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Traffic Engineering: An Overview | OSPF and IS-IS: Choosing an IGP for Large-Scale Networks
11.2. Traffic Engineering: An Overview
Key to the usefulness of MPLS is that after the LSP is established, your
EGP or IGP or both can view the LSP as a traffic path when calculating
best paths to a destination. This is again similar to an ATM or Frame
Relay VC: Even though the path actually traverses multiple switching
nodes, a routing protocol can view it as a single link between the
ingress node and the egress node.
The example LSP you have seen so far in Figures 11.2 and 11.3 is too
simple to be of practical interest. There is only one physical route from
the ingress LSR to the egress LSR, so routing protocols are going to
choose it whether an LSP exists or not. But consider the ingress and
egress nodes in Figure 11.6. This network contains multiple paths be-
tween the ingress and the egress. The IGP in this network will do just
what it is designed to do and select the shortest path between ingress
and egress based on its given metrics. Assuming that all routers in the
network are ingress for some traffic flows and egress for other traffic
flows, the traffic might be fairly evenly distributed throughout the net-
work. But suppose much more traffic flows into the one ingress point
shown and out of the egress point shown, than anywhere else in the
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network. The single path chosen by the IGP might become congested
while available bandwidth on other paths is underutilized.
Figure 11.6. The IGP will select only one of the multiple paths
between the ingress and egress router in this topology.
Consider also a case in which the network in Figure 11.6 is a multiser-
vice network. You might want to route best-effort traffic between the
ingress and egress over longer paths, reserving the bandwidth on the
shortest path for delay-sensitive traffic such as voice.
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Such requirements are the basis of MPLS traffic engineering. Using
MPLS LSPs, you can engineer your traffic loads across the network in
such a way that available bandwidth is more efficiently utilized; you
can establish different paths for different traffic classes for better mul-
tiservice performance; and you can route traffic around trouble spots
such as congested links and nodes—congestion that IGPs cannot detect.
Traffic engineering capability has long been a part of ATM and Frame
Relay networks. However, before MPLS TE, the only traffic engineering
that could be done in IP networks without an ATM or Frame Relay
overlay was a crude manipulation of link metrics. Changing a link met-
ric is an all-or-nothing action; the IGP still chooses the shortest path.
MPLS TE enables you to track a number of interface parameters
throughout your network and then use these parameters to specify
how a path is selected and what packets use what path, permitting
much more granularity in regulating traffic flows.
11.2.1. TE Link Parameters
As you certainly know, an IGP selects a shortest path based on a metric
—some numeric value—assigned to the router interfaces throughout
the network. The foundation of traffic engineering is also an assign-
ment of values to interfaces. But because a useful and flexible TE appli-
cation requires a variety of parameters on which you can base path se-
lection, there must be a variety of values that can be assigned to inter-
faces that reflect these parameters. Those parameters are:
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Maximum Bandwidth
Maximum Reservable Bandwidth
Unreserved Bandwidth
Traffic Engineering Metric
Administrative Group
The first three parameters enable a mechanism by which you can spec-
ify the bandwidth an LSP can use. For example, an LSP might be re-
quired to have 10M available to it. When the LSP is being set up, it can
traverse only links between the ingress and egress on which at least
10M of bandwidth is available. That 10M is then reserved on the links
and becomes unavailable for use by another LSP. So if a 10M LSP is set
up across a link on which there is a total of 15M of available band-
width, only 5M of reservable bandwidth is left after the LSP is estab-
lished. If a second LSP is to be set up and also requires 10M, it cannot
use this link and must be set up on an alternate path that provides
enough bandwidth. If no other path with sufficient reservable band-
width is available, the second LSP cannot be established.
Maximum Bandwidth is the bandwidth of the interface. It might be the
actual bandwidth of the interface or it might be a configured number.
Maximum Reservable Bandwidth specifies how much of the link band-
width can be reserved by LSPs.
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Unreserved Bandwidth is the amount of maximum reservable band-
width that has not yet been used by LSPs.
Traffic Engineering Metric is a 24-bit value that can be assigned to an
interface and is used the same as an IGP metric. The TE metric allows
you to set up a metric-based LSP topology that is different from the
metric-based IGP shortest-path topology.
