Link Layer Discovery Protocol

Emergency Services Workshop, NY Oct 5-6, 2006 Manfred Arndt (manfred.r.arndt@hp.com)

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

Scope

IEEE 802.1AB Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP)

A standard and extensible multi-vendor protocol and management elements to support network topology discovery and exchange device configuration and capabilities Developed and maintained by IEEE 802.1, planned for revision

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

Objectives
Widespread industry adoption
Simple and leveraged design increases chances of vendor adoption Simple design leads to low development cost

Interoperability with many endpoint device types

Low complexity higher interoperability potential

Must be practical for both cost-restrained and feature rich endpoints

High reliability, critical to Emergency Call Service scenarios

Low complexity with fewest possible moving parts Location always provided immediately on connection of move

Easily extensible for future needs

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

LLDP Overview
Basic Functions (IEEE 802.1AB-2005*):
Simple one-way neighbor discovery protocol with periodic transmissions LLDP frames are not forwarded, but constrained to a single point to point link LLDP frames contain formatted TLVs (type, length, value)
Globally unique system and port identification Time-to-Live information for ageing purposes Optional system capabilities (e.g. router, IP phone, wireless AP) Optional system name, description, and management address Organizational extensions

Receiver stores information in a neighbor database, accessible via SNMP MIB Receiver ages MIB to insure only valid network data is available Management applications can harness the power via SNMP

* Currently planned for revision, PAR submitted for targeted Nov 06 approval

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

LLDP Entities & Agents A peak under the hood*

LLDP operates above the Local MIBs: Holds locally MAC Service Layer configured data Data may be supplied/modified by management applications

Remote MIBs: Holds and ages received data from far end Available for management applications use

LLDP State machine Controls Tx and Rx of frames Contains state machine control variables

LSAP = Link service access point MSAP = MAC service access point

All LLDP Entities contain 1 or more LLDP Agents

* Animated Slide
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Entity Management MIBs: Common data, of use to LLDP and others Not directly part of LLDP

LLDP TLV Extensibility

Easy to define organizational extensions

There are currently three organizational extensions:

1. IEEE 802.1
Port VLAN, Port & Protocol VLANs, VLAN Name, Protocol Entity

2. IEEE 802.3
MAC/PHY configuration, PoE Power, Link Aggregation, Maximum Frame Size

3. TIA - IP Telephony Infrastructure (LLDP-MED)

VLAN & QoS auto-config, Physical Location Discovery, Detailed Inventory, Fine Grain PoE Power

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

802.1AB Revision Proposal (Nov 06)

Currently planned project revision considerations include: Supporting the needs of 802.3at (PoE Plus), including:
Ongoing dynamic fine-grain power negotiation (e.g. video call in process)
Power priority (e.g. must keep red phone alive) Backup power conservation (e.g. extend UPS battery life during disasters)

Provide support for rapid fast start TLV exchange

Required for power negotiation and to quickly discover Audio Visual Bridge and Congestion Management interconnectivity boundaries

Define additional destination addresses such that the propagation of LLDP frames across specific transparent devices can be achieved
Certain TLVs, like PoE power and speed/duplex, must never be forwarded
Some TLVs need to traverse transparent links (e.g. across provider bridges)

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

References & Contacts

The formal LLDP specification is freely available for download at:
http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.1AB-2005.pdf

Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLDP http://wiki.ethereal.com/LinkLayerDiscoveryProtocol

Contacts:
Paul Congdon (paul.congdon@hp.com); project leader of IEEE 802.1AB-2005 (LLDP) and vice-chair of IEEE 802.1 Working Group Manfred Arndt (manfred.r.arndt@hp.com); co-author of ANSI/TIA-1057 (LLDP-MED)

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

Backup Slides

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

How Does LLDP Work?

Discovery MIB
port A19 C2 D2 device Switch IP-Phone IP-Phone VoIP Gateway info xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

Management App Topology discovery, location, inventory & more SNMP PSTN

Discovery MIB
port A4 A4 B6 B21 device IP-phone PC PC Switch info xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

F3

Im a switch

Im a switch

Im a switch Im a switch Im a switch

Im a VoIP Gateway / Server Im an IP-Phone

Im a switch

Im a switch

Im an IP-Phone

Im an IP-Phone Im a PC Im a PC

Im a PC

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Emergency Services Workshop - NY

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LLDP Frame Format

IEEE 802.3 LLDP frame format

LLDP Multicast = 01-80-C2-00-00-0E (same as Spanning Tree except for last octet)

LLDPDU format

Each TLV (Type, Length, Value) contains a set of useful attributes

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Is LLDP a stateless protocol?

IEEE 802.1AB-2005:
LLDP updates are limited to no faster than 1 per second

Intended as one-way advertisements, without req / acks

Dramatically simplifies implementations Bounds performance requirements for scalability

On occasion, the management entity may see a change in state of a peer and perform some local database maintenance operation By definition, anytime a local value changes, LLDP sends a frame thus triggering a packet in reverse (limited to once per second) The protocol itself is stateless, but the management entity above is required to maintain state and may act on information from peers LLDP-MED (ANSI/TIA-1057) follows these same principals.
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