Routing Area Directorate for comments as part of the Director’s review process.
Routing Area WG Reports
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
This WG is not meeting at IETF 66. The WG is close to undertaking a last call on its current document set. The Routing Area Directorate should be involved in review at this stage
Common Control and Measurement Plane (CCAMP)
This WG has a new new co-chair, Deborah Brungard. There was reported to be steady progress on drafts. Considering that the WG currently has some 29 active drafts, this is certainly a very active group. There is currently a strong focus on interior gateway routing protocols with traffic engineering capabilities and automatic mesh capabilities.
The GMPLS-controlled Ethernet Label Switching (GELS) topic, relating to GMPLS control of Ethernet environments, which held a BoF at IETF 64 will now be folded into the CCAMP WG charter, and GMPLS control protocols will be used. There is no new data plane definition in this proposed direction, which is addressing one of the more contentious issues that surfaced in the GELS BoF.
Forwarding and Control Element Separation (FORCES)
The WG is attempting to complete the base model document, which then forms the foundation for the WG’s document set. The WG has decided to place a deadline for review comments for this draft, in an attempt to complete the document in the near future. Current work includes consideration of the Transport Mapping Layer, and the potential to use SCTP in this context, as well as a FORCES MIB.
Inter-Domain Routing (IDR)
There has been some progress in terms of moving documents thriough the IESG, and a number of RFCs were published after IETF 65 (RFC 4456 and RFC4486). A number of additional documents are to be passed to the IESG in the weeks immediately following IETF 66. It was noted by the WG chair that there have been various recent efforts to add capabilities to BGP in working groups outside the Routing Area, and a call for IDR involvement in this effort was made. As one example, the Softwires WG in the Internet area will work on some framework documents to attempt to address these issues, and some deliberate effort to use cross-WG postings was made in that case. Some further discussion with the ADs was proposed. Other areas and other WGs do undertake some work on extensions to routing protocols, with the need to manage outcomes to ensure coherence and consistency of the resultant routing protocol extensions. This is asserted to be a matter for AD attention and work management. It was recommended that some coordination effort across WGs should be undertaken as early as possible when work on routing protocols is taken up in other working groups (“early cross-area review” is the procedure being considered here).
IS-IS for IP Internets (ISIS)
There are some further work items in this WG, including support for IPv6, multi-topology routing, policy control mechanisms, and extensions for advertising routing information and HMAC SHA authentication. It is expected that the WG will be rechartered to reflect this intended work agenda.
Layer 1 Virtual Private Networks (L1VPN)
It was reported that this WG is progressing well, with the framework document completed in the working group and applicability description underway. A large part of this WG’s agenda is concerned with emulation of edge-to-edge circuit states via GMPLS paths. There has been some cross-working group and cross-area review of these L1VPN drafts.
Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET)
The three core MANET documents have been updated. The WG is now looking at a common generalized messaging format. Update of this document has been completed, and work on a common neighbourhood discovery protocol is underway. Within MANET there are at present both pro-active and re-active approaches, and some effort to pull these together will be undertaken. The chairs of Autoconf (Internet Area) and MANET are working on a common-architecture document and will publish this following IETF 66. This is a document that would benefit from early cross-area review.
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
This working group had a busy agenda at IETF 66. The highlight is point-to-multi-point point traffic engineering-label-switched path (TE LSPs) and a report of the meeting with ITU-T Q12/15 on T-MPLS.
Open Shortest Path First IGP (OSPF)
Most the original OSPF charter documents have been completed by the working group at this stage (MIB on V2 and security on v3). Only the OSPFv3 MIB remains. The WG is currently in the process of re-chartering with work items including Multi-Topology Routing (MTR) in OSPF and OSPF in a MANET environment. The initial OSPF MANET work has focused on flooding and adjacency reduction optimizations. Some OSPF WG review of the CCAMP documents has been requested.
Path Computation Element (PCE)
The PCE architecture RFC (first WG RFC) has been published: RFC 4655 and two PCE documents are in the RFC editor queue. The base protocol space is now stable, and a call for review has been made. There have been some proposals for further PCE work, and the chair would like to hold off on further specification of requirements until there has been some experience with the base protocol. There was consideration of an experimental track on manageability of the PCE specifications. Policy work is outstanding, as is consideration of the complete requirement set.
Routing Protocol Security Requirements (RPSEC)
The RPSEC Working Group is finishing up with work on the generic threats document, and this document is now back in the RFC Editor’s queue. The documents on OSPF vulnerabilities and the BGP attack tree are being reviewed, and appear to be close to completion. The BGP security requirements document is also considered to be almost ready for a working group Last Call. Without further new items, the WG will have completed its current charter with those documents.
Routing Area Working Group (RAWG)
This group did not meet at IETF 66. Currently on the Working Group’s agenda is an open question about loop-free/microloop detection algorithms that need to be resolved prior to last call of the IP Fast-Reroute document.
Secure Inter-Domain Routing (SIDR)
This is the first meeting of this working group since it was chartered following IETF 65. Current work is focused on the basic instruments of trust within the routing and addressing environment, examining a profile for X.509 Public Key certificates that would be able to function as ‘right-of-use’ tokens in a routing context. This would form the basic trust injection function for the work on securing route origination. The next work item is that of an overall architecture for secure inter-domain routing systems. In addition at IETF 66 SIDR gave some time to air the varying proposals for TCP MD5 key rollover.
Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
The VRRP for V6 spec with the IESG, as it relates to consideration of the SeNd technology. The unified MIB is under MIB doctor review, and the subsecond timer work is under WG review. This working group did not meet at IETF 66.
RFC 1264 Discussion
What should the requirement be for routing area documents that are forwarded to the IESG for publication as RFCs? The Routing Area had previously requested implementation reports, detailing the outcomes of implementation and interoperability of the specification, preferably from at least two independent implementations as a pre-requisite for passing a document to the IESG for publication at the Proposed Standard level. There was strong consensus at the area meeting to have “good” requirements, however the developing picture appears to be visible consensus in the Routing Area to have Proposed Standard publication requirements that are no different than the other IETF areas. At this stage it is proposed that it be a working group matter to determine requirements related to implementation reports, and due attention should be given to quality of WG documents in this process. This would make the requirements specified in RFC 1264 to be considered historic for the Routing Area, particularly in terms of specifying more stringent preconditions for Routing Area Proposed Standard documents.
IP Routing in the Global Information Grid
This was a report to the meeting on the recent U.S. Departement of Defense initiative called the “Global Information Grid”. This initiative is projected to have a number of routing objectives, as well as objectives of supporting Quality of Service (QoS) and security. This Global-Internet-Geography (GIG) environment proposes pervasive node and network mobility, implying that the current Internet routing paradigm may not be totally applicable in a number of dimensions. Some potential for “fundamental change” in inter-domain is contemplated.
IAB Routing and Addressing Workshop
Dave Meyer reported on the proposed IAB workshop on routing and addressing. Mid-October is the likely time for this by-invitation-only IAB workshop. Current workshop activity appears to be the definition of a routing problem statement and a requirement list. Ross Callon commented that it would be valuable for a broader consideration on the routing-discuss mailer on the identification of the problems of routing and addressing.
The routing-discuss mailing list is: [email protected]