Administrative Group, also known as affinity, enables you to make an
interface a member of one or more of 32 possible administrative
groups. Administrative groups are often called link colors because you
can associate names with each of the 32 administrative groups, and
traditionally those names have been the names of colors. For example,
you might “color” all of your highest-speed links gold, your medium-
speed links silver, and your low-speed links bronze. You could then
specify that certain LSPs can only use gold or silver links and other
LSPs can only use silver or bronze links. Or instead of specifying what
links an LSP can use, you might specify what links an LSP cannot use:
For instance, an LSP might use any link except platinum links.
Figure 11.7 shows a Cisco Systems IOS output displaying traffic engi-
neering parameters for an interface. You can observe the TE metric,
the maximum bandwidth, the maximum reservable bandwidth, and
the administrative groups (affinity bits) to which the interface belongs.
Notice that the maximum reservable bandwidth is greater than the
maximum bandwidth. Specifying a maximum reservable bandwidth
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greater than the maximum bandwidth permits oversubscription of the
interface.
Figure 11.7. An IOS output showing the TE parameters associated with an interface.
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Cisco7# show ip ospf mpls traffic-eng link
OSPF Router with ID (10.1.1.1) (Process ID 1)
Area 0 has 1 MPLS TE links. Area instance is 14.
Links in hash bucket 8.
Link is associated with fragment 1. Link
instance is 14
Link connected to Point-to-Point network
Link ID :192.168.5.4
Interface Address :10.5.0.1
Neighbor Address :10.5.0.2
Admin Metric :84
Maximum bandwidth :150000
Maximum reservable bandwidth :250000
Number of Priority :8
Priority 0 :250000 Priority 1 :250000
Priority 2 :250000 Priority 3 :250000
Priority 4 :250000 Priority 5 :250000
Priority 6 :250000 Priority 7 :212500
Affinity Bit :0x3
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Of interest in Figure 11.7 are the eight entries labeled “Priority” 0
through 7. The value associated with each of these eight priorities is
the unreserved bandwidth. When an LSP is being configured for TE, is
can be given a setup and a hold priority, and each of these priorities is
a value between 0 and 7. Setup priority is the “strength” the LSP has to
preempt another LSP, and the hold priority is the “strength” an LSP has
to resist being preempted. If a new LSP has a setup priority higher than
the hold priority of an existing LSP, and there are not enough link re-
sources such as bandwidth to support both, the stronger LSP can re-
place the weaker LSP, and the weaker LSP must find a new path to its
egress. So the unreserved bandwidth in Figure 11.7 is allocated sepa-
rately for each of the eight setup priority levels; 0 is the highest or
“strongest,” and 7 is the lowest.
11.2.2. Constrained Shortest Path First
The calculation of a traffic engineered path takes place only in the
ingress router. That means the ingress router must have some way to
learn all of the TE parameters assigned to all MPLS interfaces in the
network, and it must have a place to store that information. This is
where OSPF and IS-IS come in: Both protocols have extensions that al-
low them to carry the TE interface parameters along with the normal
interface parameters such as OSPF or IS-IS metrics and link state.
Those extensions, the real topic of this chapter, are detailed in
Sections 11.3 and 11.4.
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Just as OSPF LSAs and IS-IS LSPs are stored in a link state database, the
traffic engineering parameters carried by the extensions to these pro-
tocols are stored in a special database called the traffic engineering
database (TED). Figure 11.8 shows an example of a TED from a Juniper
Networks LSR. For each entry, you can observe the administrative
groups (called color in this display), the metric, and the bandwidth
parameters.
Figure 11.8. A JUNOS output showing a traffic engineering database.
