Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Boutros, Ed.
Request for Comments: 9638 Ciena Corporation
Category: Informational D. Eastlake 3rd, Ed.
ISSN: 2070-1721 Independent
September 2024
Network Virtualization over Layer 3 (NVO3) Encapsulation Considerations
Abstract
The IETF Network Virtualization Overlays (NVO3) Working Group
developed considerations for a common encapsulation that addresses
various network virtualization overlay technical concerns. This
document provides a record, for the benefit of the IETF community, of
the considerations arrived at by the NVO3 Working Group starting from
the output of the NVO3 encapsulation Design Team. These
considerations may be helpful with future deliberations by working
groups over the choice of encapsulation formats.
There are implications of having different encapsulations in real
environments consisting of both software and hardware implementations
and within and spanning multiple data centers. For example,
Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) functions such as
path MTU discovery become challenging with multiple encapsulations
along the data path.
Based on these considerations, the NVO3 Working Group determined that
Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (Geneve) with a few
modifications is the common encapsulation. This document provides
more details, particularly in Section 7.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9638.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Design Team and Working Group Process
3. Terminology
4. Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Definitions
5. Encapsulation Issues and Background
5.1. Geneve
5.2. Generic UDP Encapsulation (GUE)
5.3. Generic Protocol Extension (GPE) for VXLAN
6. Common Encapsulation Considerations
6.1. Current Encapsulations
6.2. Useful Extensions Use Cases
6.2.1. Telemetry Extensions
6.2.2. Security/Integrity Extensions
6.2.3. Group-Based Policy
6.3. Hardware Considerations
6.4. Extension Size
6.5. Ordering of Extension Headers
6.6. TLV versus Bit Fields
6.7. Control Plane Considerations
6.8. Split NVE
6.9. Larger VNI Considerations
7. Recommendations
8. Security Considerations
9. IANA Considerations
10. References
10.1. Normative References
10.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Encapsulation Comparison
A.1. Overview
A.2. Extensibility
A.2.1. Innate Extensibility Support
A.2.2. Extension Parsing
A.2.3. Critical Extensions
A.2.4. Maximal Header Length
A.3. Encapsulation Header
A.3.1. Virtual Network Identifier (VNI)
A.3.2. Next Protocol
A.3.3. Other Header Fields
A.4. Comparison Summary
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
The NVO3 Working Group is chartered to gather requirements and
develop solutions for network virtualization data planes based on
encapsulation of virtual network traffic over an IP-based underlay
data plane. Requirements include due consideration for OAM and
security. Based on these requirements, the WG was to select, extend,
and/or develop one or more data plane encapsulation formats.
This led to WG Internet-Drafts and an RFC describing three
encapsulations as follows:
* "Geneve: Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation" [RFC8926]
* "Generic UDP Encapsulation" [GUE]
* "Generic Protocol Extension for VXLAN (VXLAN-GPE)" [VXLAN-GPE]
Discussion on the list and in face-to-face meetings identified a
number of technical problems with each of these encapsulations.
Furthermore, there was a clear consensus at the 96th IETF meeting in
Berlin that the working group should progress only one data plane
encapsulation, to maximize interoperability. In order to overcome a
deadlock on the encapsulation decision, the WG consensus was to form
a Design Team [RFC2418] to resolve this issue and provide initial
considerations.
2. Design Team and Working Group Process
The Design Team was to select one of the proposed encapsulations and
enhance it to address the technical concerns. The goals were simple
evolution of deployed networks as well as applicability to all
locations in the NVO3 architecture. The Design Team was to
specifically select a design that allows for future extensibility but
is not burdensome on hardware implementations. The selected design
also needed to operate well with the Internet Control Message
Protocol (ICMP) and in Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) environments. If
further extensibility is required, then it should be done in such a
manner that it does not require the consent of an entity outside of
the IETF.
The output of the Design Team was then processed through the working
group, resulting in a working group consensus for this document.
3. Terminology
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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
4. Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Definitions
The following abbreviations and acronyms are used in this document:
ACL: Access Control List
ECMP: Equal-Cost Multipath
EVPN: Ethernet VPN [RFC8365]
Geneve: Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation [RFC8926]
GPE: Generic Protocol Extension
GUE: Generic UDP Encapsulation [GUE]
HMAC: Hash-Based Message Authentication Code [RFC2104]
IEEE: Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers
(<https://www.ieee.org/>)
NIC: Network Interface Card (refers to network interface hardware
that is not necessarily a discrete "card")
NSH: Network Service Header [RFC8300]
NVA: Network Virtualization Authority
NVE: Network Virtual Edge (refers to an NVE device)
NVO3: Network Virtualization over Layer 3
OAM: Operations, Administration, and Maintenance [RFC6291]
PWE3: Pseudowire Emulation Edge-to-Edge
TCAM: Ternary Content-Addressable Memory
TLV: Type-Length-Value
Transit device: Refers to underlay network devices between NVEs.
