RFC7699
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Farrel Request for Comments: 7699 D. King Updates: 3471, 6205 Old Dog Consulting Category: Standards Track Y. Li ISSN: 2070-1721 Nanjing University
F. Zhang
Huawei Technologies
November 2015
Generalized Labels for the Flexi-Grid in
Lambda Switch Capable (LSC) Label Switching Routers
Abstract
GMPLS supports the description of optical switching by identifying entries in fixed lists of switchable wavelengths (called grids) through the encoding of lambda labels. Work within the ITU-T Study Group 15 has defined a finer-granularity grid, and the facility to flexibly select different widths of spectrum from the grid. This document defines a new GMPLS lambda label format to support this flexi-grid.
This document updates RFCs 3471 and 6205 by introducing a new label format.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7699.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Contents
Introduction
As described in RFC3945, GMPLS extends MPLS from supporting only Packet Switch Capable (PSC) interfaces and switching, to also support four new classes of interfaces and switching that include Lambda Switch Capable (LSC).
A functional description of the extensions to MPLS signaling needed to support this new class of interface and switching is provided in RFC3471.
Section 3.2.1.1 of RFC3471 states that wavelength labels "only have significance between two neighbors": global wavelength semantics are not considered. RFC6205 defines a standard lambda label format that has a global semantic and is compliant with both the Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) grid [G.694.1] and the Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) grid [G.694.2]. The terms DWDM and CWDM are defined in [G.671].
A flexible-grid network selects its data channels as arbitrarily assigned pieces of the spectrum. Mixed bitrate transmission systems can allocate their channels with different spectral bandwidths so that the channels can be optimized for the bandwidth requirements of the particular bit rate and modulation scheme of the individual channels. This technique is regarded as a promising way to improve the network utilization efficiency and fundamentally reduce the cost of the core network.
The "flexi-grid" has been developed within the ITU-T Study Group 15 to allow selection and switching of pieces of the optical spectrum chosen flexibly from a fine-granularity grid of wavelengths with variable spectral bandwidth [G.694.1].
RFC3471 defines several basic label types including the lambda label. Section 3.2.1.1 of RFC3471 states that wavelength labels "only have significance between two neighbors"; global wavelength semantics are not considered. In order to facilitate interoperability in a network composed of LSC equipment, RFC6205 defines a standard lambda label format and is designated an update of RFC 3471.
This document continues the theme of defining global semantics for the wavelength label by adding support for the flexi-grid. Thus, this document updates RFC6205 and RFC3471.
This document relies on [G.694.1] for the definition of the optical data plane and does not make any updates to the work of the ITU-T.
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 RFC2119.
Overview of Flexi-Grid
[G.694.1] defines DWDM fixed grids. The latest version of that document extends the DWDM fixed grids to add support for flexible grids. The basis of the work is to allow a data channel to be formed from an abstract grid anchored at 193.1 THz and selected on a channel spacing of 6.25 GHz with a variable slot width measured in units of 12.5 GHz. Individual allocations may be made on this basis from anywhere in the spectrum, subject to allocations not overlapping.
[G.694.1] provides clear guidance on the support of flexible grid by implementations in Section 2 of Appendix I:
The flexible DWDM grid defined in clause 7 has a nominal central frequency granularity of 6.25 GHz and a slot width granularity of 12.5 GHz. However, devices or applications that make use of the flexible grid may not have to be capable of supporting every possible slot width or position. In other words, applications may be defined where only a subset of the possible slot widths and positions are required to be supported.
For example, an application could be defined where the nominal central frequency granularity is 12.5 GHz (by only requiring values of n that are even) and that only requires slot widths as a multiple of 25 GHz (by only requiring values of m that are even).
Some additional background on the use of GMPLS for flexible grids can be found in RFC7698.
Composite Labels
It is possible to construct an end-to-end connection as a composite of more than one flexi-grid slot. The mechanism used in GMPLS is similar to that used to support inverse multiplexing familiar in time-division multiplexing (TDM) and optical transport networks (OTNs). The slots in the set could potentially be contiguous or non- contiguous (only as allowed by the definitions of the data plane) and could be signaled as a single LSP or constructed from a group of LSPs. For more details, refer to Section 4.3.
How the signal is carried across such groups of channels is out of scope for this document.
Fixed-Grid Lambda Label Encoding
RFC6205 defines an encoding for a global semantic for a DWDM label based on four fields:
- Grid: used to select which grid the lambda is selected from.
Values defined in RFC6205 identify DWDM [G.694.1] and CWDM [G.694.2].
- C.S. (Channel Spacing): used to indicate the channel spacing.
