Shedding Light on the

Glue Logic
of the Internet Routing
Architecture
Frank Le, Geoffrey Xie, Dan Pei, Jia Wang, Hui Zhang

SIGCOMM 2008, August 17-22, Seattle WA

Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-175-0/08/08
Acknowledgement

Slides 12,15,18-20, 23, 29 and 30-39

were extracted from the actual
presentation given by the authors and
permission was obtained from them for
their use.
 Introduction
 The authors believe they have identified a
fundamental building block of the Internet
Routing architecture -- Glue Logic.
 What is Glue Logic and what part does it play
in the network?
 Why is the study of Glue Logic important?
– Why did it emerge?
– How does it fit into network design?
– What do the authors propose we do about it?
Agenda
 Glue logic
 Methodology the Authors used
 Data Analysis
 Results Interpretation
 Conclusion
Typical scenario

 Think about the recent bank takeovers

 You are in charge of integrating the
new network with yours and routing
protocols are not the same
– Redo your network or theirs
– Figure out some way to connect the two
 Example Enterprise Network

R o u t e r A R o u t e r B
R o u t e r D

R o u t i n g D o m a i n 1 R o u t i n g D o m a i n 2
O S F P E I G R P 2 0

R o u t e r C R o u t e r E

R o u t i n g D o m a i n 3
R I P R o u t e r F

R o u t e r G R o u t e r H
Vocabulary
 Route Redistribution
 Route Selection
 Glue Logic
 Protocols OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, RIP
Route Redistribution
 By default, processes of differing
routing protocols do not exchange
routing information so the internal
routers of the OSPF domain have no
visibility of the destinations of the
EIGRP domain
 Route redistribution provides the
means to allow routes from one routing
process to be imported into another
routing process on the same router
Route Selection
 Inthe example because of route
redistribution configurations on routers
B and E there are now two routes to
router D from router C.
 Route selection provides the means to
customize the preference order
between paths C-B-D and C-F-E-D
Glue Logic
 Combination of route selection and
route redistribution procedures
 Introduced as a software enhancement
by router vendors (rather than a
standard protocol)
 Independently configured per router
Glue Logic
 Inthe previous network BGP can be
used as the route selection and
redistribution mechanism between the
3 domains.
 Functionalities of the glue logic can not
be solely supported by BGP.
– Route selection and redistribution
mechanisms are needed when
exchanging route information between
OSPF and BGP
Glue Logic

 Safety properties have not been

scrutinized much by the research
community
– Misconfigurations can result in persistent
forwarding loops (cause of long-lived loops
and IP prefix hijacks)
– One study says glue logic introduces a
wider range of safety challenges than BGP
Glue Logic -- Internet Routing Reality
Glue Logic
 One would expect operators would
choose BGP over glue logic for joining
routing domains, however glue logic
seems to be very prevalent (authors
point to operator interactions and
bulletin boards)
 Explanation could be glue logic is
easier to configure and need only be
applied at border routers
Glue Logic

 Thispaper takes a first step toward a

definite answer regarding whether glue
logic is a fundamental building block of
IP routing design.
Glue Logic
Routing Design
 Routing designs of operational networks are
complex1
 Multiple IGP domains per network

IGP
OSPF RIP OSPF OSPF

OSPF ISIS EIGRP

IGP
IGPdomains
domainslinked,
linked, not
not by
by BGP
BGP
1
Maltz, et al. Routing design in operational networks: A look from the 17
inside. SIGCOMM 04
Routing Glue Logic
 Recent study1 revealed the existence of a lower
level glue logic to interconnect routing domains
 Route redistribution allows exchange of routing
information among routing domains
B OSPF RIP
OSPF RIP A B D
route selection
FIB
C

Route
Route redistribution
redistribution provides
providesrequired
required “glue
“glue logic”
logic”
between
betweenrouting
routingdomains
domains
18
1
Le, Xie, Zhang, Understanding Route Redistribution, ICNP 07
How does the Glue Logic compare
to BGP?
• Glue logic can implement policies, like BGP
• Unlike BGP, glue logic is NOT a protocol
– RR is just configuration mechanism, used separately
at each router, and extremely vulnerable to anomalies1

• Our discussions with operators revealed glue logic, not

BGP, is often used to interconnect network domains
• Even when BGP is used, glue logic is required to specify
the routes to advertise at the BGP level
Glue
Glue logic
logicseems
seems more
morecommonly
commonlyused
usedthan
thanBGP,
BGP, but
but
isismuch
muchless
lessunderstood
understoodand
andmuch
muchmore
more error-prone
error-prone
19
1
Le, Xie, Zhang, Understanding Route Redistribution, ICNP 07
 Router-level Shortest Path
Routing
BGP 65001 BGP 65002
Asia Europe
(OSPF1) Receiver (OSPF2)

BGP 65003

America
Sender Sender
(OSPF3)

BGP
BGP cannot
cannot support
support router-level
router-level shortest
shortest
path
path routing
routing 20
Limitations of BGP
Local Pref: 200

