Albert –

We are in full agreement.

Delays in bringing BFD backup after a previous failure may well be warranted in 
the break-in-middle scenarios.
I am not convinced this needs to be standardized – seems quite appropriate as 
an implementation choice. But if any discussion were to occur in RFCs, I think 
it should be in some BFD document.

As this draft is focused on OSPF protocol extensions, I don’t think BFD 
dampening needs to be discussed. In any case it should not alter the 
interaction between BFD and protocols. If it takes longer for BFD to come up 
that just means the OSPF adjacency will not come up either – which is exactly 
the behavior that is desired.

    Les


From: Albert Fu (BLOOMBERG/ 120 PARK) <af...@bloomberg.net>
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2022 6:50 AM
To: Les Ginsberg (ginsberg) <ginsb...@cisco.com>; ketant.i...@gmail.com; 
rob...@raszuk.net
Cc: Acee Lindem (acee) <a...@cisco.com>; 
draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-m...@ietf.org; lsr@ietf.org
Subject: RE: [Lsr] Working Group Last Call for "OSPF Strict-Mode for BFD" - 
draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-mode-04

Hi Les,

Your scenario below is indeed something we have encountered in our production 
network in the non-strict scenario, due to "flapping" links, where routing 
protocol could come up before BFD due to "break-in-middle" link issue 
(interface stayed up, so routing protocol remained active). Strict mode will 
address this issue.

Another point to add is that we do have as a standard on our interfaces to 
safeguard against flapping link by configuring interface 
hold-time/carrier-delay. However, this is only useful in situations where the 
link physically goes down (and fast detection is automatic in most 
implementation).

Nowadays, it is also common to see the "break-in-middle" failures. we use BFD 
to detect this sort of failure within sub-second. And to dampen this sort of 
break-in-middle failures, we will need to use BFD holdtime/dampening.

Thanks

Albert



From: ginsb...@cisco.com<mailto:ginsb...@cisco.com> At: 01/30/22 14:38:37 
UTC-5:00
To: rob...@raszuk.net<mailto:rob...@raszuk.net>, 
ketant.i...@gmail.com<mailto:ketant.i...@gmail.com>
Cc: Albert Fu (BLOOMBERG/ 120 PARK ) <mailto:af...@bloomberg.net> , 
a...@cisco.com<mailto:a...@cisco.com>, 
draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-m...@ietf.org<mailto:draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-m...@ietf.org>,
 lsr@ietf.org<mailto:lsr@ietf.org>
Subject: RE: [Lsr] Working Group Last Call for "OSPF Strict-Mode for BFD" - 
draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-mode-04

Robert –

Here is what you said (emphasis added):

<snip>
But the timer I am suggesting is not related to BFD operation, but to OSPF 
(and/or ISIS). It is not about BFD sessions being UP or DOWN. It is about 
allowing BFD for more testing (with various parameters (for example increasing 
test packet size in some discrete steps) before OSPF is happy to bring the adj. 
up.
<end snip>

Point #1: If you want BFD to do more testing (such as MTU testing) then clearly 
you need extensions to BFD (such as 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-bfd-large-packets/ )

Point #2: The existing timers (as Ketan points out are mentioned in Section 5) 
are applied today at the OSPF level precisely because OSPF does not currently 
have strict-mode operation. So in a flapping scenario you could see the 
following behavior:

a)BFD goes down
b)OSPF goes down in response to BFD
c)OSPF comes back up
d)Link is still unstable – so traffic is being dropped some of the time – but 
perhaps OSPF adjacency stays up (i.e., OSPF hellos get through often enough to 
keep the OSPF adjacency up)

So some implementations have chosen to insert a delay following “b”. This 
doesn’t guarantee stability, but hopefully makes it less likely. And because 
OSPF today does NOT wait for BFD to come up, the delay has to be implemented at 
the OSPF level.

Once you have strict mode support, the sequence becomes:

a)BFD goes down
b)OSPF goes down in response to BFD
c)BFD comes back up
d)OSPF comes back up

Now, if the concern is that BFD comes back up while the link is still unstable, 
the way to address that is to put a delay either before BFD attempts to bring 
up a new session or a delay after achieving UP state before it signals UP to 
its clients – such as OSPF. This is a better solution because all BFD clients 
benefit from this. Ad if the link is still unstable, it is more likely that the 
BFD session will go down during the delay period than it would be for OSPF 
because the BFD timers are significantly more aggressive.
(BTW, this behavior can be done w/o a BFD protocol extension – it is purely an 
implementation choice.)

From a design perspective, dampening is always best done at the lowest layer 
possible. In most cases, interface layer dampening is best. If that is not 
reliable for some reason, then move one layer up – not two layers up.

   Les


From: Robert Raszuk <rob...@raszuk.net<mailto:rob...@raszuk.net>>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2022 10:05 AM
To: Ketan Talaulikar <ketant.i...@gmail.com<mailto:ketant.i...@gmail.com>>
Cc: Les Ginsberg (ginsberg) <ginsb...@cisco.com<mailto:ginsb...@cisco.com>>; 
Acee Lindem (acee) <a...@cisco.com<mailto:a...@cisco.com>>; 
draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-m...@ietf.org<mailto:draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-m...@ietf.org>;
 Albert Fu <af...@bloomberg.net<mailto:af...@bloomberg.net>>; lsr 
<lsr@ietf.org<mailto:lsr@ietf.org>>
Subject: Re: [Lsr] Working Group Last Call for "OSPF Strict-Mode for BFD" - 
draft-ietf-lsr-ospf-bfd-strict-mode-04

Hi Ketan,

I would like to point out that the draft discusses the BFD "dampening" or 
"hold-down" mechanism in Sec 5. We are aware of BFD implementations that 
include such mechanisms in a protocol-agnostic manner.

BFD dampening or hold-time are completely orthogonal to my point. Both have 
nothing to do with it.

Those timers only fire when BFD goes down. In my example BFD does not go down. 
But we want to bring up the client adj. only after X ms/sec/min etc ...of 
normal BFD operation if no failure is detected during that timer.

This draft indicates that OSPF adjacency will "advance" in the neighbor FSM 
only after BFD reports UP.

And that is exactly too soon. In fact if you do that today without waiting some 
time (if you retire the current OSPF timer) you will not help at all in the 
case you are trying to address.

Reason being that perhaps 200 ms after BFD UP it will go down, but OSPF adj. 
will get already established. It is really pretty simple.

Thx,
Robert.

PS. And yes I think ISIS should also get fixed in that respect.

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