Routing Bridges : Base Protocol Specification
RFC 6325, “Routing Bridges : Base Protocol Specification”, is a Proposed Standard document published in July 2011 by R. Perlman, D. Eastlake 3rd, D. Dutt, S. Gai, A. Ghanwani. It has since been updated by RFC 6327, RFC 6439, RFC 7172, RFC 7177, RFC 7179, RFC 7180, RFC 7357, RFC 7455, RFC 7780, RFC 7783, RFC 8139, RFC 8249, RFC 8361, RFC 8377. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
Routing Bridges (RBridges) provide optimal pair-wise forwarding without configuration, safe forwarding even during periods of temporary loops, and support for multipathing of both unicast and multicast traffic. They achieve these goals using IS-IS routing and encapsulation of traffic with a header that includes a hop count.
RBridges are compatible with previous IEEE 802.1 customer bridges as well as IPv4 and IPv6 routers and end nodes. They are as invisible to current IP routers as bridges are and, like routers, they terminate the bridge spanning tree protocol.
The design supports VLANs and the optimization of the distribution of multi-destination frames based on VLAN ID and based on IP-derived multicast groups. It also allows unicast forwarding tables at transit RBridges to be sized according to the number of RBridges (rather than the number of end nodes), which allows their forwarding tables to be substantially smaller than in conventional customer bridges. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
What “Proposed Standard” means
An entry-level standards-track specification: stable, peer-reviewed and a solid basis for implementation, though it may still evolve before becoming an Internet Standard.
The canonical text of RFC 6325 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
- RFC 6324 Routing Loop Attack Using IPv6 Automatic Tunnels: Problem Statement and Proposed Mitigations
- RFC 6326 Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links Use of IS-IS
- RFC 6323 Sender RTT Estimate Option for the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol
- RFC 6327 Routing Bridges : Adjacency
- RFC 6322 Datatracker States and Annotations for the IAB, IRTF, and Independent Submission Streams
- RFC 6328 IANA Considerations for Network Layer Protocol Identifiers
- RFC 6321 xCal: The XML Format for iCalendar
- RFC 6320 Protocol for Access Node Control Mechanism in Broadband Networks