Avoiding Equal Cost Multipath Treatment in MPLS Networks
RFC 4928, “Avoiding Equal Cost Multipath Treatment in MPLS Networks”, is a Best Current Practice document published in June 2007 by G. Swallow, S. Bryant, L. Andersson. It has since been updated by RFC 7274, RFC 9790. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This document describes the Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP) behavior of currently deployed MPLS networks. This document makes best practice recommendations for anyone defining an application to run over an MPLS network that wishes to avoid the reordering that can result from transmission of different packets from the same flow over multiple different equal cost paths. These recommendations rely on inspection of the IP version number field in packets. Despite the heuristic nature of the recommendations, they provide a relatively safe way to operate MPLS networks, even if future allocations of IP version numbers were made for some purpose. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.
What “Best Current Practice” means
Documents the IETF community's recommended operational or procedural practice rather than a protocol specification.
The canonical text of RFC 4928 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
- RFC 4927 Path Computation Element Communication Protocol Specific Requirements for Inter-Area MPLS and GMPLS Traffic Engineering
- RFC 4929 Change Process for Multiprotocol Label Switching and Generalized MPLS Protocols and Procedures
- RFC 4926 A URN Namespace for GEANT
- RFC 4930 Extensible Provisioning Protocol
- RFC 4925 Softwire Problem Statement
- RFC 4931 Extensible Provisioning Protocol Domain Name Mapping
- RFC 4924 Reflections on Internet Transparency
- RFC 4932 Extensible Provisioning Protocol Host Mapping