Subject: [Rift] AD Review of draft-ietf-rift-rift-12 (Part 1)

From: Alvaro Retana <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2021 11:56:25 -0800

Dear authors:

This is Part 1 of my review of this document.  Given that it is so
long, in order to make progress and not completely block the rest of
my publication queue [1], I decided to provide comments in parts.
Please address each set of comments as you can and update the document
accordingly -- I also expect a reply to this message, especially to
any points/comments that you might not agree with or want to discuss
further.  That will make my review of any changes easier/faster.  I
will wait for a reply before looking at any document updates.

OTOH, even while interleaving my reading with other documents, I won't
wait for each part to be addressed before starting on the next one.
But I may return to parts I've already reviewed as I get further into
the document.

Part 1 includes the introductory text through the end of §4.1 (Overview).

While I appreciate the overview of the topologies and the protocol, I
think that this extended introductory material is at times too
long/wordy and complex (for the average reader, sometimes being forced
to make assumptions or jump ahead), but also incomplete.  To be more
specific:

- The description of the general topology (§4.1.2) gets in to significant
  detail and complexity, including the way in which the concepts are depicted
  in the figures.  (ASCII art is not the best, you might want to take
  advantage of using SVI.)  I noticed that none of the figures/sections in
  §4.1.2 are referenced elsewhere (but the simple Figures 2 and 3 are), which
  makes me think about the value of the in-depth treatment if it will not be
  explicitly considered later on.

   In several places I was under the impression that a DC design guide was
   being presented.  Which brings up the question: does RIFT require the
   topologies to be exactly as the ones described to operate correctly?

- My main expectation of the overview was to get a high-level idea of the
  operation of RIFT, but that is not done there.  Besides a quick mention in
  §4.1.1 and some text in the introduction, the focus of the overview is on
  fallen leaves/dissaggregation.  I understand that may be a significant
  issue/feature, but it shouldn't be the dominating topic in the overview.
  Maybe some of the other pieces are more "well-known" (neighbor discovery,
  flooding, etc.), but even ZTP (even if optional) is not mentioned.

In general, I don't think that the deep-/complex treatment is
necessary.  You may still decide to keep it (see specific comments
inline below), but I think it will represent a significant distraction
for other reviewers.

Thanks!

Alvaro.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/ad/alvaro.retana

[Line numbers from idnits.]

...
17	Abstract

19	   This document defines a specialized, dynamic routing protocol for
20	   Clos and fat-tree network topologies optimized towards minimization
21	   of configuration and operational complexity.  The protocol

[opinion] While this is a nice Abstract, I think that it is too long
and is not completely reflected in the Introduction.  Personally, I
consider the first paragraph enough for an Abstract.  It would be very
nice if the list below was instead moved to the Introduction with
pointers to where these protocol characteristics are
specified/explained.

23	   o  deals with no configuration, fully automated construction of fat-
24	      tree topologies based on detection of links,

26	   o  minimizes the amount of routing state held at each level,

28	   o  automatically prunes and load balances topology flooding exchanges
29	      over a sufficient subset of links,

31	   o  supports automatic disaggregation of prefixes on link and node
32	      failures to prevent black-holing and suboptimal routing,

34	   o  allows traffic steering and re-routing policies,

36	   o  allows loop-free non-ECMP forwarding,

38	   o  automatically re-balances traffic towards the spines based on
39	      bandwidth available and finally

41	   o  provides mechanisms to synchronize a limited key-value data-store
42	      that can be used after protocol convergence to e.g.  bootstrap
43	      higher levels of functionality on nodes.

...
77	Table of Contents

79	   1.  Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
80	   2.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
81	     2.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
82	   3.  Reference Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
83	     3.1.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
84	     3.2.  Topology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
85	   4.  RIFT: Routing in Fat Trees  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
86	     4.1.  Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
87	       4.1.1.  Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
88	       4.1.2.  Generalized Topology View . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
89	         4.1.2.1.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
90	         4.1.2.2.  Clos as Crossed Crossbars . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
91	       4.1.3.  Fallen Leaf Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
92	       4.1.4.  Discovering Fallen Leaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
93	       4.1.5.  Addressing the Fallen Leaves Problem  . . . . . . . .  31
94	     4.2.  Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
95	       4.2.1.  Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
96	       4.2.2.  Link (Neighbor) Discovery (LIE Exchange)  . . . . . .  33
97	         4.2.2.1.  LIE FSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36

[nit] I don't think we need all this detail in the TOC.  Maybe
limiting the entries to 2 or 3 levels is enough (e.g. 4.2 or 4.2.2).

...
256	1.  Authors

258	   This work is a product of a list of individuals which are all to be
259	   considered major contributors independent of the fact whether their
260	   name made it to the limited boilerplate author's list or not.

[minor] Please move this section to one called "Contributors" and
place it after the Acknowledgments.  Only the people not on the front
page should be listed there.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7322#section-4.11

...
273	2.  Introduction

275	   Clos [CLOS] and Fat-Tree [FATTREE] topologies have gained prominence
276	   in today's networking, primarily as result of the paradigm shift
277	   towards a centralized data-center based architecture that is poised
278	   to deliver a majority of computation and storage services in the
279	   future.  Today's current routing protocols were geared towards a
280	   network with an irregular topology and low degree of connectivity
281	   originally but given they were the only available options,
282	   consequently several attempts to apply those protocols to Clos have
283	   been made.  Most successfully BGP [RFC4271] [RFC7938] has been
284	   extended to this purpose, not as much due to its inherent suitability
285	   but rather because the perceived capability to easily modify BGP and
286	   the immanent difficulties with link-state [DIJKSTRA] based protocols
287	   to optimize topology exchange and converge quickly in large scale
288	   densely meshed topologies.  The incumbent protocols precondition
289	   normally extensive configuration or provisioning during bring up and
290	   re-dimensioning.  This tends to be viable only for a set of
291	   organizations with according networking operation skills and budgets.
292	   For many IP fabric builders a desirable protocol would be one that
293	   auto-configures itself and deals with failures and mis-configurations
294	   with a minimum of human intervention only.  Such a solution would
295	   allow local IP fabric bandwidth to be consumed in a 'standard
296	   component' fashion, i.e. provision it much faster and operate it at
297	   much lower costs than today, much like compute or storage is consumed
298	   already.

[nit] s/Fat-Tree/Fat Tree/g    To be consistent with the terminology section.

...
318	   For the visually oriented reader, Figure 1 presents a first level
319	   simplified view of the resulting information and routes on a RIFT
320	   fabric.  The top of the fabric is holding in its link-state database
321	   the nodes below it and the routes to them.  In the second row of the
322	   database table we indicate that partial information of other nodes in
323	   the same level is available as well.  The details of how this is
324	   achieved will be postponed for the moment.  When we look at the
325	   "bottom" of the fabric, the leaves, we see that the topology is
326	   basically empty and they only hold a load balanced default route to
327	   the next level under normal conditions.