UUID: Universally Unique Identifier
VNI: Virtual Network Identifier
VXLAN: Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network [RFC7348]
5. Encapsulation Issues and Background
The following subsections describe issues with current encapsulations
as discussed by the NVO3 WG. Numerous extensions and options have
been designed for GUE and Geneve that may help resolve some of these
issues, but these have not yet been validated by the WG.
Also included are diagrams and information on the candidate
encapsulations. These are mostly copied from other documents. Since
each protocol is assumed to be sent over UDP, an initial UDP header
is shown that would be preceded by an IPv4 or IPv6 header.
5.1. Geneve
The Geneve packet format, taken from [RFC8926], is shown in Figure 1
below.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
Outer UDP Header:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Port | Dest Port = 6081 Geneve |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| UDP Length | UDP Checksum |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Geneve Header:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|Ver| Opt Len |O|C| Rsvd. | Protocol Type |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Virtual Network Identifier (VNI) | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
~ Variable-Length Options ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: Geneve Header
The type of payload being carried is indicated by an Ethertype
[RFC9542] in the Protocol Type field in the Geneve header; Ethernet
itself is represented by Ethertype 0x6558. See [RFC8926] for details
concerning UDP header fields. The O bit indicates an OAM packet.
The Geneve C bit is the "Critical" bit, which means that the options
must be processed or the packet discarded.
Issues with Geneve [RFC8926] are as follows:
* Geneve can't be implemented cost-effectively in all use cases
because the variable-length header and order of the TLVs make it
costly (in terms of number of gates) to implement in hardware.
* The header doesn't fit into the largest commonly available parse
buffer (256 bytes in a NIC). Thus, doubling the buffer size can't
be justified unless it is mandatory for hardware to process
additional option fields.
The selection of Geneve despite these issues may be the result of the
Geneve design effort, assuming that the Geneve header would typically
be delivered to a server and parsed in software.
5.2. Generic UDP Encapsulation (GUE)
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
UDP Header:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Port | Dest Port = 6080 GUE |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| UDP Length | UDP Checksum |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
GUE Header:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| 0 |C| Hlen | Proto/ctype | Flags |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
~ Extensions Fields (optional) ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 2: GUE Header
The type of payload being carried is indicated by an IANA protocol
number in the Proto/ctype field. The GUE C bit (Control bit)
indicates a control packet.
Issues with GUE [GUE] are as follows:
* There were a significant number of objections to GUE related to
the complexity of its implementation in hardware, similar to those
noted for Geneve above, such as the variable length and possible
high maximum length of the header.
5.3. Generic Protocol Extension (GPE) for VXLAN
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
Outer UDP Header:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Port | Dest Port = 4790 GPE |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| UDP Length | UDP Checksum |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
VXLAN-GPE Header
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|R|R|Ver|I|P|B|O| Reserved | Next Protocol |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Virtual Network Identifier (VNI) | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 3: GPE Header
The type of payload being carried is indicated by the Next Protocol
field using a registry specific to VXLAN-GPE. The I bit indicates
that the VNI is valid. The P bit indicates that the Next Protocol
field is valid. The B bit indicates that the packet is an ingress
replicated Broadcast, Unknown Unicast, or Multicast packet. The O
bit indicates an OAM packet.
Issues with VXLAN-GPE [VXLAN-GPE] are as follows:
* GPE is not day one backwards compatible with VXLAN [RFC7348].
Although the frame format is similar, it uses a different UDP
port, so it would require changes to existing implementations even
if the rest of the GPE frame were the same.
* GPE is insufficiently extensible. It adds a Next Protocol field
and some flag bits to the VXLAN header but is not otherwise
extensible.
* As discussed in Section 6.2.2, security (e.g., of the VNI) has not
been addressed by GPE. Although a shim header could be added for
security and to support other extensions, this has not been
defined yet. More study would be needed to understand the
implication of such a shim on offloading in NICs.
6. Common Encapsulation Considerations
6.1. Current Encapsulations
Appendix A includes a detailed comparison between the three proposed
encapsulations. The comparison indicates several common properties
but also three major differences among the encapsulations:
* Extensibility: Geneve and GUE were defined with built-in
extensibility, while VXLAN-GPE is not inherently extensible. Note
that any of the three encapsulations can be extended using the
Network Service Header (NSH) [RFC8300].
* Extension method: Geneve is extensible using Type-Length-Value
(TLV) fields, while GUE uses a small set of possible extensions
and a set of flags that indicate which extensions are present.
