





Network Working Group                                    K. Muthukrishnan
Request for Comments: 2917                            Lucent Technologies
Category: Informational                                          A. Malis
                                                    Vivace Networks, Inc.
                                                           September 2000


                    A Core MPLS IP VPN Architecture

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This memo presents an approach for building core Virtual Private
   Network (VPN) services in a service provider's MPLS backbone.  This
   approach uses Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) running in the
   backbone to provide premium services in addition to best effort
   services. The central vision is for the service provider to provide a
   virtual router service to their customers. The keystones of this
   architecture are ease of configuration, user security, network
   security, dynamic neighbor discovery, scaling and the use of existing
   routing protocols as they exist today without any modifications.

1. Acronyms

        ARP     Address Resolution Protocol
        CE      Customer Edge router
        LSP     Label Switched Path
        PNA     Private Network Administrator
        SLA     Service Level Agreement
        SP      Service Provider
        SPED    Service Provider Edge Device
        SPNA    SP Network Administrator
        VMA     VPN Multicast Address
        VPNID   VPN Identifier
        VR      Virtual Router
        VRC     Virtual Router Console






Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 1]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


2. Introduction

   This memo describes an approach for building IP VPN services out of
   the backbone of the SP's network. Broadly speaking, two possible
   approaches present themselves: the overlay model and the virtual
   router approach. The overlay model is based on overloading some
   semantic(s) of existing routing protocols to carry reachability
   information.  In this document, we focus on the virtual router
   service.

   The approach presented here does not depend on any modifications of
   any existing routing protocols. Neighbor discovery is aided by the
   use of  an emulated LAN and is achieved by the use of ARP. This memo
   makes a concerted effort to draw the line between the SP and the PNA:
   the SP owns and manages layer 1 and layer 2 services while layer 3
   services belong to and are manageable by the PNA. By the provisioning
   of fully logically independent routing domains, the PNA has been
   given the flexibility to use private and unregistered addresses. Due
   to the use of private LSPs and the use of VPNID encapsulation using
   label stacks over shared LSPs, data security is not an issue.

   The approach espoused in this memo differs from that described in RFC
   2547 [Rosen1] in that no specific routing protocol has been
   overloaded to carry VPN routes.  RFC 2547 specifies a way to modify
   BGP to carry VPN unicast routes across the SP's backbone. To carry
   multicast routes, further architectural work will be necessary.

3. Virtual Routers

   A virtual router is a collection of threads, either static or
   dynamic, in a routing device, that provides routing and forwarding
   services much like physical routers. A virtual router need not be a
   separate operating system process (although it could be); it simply
   has to provide the illusion that a dedicated router is available to
   satisfy the needs of the network(s) to which it is connected. A
   virtual router, like its physical counterpart, is an element in a
   routing domain. The other routers in this domain could be physical or
   virtual routers themselves. Given that the virtual router connects to
   a specific (logically discrete) routing domain and that a physical
   router can support multiple virtual routers, it follows that a
   physical router supports multiple (logically discreet) routing
   domains.

   From the user (VPN customer) standpoint, it is imperative that the
   virtual router be as equivalent to a physical router as possible. In
   other words, with very minor and very few exceptions, the virtual
   router should appear for all purposes (configuration, management,
   monitoring and troubleshooting) like a dedicated physical router. The



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 2]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   main motivation behind this requirement is to avoid upgrading or re-
   configuring the large installed base of routers and to avoid
   retraining of network administrators.

   The aspects of a router that a virtual router needs to emulate are:

   1. Configuration of any combination of routing protocols

   2. Monitoring of the network

   3. Troubleshooting.

   Every VPN has a logically independent routing domain. This enhances
   the SP's ability to offer a fully flexible virtual router service
   that can fully serve the SP's customer without requiring physical
   per-VPN routers. This means that the SP's "hardware" investments,
   namely routers and links between them, can be re-used by multiple
   customers.

4. Objectives

   1. Easy, scalable configuration of VPN endpoints in the service
      provider network. At most, one piece of configuration should be
      necessary when a CE is added.

   2. No use of SP resources that are globally unique and hard to get
      such as IP addresses and subnets.

   3. Dynamic discovery of VRs (Virtual Routers) in the SP's cloud. This
      is an optional, but extremely valuable "keep it simple" goal.

