Catalyst 6500 Release 12.2SX Software Configuration Guide

Configuring Control Plane Policing

This chapter describes how to configure control plane policing (CoPP) with Cisco IOS Release 12.2SX.

Note For complete syntax and usage information for the commands used in this chapter, see the Cisco IOS Master Command List, at this URL:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/mcl/allreleasemcl/all_book.html

Tip For additional information about Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches (including configuration examples and troubleshooting information), see the documents listed on this page:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

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This chapter consists of these sections:

•Understanding Control Plane Policing

•CoPP Default Configuration

•CoPP Configuration Guidelines and Restrictions

•Configuring CoPP

•Monitoring CoPP

•Defining Traffic Classification

Understanding Control Plane Policing

The traffic managed by the RP is divided into three functional components or planes:

•Data plane

•Management plane

•Control plane

The control plane policing (CoPP) feature increases security on the switch by protecting the RP from unnecessary or DoS traffic and giving priority to important control plane and management traffic. The PFC3 and DFC3 provide hardware support for CoPP. CoPP works with the PFC3 rate limiters.

The PFC3 supports the built-in "special case" rate limiters that can be used when an ACL cannot classify particular scenarios, such as IP options cases, TTL and MTU failure cases, packets with errors, and multicast packets. When enabling the special-case rate limiters, the special-case rate limiters override the CoPP policy for packets matching the rate-limiter criteria.

The majority of traffic managed by the RP is handled by way of the control and management planes. You can use CoPP to protect the control and management planes, and ensure routing stability, reachability, and packet delivery. CoPP uses a dedicated control plane configuration through the modular QoS CLI (MQC) to provide filtering and rate-limiting capabilities for the control plane packets.

CoPP Default Configuration

CoPP is disabled by default.

CoPP Configuration Guidelines and Restrictions

When configuring CoPP, follow these guidelines and restrictions:

•CoPP is not be enabled in hardware unless you have enabled PFC QoS globally with the mls qos command. If you do not enter the mls qos command, CoPP is not hardware-accelerated.

•CoPP is supported in software for the following:

–Multicast traffic.

–Broadcast traffic.

Note The combination of ACLs, traffic storm control, and CoPP software protection provides protection against broadcast DoS attacks.

–CoPP-policy ACLs configured with the log keyword. To avoid software-supported CoPP processing, do not use the log keyword in CoPP-policy ACLs.

–When there is a large QoS configuration for other interfaces, you can run out of TCAM space. When this situation occurs, CoPP may be performed entirely in software and result in performance degradation and CPU cycle consumption. Enter the show tcam utilization command to verify the TCAM utilization.

–CoPP policies configured with the match protocol arp command.

–Release 12.2(33)SXI4 and later releases support CoPP policies configured with the match access-group arp_acl command.

•CoPP is performed on a per-forwarding-engine basis and software CoPP is performed on an aggregate basis.

•CoPP does not support MAC ACLs.

•CoPP does not support non-IP classes except for the default non-IP class. ACLs can be used instead of non-IP classes to drop non-IP traffic, and the default non-IP CoPP class can be used to limit to non-IP traffic that reaches the RP CPU.

•In PFC3A mode, egress QoS and CoPP cannot be configured at the same time. A warning message is displayed to inform you that egress QoS and CoPP cannot be configured at the same time.

•You must ensure that the CoPP policy does not filter critical traffic such as routing protocols or interactive access to the switches. Filtering this traffic could prevent remote access to the switch, requiring a console connection.

•The PFC3 supports built-in special-case rate limiters, which are useful for situations where an ACL cannot be used (for example, TTL, MTU, and IP options). When you enable the special-case rate limiters, you should be aware that the special-case rate limiters will override the CoPP policy for packets matching the rate-limiter criteria.

•Neither egress CoPP nor silent mode is supported. CoPP is only supported on ingress (service-policy output CoPP cannot be applied to the control plane interface).

•ACE hit counters in hardware are only for ACL logic. You can rely on software ACE hit counters and the show access-list, show policy-map control-plane, and show mls ip qos commands to troubleshoot evaluate CPU traffic.

Configuring CoPP

CoPP uses MQC to define traffic classification criteria and to specify the configurable policy actions for the classified traffic. You must first identify the traffic to be classified by defining a class map. The class map defines packets for a particular traffic class. After you have classified the traffic, you can create policy maps to enforce policy actions for the identified traffic. The control-plane global configuration command allows the CoPP service policies to be directly attached to the control plane.

For information on how to define the traffic classification criteria, see the "Defining Traffic Classification" section.

To configure CoPP, perform this task:

When defining the packet classification criteria, follow these guidelines and restrictions:

•To avoid matching the filtering and policing that are configured in a subsequent class, configure policing in each class. CoPP does not apply the filtering in a class that does not contain a police command. A class without a police command matches no traffic.

•The ACLs used for classification are QoS ACLs. The supported QoS ACLs are IP standard, extended, and named.