RFC6205 defines values to represent spacing of 100, 50, 25, and 12.5 GHz.
- Identifier: a local-scoped integer used to distinguish different
lasers (in one node) when they can transmit the same frequency lambda.
- n: a two's-complement integer to take a positive, negative, or
zero value. This value is used to compute the frequency as defined in RFC6205 and based on [G.694.1]. The use of n is repeated here for ease of reading the rest of this document: in case of discrepancy, the definition in RFC6205 is normative.
Frequency (THz) = 193.1 THz + n * frequency granularity (THz)
where the nominal central frequency granularity for the flexible grid is 0.00625 THz
Flexi-Grid Label Format and Values
Flexi-Grid Label Encoding
This document defines a generalized label encoding for use in flexi- grid systems. As with the other GMPLS lambda label formats defined in RFC3471 and RFC6205, the use of this label format is known a priori. That is, since the interpretation of all lambda labels is determined hop by hop, the use of this label format requires that all nodes on the path expect to use this label format.
For convenience, however, the label format is modeled on the fixed- grid label defined in RFC6205 and briefly described in Section 3.
Figure 1 shows the format of the Flexi-Grid Label. It is a 64-bit label.
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |Grid | C.S. | Identifier | n | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | m | Reserved | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1 : The Flexi-Grid Label Encoding
This document defines a new Grid value to supplement those in RFC6205:
+----------+---------+ | Grid | Value | +----------+---------+ |ITU-T Flex| 3 | +----------+---------+
Within the fixed-grid network, the C.S. value is used to represent the channel spacing, as the spacing between adjacent channels is constant. For the flexible-grid situation, this field is used to represent the nominal central frequency granularity.
This document defines a new C.S. value to supplement those in RFC6205:
+------------+---------+ | C.S. (GHz) | Value | +------------+---------+ | 6.25 | 5 | +------------+---------+
The meaning of the Identifier field is maintained from RFC6205 (see also Section 3).
The meaning of n is maintained from RFC6205 (see also Section 3).
The m field is used to identify the slot width according to the formula given in [G.694.1] as follows. It is a 16-bit integer value encoded in line format.
Slot Width (GHz) = 12.5 GHz * m
The Reserved field MUST be set to zero on transmission and SHOULD be ignored on receipt.
An implementation that wishes to use the flexi-grid label encoding MUST follow the procedures of RFC3473 and of RFC3471 as updated by RFC6205. It MUST set Grid to 3 and C.S. to 5. It MUST set Identifier to indicate the local identifier of the laser in use as described in RFC6205. It MUST also set n according to the formula in Section 3 (inherited unchanged from RFC6205). Finally, the implementation MUST set m as described in the formula stated above.
Considerations of Bandwidth
There is some overlap between the concepts of bandwidth and label in many GMPLS-based systems where a label indicates a physical switching resource. This overlap is increased in a flexi-grid system where a label value indicates the slot width and so affects the bandwidth supported by an LSP. Thus, the m parameter is both a property of the label (i.e., it helps define exactly what is switched) and of the bandwidth.
In GMPLS signaling RFC3473, bandwidth is requested in the SENDER_TSPEC object and confirmed in the FLOWSPEC object. The m parameter, which is a parameter of the GMPLS flexi-grid label as described above, is also a parameter of the flexi-grid Tspec and Flowspec as described in [FLEXRSVP].
Composite Labels
The creation of a composite of multiple channels to support inverse multiplexing is already supported in GMPLS for TDM and OTN (see RFC4606, RFC6344, and RFC7139). The mechanism used for flexi- grid is similar.
To signal an LSP that uses multiple flexi-grid slots, a "compound label" is constructed. That is, the LABEL object is constructed from a concatenation of the 64-bit Flexi-Grid Labels shown in Figure 1. The number of elements in the label can be determined from the length of the LABEL object. The resulting LABEL object is shown in Figure 2 including the object header that is not normally shown in diagrammatic representations of RSVP-TE objects. Note that r is the count of component labels, and this is backward compatible with the label shown in Figure 1 where the value of r is 1.
The component labels MUST be presented in increasing order of the value n. Implementations MUST NOT infer anything about the encoding of a signal into the set of slots represented by a compound label from the label itself. Information about the encoding MAY be handled in other fields in signaling messages or through an out-of-band system, but such considerations are outside the scope of this document.
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Object Length (4 + 8r) | Class-Num (16)| C-Type (2) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |Grid | C.S. | Identifier | n | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | m | Reserved | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ~ ~ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |Grid | C.S. | Identifier | n | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | m | Reserved | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 2 : A Compound Label for Virtual Concatenation
Note that specific rules must be applied as follows:
- Grid MUST show "ITU-T Flex" value 3 in each component label. - C.S. MUST have the same value in each component label. - Identifier in each component label may identify different physical
equipment.