* Length field: Geneve and GUE include a Length field, indicating
the length of the encapsulation header, while VXLAN-GPE does not
include such a field. Thus, it may be harder to skip the
encapsulation header with VXLAN-GPE
6.2. Useful Extensions Use Cases
Extensions that are not vendor-specific, such as TLVs, MUST follow
the standardization process. The following use cases for extensions
show that there is a strong requirement to support variable-length
extensions with possible different subtypes.
6.2.1. Telemetry Extensions
In several scenarios, it is beneficial to make information available
to the operator about the path a packet took through the network or
through a network device as well as information about associated
telemetry.
This includes not only tasks like debugging, troubleshooting, and
network planning and optimization but also policy or service level
agreement compliance checks.
Packet scheduling algorithms, especially for balancing traffic across
equal-cost paths or links, often leverage information contained
within the packet, such as protocol number, IP address, or Message
Authentication Code (MAC) address. Thus, probe packets would need to
be either sent between the exact same endpoints with the exact same
parameters or artificially constructed as "fake" packets and inserted
along the path. Both approaches are often not feasible from an
operational perspective because access to the end system is not
feasible or the diversity of parameters and associated probe packets
to be created is simply too large. An extension providing an in-band
telemetry mechanism [RFC9197] is an alternative in those cases.
6.2.2. Security/Integrity Extensions
Since the currently proposed NVO3 encapsulations do not protect their
headers, a single bit corruption in the VNI field could deliver a
packet to the wrong tenant. Extension headers are needed to use any
sophisticated security.
The possibility of VNI spoofing with an NVO3 protocol is exacerbated
by using UDP. Systems typically have no restrictions on applications
being able to send to any UDP port, so an unprivileged application
can trivially spoof VXLAN [RFC7348] packets, using arbitrary VNIs,
for instance.
One can envision support of an HMAC-like Message Authentication Code
(MAC) [RFC2104] in an NVO3 extension to authenticate the header and
the outer IP addresses, thereby preventing attackers from injecting
packets with spoofed VNIs.
Another aspect of security is payload security. Essentially, this
makes packets that look like the following:
IP|UDP|NVO3 Encap|DTLS/IPsec-ESP Extension|payload.
This is desirable because:
* we still have the UDP header for ECMP,
* the NVO3 header is in plain text so it can be read by network
elements, and
* different security or other payload transforms can be supported on
a single UDP port (we don't need a separate UDP port for DTLS/
IPsec; see [RFC9147] and [RFC6071], respectively).
6.2.3. Group-Based Policy
Another use case would be to carry the Group-Based Policy (GBP)
source group information within a NVO3 header extension in a similar
manner as has been implemented for VXLAN [VXLAN-GROUP]. This allows
various forms of policy such as access control and QoS to be applied
between abstract groups rather than coupled to specific endpoint
addresses.
6.3. Hardware Considerations
Hardware restrictions should be taken into consideration along with
future hardware enhancements that may provide more flexible metadata
(MD) processing. However, the set of options that need to and will
be implemented in hardware will be a subset of what is implemented in
software. This is because software NVEs are likely to grow features,
and hence option support, at a more rapid rate.
It is hard to predict which options will be implemented in which
piece of hardware and when. That depends on whether the hardware
will be in the form of:
* a NIC providing increasing offload capabilities to software NVEs,
or
* a switch chip being used as an NVE gateway towards non-NVO3 parts
of the network, or even
* a transit device that participates in the NVO3 data plane, e.g.,
for OAM purposes.
A result of this is that it doesn't look useful to prescribe some
order to the options so that the ones that are likely to be
implemented in hardware come first. We can't decide such an order
when we define the options; however, a control plane can enforce such
an order for some hardware implementations.
We do know that hardware initially needs to be able to efficiently
skip over the NVO3 header to find the inner payload. That is needed
both for NICs implementing various TCP offload mechanisms and for
transit devices and NVEs applying policy or ACLs to the inner
payload.
6.4. Extension Size
Extension header length has a significant impact on hardware and
software implementations. A maximum total header length that is too
small will unnecessarily constrain software flexibility. A maximum
total header length that is too large will place a nontrivial cost on
hardware implementations. Thus, the DT recommends that there be a
minimum and maximum total available extension header length
specified. The maximum total header length is determined by the size
of the bit field allocated for the total extension header length
field. The risk with this approach is that it may be difficult to
extend the total header size in the future. The minimum total header
length is determined by a requirement in the specifications that all
implementations must meet. The risk with this approach is that all
implementations will only implement support for the minimum total
header length, which would then become the de facto maximum total
header length.
The recommended minimum total available header length is 64 bytes.
The size of an extension header should always be 4-byte aligned.
The maximum length of a single option should be large enough to meet
the different extension use case requirements, e.g., for in-band
telemetry and future use.
6.5. Ordering of Extension Headers
To support hardware nodes at the target NVE or at a transit device
that can process one or a few extension headers in TCAM, a control
plane in such a deployment could signal a capability to ensure that a
specific extension header will always appear in a specific order, for
example, that such a specific extension header appear first in the
packet.