   4. Virtual Routers should be fully configurable and monitorable by
      the VPN network administrator. This provides the PNA with the
      flexibility to either configure the VPN themselves or outsource
      configuration tasks to the SP.

   5. Quality of data forwarding should be configurable on a VPN-by-VPN
      basis.  This should translate to continuous (but perhaps discrete)
      grades of service.  Some examples include best effort, dedicated
      bandwidth, QOS, and policy based forwarding services.

   6. Differentiated services should be configurable on a VPN-by-VPN
      basis, perhaps based on LSPs set up for exclusive use for
      forwarding data traffic in the VPN.







Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 3]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   7. Security of internet routers extended to virtual routers. This
      means that the virtual router's data forwarding and routing
      functions should be as secure as a dedicated, private physical
      router.  There should be no unintended leak of information (user
      data and reachability information) from one routing domain to
      another.

   8. Specific routing protocols should not be mandated between virtual
      routers. This is critical to ensuring the VPN customer can setup
      the network and policies as the customer sees fit. For example,
      some protocols are strong in filtering, while others are strong in
      traffic engineering. The VPN customer might want to exploit both
      to achieve "best of breed" network quality.

   9. No special extensions to existing routing protocols such as BGP,
      RIP, OSPF, ISIS etc. This is critical to allowing the future
      addition of other services such as NHRP and multicast. In
      addition, as advances and addenda are made to existing protocols
      (such as traffic engineering extensions to ISIS and OSPF), they
      can be easily incorporated into the VPN implementation.

5. Architectural Requirements

   The service provider network must run some form of multicast routing
   to all nodes that will have VPN connections and to nodes that must
   forward multicast datagrams for virtual router discovery. A specific
   multicast routing protocol is not mandated. An SP may run MOSPF or
   DVMRP or any other protocol.

6. Architectural Outline

   1.  Every VPN is assigned a VPNID which is unique within the SP's
       network.  This identifier unambiguously identifies the VPN with
       which a packet or connection is associated. The VPNID of zero is
       reserved; it is associated with and represents the public
       internet.  It is recommended, but not required that these VPN
       identifiers will be compliant with RFC 2685 [Fox].

   2.  The VPN service is offered in the form of a Virtual Router
       service.  These VRs reside in the SPED and are as such confined
       to the edge of the SP's cloud. The VRs will use the SP's network
       for data and control packet forwarding but are otherwise
       invisible outside the SPEDs.

   3.  The "size" of the VR contracted to the VPN in a given SPED is
       expressed by the quantity of IP resources such as routing
       interfaces, route filters, routing entries etc. This is entirely
       under the control of the SP and provides the fine granularity



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 4]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


       that the SP requires to offer virtually infinite grades of VR
       service on a per-SPED level. [Example: one SPED may be the
       aggregating point (say headquarters of the corporation) for a
       given VPN and a number of other SPEDs may be access points
       (branch offices). In this case, the SPED connected to the
       headquarters may be contracted to provide a large VR while the
       SPEDs connected to the branch offices may house small, perhaps
       stub VRs]. This provision also allows the SP to design the
       network with an end goal of distributing the load among the
       routers in the network.

   4.  One indicator of the VPN size is the number of SPEDs in the SP's
       network that have connections to CPE routers in that VPN.  In
       this respect, a VPN with many sites that need to be connected is
       a "large" VPN whereas one with a few sites is a "small" VPN.
       Also, it is conceivable that a VPN grows or shrinks in size over
       time. VPNs may even merge due to corporate mergers, acquisitions
       and partnering agreements. These changes are easy to accommodate
       in this architecture, as globally unique IP resources do not have
       to be dedicated or assigned to VPNs. The number of SPEDs is not
       limited by any artificial configuration limits.

   5.  The SP owns and manages Layer 1 and Layer 2 entities. To be
       specific, the SP controls physical switches or routers, physical
       links, logical layer 2 connections (such as DLCI in Frame Relay
       and VPI/VCI in ATM) and LSPs (and their assignment to specific
       VPNs).  In the context of VPNs, it is the SP's responsibility to
       contract and assign layer 2 entities to specific VPNs.

   6.  Layer 3 entities belong to and are manageable by the PNA.
       Examples of these entities include IP interfaces, choice of
       dynamic routing protocols or static routes, and routing
       interfaces. Note that although Layer 3 configuration logically
       falls under the PNA's area of responsibility, it is not necessary
       for the PNA to execute it.  It is quite viable for the PNA to
       outsource the IP administration of the virtual routers to the
       Service Provider.  Regardless of who assumes responsibility for
       configuration and monitoring, this approach provides a full
       routing domain view to the PNA and empowers the PNA to design the
       network to achieve intranet, extranet and traffic engineering
       goals.