- Values of n and m in each component label define the slots that
are concatenated.
At the time of writing, [G.694.1] only supports only groupings of adjacent slots (i.e., without intervening unused slots that could be used for other purposes) of identical width (same value of m), and the component slots must be in increasing order of frequency (i.e., increasing order of the value n). The mechanism defined here MUST NOT be used for other forms of grouping unless and until those forms are defined and documented in Recommendations published by the ITU-T.
Note further that while the mechanism described here naturally means that all component channels are corouted, a composite channel can also be achieved by constructing individual LSPs from single flexi- grid slots and managing those LSPs as a group. A mechanism for achieving this for TDM is described in RFC6344, but is out of scope for discussion in this document because the labels used are normal, single-slot labels and require no additional definitions.
Manageability and Backward Compatibility Considerations
This section briefly considers issues of manageability and backward compatibility.
Control-Plane Backward Compatibility
Labels are carried in two ways in GMPLS: for immediate use on the next hop and for use at remote hops.
It is an assumption of GMPLS that both ends of a link know what label types are supported and only use appropriate label types. If a label of an unknown type is received, it will be processed as if it was of a known type since the Label Object and similar label-carrying objects do not contain a type identifier. Thus, the introduction of a flexi-grid label in this document does not change the compatibility issues, and a legacy node that does not support the new flexi-grid label should not expect to receive or handle such labels. If one is incorrectly used in communication with a legacy node, it will attempt to process it as an expected label type with a potentially poor outcome.
It is possible that a GMPLS message transitting a legacy node will contain a flexi-grid label destined for or reported by a remote node. For example, an LSP that transits links of different technologies might record flexi-grid labels in a Record Route Object that is subsequently passed to a legacy node. Such labels will not have any impact on legacy implementations except as noted in the manageability considerations in the next section.
Manageability Considerations
This document introduces no new elements for management. That is, labels can continue to be used in the same way by the GMPLS protocols and where those labels were treated as opaque quantities with local or global significance, no change is needed to the management systems.
However, this document introduces some changes to the nature of a label that may require changes to management systems. Although Section 3.2 of RFC3471 makes clear that a label is of variable length according to the type and that the type is supposed to be known a priori by both ends of a link, a management system is not guaranteed to be updated in step with upgrades or installations of new flexi-grid functionality in the network.
But, an implementation expecting a 32-bit lambda label would not fail ungracefully because the first 32 bits follow the format of RFC6205. It would look at theses labels and read but not recognize the new grid type value. It would then give up trying to parse the label and (presumably) the whole of the rest of the message.
The management system can be upgraded in two steps:
- Firstly, systems that handle lambda labels as 32-bit quantities
need to be updated to handle the increased length (64 bits) of labels as described in this document. These "unknown" 64-bit labels could be displayed as opaque 64-bit quantities and still add a lot of value for the operator (who might need to parse the label by hand). However, an implementation that already supports lambda labels as defined in RFC6205 can safely continue to process the first 32 bits and display the fields defined in RFC 6205 as before, leaving just the second 32 bits as opaque data.
- Second, a more sophisticated upgrade to a management system would
fully parse the flexi-grid labels and display them field by field as described in this document.
Security Considerations
RFC6205 notes that the definition of a new label encoding does not introduce any new security considerations to RFC3471 or RFC3473. That statement applies equally to this document.
For a general discussion on MPLS and GMPLS-related security issues, see the MPLS/GMPLS security framework RFC5920.
IANA Considerations
IANA maintains the "Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Parameters" registry that contains several subregistries.
Grid Subregistry
IANA has allocated a new entry in this subregistry as follows:
Value Grid Reference
------------------------- ----------
3 ITU-T Flex RFC 7699
DWDM Channel Spacing Subregistry
IANA has allocated a new entry in this subregistry as follows:
Value Channel Spacing (GHz) Reference
------------------------- ----------
5 6.25 RFC 7699
References
Normative References
RFC2119 Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
RFC3471 Berger, L., Ed., "Generalized Multi-Protocol Label
Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Functional Description",
RFC 3471, DOI 10.17487/RFC3471, January 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3471>.
RFC3473 Berger, L., Ed., "Generalized Multi-Protocol Label
Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Resource ReserVation Protocol-
Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) Extensions", RFC 3473,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3473, January 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3473>.
RFC6205 Otani, T., Ed., and D. Li, Ed., "Generalized Labels for
Lambda-Switch-Capable (LSC) Label Switching Routers",
RFC 6205, DOI 10.17487/RFC6205, March 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6205>.
