Hi Bruno,

> I think it’s self-evident that we would end up with a permanent routing
loop.

Is that so ? Wouldn't it just result in unidirectional link for a given app
? Maybe intentional ?

It seems that what you described may cause asymmetric routing but not a
routing loop. After all packets belonging to an app are consistently using
that app's topology in each node.

Cheers,
R.





On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 11:03 AM <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I think that I may have an issue with the way FlexAlgo [2] uses ASLA [1]
>
>
>
> FlexAlgo is distributed routing computation so it’s required that all
> routers use exactly the same data to compute the routes/SPF.
>
>
>
> FlexAlgo is clear that ASLA MUST be used:
>
> “Link attribute advertisements that are to be used during Flex-
>
>    Algorithm calculation MUST use the Application-Specific Link
>
>    Attribute (ASLA) advertisements defined in [RFC8919 
> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8919>] or [RFC8920 
> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8920>],”
>
>
>
> However ASLA provides multiple ways to advertise IGP attributes and does
> not seem precise enough in its specification.
>
> “If link attributes are advertised associated with zero-length
> Application Identifier Bit Masks for both standard applications and
> user-defined applications, then any standard application and/or any
> user-defined application is permitted to use that set of link attributes”
>
>
>
> My issue is the use of the term “permitted” which
>
> a)     is not a normative keyword
>
> b)    IMHO translates to MAY hence also MAY NOT. While we need a MUST to
> ensure a consistent SPF.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> One example of issue is when FlexAlgo uses a metric different from the
> IGP (e.g. TE-metric) , and one node advertises this TE-metric in an ASLA
> with zero-length Bit Mask.
>
> - If one node uses this TE-metric (since it is permitted to) it includes
> that link in its SPF
>
> - If another node does not use this TE-metric (since it is not required
> to) it prunes that link from its SPF
>
> I think it’s self-evident that we would end up with a permanent routing
> loop.
>
>
>
> Ideally, I would probably have preferred ALSA to be specific about the
> behaviour but ASLA is already published as RFC so it’s a bit late
>
> So at this point, I think that the burden is on FlexAlgo to specify the
> precise behaviour as a MUST in section 12. [2]
>
>
>
> The smallest change from FlexAlgo draft standpoint may be to _*require*_
> the use of the ASLA _*with the X-Flag set*_ . But I’m fine with whatever
> interoperable behaviour (well for me, ideally I’d prefer the behaviour
> already implemented by the implementations that I’ve deployed ;-) but that
> would be a selfish requirement).
>
>
>
> Note that there are existing implementations and this would impact them.
> That been said, we do need the interop behaviour so if there are already
> inconsistent behaviours, some implementations will need to be changed (and
> hence become non interoperable with themselves)
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Regards,
>
> --Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8919.html
>
> [2]
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lsr-flex-algo-16#section-12
>
>
>
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