[nit] s/holding...the nodes below/holding...information about the nodes below

[style nit] Some portions of the text are written in first person ("we
indicate").  Personally, in this type of documents I prefer to not see
that treatment ("the table indicates").  This is just a personal
preference, a nit.  No need to take any action -- unless you really
want to. ;-)

[minor] "details of how this is achieved will be postponed for the
moment."  Sure, this is just the Introduction.  A pointer to where the
details are would be very nice.

[nit] s/and they only hold a load balanced default route to the next
level under normal conditions./and, under normal conditions, they only
hold a load balanced default route to the next level.

329	   The balance of this document details a dedicated IP fabric routing
330	   protocol, fills in the specification details and ultimately includes
331	   resulting security considerations.

[] As I mentioned above, moving the list from the Abstract to the
Introduction would be beneficial.  Given that this is a long document,
providing some type of roadmap/reader's guide (based on that list, for
example) would be great!

...
357	2.1.  Requirements Language

359	   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
360	   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
361	   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 8174 [RFC8174].

[major] Use the template exactly as written in rfc8174.

363	3.  Reference Frame

365	3.1.  Terminology

[minor] Where possible/appropriate, please add forward references to
the sections where the terms are further specified.

367	   This section presents the terminology used in this document.  It is
368	   assumed that the reader is thoroughly familiar with the terms and
369	   concepts used in OSPF [RFC2328] and IS-IS [ISO10589-Second-Edition],
370	   [ISO10589] as well as the according graph theoretical concepts of
371	   shortest path first (SPF) [DIJKSTRA] computation and DAGs.

[minor] The two references to ISO10589 look the same to me.  Do we need both?

...
383	   Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG):  A finite directed graph with no
384	      directed cycles (loops).  If links in Clos are considered as
385	      either being all directed towards the top or vice versa, each of
386	      such two graphs is a DAG.

[nit] s/in Clos/in a Clos

388	   Folded Spine-and-Leaf:  In case Clos fabric input and output stages
389	      are analogous, the fabric can be "folded" to build a "superspine"
390	      or top which we will call Top of Fabric (ToF) in this document.

[nit] s/In case Clos/In case the Clos

[minor] This term is only used in this section.  Does it really need
to be defined?  I'm wondering if the terminology can be simplified.

...
401	   Superspine vs. Aggregation and Spine vs. Edge/Leaf:
402	      Traditional level names in 5-stages folded Clos for Level 2, 1 and
403	      0 respectively.  We normalize this language to talk about top-of-
404	      fabric (ToF), top-of-pod (ToP) and leaves.

[minor] Instead of adding an entry (even if the name uses "vs.", it is
not a comparison) for these names just to reference the normalized
names, which are also defined later, just mention these traditional
names in those entries.

406	   Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP):  Optional RIFT mechanism which allows
407	      to derive node levels automatically based on minimum configuration
408	      (only ToF property has to be provisioned on according nodes).

[?] I can't parse the text in parenthesis.

410	   Point of Delivery (PoD):  A self-contained vertical slice or subset
411	      of a Clos or Fat Tree network containing normally only level 0 and
412	      level 1 nodes.  A node in a PoD communicates with nodes in other
413	      PoDs via the Top-of-Fabric.  We number PoDs to distinguish them
414	      and use PoD #0 to denote "undefined" PoD.

[minor] "level 0 and level 1"   The definition of level doesn't
mention numbers -- maybe add something there to point at the fact that
level 0 and a leaf are equivalent (position-wise).

...
429	   Leaf:  A node without southbound adjacencies.  Its level is 0 (except
430	      cases where it is deriving its level via ZTP and is running
431	      without LEAF_ONLY which will be explained in Section 4.2.7).

[minor] s/(except...Section 4.2.7)./(see Section 4.2.7).

433	   Top-of-fabric Plane or Partition:  In large fabrics top-of-fabric
434	      switches may not have enough ports to aggregate all switches south
435	      of them and with that, the ToF is 'split' into multiple
436	      independent planes.  Introduction and Section 4.1.2 explains the
437	      concept in more detail.  A plane is subset of ToF nodes that see
438	      each other through south reflection or E-W links.

[minor] "Introduction..."   I didn't see related text there.

[nit] s/is subset/is a subset

440	   Radix:  A radix of a switch is basically number of switching ports it
441	      provides.  It's sometimes called fanout as well.

[nit] s/A radix of a switch is basically number of switching ports it
provides./The number of switching ports it provides.

...
460	   East-West Link:  A link between two nodes at the same level.  East-
461	      West links are normally not part of Clos or "fat-tree" topologies.

[minor] s/East-West Link/East-West (E-W) Link

[minor] "...normally not part of Clos or "fat-tree" topologies."   But
they are used by RIFT in several places.  To avoid confusion maybe the
last sentence is not needed.

...
476	   South Reflection:  Often abbreviated just as "reflection" it defines
477	      a mechanism where South Node TIEs are "reflected" from the level
478	      south back up north to allow nodes in the same level without E-W
479	      links to "see" each other's node TIEs.

[nit] s/"reflection" it/"reflection", it

[minor] Please expand TIE.  I know the definition is in the very next
paragraph, but it is good practice to expand on first use.

...
490	   Node TIE:  This stands as acronym for a "Node Topology Information
491	      Element" that contains all adjacencies the node discovered and
492	      information about node itself.  Node TIE should NOT be confused
493	      with a North TIE since "node" defines the type of TIE rather than
494	      its direction.

[nit] s/This stands as acronym for a "Node Topology Information
Element" that contains/An acronym for a "Node Topology Information
Element", which contains

[nit] s/about node/about the node

[minor] s/NOT/not/g   This is not one of the rfc2119 keywords, so it
should not be capitalized.  I know you're doing it for emphasis, but
it will be eventually changed -- so let's take care of it now.

...
501	   Key Value TIE:  A South TIE that is carrying a set of key value pairs
502	      [DYNAMO].  It can be used to distribute information in the
503	      southbound direction within the protocol.

[minor] "Key Value TIE" is not used anywhere else in the document.
Also, the definition talks about a South TIE carrying (only? -- that's
what the definition sounds like) key value pairs...but §4.2.3.2
mentions other information and even North TIEs carrying key value
pairs.

505	   TIDE:  Topology Information Description Element, equivalent to CSNP
506	      in ISIS.

[minor] Please expand CSNP.

508	   TIRE:  Topology Information Request Element, equivalent to PSNP in
509	      ISIS.  It can both confirm received and request missing TIEs.

[minor] Please expand PSNP.

511	   De-aggregation/Disaggregation:  Process in which a node decides to
512	      advertise more specific prefixes Southwards, either positively to
513	      attract the corresponding traffic, or negatively to repel it.
514	      Disaggregation is performed to prevent black-holing and suboptimal
515	      routing to the more specific prefixes.