jeff@Juniper3> show ted database extensive
TED database: 0 ISIS nodes 6 INET nodes
NodeID: 172.16.229.7
Type: Rtr, Age: 72166 secs, LinkIn: 1, LinkOut: 1
Protocol: OSPF(0.0.0.0)
To: 172.16.229.190-1, Local: 172.16.229.191,
Remote: 0.0.0.0
Color: 0 <none>
Metric: 100
Static BW: 1000Mbps
Reservable BW: 1000Mbps
Available BW [priority] bps:
[0] 1000Mbps [1] 1000Mbps [2]
1000Mbps [3] 1000Mbps
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[4] 1000Mbps [5] 1000Mbps [6]
1000Mbps [7] 1000Mbps
Interface Switching Capability Descriptor(1):
Switching type: Packet
Encoding type: Packet
Maximum LSP BW [priority] bps:
[0] 1000Mbps [1] 1000Mbps [2]
1000Mbps [3] 1000Mbps
[4] 1000Mbps [5] 1000Mbps [6]
1000Mbps [7] 1000Mbps
NodeID: 172.16.229.8
Type: Rtr, Age: 72161 secs, LinkIn: 1, LinkOut: 1
Protocol: OSPF(0.0.0.0)
To: 172.16.229.189-1, Local: 172.16.229.188,
Remote: 0.0.0.0
Color: 0 <none>
Metric: 100
Static BW: 1000Mbps
Reservable BW: 1000Mbps
Available BW [priority] bps:
[0] 1000Mbps [1] 1000Mbps [2]
1000Mbps [3] 1000Mbps
[4] 1000Mbps [5] 1000Mbps [6]
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1000Mbps [7] 1000Mbps
Interface Switching Capability Descriptor(1):
Switching type: Packet
Encoding type: Packet
Maximum LSP BW [priority] bps:
[0] 1000Mbps [1] 1000Mbps [2]
1000Mbps [3] 1000Mbps
[4] 1000Mbps [5] 1000Mbps [6]
1000Mbps [7] 1000Mbps
NodeID: 172.16.229.9
Type: Rtr, Age: 10924 secs, LinkIn: 3, LinkOut: 3
Protocol: OSPF(0.0.0.0)
To: 172.16.229.190-1, Local: 172.16.229.190,
Remote: 0.0.0.0
Color: 0 <none>
Metric: 100
Static BW: 1000Mbps
Reservable BW: 1000Mbps
Available BW [priority] bps:
[0] 1000Mbps [1] 1000Mbps [2]
1000Mbps [3] 1000Mbps
[4] 1000Mbps [5] 1000Mbps [6]
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1000Mbps [7] 1000Mbps
Interface Switching Capability Descriptor(1):
Switching type: Packet
Encoding type: Packet
Maximum LSP BW [priority] bps:
[0] 1000Mbps [1] 1000Mbps [2]
1000Mbps [3] 1000Mbps
[4] 1000Mbps [5] 1000Mbps [6]
1000Mbps [7] 1000Mbps
To: 172.16.229.10, Local: 172.16.229.193,
Remote: 172.16.229.192
Color: 0 <none>
Metric: 100
Static BW: 155.52Mbps
Reservable BW: 155.52Mbps
Available BW [priority] bps:
[0] 155.52Mbps [1] 155.52Mbps [2]
155.52Mbps [3] 155.52Mbps
[4] 155.52Mbps [5] 155.52Mbps [6]
155.52Mbps [7] 155.52Mbps
Interface Switching Capability Descriptor(1):
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Switching type: Packet
Encoding type: Packet
Maximum LSP BW [priority] bps:
[0] 155.52Mbps [1] 155.52Mbps [2]
155.52Mbps [3] 155.52Mbps
[4] 155.52Mbps [5] 155.52Mbps [6]
155.52Mbps [7] 155.52Mbps
To: 172.16.229.10, Local: 172.16.229.195,
Remote: 172.16.229.194
Color: 0 <none>
Metric: 100
Static BW: 155.52Mbps
Reservable BW: 155.52Mbps
Available BW [priority] bps:
[0] 155.52Mbps [1] 155.52Mbps [2]
155.52Mbps [3] 155.52Mbps
[4] 155.52Mbps [5] 155.52Mbps [6]
155.52Mbps [7] 155.52Mbps
Interface Switching Capability Descriptor(1):
Switching type: Packet
Encoding type: Packet
Maximum LSP BW [priority] bps:
[0] 155.52Mbps [1] 155.52Mbps [2]
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155.52Mbps [3] 155.52Mbps
[4] 155.52Mbps [5] 155.52Mbps [6]
155.52Mbps [7] 155.52Mbps
When you configure an LSP at an ingress LSR, you specify constraints
on the LSP: What link colors it can or cannot use, its bandwidth, the
maximum number of LSR hops it can traverse, and so on. Using these
constraints and the information in the TED, the LSR runs a modified
SPF algorithm called constrained shortest path first (CSPF), which cal-
culates the shortest path to the egress within the constraints you speci-
fied. A specification of the resulting shortest path is then fed to the sig-
naling protocol—RSVP or CR-LDP—which sets up the LSP.
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