Understanding Route

Redistribution

ICNP 2007
October 17th, 2007

Franck Le, Geoffrey G. Xie, Hui Zhang

1
 Internetwork and Routing
• Common view:
– Intra-domain routing using OSPF, RIP
– Inter-domain routing using BGP
• In reality, internetworking is much more complex
– ISP networks:
• OSPF routes to be redistributed into BGP (and vice versa)
– Enterprise networks:
• When BGP is not used, needs mechanism to distribute
routes among OSPF, RIP, EIGRP domains
• Also, needs to distribute routes among multiple OSPF
domains
2
 What is Route Re-Distribution (RR)?
By default, OSPF routers have no visibility of RIP routers

RIP OSPF

B D
router ospf 27
A C E redistribute rip metric
200 subnets route-map
rip2ospf
Office branch 1 Office branch 2 distance ospf external
200
!
route-map rip2ospf permit
RIP OSPF Local 100
match ip address 100
set tag 22
FIB set metric-type-1
3
How Does RR Compare to BGP?
• In many scenarios, RR, not BGP, is used to interconnect
network domains,
• Even when BGP is used, RR is required to connect BGP
and IGP

• RR can implement policy, like BGP

• Unlike BGP, RR is NOT a protocol
– RR is just a configuration mechanism, used
separately at each router
RR is more commonly used than BGP, but much
less understood, and much more error-prone
4
 Problem Statements
• Given an internetwork with RR
configurations, what are the loop-free and
convergence properties?
• What are the guidelines of using RR if one
wants to have loop-free and convergent
internetwork?

5
 Synthesis of the Paper
• Model that reasons about the loop-free and
convergence properties
• Sufficient condition to guarantee loop-free
and convergence properties

6
 Outline
1. Introduction to Route Redistribution (RR)
2. Illustration of routing anomalies
3. A Model for RR
4. Sufficient condition for loop-free and
convergent RR

7
Route Selection Process
Office branch 1 Office branch 2
RIP OSPF
P
B D P

E
A C

RIP OSPF Local

P Signaling

FIB Data path

8
Route Selection Process
Office branch 1 Office branch 2
RIP OSPF

B D
P
P E
A C

P P
Selected routing process

RIP OSPF Local

P Signaling
120 110 0/1
FIB Data path
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Route Redistribution Process
Office branch 1 Office branch 2
RIP OSPF

B D

P E
A C
RIP Update

RIP OSPF Local

P Signaling
120 110 0/1
FIB Data path
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 Outline
1. Introduction to Route Redistribution (RR)
2. Illustration of routing anomalies
3. A Model for RR
4. Sufficient condition for loop-free and
convergent RR

11
 Instabilities

• Wide range of possible routing instabilities

• No general guideline to configure RR

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 Formation of Routing Loops

RIP OSPF Local

RIP(120) Next-hop: EOSPF(110)
D FIB
Next-hop: D P
B
P Next-hop: C
E
P
A C

Next-hop: B RIP OSPF Local

P Signaling
FIB
Data path
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 Outline
1. Introduction to Route Redistribution (RR)
2. Illustration of routing anomalies
3. A Model for RR
4. Sufficient condition for loop-free and
convergent RR

14
 Challenges
• Too many network elements
– Hundreds or thousands of routers
• Different router processing order
– Routers may process signaling messages in
different order (message delay, router load)
– Different order can result in different outcome

15
 Solutions
• Too many network elements
– Abstractions: routing instances
– Logics: route selection, RR, network-wide RR
• Different router processing order
– Activation sequence1

1
L. Gao and J. Rexford, Stable Internet Routing Without Global Coordination,
in Proc. ACM SIGMETRICS, 2000 16
 A Model for RR
• Abstracts the dynamic exchange of routing
information for a prefix P
• Allows to predict paths

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 Route Propagation Graph
2
• Routing instance (110)

1
• Originating routing instance
(120)

• Configured redistribution 1 80, A, 90 2

(120) (110)

• Actual redistribution 1 80, A, 90 2

(120) (110)

• Route vs. no route 1 80, A, 90 2

(120) (110)
• Variables: CL, S
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 Illustration of Model
B C D E

A
F G H I
J
P
K M N
L

RIP OSPF1 RIP OSPF2

0 1 F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) F (110) L (120)
E H
4
E H
OSPF2 19
(110)
 Illustration of Model
Sequence 1
0 1 F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) F (110) L (120)
E H
Signaling 4
E OSPF2 H
Data path (110)

S(t=1) = {A} S(t=2) = {F} S(t=3) = {L}

CL(t=0) = {A} CL(t=1) = {E, F} CL(t=2) = {E, L} CL(t=3) = {E, H}

S(t=6) = {A, F} S(t=5) = {E} S(t=4) = {H}

CL(t=6) = { } CL(t=5) = {A, F} CL(t=4) = {E}
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 Route Redistribution Configuration -
Cycle Detection (RRC-CD) Problem
• Given a RR configuration, determining
whether there is an activation sequence
such that the redistributions converge to
state including a cycle of active
redistributions is NP-hard

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 Outline
1. Introduction to Route Redistribution (RR)
2. Illustration of routing anomalies
3. A Model for RR
4. Sufficient condition for loop-free and
convergent RR

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 Sufficient condition for safety
• Pruning of Route Propagation Graph
– For each redistributing router, only conserve
redistributions from the routing processes
with lowest administrative distances
• Rationale
– Focus on preferred redistributions

1 A 2 A 3 A 4
(100) (70) (120) (90)

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 Sufficient condition
If resulting graph satisfies
1. Every redistributing router redistributes from a
single routing instance (predictable outcome)
2. For all vertice, there is a redistribution path from a
originating vertex (active redistribution)
3. The graph is acyclic (no cycle)
Then, the redistributions converge to an acyclic
routing state
 No route oscillations
 No forwarding loops
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 Application of Sufficient
Condition

0 1 F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) F (110) L (120)
E H
4
E H
OSPF2
(110)

25
 Application of Sufficient
Condition

0 1 80, F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) F, 80 (110) L (120)
80, E H
4
E, 80 H
OSPF2
(110)

Modifications
26
 Application of Sufficient
Condition

0 1 80, F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) F, 80 (110) L (120)
80, E H
4
E, 80 H
OSPF2
(110)

Pruning
27
 Application of Sufficient
Condition

0 1 80, F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) (110) (120)
80, E
4
OSPF2 H
(110)

Pruning
28
 Application of Sufficient
Condition

0 1 80, F 2 L 3
A
Local RIP OSPF1 RIP
(0) (120) (110) (120)
80, E
4
OSPF2 H
(110)

1. Every redistributing router is redistributing

from a single routing instance.
2. For all vertice, there is a redistribution path
from a originating vertex.
3. The graph is acyclic. 29
 Summary
• Internetwork is far more complex with RR
than the conceptual model of BGP/OSPF
• RR serves a fundamental need, but is not
well-understood or even well-designed
• First formal study route-free and
convergence properties of RR
internetwork
– Model
– Sufficient condition
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 Future Work
• If one were to re-design the RR, what
should be the solution that supports all the
RR applications but avoid the pitfalls?

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