[nit] "De-aggregation/Disaggregation"  It would be very nice if you
settled on one word.  Disaggregation seems to be used the most, but
dis-aggregation also shows up a couple of times.

...
521	   Flood Repeater (FR):  A node can designate one or more northbound
522	      neighbor nodes to be flood repeaters.  The flood repeaters are
523	      responsible for flooding northbound TIEs further north.  They are
524	      similar to MPR in OSLR.  The document sometimes calls them flood
525	      leaders as well.

[minor] Please expand both MPR and OLSR.

[minor] Also, please add a reference.  I see that MPR/OLSR are only
mentioned once more (§4.2.3.9), and wonder if we even need to make
reference to them.  The first paragraph in §4.2.3.9 already pretty
much covers the intent of an MPR.

527	   Bandwidth Adjusted Distance (BAD):  Each RIFT node can calculate the
528	      amount of northbound bandwidth available towards a node compared
529	      to other nodes at the same level and can modify the route distance
530	      accordingly to allow for the lower level to adjust their load
531	      balancing towards spines.

[minor] A reference to §4.3.6.1 would be very nice.

533	   Overloaded:  Applies to a node advertising `overload` attribute as
534	      set.  The semantics closely follow the meaning of the same
535	      attribute in [ISO10589-Second-Edition].

[nit] s/advertising `overload` attribute/advertising the `overload` attribute

[minor] There is no overload attribute in ISO10589, just an Overload
Bit.  Also, §4.3.1 (please add a reference) calls it the overload bit.

...
540	   Three-Way Adjacency:  RIFT tries to form a unique adjacency over an
541	      interface and exchange local configuration and necessary ZTP
542	      information.  An adjacency is only advertised in node TIEs and
543	      used for computations after it achieved three-way state, i.e. both
544	      routers reflected each other in LIEs including relevant security
545	      information.  LIEs before three-way state is reached may carry ZTP
546	      related information already.

[minor] s/tries to form a unique adjacency/forms a unique adjacency

[nit] s/and exchange local/and exchanges local

[nit] s/after it achieved three-way state/after the three-way state is achieved

[minor] Note that three-way, threeway and three way are all used in
different places.  Please be consistent.

...
554	   Neighbor:  Once a three-way adjacency has been formed a neighborship
555	      relationship contains the neighbor's properties.  Multiple
556	      adjacencies can be formed to a remote node via parallel interfaces
557	      but such adjacencies are NOT sharing a neighbor structure.  Saying
558	      "neighbor" is thus equivalent to saying "a three-way adjacency".

[] How is load balancing achieved through parallel links between the
same pair of routers?  Just putting this comment here so I don't
forget it later.

...
566	   Shortest-Path First (SPF):  A well-known graph algorithm attributed
567	      to Dijkstra that establishes a tree of shortest paths from a
568	      source to destinations on the graph.  We use SPF acronym due to
569	      its familiarity as general term for the node reachability
570	      calculations RIFT can employ to ultimately calculate routes of
571	      which Dijkstra algorithm is one.

573	   North SPF (N-SPF):  A reachability calculation that is progressing
574	      northbound, as example SPF that is using South Node TIEs only.
575	      Normally it progresses a single hop only and installs default
576	      routes.

578	   South SPF (S-SPF):  A reachability calculation that is progressing
579	      southbound, as example SPF that is using North Node TIEs only.

[minor] Please add a reference to where the specific algorithm used by
RIFT is specified.

...
585	3.2.  Topology
586	               ^ N      +--------+          +--------+
587	Level 2        |        |ToF   21|          |ToF   22|
588	           E <-*-> W    ++-+--+-++          ++-+--+-++
589	               |         | |  | |            | |  | |
590	             S v      P111/2  P121/2         | |  | |
591	                         ^ ^  ^ ^            | |  | |
592	                         | |  | |            | |  | |
593	          +--------------+ |  +-----------+  | |  | +---------------+
594	          |                |    |         |  | |  |                 |
595	         South +-----------------------------+ |  |                 ^
596	          |    |           |    |         |    |  |             All TIEs
597	          0/0  0/0        0/0   +-----------------------------+     |
598	          v    v           v              |    |  |           |     |
599	          |    |           +-+    +<-0/0----------+           |     |
600	          |    |             |    |       |    |              |     |
601	        +-+----++ optional +-+----++     ++----+-+           ++-----++
602	Level 1 |       | E/W link |       |     |       |           |       |
603	        |Spin111+----------+Spin112|     |Spin121|           |Spin122|
604	        +-+---+-+          ++----+-+     +-+---+-+           ++---+--+
605	          |   |             |   South      |   |              |   |
606	          |   +---0/0--->-----+ 0/0        |   +----------------+ |
607	         0/0                | |  |         |                  | | |
608	          |   +---<-0/0-----+ |  v         |   +--------------+ | |
609	          v   |               |  |         |   |                | |
610	        +-+---+-+          +--+--+-+     +-+---+-+          +---+-+-+
611	Level 0 |       |  (L2L)   |       |     |       |          |       |
612	        |Leaf111+~~~~~~~~~~+Leaf112|     |Leaf121|          |Leaf122|
613	        +-+-----+          +-+---+-+     +--+--+-+          +-+-----+
614	          +                  +    \        /   +              +
615	          Prefix111   Prefix112    \      /   Prefix121    Prefix122
616	                                  multi-homed
617	                                    Prefix
618	        +---------- PoD 1 ---------+     +---------- PoD 2 ---------+

620	              Figure 2: A Three Level Spine-and-Leaf Topology
621	                    .+--------+  +--------+  +--------+  +--------+
622	                    .|ToF   A1|  |ToF   B1|  |ToF   B2|  |ToF   A2|
623	                    .++-+-----+  ++-+-----+  ++-+-----+  ++-+-----+
624	                    . | |         | |         | |         | |
625	                    . | |         | |         | +---------------+
626	                    . | |         | |         |           | |   |
627	                    . | |         | +-------------------------+ |
628	                    . | |         |           |           | | | |
629	                    . | +-----------------------+         | | | |
630	                    . |           |           | |         | | | |
631	                    . |           | +---------+ | +---------+ | |
632	                    . |           | |           | |       |   | |
633	                    . | +---------------------------------+   | |
634	                    . | |         | |           | |           | |
635	                    .++-+-----+  ++-+-----+  +--+-+---+  +----+-+-+
636	                    .|Spine111|  |Spine112|  |Spine121|  |Spine122|
637	                    .+-+---+--+  ++----+--+  +-+---+--+  ++---+---+
638	                    .  |   |      |    |       |   |      |   |
639	                    .  |   +--------+  |       |   +--------+ |
640	                    .  |          | |  |       |          | | |
641	                    .  |   -------+ |  |       |   +------+ | |
642	                    .  |   |        |  |       |   |        | |
643	                    .+-+---+-+   +--+--+-+   +-+---+-+  +---+-+-+
644	                    .|Leaf111|   |Leaf112|   |Leaf121|  |Leaf122|
645	                    .+-------+   +-------+   +-------+  +-------+

647	                  Figure 3: Topology with Multiple Planes

649	   We will use topology in Figure 2 (called commonly a fat tree/network
650	   in modern IP fabric considerations [VAHDAT08] as homonym to the
651	   original definition of the term [FATTREE]) in all further
652	   considerations.  This figure depicts a generic "single plane fat-
653	   tree" and the concepts explained using three levels apply by
654	   induction to further levels and higher degrees of connectivity.
655	   Further, this document will deal also with designs that provide only
656	   sparser connectivity and "partitioned spines" as shown in Figure 3
657	   and explained further in Section 4.1.2.