•These are the only match types supported:

–ip precedence

–ip dscp

–access-group

•Only IP ACLs are supported in hardware.

•MAC-based matching is done in software only.

•You can enter one match command in a single class map only.

When defining the service policy, the police policy-map action is the only supported action.

When applying the service policy to the control plane, the input direction is only supported.

Monitoring CoPP

You can enter the show policy-map control-plane command for developing site-specific policies, monitoring statistics for the control plane policy, and troubleshooting CoPP. This command displays dynamic information about the actual policy applied, including rate information and the number of bytes (and packets) that conformed or exceeded the configured policies both in hardware and in software.

The output of the show policy-map control-plane command is as follows:

Router# show policy-map control-plane

Control Plane Interface

  Service policy CoPP-normal

Hardware Counters:

class-map: CoPP-normal (match-all)

      Match: access-group 130

      police :

        96000 bps 3000 limit 3000 extended limit

      Earl in slot 3 :

        0 bytes

        5 minute offered rate 0 bps

        aggregate-forwarded 0 bytes action: transmit

        exceeded 0 bytes action: drop

        aggregate-forward 0 bps exceed 0 bps 

      Earl in slot 5 :

        0 bytes

        5 minute offered rate 0 bps

        aggregate-forwarded 0 bytes action: transmit

        exceeded 0 bytes action: drop

        aggregate-forward 0 bps exceed 0 bps 

Software Counters: 

    Class-map: CoPP-normal (match-all) 0 packets, 0 bytes

      5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

      Match: access-group 130

      police:

        96000 bps, 3125 limit, 3125 extended limit

        conformed 0 packets, 0 bytes; action: transmit

        exceeded 0 packets, 0 bytes; action: drop

        conformed 0 bps, exceed 0 bps, violate 0 bps  

Router#

To display the hardware counters for bytes dropped and forwarded by the policy, enter the show mls qos ip command:

Router# show mls qos ip 

 QoS Summary [IP]:      (* - shared aggregates, Mod - switch module)

Int Mod Dir  Class-map DSCP  Agg  Trust Fl   AgForward-By   AgPoliced-By

                             Id         Id                              

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPP  5  In CoPP-normal    0    1   dscp  0         505408       83822272

CPP  9  In CoPP-normal    0    4   dscp  0              0              0

Router#

To display the CoPP access list information, enter the show access-lists coppacl-bgp command:

Router# show access-lists coppacl-bgp

Extended IP access list coppacl-bgp

10 permit tcp host 47.1.1.1 host 10.9.9.9 eq bgp (4 matches)

20 permit tcp host 47.1.1.1 eq bgp host 10.9.9.9

30 permit tcp host 10.86.183.120 host 10.9.9.9 eq bgp (1 match)

40 permit tcp host 10.86.183.120 eq bgp host 10.9.9.9

Defining Traffic Classification

The following sections contain information on how to classify CoPP traffic:

•Traffic Classification Overview

•Traffic Classification Guidelines

•Sample Basic ACLs for CoPP Traffic Classification

Traffic Classification Overview

You can define any number of classes, but typically traffic is grouped into classes that are based on relative importance. The following provides a sample grouping:

•Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)—Traffic that is crucial to maintaining neighbor relationships for BGP routing protocol, for example, BGP keepalives and routing updates. Maintaining BGP routing protocol is crucial to maintaining connectivity within a network or to a service provider. Sites that do not run BGP do not need to use this class.

•Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP)—Traffic that is crucial to maintaining IGP routing protocols, for example, open shortest path first OSPF, enhanced interior gateway routing protocol (EIGRP), and routing information protocol (RIP). Maintaining IGP routing protocols is crucial to maintaining connectivity within a network.

•Management—Necessary, frequently used traffic that is required during day-to-day operations. For example, traffic used for remote network access, and Cisco IOS image upgrades and management, such as Telnet, secure shell (SSH), network time protocol (NTP), simple network management protocol (SNMP), terminal access controller access control system (TACACS), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), trivial file transfer protocol (TFTP), and file transfer protocol (FTP).

•Reporting—Traffic used for generating network performance statistics for the purpose of reporting. For example, using Cisco IOS IP service level agreements (SLAs) to generate ICMP with different DSCP settings in order to report on response times within different QoS data classes.

•Monitoring—Traffic used for monitoring a switch. Traffic should be permitted but should never be a risk to the switch; with CoPP, this traffic can be permitted but limited to a low rate. For example, ICMP echo request (ping) and traceroute.

•Critical Applications—Critical application traffic that is specific and crucial to a particular customer environment. Traffic included in this class should be tailored specifically to the required application requirements of the user (in other words, one customer may use multicast, while another uses IPsec or generic routing encapsulation (GRE). For example, GRE, hot standby router protocol (HSRP), virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP), session initiation protocol (SIP), data link switching (DLSw), dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), multicast source discovery protocol (MSDP), Internet group management protocol (IGMP), protocol independent multicast (PIM), multicast traffic, and IPsec.

