Prefix Advertisement and Resolution

After segment routing is successfully enabled in the IS-IS or OSPF instance, the router performs the following operations. See IS-IS Control Protocol Changes, OSPFv2 Control Protocol Changes, and OSPFv3 Control Protocol Changes for details of all TLVs and sub-TLVs for both IS-IS and OSPF protocols.

  1. Advertise the Segment Routing Capability Sub-TLV to routers in all areas/levels of this IGP instance. However, only neighbors with which it established an adjacency interprets the SID/label range information and use it for calculating the label to swap to or push for a given resolved prefix SID.

  2. Advertise the assigned index for each configured node SID in the new prefix SID sub-TLV with the N-flag (node-SID flag) set. Then the segment routing module programs the incoming label map (ILM) with a pop operation for each local node SID in the data path.

  3. Assign and advertise automatically an adjacency SID label for each formed adjacency over a network IP interface in the new Adjacency SID sub-TLV. The following points should be considered.

    • Adjacency SID is advertised for both numbered and unnumbered network IP interface.

    • Adjacency SID is not advertised for an IES interface because access interfaces do not support MPLS.

    • The adjacency SID must be unique per instance and per adjacency. Furthermore, ISIS MT=0 can establish an adjacency for both IPv4 and IPv6 address families over the same link and in such a case a different adjacency SID is assigned to each next-hop. However, the existing IS-IS implementation assigns a single Protect-Group ID (PG-ID) to the adjacency and as such when the state machine of a BFD session tracking the IPv4 or IPv6 next-hop times out, an action is triggered for the prefixes of both address families over that adjacency.

    The segment routing module programs the incoming label map (ILM) with a swap to an implicit null label operation, for each advertised adjacency SID.

  4. Resolve received prefixes and, if a prefix SID sub-TLV exists, the Segment Routing module programs the ILM with a swap operation and an LTN with a push operation, both pointing to the primary/LFA NHLFE. An SR tunnel is also added to the TTM. If a node SID resolves over an IES interface, the data path is not programmed and a trap is raised. Thus, only next-hops of an ECMP set corresponding to network IP interfaces are programmed in data path; next-hops corresponding to IES interfaces are not programmed. However, if the user configures the interface as network on one side and IES on the other side, MPLS packets for the SR tunnel received on the access side are dropped.

  5. LSA filtering causes SIDs not to be sent in one direction which means some node SIDs is resolved in parts of the network upstream of the advertisement suppression.

When the user enables segment routing in a given IGP instance, the main SPF and LFA SPF are computed normally and the primary next-hop and LFA backup next-hop for a received prefix are added to RTM without the label information advertised in the prefix SID sub-TLV. In all cases, the segment routing (SR) tunnel is not added into RTM.