[60601] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: MPLS ICMP Extensions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Bernico)
Thu Aug 14 14:21:53 2003
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:21:28 -0500
From: "Mike Bernico" <mbernico@illinois.net>
To: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell@ufp.org>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that the extended MPLS info only showed
up when the trace was started on a PE or P router. Is that right? =20
If customers or others outside the MPLS domain can see that info I'd
definitely agree with you.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Leo Bicknell [mailto:bicknell@ufp.org]=20
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 12:40 PM
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: MPLS ICMP Extensions
I wanted to get some other opinions on some new features that have
appeared in recent code from the popular vendors. It appears there
is a new draft, a copy of which can be found at
http://www.watersprings.org/links/mlr/id/draft-ietf-mpls-icmp-01.txt
that
allows MPLS enabled boxes to return some additonal information in
a traceroute packet.
That's all well and good, and I can see how that might be amazingly
useful to someone running an MPLS network, however, it seems to
expose data much further than the local network. Here's a random
example from a traceroute I recently performed (on a Juniper):
traceroute wcg.net
[snip]
11 hrndva1wcx3-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.95.117) 91.935 ms 102.652 ms
92.960 ms
MPLS Label=3D13198 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
12 hrndva1wcx2-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.95.77) 92.593 ms 92.785 ms 93.119
ms
MPLS Label=3D12676 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
13 nycmny2wcx2-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.240.45) 93.273 ms 93.121 ms
93.067 ms
MPLS Label=3D12632 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
14 nycmny2wcx3-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.87.78) 104.755 ms 91.949 ms
92.169 ms
MPLS Label=3D12672 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
15 chcgil1wcx3-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.240.37) 92.021 ms 91.737 ms
91.684 ms
MPLS Label=3D12592 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
16 chcgil1wcx3-pos5-0.wcg.net (64.200.210.114) 175.907 ms 278.144 ms
203.763 ms
MPLS Label=3D12695 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
17 chcgil1wcx2-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.103.73) 93.286 ms 93.230 ms
93.593 ms
MPLS Label=3D13506 CoS=3D0 TTL=3D1 S=3D1
18 stlsmo3wcf1-atm.wcg.net (64.200.210.158) 92.780 ms 92.344 ms
92.596 ms
It appears both Cisco and Juniper support this new feature. The
question I quickly asked both vendors is how do you turn this
behavior off, so the traceroutes appear as they did before this
feature was introduced. The answer, apparently, is you don't. You
can either disable TTL processing on your MPLS tunnels (in effect
disabling traceroute), or you can have it output all this extra
information.
The response I'm getting so far from each vendor is they believe
this are the right two options to offer. Thus, my post here. I
think there are more people out there who would like to not expose
their MPLS labels, Class of Service info, or anything else this
feature can provide (because, I don't know all of what it can
display), but still allow traceroute to work normally.
If I'm off in the deep end, please tell me so, if not, please tell your
vendor rep you'd like the "icmp no mpls info" knob.
--=20
Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request@tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
