Mar
13
IS-IS Multitopology: IPv4 and IPv6
When working with IPv6 prefixes in IS-IS, you can configure IS-IS to be in a single topology for both IPv4 and IPv6 or to run different topologies for IPv4 and IPv6. Reading all the official documentation about IS-IS Multitopology I didn’t get a clear conclusion, so I decided to check it out on the lab. And that’s what we’re going to do in this post 
First of all, let’s see how IS-IS works by default when activating IPv6. The lab I’m going to use is as follows:
By default, IS-IS works in single-topology mode when activating IPv4 and IPv6. This means that the IS-IS topology will be built based on IS Reachability TLVs. When the base topology is built, then IPv4 prefixes (IP Reachability TLV) and IPv6 prefixes (IPv6 Reachability TLV) are added to each node as leaves, without checking if there is IPv6 connectivity between nodes.
Let’s imagine we have the above IPv4 and IPv6 address scheme. As we can see, adjacencies are formed regardless the IP scheme on the link:
R4# show isis neighbors System Id Type Interface IP Address State Holdtime Circuit Id R1 L1 Fa1/0 10.10.14.1 UP 24 R4.01 R1 L2 Fa1/0 10.10.14.1 UP 29 R4.01 R5 L1 Fa2/0 10.10.45.5 UP 9 R5.01 R5 L2 Fa2/0 10.10.45.5 UP 9 R5.01 R4# show isis ipv6 topology R4# R4# show isis topology IS-IS TID 0 paths to level-1 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 10 R1 Fa1/0 ca00.0f26.0038 R2 20 R1 Fa1/0 ca00.0f26.0038 R4 -- R5 10 R5 Fa2/0 ca04.0f5d.001c IS-IS TID 0 paths to level-2 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 10 R1 Fa1/0 ca00.0f26.0038 R2 20 R1 Fa1/0 ca00.0f26.0038 R4 -- R5 10 R5 Fa2/0 ca04.0f5d.001cR4#
R5# show isis neighbors System Id Type Interface IP Address State Holdtime Circuit Id R4 L1 Fa1/0 10.10.45.4 UP 24 R5.01 R4 L2 Fa1/0 10.10.45.4 UP 28 R5.01 R5# show isis ipv6 topology R5# R5# show isis topology IS-IS TID 0 paths to level-1 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 20 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R2 30 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R4 10 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R5 -- IS-IS TID 0 paths to level-2 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 20 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R2 30 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R4 10 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R5 --
R5#
As we can see, the IS-IS IPv4 topology is built (IS Reachability TLV), and IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes are added to each node based on the information announced by each router (IP Reachability TLV and IPv6 Reachability TLV). IS-IS doesn’t check the IPv6 consistency in the actual topology, so we may come to the scenario where R5 thinks there is IPv6 connectivity to reach R1 IPv6 address, when indeed, there isn’t:
R5# sh ipv6 route
....
I1 2001:CC1E:1:1::1/128 [115/20]
via FE80::C803:FFF:FE3B:38, FastEthernet1/0
I1 2001:CC1E:2:2::2/128 [115/30]
via FE80::C803:FFF:FE3B:38, FastEthernet1/0
I1 2001:CC1E:4:4::4/128 [115/10]
via FE80::C803:FFF:FE3B:38, FastEthernet1/0
LC 2001:CC1E:5:5::5/128 [0/0]
via Loopback0, receive
...
R5# ping ipv6 2001:CC1E:1:1::1 Type escape sequence to abort. Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 2001:CC1E:1:1::1, timeout is 2 seconds: ..... Success rate is 0 percent (0/5) R5# R5# ping ipv6 2001:cc1e:4:4::4 Type escape sequence to abort. Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 2001:CC1E:4:4::4, timeout is 2 seconds: !!!!! Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 8/16/32 ms
What can we do to avoid this behaviour? We can activate IS-IS Multitopology. Doing so, IS-IS creates two different topologies: one built based on IS Reachability TLVs and dedicated to IPv4 routing info, and a second one built based on Multitopology IS Reachability TLVs and dedicated to IPv6 routing info.
(in each router) router isis net 49.0001.0050.0500.5005.00 metric-style wide passive-interface Loopback0 ! address-family ipv6 multi-topology exit-address-family
R5# show isis topology IS-IS TID 0 paths to level-1 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 20 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R2 30 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R4 10 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R5 -- IS-IS TID 0 paths to level-2 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 20 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R2 30 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R4 10 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R5 -- R5# show isis ipv6 topology IS-IS TID 2 paths to level-1 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 ** R2 ** R4 10 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R5 -- IS-IS TID 2 paths to level-2 routers System Id Metric Next-Hop Interface SNPA R1 ** R2 ** R4 10 R4 Fa1/0 ca03.0f3b.0038 R5 --
Having two different topologies, now IS-IS can add IPv4 prefixes and IPv6 prefixes to the correspondent node depending on the topology. Because in the IPv6 topology there is no connectivity between R1 and R4, the IPv6 info is consistent, and we can see that R4 and R5 doesn’t see R1 and R2 IPv6 prefixes as reachable:
R5# show ipv6 route
...
I1 2001:CC1E:4:4::4/128 [115/10]
via FE80::C803:FFF:FE3B:38, FastEthernet1/0
LC 2001:CC1E:5:5::5/128 [0/0]
via Loopback0, receive
...
R5# ping 2001:cc1e:4:4::4 sour lo0 Packet sent with a source address of 2001:CC1E:5:5::5 !!!!! Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 4/10/20 ms
Of course, having two topologies increases the resources needed by each router, and also the runs twice the spf algorithm, since you need to keep two topology bases.
So all these make me think that a single-topology architecture is thought for dual-stack networks, where there is IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity end to end. While multitopology is for those scenarios where there may be some segments where IPv6 connectivity is not granted.
Have fun!!
The IS-IS Multitopology: IPv4 and IPv6 by CCIE Blog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