The order of the extension headers should be hardware friendly for
both the sender and the receiver and possibly some transit devices as
well. This may require that the extension headers and their order be
determined dynamically based on the hardware of those devices.
Transit devices don't participate in control plane communication
between the endpoints and are not required to process the extension
headers; however, if they do, they may need to process only a small
subset of the extension headers that will be consumed by target NVEs.
6.6. TLV versus Bit Fields
If there is a well-known initial set of options that is likely to be
implemented in software and in hardware, it can be efficient to use
the bit fields approach to indicate the presence of extensions as in
GUE. However, as described in Section 6.3, if options are added over
time and different subsets of options are likely to be implemented in
different pieces of hardware, then it would be hard for the IETF to
specify which options should get the early bit fields. TLVs are a
lot more flexible, which avoids the need to determine the relative
importance of different options. However, general TLVs of arbitrary
order, size, and repetition are difficult to implement in hardware.
A middle ground is to use TLVs with restrictions on their size and
alignment, observing that individual TLVs can have a fixed length,
and to support via the control plane a method such that an NVE will
only receive options that it needs and implements. The control plane
approach can potentially be used to control the order of the TLVs
sent to a particular NVE. Note that transit devices are not likely
to participate in the control plane; hence, to the extent that they
need to participate in option processing, some other method must be
used. Transit devices would have issues with future GUE bit fields
being defined for future options as well.
A benefit of TLVs from a hardware perspective is that they are self
describing, i.e., all the information is in the TLV. In a bit field
approach, the hardware needs to look up the bit to determine the
length of the data associated with the bit through some separate
table, which would add hardware complexity.
There are use cases where multiple modules of software are running on
an NVE. These can be modules such as a diagnostic module by one
vendor that does packet sampling and another module from a different
vendor that implements a firewall. Using a TLV format, it is easier
to have different software modules process different TLVs without
conflicting with each other. Such TLVs could be standard extensions
or vendor-specific extensions. This can help with hardware
modularity as well. There are some implementations with options that
allow different software modules, like MAC learning and security, to
process different options.
6.7. Control Plane Considerations
Given that we want to allow considerable flexibility and
extensibility (e.g., for software NVEs), yet want to be able to
support important extensions in less flexible contexts such as
hardware NVEs, it is useful to consider the control plane. By
control plane in this section we mean protocols, such as EVPN
[RFC8365] and others, and deployment-specific configurations.
If each NVE can express in the control plane that it only supports
certain extensions (which could be a single extension, or a few), and
the source NVEs only include supported extensions in the NVO3
packets, then the target NVE can use a simpler parser (e.g., a TCAM
might be usable to look for a single NVO3 extension) and the depth of
the inner payload in the NVO3 packet will be minimized. Furthermore,
if the target NVE cares about a few extensions and can express in the
control plane the desired order of those extensions in the NVO3
packets, then the deployment can provide useful functionality with
simplified hardware requirements for the target NVE.
Transit devices that are not aware of the NVO3 extensions somewhat
benefit from such an approach, since the inner payload is less deep
in the packet if no extraneous extension headers are included in the
packet. In general, a transit device is not likely to participate in
the NVO3 control plane. However, configuration mechanisms can take
into account limitations of the transit devices used in particular
deployments.
Note that with this approach, different NVEs could desire different
extensions or sets of extensions, which means that the source NVE
needs to be able to place different sets of extensions in different
NVO3 packets, and perhaps in a different order. It also assumes that
underlay multicast or replication servers are not used together with
NVO3 extension headers.
There is a need to consider mandatory extensions versus optional
extensions. Mandatory extensions require the receiver to drop the
packet if the extension is unknown. A control plane mechanism can
prevent the need for dropping unknown extensions, since they would
not be included to target NVEs that do not support them.
The control planes defined today need to add the ability to describe
the different encapsulations. Thus, perhaps EVPN [RFC8365] and any
other control plane protocol that the IETF defines should have a way
to indicate the supported NVO3 extensions and their order for each of
the encapsulations supported.
Developing a separate document on guidance for option processing and
control plane participation should be considered. This should
provide examples and guidance on the range of usage models and
deployment scenarios for specific options. It should also provide
examples of option ordering that are relevant for that specific
deployment. This includes endpoints and middleboxes that are using
the options. Having the control plane negotiate the constraints is
the most appropriate and flexible way to address these requirements.
6.8. Split NVE
If there is a need for hosts to send and receive options in a split
NVE case [RFC8394], this is possible using any of the existing
extensible encapsulations (GPE with NSH, GUE, or Geneve) by defining
a way to carry those over other transports. An NSH can already be
used over different transports.