[minor] The first sentence introduces another source to define fat
tree, which is not mentioned in the Introduction nor in the
Terminology.  This is not a huge deal, but it would be nice to keep
consistency throughout.  IOW, include the new reference somewhere in
the first couple of sections, settle on one, or simply just don't add
a new reference.

[minor] For completeness, it would be nice to explain that the figures
are incomplete: for example, Figure 2 shows only some of the TIEs,
Figure 3 shows none of them, etc...

[] BTW, SVI graphics are now supported in xmltorfcv3.  Some of the
figures might be easier to visualize that way than using ASCII art.

659	4.  RIFT: Routing in Fat Trees

661	   We present here a detailed outline of a protocol optimized for
662	   Routing in Fat Trees (RIFT) that in most abstract terms has many
663	   properties of a modified link-state protocol
664	   [RFC2328][ISO10589-Second-Edition] when distributing information
665	   northbound and distance vector [RFC4271] protocol when distributing
666	   information southbound.  While this is an unusual combination, it
667	   does quite naturally exhibit the desirable properties we seek.

[minor] s/detailed outline/detailed specification

[nit] s/and distance vector/and a distance vector

[] The references to OSPF/ISIS/BGP seem superfluous because those
documents don't define generic link-state or distance vector protocols
-- in fact, many would argue that BGP is a path vector protocol.  Just
my opinion.  I would be very happy if the references are not included.
I wonder if there are generic references that can be used instead of
specific ones (for information purposes).

669	4.1.  Overview

671	4.1.1.  Properties

673	   The most singular property of RIFT is that it floods flat link-state
674	   information northbound only so that each level obtains the full
675	   topology of levels south of it.  Link-State information is, with some
676	   exceptions, never flooded East-West or back South again.  Exceptions
677	   like south reflection is explained in detail in Section 4.2.5.1 and
678	   east-west flooding at ToF level in multi-plane fabrics is outlined in
679	   Section 4.1.2.  In southbound direction, the protocol operates like a
680	   "fully summarizing, unidirectional" path vector protocol or rather a
681	   distance vector with implicit split horizon.  Routing information,
682	   normally just the default route, propagates one hop south and is 're-
683	   advertised' by nodes at next lower level.  However, RIFT uses
684	   flooding in the southern direction as well to avoid the overhead of
685	   building an update per adjacency.  We omit describing the East-West
686	   direction for the moment.

[minor] What is "flat link-state information"?  It looks like this is
the only place where "flat" is used.  Maybe s/flat/

[nit] s/In southbound direction/In the southbound direction

[] "...the protocol operates like a "fully summarizing,
unidirectional" path vector protocol or rather a distance vector with
implicit split horizon."  I hope that the operation is specified
elsewhere, and that the document doesn't depend on these descriptions.
Personal opinion: simple and direct language may serve you better.

688	   Those information flow constraints create not only an anisotropic
689	   protocol (i.e. the information is not distributed "evenly" or
690	   "clumped" but summarized along the N-S gradient) but also a "smooth"
691	   information propagation where nodes do not receive the same
692	   information from multiple directions at the same time.  Normally,
693	   accepting the same reachability on any link, without understanding
694	   its topological significance, forces tie-breaking on some kind of
695	   distance metric.  And such tie-breaking leads ultimately in hop-by-
696	   hop forwarding to shortest paths only.  In contrast to that, RIFT,
697	   under normal conditions, does not need to tie-break same reachability
698	   information from multiple directions.  Its computation principles
699	   (south forwarding direction is always preferred) leads to valley-free
700	   forwarding behavior.  And since valley free routing is loop-free, it
701	   can use all feasible paths which is another highly desirable property
702	   if available bandwidth should be utilized to the maximum extent
703	   possible.

[] "anisotropic"   This is my word of the day.  I learned a new one! :-)

[nit] s/tie-break same/tie-break the same

[minor] "valley-free"  Reference?

705	   To account for the "northern" and the "southern" information split
706	   the link state database is partitioned accordingly into "north
707	   representation" and "south representation" TIEs.  In simplest terms
708	   the North TIEs contain a link state topology description of lower
709	   levels and and South TIEs carry simply default routes towards the
710	   level above.  This oversimplified view will be refined gradually in
711	   following sections while introducing protocol procedures and state
712	   machines at the same time.

[nit] s/in following/in the following

714	4.1.2.  Generalized Topology View

716	   This section will shed some light on the topologies RIFT addresses,
717	   including multi plane fabrics and their implications.  Readers that
718	   are only interested in single plane designs, i.e. all top-of-fabric
719	   nodes being topologically equal and initially connected to all the
720	   switches at the level below them, can skip the rest of Section 4.1.2
721	   and resulting Section 4.2.5.2 as well.

[minor] "Readers...can skip the rest of Section 4.1.2 and resulting
Section 4.2.5.2 as well."  I can see how a reader can skip a part of
the overview, but §4.2* is where the specification is.  Are you saying
that §4.2.5.2 doesn't have to be implemented/supported in some cases?
Are there other sections that are also not needed in some cases?  Does
this result in the ability to implement subsets of RIFT to support
specific topologies?  Where is that discussed?

...
737	4.1.2.1.  Terminology
...
746	   K: Denotes the number of ports in radix of a switch pointing north or
747	      south.  Further, K_LEAF denotes number of ports pointing south,
748	      i.e. towards leaves, and K_TOP for number of ports pointing north
749	      towards a higher spine level.  To simplify the visual aids,
750	      notations and further considerations, K will be mostly set to
751	      Radix/2.

[minor] Radix is defined in §3.1 as the number of ports.  s/Denotes
the number of ports in radix of a switch/Denotes the radix of a switch

...
757	   N: Denote the number of independent ToF planes in a topology.

