Future attributes

Specifications for the following attributes have been defined but not implemented yet:

Future attributes
Attribute Name Type Access Default Value Validation/Constraint Description
technique string RW admin only None for instance “ipvpn” or “evpn” (optional) selection of the technique used to implement the VPN
auto_aggregate bool RW admin only False { True | False } enable prefix aggregation or not (type l3 only) but no support in any driver
admin_state_up bool RW admin only True { True | False } interconnection with this BGPVPN is enabled by the admin
vnid integer RW admin only None 24bit integer Globally-assigned VXLAN id

‘auto_aggregate’ attribute

The ‘auto_aggregate’ flag controls whether or not routes should be automatically aggregated before being advertised outside Neutron. A backend may or may not support this behavior, and its driver should report an API error in the latter case.

‘technique’ attribute

The ‘technique’ attribute is optional and can be used by the admin to select one of multiple techniques when more than one is supported by the driver. When no technique is specified, the driver will use a default value. An API call will be available to let the API user know about the types supported by the driver for a said vpn type.

Currently defined techniques are:

  • for l3:
    • ‘ipvpn’: this corresponds to RFC4364
    • ‘evpn-prefix’: this corresponds to draft-ietf-bess-evpn-prefix-advertisement
  • for l2:
    • ‘evpn’: this corresponds to RFC7432

API call to list the available techniques, with example answers:

  • GET /bgpvpn/techniques

    { "techniques": {
       "l3": [ "ipvpn" ],
       "l2": [ "evpn" ]
    } }
    
  • GET /bgpvpn/techniques/l3

    { "l3": [ "ipvpn"] }
    
  • GET /bgpvpn/techniques/l2

    { "l2": [ "evpn"] }
    

‘admin_state_up’ attribute

This is an admin-only attribute allowing the admin to shutdown connectivity to and from a BGP VPN and expose this state to the tenant.

‘VNID’ attribute

VXLAN is one option among others that could be used for BGP E-VPNs for instance in the context of E-VPN [draft-ietf-bess-evpn-overlay]. When VXLAN is used on a hardware platforms the use of a locally-assigned id may not be always possible which introduce the need to configure a globally-assigned VXLAN VNID.

The ‘VNID’ optional VNID attribute allows the admin to enforce the use of a chosen globally-assigned VXLAN VNID for the said BGPVPN.

The default when no VNID is specified and the VXLAN encapsulation is used, is to let the backend choose the VNID in advertised routes, and use the VNID in received routes for transmitted traffic

If the ‘VNID’ attribute is set for a BGPVPN, the following is enforced:

  • the routes announced by the backend will advertise the specified VNID (this relates to traffic sent from this BGP VPN to a Network or Router)
  • the routes received by the backend and that would be used to send traffic to the BGP VPN will not be used if they carry a different VNID than the VNID specified for the BGPVPN (this relates to traffic sent from a Network or Router to the BGP VPN)

In the case of a Network or Router associated to multiple BGPVPNs, the check in the second bullet in the previous paragraph is done as follows:

  • when a route is imported, for each BGPVPN associated to the Network or Router and having a VNID defined:
    • the set of Route Targets of the route is intersected with the import_rts of the BGPVPN
    • if this intersection is non-empty the ‘VNID’ of the BGPVPN is retained
  • the route is used to establish connectivity to the destination in the forwarding plane only if the VNID is advertised is equal to all retained VNIDs in the previous step

The above check is applied similarly for a Router associated to multiple BGP VPN.

The backend is expected provide troubleshooting information for the cases when a route ends up not being used because the VNID checked failed.