If this is needed with other encapsulations, it can be done by
defining an Ethertype so that it can be carried over Ethernet and
IEEE Std 802.1Q [IEEE802.1Q].
If there is a need to carry other encapsulations over MPLS, it would
require an EVPN control plane to signal that other encapsulation
headers and options will be present in front of the Layer 2 (L2)
packet. The VNI can be ignored in the header, and the MPLS label
will be the one used to identify the EVPN L2 instance.
6.9. Larger VNI Considerations
Whether we should make the VNI 32 bits or larger was one of the
topics considered. The benefit of a 24-bit VNI would be to avoid
unnecessary changes with existing proposals and implementations that
are almost all, if not all, using a 24-bit VNI. If we need a larger
VNI, perhaps for a telemetry case, an extension can be used to
support that.
7. Recommendations
The Design Team reported that Geneve was most suitable as a starting
point for a proposed standard for network virtualization, for the
following reasons given below. This conclusion was supported by the
NVO3 Working Group.
1. On whether the VNI should be in the base header or in an
extension header and whether it should be a 24-bit or 32-bit
field (see Section 6.9), it was agreed that the VNI is critical
information for network virtualization and MUST be present in all
packets. It was also agreed that a 24-bit VNI, which is
supported by Geneve, matches the existing widely used
encapsulation formats, i.e., VXLAN [RFC7348] and Network
Virtualization Using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE)
[RFC7637], and hence is more suitable to use going forward.
2. The Geneve header has the total options length, which allows
skipping over the options for NIC offload operations and transit
devices to view flow information in the inner payload.
3. The option of using an NSH [RFC8300] with VXLAN-GPE was
considered, but given that an NSH is targeted at service chaining
and contains service chaining information, it is less suitable
for the network virtualization use case. The other downside of
VXLAN-GPE was the lack of a header length in VXLAN-GPE, which
makes skipping over the headers to process inner payloads more
difficult. A total options length is present in Geneve. It is
not possible to skip any options in the middle with VXLAN-GPE.
In principle, a split between a base header and a header with
options is interesting (whether that options header is an NSH or
some new header without ties to a service path). Whether it
would make sense to either use an NSH for this or define a new
NVO3 options header was explored. However, this makes it
slightly harder to find the inner payload since the Length field
is not in the NVO3 header itself. Thus, one more field would
have to be extracted to compute the start of the inner payload.
Also, if the experience with IPv6 extension headers is a guide,
there would be a risk that key pieces of hardware might not
implement the options header, resulting in future calls to
deprecate its use. Making the options part of the base NVO3
header has less of those issues. Even though the implementation
of any particular option can't be predicted ahead of time, the
option mechanism and ability to skip the options is likely to be
broadly implemented.
4. The TLV style and bit field style of extension mechanisms were
compared. It was deemed that parsing either TLVs or bit fields
is expensive, and while bit fields may be simpler to parse, they
are also more restrictive and require guessing which extensions
will be widely implemented in order to get early bit assignments.
Given that half the bits are already assigned in GUE, a widely
deployed extension may appear in a flag extension, and this will
require extra processing to dig the flag from the flag extension
and then look for the extension itself. Also, bit fields are not
flexible enough to address the requirements from OAM, telemetry,
and security extensions for variable-length options and different
subtypes of the same option. While TLVs are more flexible, a
control plane can restrict the number of option TLVs as well as
the order and size of the TLVs to limit this flexibility and make
the TLVs simpler for a data plane implementation to handle.
5. The multi-vendor NVE case was briefly discussed, as was the need
to allow vendors to put their own extensions in the NVE header.
This is possible with TLVs.
6. It was agreed that the C bit (Critical bit) in Geneve is helpful.
This bit indicates that the header includes options that must be
parsed, or else the packet must be discarded. The bit allows a
receiver NVE to easily decide whether or not to process options
(such as a UUID-based packet trace) and decide how an optional
extension can be ignored. Thus, a Critical bit makes it easy for
the NVE to skip over the options not marked with such a bit.
Thus, the C bit should remain as defined in Geneve.
7. There are already some extensions of varying sizes that are being
discussed (see Section 6.2). By using Geneve options, it is
possible to get in-band parameters like switch id, ingress port,
egress port, internal delay, and queue size using TLV extensions
for telemetry purposes from switches. It is also possible to add
security extension TLVs like HMAC [RFC2104] and DTLS/IPsec (see
[RFC9147] and [RFC6071], respectively) to authenticate the Geneve
packet header and secure the Geneve packet payload by software or
hardware tunnel endpoints. A Group-Based Policy extension TLV
can be carried as well.
8. There are already implementations of Geneve options deployed in
production networks. There is new hardware supporting Geneve TLV
parsing as well. In addition, an In-band Telemetry (INT)
specification [INT] is being developed by P4.org that illustrates
the option of INT metadata carried over Geneve. Open Virtual
Network (OVN) and Open vSwitch (OVS) [OVN] have also defined one
or more option TLVs for Geneve.