[nit] s/Denote/Denotes

...
766	4.1.2.2.  Clos as Crossed Crossbars

768	   The typical topology for which RIFT is defined is built of P number
769	   of PoDs and connected together by S number of ToF nodes.  A PoD node
770	   has K number of ports (also called Radix).  We consider half of them
771	   (K=Radix/2) as connecting host devices from the south, and the other
772	   half connecting to interleaved PoD Top-Level switches to the north.
773	   Ratio K can be chosen differently without loss of generality when
774	   port speeds differ or the fabric is oversubscribed but K=R/2 allows
775	   for more readable representation whereby there are as many ports
776	   facing north as south on any intermediate node.  We represent a node
777	   hence in a schematic fashion with ports "sticking out" to its north
778	   and south rather than by the usual real-world front faceplate designs
779	   of the day.

[nit] s/Ratio K can be chosen differently/The K ratio can be chosen differently

[minor] "K=R/2"  R is defined in §4.1.2.1 as the redundancy, not the radix.

781	   Figure 4 provides a view of a leaf node as seen from the north, i.e.
782	   showing ports that connect northbound.  For lack of a better symbol,
783	   we have chosen to use the "o" as ASCII visualisation of a single
784	   port.  In this example, K_LEAF has 6 ports.  Observe that the number
785	   of PoDs is not related to Radix unless the ToF Nodes are constrained
786	   to be the same as the PoD nodes in a particular deployment.

[minor] "showing ports that connect northbound...K_LEAF has 6 ports"
The ports that connect north are K_TOP.

788	       Top view
789	        +---+
790	        |   |
791	        | o |     e.g., Radix = 12, K_LEAF = 6
792	        |   |
793	        | o |
794	        |   |      -------------------------
795	        | o ------- Physical Port (Ethernet) ----+
796	        |   |      -------------------------     |
797	        | o |                                    |
798	        |   |                                    |
799	        | o |                                    |
800	        |   |                                    |
801	        | o |                                    |
802	        |   |                                    |
803	        +---+                                    |

805	          ||             ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||
806	        +----+       +------------------------------------------------+
807	        |    |       |                                                |
808	        +----+       +------------------------------------------------+
809	          ||             ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||
810	              Side views

812	                      Figure 4: A Leaf Node, K_LEAF=6

814	   The Radix of a PoD's top node may be different than that of the leaf
815	   node.  Though, more often than not, a same type of node is used for
816	   both, effectively forming a square (K*K).  In general case, we could
817	   have switches with K_TOP southern ports on nodes at the top of the
818	   PoD which are not necessarily the same as K_LEAF.  For instance, in
819	   the representations below, we pick a 6 port K_LEAF and a 8 port
820	   K_TOP.  In order to form a crossbar, we need K_TOP Leaf Nodes as
821	   illustrated in Figure 5.

[nit] s/In general case/In the general case

[minor] "K_TOP southern ports"  Aren't K_TOP the ports pointing north?
 The description is confusing because the terminology from the last
section is not used in the same way -- the description mixes the
terminology with the number represented.  For example, "K_TOP Leaf
Nodes" doesn't make sense if the terminology is strictly applied,
where K_TOP is the "number of ports pointing north".  Also (if I
understood Figure 4 correctly), each node below has 6 K_TOP ports --
presumably the node at the top has 8 K_LEAF ports.

823	             +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+
824	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
825	             | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |
826	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
827	             | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |
828	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
829	             | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |
830	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
831	             | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |
832	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
833	             | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |
834	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
835	             | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |
836	             |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
837	             +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+

839	                 Figure 5: Southern View of a PoD, K_TOP=8

841	   As further visualized in Figure 6 the K_TOP Leaf Nodes are fully
842	   interconnected with the K_LEAF PoD-top nodes, providing connectivity
843	   that can be represented as a crossbar when "looked at" from the
844	   north.  The result is that, in the absence of a failure, a packet
845	   entering the PoD from the north on any port can be routed to any port
846	   in the south of the PoD and vice versa.  And that is precisely why it
847	   makes sense to talk about a "switching matrix".

[minor] "K_TOP Leaf Nodes are fully interconnected with the K_LEAF
PoD-top nodes"  Same comment about the terminology...   I only see one
"PoD top Node" with one connection to a switch, not a full
interconnect.

[minor] The figure also doesn't show the connection between the
switches (if any)...and I'm not sure what the "connectors" (?) on the
switch at the top/bottom are (there seem to be more of them than
ports).

849	                                      E<-*->W

851	          +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+
852	          |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |
853	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
854	        |   o      o      o      o      o      o      o      o   |
855	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
856	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
857	        |   o      o      o      o      o      o      o      o   |
858	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
859	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
860	        |   o      o      o      o      o      o      o      o   |
861	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
862	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
863	        |   o      o      o      o      o      o      o      o   |
864	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
865	        +--------------------------------------------------------+
866	        |   o      o      o      o      o      o      o      o   |<-+
867	        +--------------------------------------------------------+  |
868	        +--------------------------------------------------------+  |
869	        |   o      o      o      o      o      o      o      o   |  |
870	        +--------------------------------------------------------+  |
871	          |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |    |
872	          +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+    |
873	                     ^                                              |
874	                     |                                              |
875	                     |     ----------        ---------------------  |
876	                     +----- Leaf Node        PoD top Node (Spine) --+
877	                           ----------        ---------------------

879	            Figure 6: Northern View of a PoD's Spines, K_TOP=8

881	   Side views of this PoD is illustrated in Figure 7 and Figure 8.

883	                      Connecting to Spine

885	      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||
886	  +----------------------------------------------------------------+   N
887	  |                    PoD top Node seen sideways                  |   ^
888	  +----------------------------------------------------------------+   |
889	      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||       *
890	    +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+     |
891	    |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |     v
892	    +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+     S
893	      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||

895	                           Connecting to Client nodes

897	              Figure 7: Side View of a PoD, K_TOP=8, K_LEAF=6

[minor] I count 8 connections to the south in the top node...and just
one on the switches below it.

899	                   Connecting to Spine

901	          ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||
902	        +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+              N
903	        |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |  |    |  |   PoD top Nodes   ^
904	        +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+  +----+              |
905	          ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||                *
906	      +------------------------------------------------+            |
907	      |              Leaf seen sideways                |            v
908	      +------------------------------------------------+            S
909	          ||      ||      ||      ||      ||      ||

911	                   Connecting to Client nodes

[minor] A leaf doesn't have southbound ports/adjacencies.  What is
this leaf connected to?

913	    Figure 8: Other Side View of a PoD, K_TOP=8, K_LEAF=6, 90o turn in
914	                                 E-W Plane

[minor] In this case I count a leaf with 6 northbound interfaces.

[minor] "90o turn in E-W Plane"  I don't know what that is.

916	   As next step, let us observe that a resulting PoD can be abstracted
917	   as a bigger node with a number K of K_POD= K_TOP * K_LEAF, and the
918	   design can recurse.

[minor] K is already defined as the number of ports (§4.1.2.1).

[minor] Lost again.  If the PoD is abstracted as a single node, then
it would have K_TOP + K_LEAF nodes, not sure where the "*" comes from
or what is trying to denote.