•Layer 2 Protocols—Traffic used for address resolution protocol (ARP). Excessive ARP packets can potentially monopolize RP resources, starving other important processes; CoPP can be used to rate limit ARP packets to prevent this situation. Currently, ARP is the only Layer 2 protocol that can be specifically classified using the match protocol classification criteria.

•Undesirable—Explicitly identifies bad or malicious traffic that should be unconditionally dropped and denied access to the RP. The undesirable classification is particularly useful when known traffic destined for the switch should always be denied and not placed into a default category. If you explicitly deny traffic, then you can enter show commands to collect approximate statistics on the denied traffic and estimate its rate.

•Default—All remaining traffic destined for the RP that has not been identified. MQC provides the default class, so the user can specify the treatment to be applied to traffic not explicitly identified in the other user-defined classes. This traffic has a highly reduced rate of access to the RP. With a default classification in place, statistics can be monitored to determine the rate of otherwise unidentified traffic destined for the control plane. After this traffic is identified, further analysis can be performed to classify it and, if needed, the other CoPP policy entries can be updated to accomodate this traffic.

After you have classified the traffic, the ACLs build the classes of traffic that are used to define the policies. For sample basic ACLs for CoPP classification, see the "Sample Basic ACLs for CoPP Traffic Classification" section.

Traffic Classification Guidelines

When defining traffic classification, follow these guidelines and restrictions:

•Before you develop the actual CoPP policy, you must identify and separate the required traffic into different classes. Traffic is grouped into nine classes that are based on relative importance. The actual number of classes needed might differ and should be selected based on your local requirements and security policies.

•You do not have to define policies that match bidirectionally. You only need to identify traffic unidirectionally (from the network to the RP) since the policy is applied on ingress only.

Sample Basic ACLs for CoPP Traffic Classification

This section shows sample basic ACLs for CoPP classification. In the samples, the commonly required traffic is identified with these ACLs:

•ACL 120—Critical traffic

•ACL 121—Important traffic

•ACL 122—Normal traffic

•ACL 123—Explicitly denies unwanted traffic

•ACL 124—All other traffic

This example shows how to define ACL 120 for critical traffic:

Router(config)# access-list 120 remark CoPP ACL for critical traffic

This example shows how to allow BGP from a known peer to this switch's BGP TCP port:

Router(config)# access-list 120 permit tcp host 47.1.1.1 host 10.9.9.9 eq bgp

This example shows how to allow BGP from a peer's BGP port to this switch:

Router(config)# access-list 120 permit tcp host 47.1.1.1 eq bgp host 10.9.9.9

Router(config)# access-list 120 permit tcp host 10.86.183.120 host 10.9.9.9 eq bgp

Router(config)# access-list 120 permit tcp host 10.86.183.120 eq bgp host 10.9.9.9

This example shows how to define ACL 121 for the important class:

Router(config)# access-list 121 remark CoPP Important traffic

This example shows how to permit return traffic from TACACS host:

Router(config)# access-list 121 permit tcp host 1.1.1.1 host 10.9.9.9 established

This example shows how to permit SSH access to the switch from a subnet:

Router(config)# access-list 121 permit tcp 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.255 host 10.9.9.9 eq 22

This example shows how to allow full access for Telnet to the switch from a host in a specific subnet and police the rest of the subnet:

Router(config)# access-list 121 deny tcp host 10.86.183.3 any eq telnet

Router(config)# access-list 121 permit tcp 10.86.183.0 0.0.0.255 any eq telnet

This example shows how to allow SNMP access from the NMS host to the switch:

Router(config)# access-list 121 permit udp host 1.1.1.2 host 10.9.9.9 eq snmp

This example shows how to allow the switch to receive NTP packets from a known clock source:

Router(config)# access-list 121 permit udp host 1.1.1.3 host 10.9.9.9 eq ntp

This example shows how to define ACL 122 for the normal traffic class:

Router(config)# access-list 122 remark CoPP normal traffic

This example shows how to permit switch-originated traceroute traffic:

Router(config)# access-list 122 permit icmp any any ttl-exceeded

Router(config)# access-list 122 permit icmp any any port-unreachable

This example shows how to permit receipt of responses to the switch that originated the pings:

Router(config)# access-list 122 permit icmp any any echo-reply

This example shows how to allow pings to the switch:

Router(config)# access-list 122 permit icmp any any echo

This example shows how to define ACL 123 for the undesirable class.

Router(config)# access-list 123 remark explicitly defined "undesirable" traffic

Note In the following example, ACL 123 is a permit entry for classification and monitoring purposes, and traffic is dropped as a result of the CoPP policy.

This example shows how to permit all traffic destined to UDP 1434 for policing:

Router(config)# access-list 123 permit udp any any eq 1434

This example shows how to define ACL 124 for all other traffic:

Router(config)# access-list 124 remark rest of the IP traffic for CoPP

Router(config)# access-list 124 permit ip any any

Tip For additional information about Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches (including configuration examples and troubleshooting information), see the documents listed on this page:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

Participate in the Technical Documentation Ideas forum