9. Usage requirements (see Section 6) have been addressed while also
considering requirements and implementations in general
(including those for software and hardware).
There seems to be interest in standardizing some well-known secure
option TLVs to secure the header and payload to guarantee
encapsulation header integrity and tenant data privacy. The working
group should consider standardizing such option(s).
The following enhancements to Geneve are recommended to make it more
suitable to hardware and yet provide flexibility for software:
* The following sort of text is recommended in Geneve documents:
while TLVs are more flexible, a control plane can restrict the
number of option TLVs as well as the order and size of the TLVs to
make it simpler for a data plane implementation in software or
hardware to handle. For example, there may be some critical
information such as a secure hash that must be processed in a
certain order at lowest latency.
* A control plane can negotiate a subset of option TLVs and certain
TLV ordering, as well as limiting the total number of option TLVs
present in the packet, for example, to allow for hardware capable
of processing fewer options. Hence, the control plane needs to
have the ability to describe the supported TLVs subset and their
order.
* The Geneve documents should specify that the subset and order of
option TLVs SHOULD be configurable for each remote NVE in the
absence of a protocol control plane.
* Geneve should follow fragmentation recommendations in overlay
services like PWE3 and the L2/L3 VPN recommendations to guarantee
larger MTUs for the tunnel overhead ([RFC3985], Section 5.3).
* The Geneve documents should provide a recommendation for C bit
(Critical bit) processing. This text could specify how critical
bits can be used with control planes and specify the critical
options.
* Given that there is a telemetry option use case for a length of
256 bytes, it is recommended that Geneve increase the single TLV
option length to 256.
* Geneve address requirements for OAM considerations for alternate
marking and for performance measurements that need a 2-bit field
in the header should be considered and the need for the current
OAM bit in the Geneve header should be clarified.
* The WG should work on security options for Geneve.
8. Security Considerations
This document does not introduce any additional security constraints;
however, Section 6.2.2 discusses security/integrity extensions and
this document suggests, in Section 7, that the NVO3 WG work on
security options for Geneve.
9. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
10.2. Informative References
[GUE] Herbert, T., Yong, L., and O. Zia, "Generic UDP
Encapsulation", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-intarea-gue-09, 26 October 2019,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-intarea-
gue-09>.
[GUE-ENCAPSULATION]
Yong, L., Herbert, T., and O. Zia, "Generic UDP
Encapsulation (GUE) for Network Virtualization Overlay",
Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-hy-nvo3-gue-4-nvo-
04, 28 October 2016,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-hy-nvo3-gue-
4-nvo-04>.
[GUE-EXTENSIONS]
Herbert, T., Yong, L., and F. Templin, "Extensions for
Generic UDP Encapsulation", Work in Progress, Internet-
Draft, draft-ietf-intarea-gue-extensions-06, 8 March 2019,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-intarea-
gue-extensions-06>.
[IEEE802.1Q]
IEEE, "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area
Networks--Bridges and Bridged Networks", IEEE Std 802.1Q-
2022, DOI 10.1109/IEEESTD.2022.10004498, December 2022,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEESTD.2022.10004498>.
[INT] P4.org Applications Working Group, "In-band Network
Telemetry (INT) Dataplane Specification", November 2020,
<https://p4.org/p4-spec/docs/INT_v2_1.pdf>.
[OVN] Linux Foundation, "Open vSwitch",
<https://www.openvswitch.org/>.
[RFC2104] Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M., and R. Canetti, "HMAC: Keyed-
Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2104, February 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2104>.
[RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, DOI 10.17487/RFC2418,
September 1998, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2418>.
[RFC3985] Bryant, S., Ed. and P. Pate, Ed., "Pseudo Wire Emulation
Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Architecture", RFC 3985,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3985, March 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3985>.
[RFC6071] Frankel, S. and S. Krishnan, "IP Security (IPsec) and
Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Document Roadmap", RFC 6071,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6071, February 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6071>.
[RFC6291] Andersson, L., van Helvoort, H., Bonica, R., Romascanu,
D., and S. Mansfield, "Guidelines for the Use of the "OAM"
Acronym in the IETF", BCP 161, RFC 6291,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6291, June 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6291>.
[RFC7348] Mahalingam, M., Dutt, D., Duda, K., Agarwal, P., Kreeger,
L., Sridhar, T., Bursell, M., and C. Wright, "Virtual
eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN): A Framework for
Overlaying Virtualized Layer 2 Networks over Layer 3
Networks", RFC 7348, DOI 10.17487/RFC7348, August 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7348>.
[RFC7637] Garg, P., Ed. and Y. Wang, Ed., "NVGRE: Network
Virtualization Using Generic Routing Encapsulation",
RFC 7637, DOI 10.17487/RFC7637, September 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7637>.