920	   It will be critical at this point that, before progressing further,
921	   the concept and the picture of "crossed crossbars" is clear.  Else,
922	   the following considerations might be difficult to comprehend.

[] The concept is clear to me -- I don't find the explanation and the
corresponding pictures specially helpful.

...
929	   This topology is also referred to as a single plane configuration and
930	   is quite popular due to its simplicity.  In order to reach a 1:1
931	   connectivity ratio between the ToF and the leaves, it results that
932	   there are K_TOP ToF nodes, because each port of a ToP node connects
933	   to a different ToF node, and K_LEAF ToP nodes for the same reason.
934	   Consequently, it will take (P * K_LEAF) ports on a ToF node to
935	   connect to each of the K_LEAF ToP nodes of the P PoDs, as shown in
936	   Figure 9.

[minor] "there are K_TOP ToF nodes...and K_LEAF ToP nodes"  As with
other places, the terminology is not used as defined earlier.  K_*
refer to the number of ports in a specific switch, so their use is
relative to that switch.  In this case each ToP has K_TOP links, and
each ToF has K_LEAF links.  The use without the reference point is
confusing.

[minor] "(P * K_LEAF)"  This calculation is clear once one realizes
that the previous discussion was for the number of ports per PoD, not
total (as the definition of K_* suggests).

938	        [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] <-----+
939	         |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |        |
940	      [=================================]     |     -----------
941	         |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |        +----- Top-of-Fabric
942	        [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]       +----- Node      -------+
943	                                              |     -----------       |
944	                                              |                       v
945	        +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ <-----+                      +-+
946	        | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |                              | |
947	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]                            | |
948	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] -------------------------  | |
949	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o<--- Physical Port (Ethernet)  | |
950	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] -------------------------  | |
951	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]                            | |
952	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]                            | |
953	        | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |                              | |
954	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]                            | |
955	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]      --------------        | |
956	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] <---  PoD top level        | |
957	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]       node (Spine)  ---+   | |
958	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]      --------------    |   | |
959	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ]                        |   | |
960	        | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  -+           +-   +-+   v   | |
961	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] |           |  --| |--[ ]--| |
962	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] |   -----   |  --| |--[ ]--| |
963	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] +--- PoD ---+  --| |--[ ]--| |
964	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] |   -----   |  --| |--[ ]--| |
965	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] |           |  --| |--[ ]--| |
966	      [ |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| |o| ] |           |  --| |--[ ]--| |
967	        | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  -+           +-   +-+       | |
968	        +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+                              +-+

970	      Figure 9: Fabric Spines and TOFs in Single Plane Design, 3 PoDs

[minor] I believe you when you say that this figure shows how "it will
take (P * K_LEAF) ports on a ToF node to connect to each of the K_LEAF
ToP nodes of the P PoDs", but the drawing is not straight forward to
interpret.  Among other reasons because there seem to be 3 different
connection types/interpretations/? to the ToF -- a different one for
each PoD.

972	   The top view can be collapsed into a third dimension where the hidden
973	   depth index is representing the PoD number.  We can then show one PoD
974	   as a class of PoDs and hence save one dimension in our
975	   representation.  The Spine Node expands in the depth and the vertical
976	   dimensions, whereas the PoD top level Nodes are constrained, in
977	   horizontal dimension.  A port in the 2-D representation represents
978	   effectively the class of all the ports at the same position in all
979	   the PoDs that are projected in its position along the depth axis.
980	   This is shown in Figure 10.

[] Do we really need this extra representation?

...
1003	   As simple as single plane deployment is it introduces a limit due to
1004	   the bound on the available radix of the ToF nodes that has to be at
1005	   least P * K_LEAF.  Nevertheless, we will see that a distinct
1006	   advantage of a connected or non-partitioned Top-of-Fabric is that all
1007	   failures can be resolved by simple, non-transitive, positive
1008	   disaggregation (i.e. nodes advertising more specific prefixes with
1009	   the default to the level below them that is however not propagated
1010	   further down the fabric) as described in Section 4.2.5.1 . In other
1011	   words; non-partitioned ToF nodes can always reach nodes below or
1012	   withdraw the routes from PoDs they cannot reach unambiguously.  And
1013	   with this, positive disaggregation can heal all failures and still
1014	   allow all the ToF nodes to see each other via south reflection.
1015	   Disaggregation will be explained in further detail in Section 4.2.5.

[nit] s/deployment is it introduces/deployment is, it introduces

1017	   In order to scale beyond the "single plane limit", the Top-of-Fabric
1018	   can be partitioned by a N number of identically wired planes where N
1019	   is an integer divider of K_LEAF.  The 1:1 ratio and the desired
1020	   symmetry are still served, this time with (K_TOP * N) ToF nodes, each
1021	   of (P * K_LEAF / N) ports.  N=1 represents a non-partitioned Spine
1022	   and N=K_LEAF is a maximally partitioned Spine.  Further, if R is any
1023	   integer divisor of K_LEAF, then N=K_LEAF/R is a feasible number of
1024	   planes and R a redundancy factor.  If proves convenient for
1025	   deployments to use a radix for the leaf nodes that is a power of 2 so
1026	   they can pick a number of planes that is a lower power of 2.  The
1027	   example in Figure 11 splits the Spine in 2 planes with a redundancy
1028	   factor R=3, meaning that there are 3 non-intersecting paths between
1029	   any leaf node and any ToF node.  A ToF node must have, in this case,
1030	   at least 3*P ports, and be directly connected to 3 of the 6 PoD-ToP
1031	   nodes (spines) in each PoD.

[nit] s/by a N number/by an N number

[minor] "(K_TOP * N) ToF nodes, each of (P * K_LEAF / N) ports"
Again, the use of the terminology without a reference assumes a
specific interpretation by the reader.

[minor] "if R is any integer divisor of K_LEAF, then N=K_LEAF/R is a
feasible number of planes and R a redundancy factor."  Please expand
on the meaning of the redundancy factor.

[minor] "6 PoD-ToP nodes"  I count 8.

1033	        +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+
1034	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1035	      | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |
1036	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1037	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1038	      | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |
1039	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1040	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1041	      | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |
1042	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1043	        +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+

1045	      Plane 1
1046	     ----------- . ------------ . ------------ . ------------ . --------
1047	      Plane 2

1049	        +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+
1050	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1051	      | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |
1052	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1053	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1054	      | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |
1055	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1056	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1057	      | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |
1058	      +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+
1059	        +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+
1060	                 ^
1061	                 |
1062	                 |      ----------------
1063	                 +----- Top-of-Fabric node
1064	                        "across" depth
1065	                        ----------------

1067	    Figure 11: Northern View of a Multi-Plane ToF Level, K_LEAF=6, N=2

1069	   At the extreme end of the spectrum it is even possible to fully
1070	   partition the spine with N = K_LEAF and R=1, while maintaining
1071	   connectivity between each leaf node and each Top-of-Fabric node.  In
1072	   that case the ToF node connects to a single Port per PoD, so it
1073	   appears as a single port in the projected view represented in
1074	   Figure 12.  The number of ports required on the Spine Node is more or
1075	   equal to P, the number of PoDs.