   7.  The VPNs can be managed as if physical routers rather than VRs
       were deployed.  Therefore, management may be performed using SNMP
       or other similar methods or directly at the VR console (VRC).






Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 5]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   8.  Industry-standard troubleshooting tools such as 'ping,'
       'traceroute,' in a routing domain domain comprised exclusively of
       dedicated physical routers.  Therefore, monitoring and .bp
       troubleshooting may be performed using SNMP or similar methods,
       but may also include the use of these standard tools. Again, the
       VRC may be used for these purposes just like any physical router.

   9.  Since the VRC is visible to the user, router specific security
       checks need to be put in place to make sure the VPN user is
       allowed access to Layer 3 resources in that VPN only and is
       disallowed from accessing physical resources in the router.  Most
       routers achieve this through the use of database views.

   10. The VRC is available to the SP as well. If configuration and
       monitoring has been outsourced to the SP, the SP may use the VRC
       to accomplish these tasks as if it were the PNA.

   11. The VRs in the SPEDs form the VPN in the SP's network. Together,
       they represent a virtual routing domain. They dynamically
       discover each other by utilizing an emulated LAN resident in the
       SP's network.

   Each VPN in the SP's network is assigned one and only one multicast
   address. This address is chosen from the administratively scoped
   range (239.192/14) [Meyer] and the only requirement is that the
   multicast address can be uniquely mapped to a specific VPN. This is
   easily automated by routers by the use of a simple function to
   unambiguously map a VPNid to the multicast address.  Subscription to
   this multicast address allows a VR to discover and be discovered by
   other VRs. It is important to note that the multicast address does
   not have to be configured.

   12. Data forwarding may be done in one of several ways:

      1. An LSP with best-effort characteristics that all VPNS can use.

      2. An LSP dedicated to a VPN and traffic engineered by the VPN
         customer.

      3. A private LSP with differentiated characteristics.

      4. Policy based forwarding on a dedicated L2 Virtual Circuit

   The choice of the preferred method is negotiable between the SP and
   the VPN customer, perhaps constituting part of the SLA between them.
   This allows the SP to offer different grades of service to different
   VPN customers.




Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 6]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   Of course, hop-by-hop forwarding is also available to forward routing
   packets and to forward user data packets during periods of LSP
   establishment and failure.

   13. This approach does not mandate that separate operating system
       tasks for each of the routing protocols be run for each VR that
       the SPED houses. Specific implementations may be tailored to the
       particular SPED in use. Maintaining separate routing databases
       and forwarding tables, one per VR, is one way to get the highest
       performance for a given SPED.

7. Scalable Configuration

   A typical VPN is expected to have 100s to 1000s of endpoints within
   the SP cloud.  Therefore, configuration should scale (at most)
   linearly with the number of end points. To be specific, the
   administrator should have to add a couple of configuration items when
   a new customer site joins the set of VRs constituting a specific VPN.
   Anything worse will make this task too daunting for the service
   provider.  In this architecture, all that the service provider needs
   to allocate and configure is the ingress/egress physical link (e.g.
   Frame Relay DLCI or ATM VPI/VCI) and the virtual connection between
   the VR and the emulated LAN.

8. Dynamic Neighbor Discovery

   The VRs in a given VPN reside in a number of SPEDs in the network.
   These VRs need to learn about each other and be connected.

   One way to do this is to require the manual configuration of
   neighbors.  As an example, when a new site is added to a VPN, this
   would require the configuration of all the other VRs as neighbors.
   This is obviously not scalable from a configuration and network
   resource standpoint.

   The need then arises to allow these VRs to dynamically discover each
   other.  Neighbor discovery is facilitated by providing each VPN with
   a limited emulated LAN. This emulated LAN is used in several ways:

   1. Address resolution uses this LAN to resolve next-hop (private) IP
      addresses associated with the other VRs.

   2. Routing protocols such as RIP and OSPF use this limited emulated
      LAN for neighbor discovery and to send routing updates.