Local Pref: 100 BGP 65002

BGP 65001 Q Europe
cost: 13 2 2
Asia R
1 1
X1 2
X Receiver Y cost: 10 M N

D S
5 cost: 12 5

A America Sender
BGP 65003

Shortest
Shortest path
path is
is not
not selected
selected
21
Methodology Used
 Routeredistribution studied in about 1600
operational networks to test the following
hypotheses:
– Route redistribution is used widely in operational
networks
– Route redistribution is not just used to simply
interconnect routing protocols but achieves more
objectives than can be realized by routing
protocols alone
– Route redistibution configurations in the wild are
ad-hoc and complex
Dataset
 1600+ operational networks
 Networks
– Tier-1 Service Provider
– Enterprise networks
– University campuses
 Number of routers per network: 1 to 3000+
 Number of lines per router:
– Average: 675 lines
– Maximum: 10000+ lines

23
Dataset – Size Distribution of Routing Domains studied (52% have 3
or fewer routers)
% of networks with ≤ n routing domains

10%

21%

34%

Number of Routing Domains (n)

24
Dataset
 52% of the networks have 3 or fewer routers
 As such a fraction of the networks does not
present the complete configurations for all
routers but instead consists of only the
configurations from the routers located at
customer sites but managed by the ISP

25
Dataset
 Despite being incomplete these
configurations were still valuable given
the focus of this study
 The authors were able to use them to
analyze the interconnections between
the customer networks and their
provide ISP

26
Results Interpretation

 Design Patterns Discovered

 Routing Data
 Potential Problems with Glue Logic
Design Patterns
 Two objectives unattainable with BGP:
(Didn’t see design patterns thoroughly identified)

- Efficient Routing, selection of best path

through the network (BGP can’t)
- Partition Healing, provide reachability
even in the event of a network partition
Routing Policies
Configurations of route redistributions
have complex policies
– Tags, prefix filters, etc.
Rationale
– Route redistribution does not include any
mechanism to thwart routing anomalies
As such, each network designs own ad-
hoc solution to prevent routing anomalies
29
 Prevalence of Route
Redistribution
• 99.9% networks rely on route redistribution
1. From IGP and local routes to BGP
BGP BGP
IGP, local IGP, local

2. From BGP into IGP (78% of networks with 15+

routers)
Office 1 BGP Office 2
IGP Backbone IGP

3. From IGP into IGP (35% of networks with 15+

routers)
Office 1 Office 2
OSPF
IGP IGP
RIP
30
Glue Logic Problem
Glue Logic Problem
 Long-lived inter-AS loops
BGP 1 P
IGP
1
2, 5
1
BGP 3 BGP 2
5
BGP 4 BGP 5
3,2,1
3,2,5

ISIS OSPF

RR
RRcan
cancause
causepersistent
persistent loops
loopsbetween
between BGP
BGP ASes
ASes

33
V. Paxson. End-to-end routing behavior in the Internet. SIGCOMM, 1996
 Count to Infinity problem
Asia X…11 Europe
(OSPF1) (OSPF2)

b31 …b1b0 X…01 b31 …b2b1b0

route-map UStoAsia permit 10 America

route-map UStoAsia permit 30
X…00 US
match ip address prefix-list match tag 8
Count to infinity (OSPF3)
set tag 9
set tag 1
problem Dest . !
!
route-map UStoAsia permit 20 X b...
31 …b1b0 bitmap
match tag 4 ... 32 bits tag
set tag 5 route-map UStoAsia deny 100
!
!
...
34
Glue Logic Problem
Glue Logic Problems
Routing Anomalies
 Clever solutions to prevent routing anomalies
 Yet, ensuring safety of route redistribution, proven to be
very difficult1
 Indeed,
– Analyzed configurations, still vulnerable to route oscillations
– Route redistribution, long suspected to be at the origins of
reported long-lived inter-AS loops

37
1
Le, Xie, Zhang, Understanding Route Redistribution, ICNP 07
Concluding Remarks
 Glue logic, a fundamental component of
Internet routing architecture
– Implements a necessary function
– Widely used in operational networks
– Used to fulfill important design objectives
 Existing glue logic, powerful tool, but severe
limitations
– Introduced by router vendors in an ad-hoc manner
– No consideration of safety properties

38
 Concluding Remarks
 Glue logic’s functions are necessary but how to
achieve them safely?
– Level of abstraction?
– Definitions of primitives?
 Correctness of routing protocols, not sufficient to
ensure robustness of networks
– Except few exceptions1,2 , most work has focused on
individual routing protocols
– Yet, glue logic can result in routing anomalies
 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~4D

1
Griffin et al., On the correctness of IBGP configuration, SIGCOMM 02 39
2
Teixeira et al., Dynamics of Hot-Potato Routing in IP Networks, SIGMETRICS 04
Contributions
1. Developed a model for characterizing
interconnections between routing domains
2. Analyzed configurations of 1600+ networks
3. Show the glue logic is fundamental component
of Internet routing architecture
4. Show insufficiencies of glue logic lead to
complex configurations and instability concerns
5. Discuss potential role of glue logic as the
Internet architecture evolves
Glue
Glue logic,
logic, aacritical
criticalcomponent
component of
of Internet
Internet architecture,
architecture,
that
that needs
needsmore
moreresearch
research
40