[minor] "more or equal to P"  ??

...
1121	4.1.3.  Fallen Leaf Problem
...
1140	   In a maximally partitioned fabric, the redundancy factor is R= 1, so
1141	   any breakage in the fabric may cause one or more fallen leaves.
1142	   However, not all cases require disaggregation.  The following cases
1143	   do not require particular action in such scenario:

[major] A quick look at §4.2.5.1 doesn't explicitly mention how a node
considers the redundancy factor...but that may be included in the "DAG
computation" mentioned in the first step.  I'm putting this comment
here so I don't forget later...

1145	      If a southern link on a node goes down, then connectivity through
1146	      that node is lost for all nodes south of it.  There is no need to
1147	      disaggregate since the connectivity to this node is lost for all
1148	      spine nodes in a same fashion.

1150	      If a ToF Node goes down, then northern traffic towards it is
1151	      routed via alternate ToF nodes in the same plane and there is no
1152	      need to disaggregate routes.
...
1159	      If the breakage is the last northern link from a ToP node to a ToF
1160	      node going down, then the fallen leaf problem affects only The ToF
1161	      node, and the connectivity to all the nodes in the PoD is lost
1162	      from that ToF node.  This can be observed by other ToF nodes
1163	      within the plane where the ToP node is located and positively
1164	      disaggregated within that plane.

[nit] s/only The ToF/only the ToF

1166	   On the other hand, there is a need to disaggregate the routes to
1167	   Fallen Leaves in a transitive fashion, all the way to the other
1168	   leaves in the following cases:

[] Without having seen the specific mechanism, this overview is hard to digest.

1170	   o  If the breakage is the last northern link from a leaf node within
1171	      a plane (there is only one such link in a maximally partitioned
1172	      fabric) that goes down, then connectivity to all unicast prefixes
1173	      attached to the leaf node is lost within the plane where the link
1174	      is located.  Southern Reflection by a leaf node, e.g., between ToP
1175	      nodes, if the PoD has only 2 levels, happens in between planes,
1176	      allowing the ToP nodes to detect the problem within the PoD where
1177	      it occurs and positively disaggregate.  The breakage can be
1178	      observed by the ToF nodes in the same plane through the North
1179	      flooding of TIEs from the ToP nodes.  The ToF nodes however need
1180	      to be aware of all the affected prefixes for the negative,
1181	      possibly transitive disaggregation to be fully effective (i.e.  a
1182	      node advertising in control plane that it cannot reach a certain
1183	      more specific prefix than default whereas such disaggregation must
1184	      in extreme condition propagate further down southbound).  The
1185	      problem can also be observed by the ToF nodes in the other planes
1186	      through the flooding of North TIEs from the affected leaf nodes,
1187	      together with non-node North TIEs which indicate the affected
1188	      prefixes.  To be effective in that case, the positive
1189	      disaggregation must reach down to the nodes that make the plane
1190	      selection, which are typically the ingress leaf nodes.  The
1191	      information is not useful for routing in the intermediate levels.

[nit] s/in control plane/in the control plane

[nit] s/in extreme condition/in the extreme condition

1193	   o  If the breakage is a ToP node in a maximally partitioned fabric -
1194	      in which case it is the only ToP node serving the plane in that
1195	      PoD - goes down, then the connectivity to all the nodes in the PoD
1196	      is lost within the plane where the ToP node is located.
1197	      Consequently, all leaves of the PoD fall in this plane.  Since the
1198	      Southern Reflection between the ToF nodes happens only within a
1199	      plane, ToF nodes in other planes cannot discover fallen leaves in
1200	      a different plane.  They also cannot determine beyond their local
1201	      plane whether a leaf node that was initially reachable has become
1202	      unreachable.  As the breakage can be observed by the ToF nodes in
1203	      the plane where the breakage happened, the ToF nodes in the plane
1204	      need to be aware of all the affected prefixes for the negative
1205	      disaggregation to be fully effective.  The problem can also be
1206	      observed by the ToF nodes in the other planes through the flooding
1207	      of North TIEs from the affected leaf nodes, if there are only 3
1208	      levels and the ToP nodes are directly connected to the leaf nodes,
1209	      and then again it can only be effective it is propagated
1210	      transitively to the leaf, and useless above that level.

[nit] s/fabric -...- goes down,/fabric -...-,

1212	   For the sake of easy comprehension let us roll the abstractions back
1213	   into a simple example and observe that in Figure 3 the loss of link
1214	   Spine 122 to Leaf 122 will make Leaf 122 a fallen leaf for Top-of-
1215	   Fabric plane B.  Worse, if the cabling was never present in first
1216	   place, plane B will not even be able to know that such a fallen leaf
1217	   exists.  Hence partitioning without further treatment results in two
1218	   grave problems:

[] "For the sake of easy comprehension...Figure 3..."  Finally!
Hmmm...sorry...I mean, it is a little ironic that after all the new
terminology, detailed descriptions and figures, the clearer
explanation uses the simplest drawing.

[nit] s/in first place/in the first place

1220	   o  Leaf 111 trying to route to Leaf 122 MUST choose Spine 111 in
1221	      plane A as its next hop since plane B will inevitably blackhole
1222	      the packet when forwarding using default routes or do excessive
1223	      bow tying.  This information must be in its routing table.

[major] s/MUST/must   This is not a Normative statement, just a
statement of fact (inside an example).

1225	   o  Any kind of "flooding" or distance vector trying to deal with the
1226	      problem by distributing host routes will be able to converge only
1227	      using paths through leaves.  The flooding of information on Leaf
1228	      122 would have to go up to Top-of-Fabric A and then "loopback"
1229	      over other leaves to ToF B leading in extreme cases to traffic for
1230	      Leaf 122 when presented to plane B taking an "inverted fabric"
1231	      path where leaves start to serve as TOFs, at least for the
1232	      duration of a protocol's convergence.

[] "Any kind of "flooding" or distance vector..."  I can guess the
meaning, but it would be better that I don't have to.   Maybe
something like: "Any advertisement..."

[minor] "information on Leaf 122"  s/on/ about (?), or maybe from. ??

1234	4.1.4.  Discovering Fallen Leaves

1236	   As illustrated later, and without further proof, the way to deal with
1237	   fallen leaves in multi-plane designs, when aggregation is used, is
1238	   that RIFT requires all the ToF nodes to share the same north topology
1239	   database.  This happens naturally in single plane design by the means
1240	   of northbound flooding and south reflection but needs additional
1241	   considerations in multi-plane fabrics.  To satisfy this RIFT, in
1242	   multi-plane designs, relies at the ToF level on ring interconnection
1243	   of switches in multiple planes.  Other solutions are possible but
1244	   they either need more cabling or end up having much longer flooding
1245	   paths and/or single points of failure.