   The per-VPN LAN is emulated using an IP multicast address.  In the
   interest of conserving public address space and because this
   multicast address needs to be visible only in the SP network space,



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 7]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   we would use an address from the Organizationally scoped multicast
   addresses (239.192/14) as described in [Meyer]. Each VPN is allocated
   an address from this range.  To completely eliminate configuration in
   this regard, this address is computed from the VPNID.

9. VPN IP Domain Configuration

                                151.0.0.1
                                ################
                               #              #
                              #  ROUTER 'A'  #
                             #              #
                            ################
                                 #       #
                                #         #
                               #           #
                              #             #
                         #############    ###############
                        #           #    #             #
                       # ROUTER 'B'#    # ROUTER 'C'  #
                      #           #    #             #
                     #           #    #             #
                    #############    ###############
                    152.0.0.2         153.0.0.3

                   Figure 1 'Physical Routing Domain'

   The physical domain in the SP's network is shown in the above figure.
   In this network, physical routers A, B and C are connected together.
   Each of the routers has a 'public' IP address assigned to it. These
   addresses uniquely identify each of the routers in the SP's network.




















Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 8]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


         172.150.0/18                                172.150.128/18
 -----------------------             ---------------------------|
             |                                       |          |
             |                                       |     172.150.128.1
             |               ROUTER 'A' (151.0.0.1)  |       |---------|
             |               #############           |       |Parts DB |
             |           ---#-----------#            |       /---------/
             |    OSPF   | #           #     ISIS    |      /----------/
             ------------|#  VR - A   #|--------------
                         #-------|---#-|
                        #############10.0.1/24
             |----|------------#-#---------------|-----|
                  |10.0.0.2/24#   #              |10.0.0.3/24
           |------|-------|  #     #    ---------|-------|
           |  ###############       #   |############### |
           | #  VR - B    |#         #  #    VR - C   #  |
           |#-------------# ROUTER 'B'##|------------#----
(152.0.0.2)###############            ############### (153.0.0.3)
      -------------------------       ROUTER 'C' |   Extranet
            172.150.64/18                        V
                                              Vendors

                Figure 2 'Virtual Routing Domain'

   Each Virtual Router is configurable by the PNA as though it were a
   private physical router. Of course, the SP limits the resources that
   this Virtual Router may consume on a SPED-by-SPED basis. Each VPN has
   a number of physical connections (to CPE routers) and a number of
   logical connections (to the emulated LAN). Each connection is IP-
   capable and can be configured to utilize any combination of the
   standard routing protocols and routing policies to achieve specific
   corporate network goals.

   To illustrate, in Figure 1, 3 VRs reside on 3 SPEDs in VPN 1. Router
   'A' houses VR-A, router 'B' houses VR-B and router 'C' houses VR-C.
   VR-C and VR-B have a physical connection to CPE equipment, while VR-A
   has 2 physical connections. Each of the VRs has a fully IP-capable
   logical connection to the emulated LAN.  VR-A has the (physical)
   connections to the headquarters of the company and runs OSPF over
   those connections. Therefore, it can route packets to 172.150.0/18
   and 172.150.128/18. VR-B runs RIP in the branch office (over the
   physical connection) and uses RIP (over the logical connection) to
   export 172.150.64/18 to VR-A. VR-A advertises a default route to VR-B
   over the logical connection.  Vendors use VR-C as the extranet
   connection to connect to the parts database at 172.150.128.1. Hence,
   VR-C advertises a default route to VR-A over the logical connection.
   VR-A exports only 175.150.128.1 to VR-C. This keeps the rest of the
   corporate network from a security problem.



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                      [Page 9]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   The network administrator will configure the following:

   1. OSPF connections to the 172.150.0/18 and 172.150.128/18 network
      in VR-A.

   2. RIP connections to VR-B and VR-C on VR-A.

   3. Route policies on VR-A to advertise only the default route to
      VR-B.

   4. Route policies on VR-A to advertise only 172.159.128.1 to VR-C.

   5. RIP on VR-B to VR-A.

   6. RIP on VR-C to advertise a default route to VR-A.

10. Neighbor Discovery Example

   In Figure #1, the SPED that houses VR-A (SPED-A) uses a public
   address of 150.0.0.1/24, SPED-B uses 150.0.0.2/24 and SPED-C uses
   150.0.0.3/24.  As noted, the connection between the VRs is via an
   emulated LAN.  For interface addresses on the emulated LAN
   connection, VR-A uses 10.0.0.1/24, VR-B uses 10.0.0.2/24 and VR-C
   uses 10.0.0.3/24.