[RFC8300] Quinn, P., Ed., Elzur, U., Ed., and C. Pignataro, Ed.,
"Network Service Header (NSH)", RFC 8300,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8300, January 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8300>.
[RFC8365] Sajassi, A., Ed., Drake, J., Ed., Bitar, N., Shekhar, R.,
Uttaro, J., and W. Henderickx, "A Network Virtualization
Overlay Solution Using Ethernet VPN (EVPN)", RFC 8365,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8365, March 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8365>.
[RFC8394] Li, Y., Eastlake 3rd, D., Kreeger, L., Narten, T., and D.
Black, "Split Network Virtualization Edge (Split-NVE)
Control-Plane Requirements", RFC 8394,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8394, May 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8394>.
[RFC8926] Gross, J., Ed., Ganga, I., Ed., and T. Sridhar, Ed.,
"Geneve: Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation",
RFC 8926, DOI 10.17487/RFC8926, November 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8926>.
[RFC9147] Rescorla, E., Tschofenig, H., and N. Modadugu, "The
Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) Protocol Version
1.3", RFC 9147, DOI 10.17487/RFC9147, April 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9147>.
[RFC9197] Brockners, F., Ed., Bhandari, S., Ed., and T. Mizrahi,
Ed., "Data Fields for In Situ Operations, Administration,
and Maintenance (IOAM)", RFC 9197, DOI 10.17487/RFC9197,
May 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9197>.
[RFC9542] Eastlake 3rd, D., Abley, J., and Y. Li, "IANA
Considerations and IETF Protocol and Documentation Usage
for IEEE 802 Parameters", BCP 141, RFC 9542,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9542, April 2024,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9542>.
[VXLAN-GPE]
Maino, F., Ed., Kreeger, L., Ed., and U. Elzur, Ed.,
"Generic Protocol Extension for VXLAN (VXLAN-GPE)", Work
in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-nvo3-vxlan-gpe-13,
4 November 2023, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-nvo3-vxlan-gpe-13>.
[VXLAN-GROUP]
Smith, M. and L. Kreeger, "VXLAN Group Policy Option",
Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-smith-vxlan-group-
policy-05, 22 October 2018,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-smith-vxlan-
group-policy-05>.
Appendix A. Encapsulation Comparison
A.1. Overview
This section presents a comparison of the three NVO3 encapsulation
proposals: Geneve [RFC8926], GUE [GUE], and VXLAN-GPE [VXLAN-GPE].
The three encapsulations use an outer UDP/IP transport. Geneve and
VXLAN-GPE use an 8-octet header, while GUE uses a 4-octet header. In
addition to the base header, optional extensions may be included in
the encapsulation, as discussed in Appendix A.2 below.
A.2. Extensibility
A.2.1. Innate Extensibility Support
The Geneve and GUE encapsulations both enable optional headers to be
incorporated at the end of the base encapsulation header.
VXLAN-GPE does not provide innate support for header extensions.
However, as discussed in [VXLAN-GPE], extensibility can be attained
to some extent if the Network Service Header (NSH) [RFC8300] is used
immediately following the VXLAN-GPE header. The NSH supports either
a fixed-size extension (MD Type 1) or a variable-size TLV-based
extension (MD Type 2). Note that NSH-over-VXLAN-GPE implies an
additional overhead of the 8-octet NSH, in addition to the VXLAN-GPE
header.
A.2.2. Extension Parsing
The Geneve variable-length options are defined as Type-Length-Value
(TLV) extensions. Similarly, VXLAN-GPE, when using an NSH, can
include NSH TLV-based extensions. In contrast, GUE defines a small
set of possible extension fields (proposed in [GUE-EXTENSIONS] and
[GUE-ENCAPSULATION]), and a set of flags in the GUE header that
indicate for each extension type whether it is present or not.
TLV-based extensions, as defined in Geneve, provide the flexibility
for a large number of possible extension types. Similar behavior can
be supported in NSH-over-VXLAN-GPE when using MD Type 2. The flag-
based approach taken in GUE strives to simplify implementations by
defining a small number of possible extensions used in a fixed order.
The Geneve and GUE headers both include a Length field that defines
the total length of the encapsulation, including the optional
extensions. This Length field simplifies the parsing by transit
devices that skip the encapsulation header without parsing its
extensions.
A.2.3. Critical Extensions
The Geneve encapsulation header includes the C field, which indicates
whether the current Geneve header includes critical options, that is
to say, options which must be parsed by the target NVE. If the
endpoint is not able to process a critical option, the packet is
discarded.
A.2.4. Maximal Header Length
The maximal header length in Geneve, including options, is 260
octets. GUE defines the maximal header to be 128 octets. VXLAN-GPE
uses a fixed-length header of 8 octets, unless NSH-over-VXLAN-GPE is
used, yielding an encapsulation header of up to 264 octets.