[minor] "As illustrated later..."  Where?

[] "and without further proof"  I hope this is at least specified at
that later point.

[nit] s/To satisfy this RIFT, in multi-plane designs, relies/To
satisfy this need in multi-plane designs, RIFT relies

1247	   In detail, by reserving two ports on each Top-of-Fabric node it is
1248	   possible to connect them together by interplane bi-directional rings
1249	   as illustrated in Figure 13.  The rings will be used to exchange full
1250	   north topology information between planes.  All ToFs having same
1251	   north topology allows by the means of transitive, negative
1252	   disaggregation described in Section 4.2.5.2 to efficiently fix any
1253	   possible fallen leaf scenario.  Somewhat as a side-effect, the
1254	   exchange of information fulfills the ask to present full view of the
1255	   fabric topology at the Top-of-Fabric level, without the need to
1256	   collate it from multiple points by additional complexity of
1257	   technologies like [RFC7752].

[nit] s/fulfills the ask to present full view/fulfills the requirement
to have a full view

[] "..., without the need to collate it from multiple points by
additional complexity of technologies like [RFC7752]."  This last
phrase is unnecessary: because carrying RIFT information in BGP-LS is
not defined, and more importantly, there's no need to criticize other
technology to make RIFT look better.

1259	           +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +--------+
1260	           |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |        |
1261	           |      |      |      |      |      |      |        |
1262	         +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+      |
1263	       +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+    |
1264	       | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |    | Plane A
1265	       +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+    |
1266	         +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+      |
1267	          |      |      |      |      |      |      |         |
1268	         +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+      |
1269	       +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+    |
1270	       | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |    | Plane B
1271	       +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+    |
1272	         +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+      |
1273	           |      |      |      |      |      |      |        |
1274	                               ...                            |
1275	           |      |      |      |      |      |      |        |
1276	         +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+      |
1277	       +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+    |
1278	       | | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o |  | o | |    | Plane X
1279	       +-|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |--|   |-+    |
1280	         +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+  +-o-+      |
1281	           |      |      |      |      |      |      |        |
1282	           |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |   |  |        |
1283	           +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +---+  +--------+
1284	    Rings    1      2      3      4      5      6      7

1286	     Figure 13: Connecting Top-of-Fabric Nodes Across Planes by Rings

[minor] Is that one ring per plane, multiple rings per plane or a big
ring for all the planes?  The drawing is not clear to me. :-(

1288	4.1.5.  Addressing the Fallen Leaves Problem

1290	   One consequence of the "Fallen Leaf" problem is that some prefixes
1291	   attached to the fallen leaf become unreachable from some of the ToF
1292	   nodes.  RIFT proposes two methods to address this issue, the positive
1293	   and the negative disaggregation.  Both methods flood South TIEs to
1294	   advertise the impacted prefix(es).

[nit] s/RIFT proposes two methods/RIFT defines two methods

[End of Review - Part 1]

---

From: Antoni Przygienda <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2021 20:28:27 +0000

Alvaro, on my to do list with other authors to comb through, I only address the first high level comments you gave

On 1/15/21, 8:56 PM, "Alvaro Retana" <[email-masked]> wrote:

    [External Email. Be cautious of content]

    Dear authors:

Prz> thanks

prz> we tried SVI, it does not work, in more detail the SVG tooling for xml did not work and we could not find any document including figures or being published with SVG or even clear description how we're supposed to get the figures in. So we reverted to ASCII art after having gone in circles for a bit.  The terminology section, representation guide is of significant value IMO, without that it's very hard to talk to people clearly about multi-plane fabrics from direct experience.

Prz> no, it does operate in other topology variants (section 6 mentions that) but this is not a design guide, this is documenting what is in vast amount of cases being built and needs addressing simply providing a clean terminology. Since no'one much builds anything else than multi-stage CLOS for IP fabrics it would be futile to complicate the specification with variants and their implications albeit such documents can be written of course outside the core spec.

Prz> This is an artefact now given we had to remove the requirements section based on other reviewer's comment. The req section was pretty clearly describing what the protocol solves. I agree that we should have a "this protocol does that" intro now instead. I think more and more actually that we should have never removed the REQ section.

Prz> Multi-plane topologies are some of the hardest discussions to get clarity on behavior/topologies/procedures IME and the nomenclature given here is paramount to have meaningful discussions and explain why negative disaggregation is needed and how it is achieved. I agree again that we need more intro on the things that fell away with the REQ section but I would not remove the detailed explanation and representation of multi-plane fabric. You are correct that it would be good to reference those figures in detailed procedure sections though

Detailed answer later

-- tony

Juniper Business Use Only

---

From: "Pascal Thubert (pthubert)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 17:02:40 +0000

Hello Tony and all:

Happy new year! (covid disclaimer: as far as realistically possible that is) 

Could we move the requirement section to the applicability draft instead of removing it?

We had pretty much the reverse comment in that draft that an explanation of the what and the why is missing...

Take care;

Pascal

> -----Original Message-----
> From: RIFT <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Antoni Przygienda
> Sent: vendredi 15 janvier 2021 21:28
> To: Alvaro Retana <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>; rift-
> [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Rift] AD Review of draft-ietf-rift-rift-12 (Part 1)
> 
> prz> we tried SVI, it does not work, in more detail the SVG tooling for xml did
> not work and we could not find any document including figures or being
> published with SVG or even clear description how we're supposed to get the
> figures in. So we reverted to ASCII art after having gone in circles for a bit.
> The terminology section, representation guide is of significant value IMO,
> without that it's very hard to talk to people clearly about multi-plane fabrics
> from direct experience.
> 
> 
> Prz> no, it does operate in other topology variants (section 6 mentions that)
> but this is not a design guide, this is documenting what is in vast amount of
> cases being built and needs addressing simply providing a clean terminology.
> Since no'one much builds anything else than multi-stage CLOS for IP fabrics it
> would be futile to complicate the specification with variants and their
> implications albeit such documents can be written of course outside the core
> spec.
> 
> 
> Prz> This is an artefact now given we had to remove the requirements
> section based on other reviewer's comment. The req section was pretty
> clearly describing what the protocol solves. I agree that we should have a
> "this protocol does that" intro now instead. I think more and more actually
> that we should have never removed the REQ section.
> 
> 
> Prz> Multi-plane topologies are some of the hardest discussions to get clarity
> on behavior/topologies/procedures IME and the nomenclature given here is
> paramount to have meaningful discussions and explain why negative
> disaggregation is needed and how it is achieved. I agree again that we need
> more intro on the things that fell away with the REQ section but I would not
> remove the detailed explanation and representation of multi-plane fabric.
> You are correct that it would be good to reference those figures in detailed
> procedure sections though
> 
> Detailed answer later
> 
> -- tony
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> RIFT mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rift