   Let's take the case of VR-A sending a packet to VR-B. To get VR-B's
   address (SPED-B's address), VR-A sends an ARP request packet with the
   address of VR-B (10.0.0.2) as the logical address. The source logical
   address is 10.0.0.1 and the hardware address is 151.0.0.1. This ARP
   request is encapsulated in this VPN's multicast address and sent out.
   SPED B and SPED-C receive a copy of the packet.  SPED-B recognizes
   10.0.0.2 in the context of VPN 1 and responds with 152.0.0.2 as the
   "hardware" address. This response is sent to the VPN multicast
   address to promote the use of promiscuous ARP and the resulting
   decrease in network traffic.

   Manual configuration would be necessary if neighbor discovery were
   not used. In this example, VR-A would be configured with a static ARP
   entry for VR-B's logical address (10.0.0.1) with the "hardware"
   address set to 152.0.0.2.

11. Forwarding

   As mentioned in the architectural outline, data forwarding may be
   done in one of several ways. In all techniques except the Hop-by-Hop
   technique for forwarding routing/control packets, the actual method





Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 10]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   is configurable. At the high end, policy based forwarding for quick
   service and at the other end best effort forwarding using public LSP
   is used. The order of forwarding preference is as follows:

   1. Policy based forwarding.

   2. Optionally configured private LSP.

   3. Best-effort public LSP.

11.1  Private LSP

   This LSP is optionally configured on a per-VPN basis. This LSP is
   usually associated with non-zero bandwidth reservation and/or a
   specific differentiated service or QOS class. If this LSP is
   available, it is used for user data and for VPN private control data
   forwarding.

11.2 Best Effort Public LSP

   VPN data packets are forwarded using this LSP if a private LSP with
   specified bandwidth and/or QOS characteristics is either not
   configured or not presently available. The LSP used is the one
   destined for the egress router in VPN 0. The VPNID in the shim header
   is used to de-multiplex data packets from various VPNs at the egress
   router.

12.  Differentiated Services

   Configuring private LSPs for VPNs allows the SP to offer
   differentiated services to paying customers. These private LSPs could
   be associated with any available L2 QOS class or Diff-Serv
   codepoints. In a VPN, multiple private LSPs with different service
   classes could be configured with flow profiles for sorting the
   packets among the LSPs. This feature, together with the ability to
   size the virtual routers, allows the SP to offer truly differentiated
   services to the VPN customer.

13.  Security Considerations

13.1  Routing Security

   The use of standard routing protocols such as OSPF and BGP in their
   unmodified form means that all the encryption and security methods
   (such as MD5 authentication of neighbors) are fully available in VRs.
   Making sure that routes are not accidentally leaked from one VPN to
   another is an implementation issue. One way to achieve this is to
   maintain separate routing and forwarding databases.



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 11]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


13.2  Data Security

   This allows the SP to assure the VPN customer that data packets in
   one VPN never have the opportunity to wander into another. From a
   routing standpoint, this could be achieved by maintaining separate
   routing databases for each virtual router. From a data forwarding
   standpoint, the use of label stacks in the case of shared LSPs
   [Rosen2] [Callon] or the use of private LSPs guarantees data privacy.
   Packet filters may also be configured to help ease the problem.

13.3  Configuration Security

   Virtual routers appear as physical routers to the PNA. This means
   that they may be configured by the PNA to achieve connectivity
   between offices of a corporation. Obviously, the SP has to guarantee
   that the PNA and the PNA's designees are the only ones who have
   access to the VRs on the SPEDs the private network has connections
   to. Since the virtual router console is functionally equivalent to a
   physical router, all of the authentication methods available on a
   physical console such as password, RADIUS, etc. are available to the
   PNA.

13.4 Physical Network Security

   When a PNA logs in to a SPED to configure or monitor the VPN, the PNA
   is logged into the VR for the VPN. The PNA has only layer 3
   configuration and monitoring privileges for the VR. Specifically, the
   PNA has no configuration privileges for the physical network. This
   provides the guarantee to the SP that a VPN administrator will not be
   able to inadvertently or otherwise adversely affect the SP's network.

14.  Virtual Router Monitoring

   All of the router monitoring features available on a physical router
   are available on the virtual router. This includes utilities such as
   "ping" and "traceroute". In addition, the ability to display private
   routing tables, link state databases, etc. are available.