[G.694.1] International Telecommunication Union, "Spectral grids for
WDM applications: DWDM frequency grid", ITU-T
Recommendation G.694.1, February 2012,
<https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.694.1/en>.
Informative References
RFC3945 Mannie, E., Ed., "Generalized Multi-Protocol Label
Switching (GMPLS) Architecture", RFC 3945, DOI 10.17487/RFC3945, October 2004, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3945>.
RFC4606 Mannie, E. and D. Papadimitriou, "Generalized Multi-
Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Extensions for
Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) and Synchronous
Digital Hierarchy (SDH) Control", RFC 4606,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4606, August 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4606>.
RFC5920 Fang, L., Ed., "Security Framework for MPLS and GMPLS
Networks", RFC 5920, DOI 10.17487/RFC5920, July 2010, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5920>.
RFC6344 Bernstein, G., Ed., Caviglia, D., Rabbat, R., and H. van
Helvoort, "Operating Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) and the
Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) with Generalized
Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS)", RFC 6344,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6344, August 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6344>.
RFC7139 Zhang, F., Ed., Zhang, G., Belotti, S., Ceccarelli, D.,
and K. Pithewan, "GMPLS Signaling Extensions for Control
of Evolving G.709 Optical Transport Networks", RFC 7139,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7139, March 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7139>.
RFC7698 Gonzalez de Dios, O., Ed., Casellas, R., Ed., Zhang, F.,
Fu., X., Ceccarelli, D., and I. Hussain, "Framework and
Requirements for GMPLS-Based Control of Flexi-Grid Dense
Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) Networks",
RFC 7698, DOI 10.17487/RFC7698, November 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7698>.
[G.671] International Telecommunication Union, "Transmission
characteristics of optical components and subsystems",
ITU-T Recommendation G.671, February 2012,
<https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.671/en>.
[G.694.2] International Telecommunication Union, "Spectral grids for
WDM applications: CWDM wavelength grid", ITU-T
Recommendation G.694.2, December 2003,
<https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.694.2/en>.
[FLEXRSVP] Zhang, F., Zhang, X., Farrel, A., Gonzalez de Dios, O.,
and D. Ceccarelli, "RSVP-TE Signaling Extensions in
support of Flexible Grid", Work in Progress, draft-ietf-
ccamp-flexible-grid-rsvp-te-ext-03, August 2015.
Appendix A. Flexi-Grid Example
Consider a fragment of an optical LSP between node A and node B using the flexible grid. Suppose that the LSP on this hop is formed:
- using the ITU-T Flexi-Grid - the nominal central frequency of the slot is 193.05 THz - the nominal central frequency granularity is 6.25 GHz - the slot width is 50 GHz.
In this case, the label representing the switchable quantity that is the flexi-grid quantity is encoded as described in Section 4.1 with the following parameter settings. The label can be used in signaling or in management protocols to describe the LSP.
Grid = 3 : ITU-T Flexi-Grid
C.S. = 5 : 6.25 GHz nominal central frequency granularity
Identifier = local value indicating the laser in use
n = -8 :
Frequency (THz) = 193.1 THz + n * frequency granularity (THz)
193.05 (THz) = 193.1 (THz) + n * 0.00625 (THz)
n = (193.05 - 193.1) / 0.00625 = -8
m = 4 :
Slot Width (GHz) = 12.5 GHz * m
50 (GHz) = 12.5 (GHz) * m
m = 50 / 12.5 = 4
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the FP-7 IDEALIST project under grant agreement number 317999.
Very many thanks to Lou Berger for discussions of labels of more than 32 bits. Many thanks to Sergio Belotti and Pietro Vittorio Grandi for their support of this work. Thanks to Gabriele Galimberti for discussion of the size of the "m" field, and to Iftekhar Hussain for discussion of composite labels. Robert Sparks, Carlos Pignataro, and Paul Wouters provided review comments during IETF Last Call.
The Vancouver 2012 Pool Party drove early discussions and rough consensus. It comprised: Dieter Beller, Ramon Casellas, Daniele Ceccarelli, Oscar Gonzalez de Dios, Iftekhar Hussain, Cyril Margaria, Lyndon Ong, Fatai Zhang, and Adrian Farrel.
Contributors
Zhang Fei Huawei Technologies Email: [email protected]
Ramon Casellas CTTC Email: [email protected]
Authors' Addresses
Adrian Farrel Old Dog Consulting Email: [email protected]
Daniel King Old Dog Consulting Email: [email protected]
Yao Li Nanjing University Email: [email protected]
Fatai Zhang Huawei Technologies Email: [email protected]
