The BGP Tunnel Encapsulation Attribute
RFC 9012, “The BGP Tunnel Encapsulation Attribute”, is a Proposed Standard document published in April 2021 by K. Patel, G. Van de Velde, S. Sangli, J. Scudder. It updates RFC 5640. It obsoletes RFC 5512, RFC 5566. It has since been updated by RFC 9830. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This document defines a BGP path attribute known as the "Tunnel Encapsulation attribute", which can be used with BGP UPDATEs of various Subsequent Address Family Identifiers (SAFIs) to provide information needed to create tunnels and their corresponding encapsulation headers. It provides encodings for a number of tunnel types, along with procedures for choosing between alternate tunnels and routing packets into tunnels.
This document obsoletes RFC 5512, which provided an earlier definition of the Tunnel Encapsulation attribute. RFC 5512 was never deployed in production. Since RFC 5566 relies on RFC 5512, it is likewise obsoleted. This document updates RFC 5640 by indicating that the Load-Balancing Block sub-TLV may be included in any Tunnel Encapsulation attribute where load balancing is desired.
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 9012 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in HTML,TXT,PDF,XML.
- RFC 9011 Static Context Header Compression and Fragmentation over LoRaWAN
- RFC 9013 OSPF Advertisement of Tunnel Encapsulations
- RFC 9010 Routing for RPL Leaves
- RFC 9014 Interconnect Solution for Ethernet VPN Overlay Networks
- RFC 9009 Efficient Route Invalidation
- RFC 9015 BGP Control Plane for the Network Service Header in Service Function Chaining
- RFC 9008 Using RPI Option Type, Routing Header for Source Routes, and IPv6-in-IPv6 Encapsulation in the RPL Data Plane
- RFC 9016 Flow and Service Information Model for Deterministic Networking