15. Performance Considerations

   For the purposes of discussing performance and scaling issues,
   today's routers can be split into two planes: the routing (control)
   plane and the forwarding plane.

   In looking at the routing plane, most modern-day routing protocols
   use some form of optimized calculation methodologies to calculate the
   shortest path(s) to end stations. For instance, OSPF and ISIS use the
   Djikstra algorithm while BGP uses the "Decision Process". These



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 12]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   algorithms are based on parsing the routing database and computing
   the best paths to end stations. The performance characteristics of
   any of these algorithms is based on either topological
   characteristics (ISIS and OSPF) or the number of ASs in the path to
   the destinations (BGP). But it is important to note that the overhead
   in setting up and beginning these calculations is very little for
   most any modern day router. This is because, although we refer to
   routing calculation input as "databases", these are memory resident
   data structures.

   Therefore, the following conclusions can be drawn:

   1. Beginning a routing calculation for a routing domain is nothing
      more than setting up some registers to point to the right database
      objects.

   2. Based on 1, the performance of a given algorithm is not
      significantly worsened by the overhead required to set it up.

   3. Based on 2, it follows that, when a number of routing calculations
      for a number of virtual routers has to be performed by a physical
      router, the complexity of the resulting routing calculation is
      nothing more than the sum of the complexities of the routing
      calculations of the individual virtual routers.

   4. Based on 3, it follows that whether an overlay model is used or a
      virtual routing model is employed, the performance characteristics
      of a router are dependent purely on its hardware capabilities and
      the choice of data structures and algorithms.

   To illustrate, let's say a physical router houses N VPNs, all running
   some routing protocol say RP. Let's also suppose that the average
   performance of RP's routing calculation algorithm is  f(X,Y) where x
   and y are parameters that determine performance of the algorithm for
   that routing protocol. As an example, for Djikstra algorithm users
   such as OSPF, X could be the number of nodes in the area while Y
   could be the number of links. The performance of an arbitrary VPN n
   is f (Xn, Yn). The performance of the (physical) router is the sum of
   f(Xi, Yi) for all values of i in 0 <= i <= N. This conclusion is
   independent of the chosen VPN approach (virtual router or overlay
   model).

   In the usual case, the forwarding plane has two inputs: the
   forwarding table and the packet header. The main performance
   parameter is the lookup algorithm. The very best performance one can
   get for a IP routing table lookup is by organizing the table as some
   form of a tree and use binary search methods to do the actual lookup.
   The performance of this algorithm is O(log n).



Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 13]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


   Hence, as long as the virtual routers' routing tables are distinct
   from each other, the lookup cost is constant for finding the routing
   table and O(log n) to find the entry. This is no worse or different
   from any router and no different from a router that employs overlay
   techniques to deliver VPN services. However, when the overlay router
   utilizes integration of multiple VPNs' routing tables, the
   performance is O(log m*n) where 'm' is the number of VPNs that the
   routing table holds routes for.

16. Acknowledgements

   The authors wish to thank Dave Ryan, Lucent Technologies for his
   invaluable in-depth review of this version of this memo.

17.  References

   [Callon] Callon R., et al., "A Framework for Multiprotocol Label
            Switching", Work in Progress.

   [Fox]    Fox, B. and B. Gleeson,"Virtual Private Networks
            Identifier", RFC 2685, September 1999.

   [Meyer]  Meyer, D., "Administratively Scoped IP Multicast", RFC 2365,
            July 1998.

   [Rosen1] Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS VPNs", RFC 2547, March
            1999.

   [Rosen2] Rosen E., Viswanathan, A. and R. Callon, "Multiprotocol
            Label Switching Architecture", Work in Progress.





















Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 14]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


18. Authors' Addresses

   Karthik Muthukrishnan
   Lucent Technologies
   1 Robbins Road
   Westford, MA 01886

   Phone: (978) 952-1368
   EMail: mkarthik@lucent.com


   Andrew Malis
   Vivace Networks, Inc.
   2730 Orchard Parkway
   San Jose, CA 95134

   Phone: (408) 383-7223
   EMail: Andy.Malis@vivacenetworks.com

































Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 15]

RFC 2917                       Core VPNs                  September 2000


19.  Full Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
   included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
   document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
   the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
   Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
   developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
   copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
   followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
   English.

   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
   revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
   TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
   BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.



















Muthukrishnan & Malis        Informational                     [Page 16]

