LSP Object Flag Extension of Stateful PCE

describes the Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) which is used between a Path Computation Element (PCE) and a Path Computation Client (PCC) (or other PCE) to enable computation of Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) for Traffic Engineering Label Switched Path (TE LSP). PCEP Extensions for the Stateful PCE Model describes a set of extensions to PCEP to enable active control of MPLS-TE and Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) tunnels. One of the extensions is the LSP object which contains a flag field; bits in the flag field are used to indicate delegation, syncronization, removal, etc. As defined in , the length of the flag field is 12 bits and the value from bit 5 to bit 11 is used for operational, administrative, remove, synchronize and delegate bits respectively. The bit value 4 is assigned in for create for PCE-Initiated LSPs. The bits from 1 to 3 is assigned in for Explicit Route Object (ERO)-compression, fragmentation and Point-to-Multipoint (P2MP) respectively. Almost all bits of the Flag field has been assigned already. Thus, it is required to extend the flag field for the LSP Object for future use. This document proposes to define a new LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV for an extended flag field in the LSP object.

The terminology is defined as and .

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

The LSP Object is defined in Section 7.3 of . This document proposes to define a new LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV for an extended flag field in the LSP object.

The format of the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV is as shown in the Figure 1.

Type (16 bits): the value is TBD1 by IANA. Length (16 bits): multiple of 4 octets. LSP Extended Flags: this contains an array of units of 32-bit flags numbered from the most significant as bit zero, where each bit represents one LSP operation, feature, or state. Currently no bits are assigned. Unassigned bits MUST be set to zero on transmission and MUST be ignored on receipt. For example of usage of the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV, the E-flag is requested for entropy label configuration proposed in .

The LSP Extended Flags field is an array of units of 32 flags and to be allocated starting from the most significant bit. No bits are currently assigned in this document and the bits of the LSP Extended Flags field will be assigned by future documents. Note that, PCEP peers MAY encounter different length of the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV. If a PCEP speaker receives the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV of a length more than it currently supports or understands, it will simply ignore the bits beyond that length. If a PCEP speaker receives the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV of a length less than the one supported by the implementation, it will consider the bits beyond the length to be unset.

The LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV defined in this document does not introduce any interoperability issues. A router that does not understand or support the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV will silently ignore the TLV as per . It is expected that future document that define bits in the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV would also define the error case handling required for missing LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV.

IANA is requested to allocate the following TLV Type Indicator value within the "PCEP TLV Type Indicators" subregistry of the "Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) Numbers" registry: Value Description Reference TBD1 LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG [This document]

IANA is requested to create a new subregistry called "LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV Flag Field", within the "Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) Numbers" registry to manage the LSP Extended Flags field of the LSP-EXTENDED-FLAG TLV. New values are assigned by Standards Action . Each bit should be tracked with the following qualities: Bit number (counting from bit 0 as the most significant bit) Capability description Defining RFC No values are currently defined.

For LSP Object procssing security considerations, see . No additional security issues are raised in this document beyond those that exist in the referenced documents.

The authors would like to thank Loa Andersson and Adrian Farrel for their review, suggestions and comments to this document.

The following people have contributed to this document: Dhruv Dhody EMail: dhruv.ietf@gmail.com