A.3. Encapsulation Header
A.3.1. Virtual Network Identifier (VNI)
The Geneve and VXLAN-GPE headers both include a 24-bit VNI field.
GUE, on the other hand, enables the use of a 32-bit field called
VNID; this field is not included in the GUE header but was defined as
an optional extension in [GUE-ENCAPSULATION].
The VXLAN-GPE header includes the I bit, indicating that the VNI
field is valid in the current header. A similar indicator is defined
as a flag in the GUE header [GUE-EXTENSIONS].
A.3.2. Next Protocol
All three encapsulation headers include a field that specifies the
type of the next protocol header, which resides after the NVO3
encapsulation header. The Geneve header includes a 16-bit field that
uses the IEEE Ethertype convention. GUE uses an 8-bit field, which
uses the IANA protocol numbering. The VXLAN-GPE header incorporates
an 8-bit Next Protocol field, using a registry specific to VXLAN-GPE,
defined in [VXLAN-GPE].
The VXLAN-GPE header also includes the P bit, which explicitly
indicates whether the Next Protocol field is present in the current
header.
A.3.3. Other Header Fields
The OAM bit, which is defined in Geneve and in VXLAN-GPE, indicates
whether the current packet is an OAM packet. The GUE header includes
a similar field but uses different terminology; the GUE C bit
(Control bit) specifies whether the current packet is a control
packet. Note that the GUE C bit can potentially be used in a large
set of protocols that are not OAM protocols. However, the control
packet examples discussed in [GUE] are related to OAM.
Each of the three NVO3 encapsulation headers includes a 2-bit Version
field, which is currently defined to be zero.
The Geneve and VXLAN-GPE headers include reserved fields; 14 bits in
the Geneve header and 27 bits in the VXLAN-GPE header are reserved.
A.4. Comparison Summary
The following table summarizes the comparison between the three NVO3
encapsulations. In some cases, a plus sign ("+") or minus sign ("-")
is used to indicate that the header is stronger or weaker in an area,
respectively.
+===============+=================+=============+===================+
| | Geneve | GUE | VXLAN-GPE |
+===============+=================+=============+===================+
| Outer | UDP/IP 6081 | UDP/IP 6080 | UDP/IP 4790 |
| transport UDP | | | |
| Port Number | | | |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Base header | 8 octets | 4 octets | 8 octets (16 |
| length | | | octets using |
| | | | an NSH) |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Extensibility | Variable-length | Extension | No innate |
| | options | fields | extensibility. |
| | | | Might use an |
| | | | NSH. |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Extension | TLV-based | Flag-based | TLV-based |
| parsing | | | (using an NSH |
| method | | | with MD Type |
| | | | 2) |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Extension | Variable | Fixed | Variable |
| order | | | (using an NSH) |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Length field | + | + | - |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Max header | 260 octets | 128 octets | 8 octets (264 |
| length | | | using an NSH) |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Critical | + | - | - |
| extension bit | | | |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| VNI field | 24 bits | 32 bits | 24 bits |
| size | | (extension) | |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Next Protocol | 16 bits | 8 bits | 8 bits New |
| field | Ethertype | Internet | registry |
| | registry | protocol | |
| | | registry | |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Next protocol | - | - | + |
| indicator | | | |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| OAM / Control | OAM bit | Control bit | OAM bit |
| field | | | |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Version field | 2 bits | 2 bits | 2 bits |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| Reserved bits | 14 bits | none | 27 bits |
+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
Table 1: Encapsulations Comparison
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Tom Herbert for providing the
motivation for the security/integrity extension and for his valuable
comments; T. Sridhar for his valuable comments and feedback; Anoop
Ghanwani for his extensive comments; and Ignas Bagdonas.
Contributors
The following coauthors have contributed to this document:
Ilango Ganga
Intel
Email: ilango.s.ganga@intel.com
Pankaj Garg
Microsoft
Email: pankajg@microsoft.com
Rajeev Manur
Broadcom
Email: rajeev.manur@broadcom.com
Tal Mizrahi
Huawei
Email: tal.mizrahi.phd@gmail.com
David Mozes
Email: mosesster@gmail.com
Erik Nordmark
ZEDEDA
Email: nordmark@sonic.net
Michael Smith
Cisco
Email: michsmit@cisco.com
Sam Aldrin
Google
Email: aldrin.ietf@gmail.com
Authors' Addresses
Sami Boutros (editor)
Ciena Corporation
United States of America
Email: sboutros@ciena.com
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd (editor)
Independent
2386 Panoramic Circle
Apopka, FL 32703
United States of America
Phone: +1-508-333-2270
Email: d3e3e3@gmail.com
