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TFO support for Multipath TCP
draft-barre-mptcp-tfo-02

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Sebastien Barre , Gregory Detal , Olivier Bonaventure , Christoph Paasch
Last updated 2017-11-27
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draft-barre-mptcp-tfo-02
MPTCP Working Group                                             S. Barre
Internet-Draft                                                  G. Detal
Intended status: Informational                                  Tessares
Expires: May 31, 2018                                     O. Bonaventure
                                                  UCLouvain and Tessares
                                                               C. Paasch
                                                                   Apple
                                                       November 27, 2017

                     TFO support for Multipath TCP
                        draft-barre-mptcp-tfo-02

Abstract

   TCP Fast Open (TFO) is a TCP extension that allows sending data in
   the SYN, instead of waiting until the TCP connection is established.
   This document describes what parts of Multipath TCP must be adapted
   to support it, and how TFO and MPTCP can operate together.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on May 31, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must

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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  TFO cookie request with MPTCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Data sequence mapping under TFO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Early context creation in server  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Using TFO to avoid useless MPTCP negotiations . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  Using TFO with MP_JOIN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  Connection establishment examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  Middlebox interactions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   9.  Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. Conclusion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   11. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   12. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Appendix A.  Implementation status  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   TCP Fast Open, described in [RFC7413], has been introduced with the
   objective of gaining one RTT before transmitting data.  This is
   considered a valuable gain as very short connections are very common,
   especially for HTTP request/response schemes.  MPTCP, on the other
   hand, has been defined in [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis] to add
   multipath support to TCP, where a TCP flow is divided in several TCP
   subflows.  Given that MPTCP can be applied transparently to any TCP
   socket, without the application knowing, it should be able to support
   TCP fast open when the application asks for it.

   When doing that, one important thing to examine is the option length
   consumed in segments that would carry both a TFO and an MPTCP option.
   The handling of MPTCP data sequence mappings must also be updated to
   take into account the data that is sent together with the SYN or the
   SYN+ACK.  A third issue to handle is the state creation in the
   server: TFO allows the server to create TCP state as soon as a SYN is
   received.  With MPTCP, even more state is created, and it may be
   useful to avoid this in a situation where MPTCP does not work but TFO
   does.

   The rest of this document is organized as follows:

   Section 2 describes the TFO cookie request, in the case of a
   Multipath TCP flow.  Section 3 proposes a way to map SYN data to the
   data sequence number space, while taking middleboxes into account.

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   In Section 4, it is explained that the MP_CAPABLE option is no longer
   always necessary in the third ack of the three-way handshake.
   Section 5 presents two ways to avoid useless MPTCP context creations
   in the server, one for client implementations, the other for server
   implementations, as a TFO extension.  Section 6 takes the MP_JOIN
   case into consideration.  Finally, we describe middlebox interactions
   in Section 8, and security considerations in Section 9.

2.  TFO cookie request with MPTCP

   When a TFO client first connects to a server, it cannot immediately
   include data in the SYN for security reasons [RFC7413].  Instead, it
   requests a cookie that will be used in subsequent connections.  This
   is done with the TCP cookie request/response options, of resp. 2
   bytes and 6-18 bytes (depending on the chosen cookie length).

   TFO and MPTCP can be combined provided that the total length of their
   options does not exceed the maximum 40 bytes possible in TCP:

   o  In the SYN: MPTCP uses a 4-bytes long MP_CAPABLE option.  The
      MPTCP and TFO options sum up to 6 bytes.
      [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis] mentions in Appendix A that SYN packet
      options typically sum up to 19 bytes, or 24 bytes where
      implementations pad each option up to a word boundary.  Even in
      the worst case, this fits the maximum option space.

   o  In the SYN+ACK: MPTCP uses a 12-bytes long MP_CAPABLE option, but
      now TFO can be as long as 18 bytes.  Since the maximum option
      length may be exceeded, it is up to the server to solve this by
      using a shorter cookie or pad the whole option block instead of
      each option separately.  Alternatively, the server may decide to
      fallback to MPTCP-only (by not giving a cookie at all), or to TFO-
      only.  As an example, if we consider that 19 bytes are used for
      classical TCP options, the maximum possible cookie length would be
      of 7 bytes.  The consequence of this, from a security viewpoint,
      is explored in Section 9.  Note that the same limitation applies
      to subsequent connections, for the SYN packet (because the client
      then echoes back the cookie to the server).  Finally, if the
      security impact of reducing the cookie size is not deemed
      acceptable, the server can reduce the amount of other TCP-options
      by omitting the TCP timestamps.  Indeed, as outlined in
      [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis] in Appendix A, an MPTCP connection
      could also avoid the use of TCP timestamps thanks to MPTCP's use
      of 64-bit sequence numbers which already provides protection
      against wrapped sequence numbers.

   o  In the third ACK: Nothing special compared to MPTCP, since no TFO
      option is used there.

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   Once the cookie has been successfully exchanged, the rest of the
   connection is just regular MPTCP.  The rest of this document assumes
   that the cookie request has been exchanged, and that data can be
   included in the SYN.

3.  Data sequence mapping under TFO

   MPTCP [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis] uses, in the TCP establishment
   phase, a key exchange that is used to generate the Initial Data
   Sequence Numbers (IDSNs).  More precisely,
   [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis] states in section 3.1 that "The SYN with
   MP_CAPABLE occupies the first octet of data sequence space, although
   this does not need to be acknowledged at the connection level until
   the first data is sent".  With TFO, one way to handle the data sent
   together with the SYN would be to consider an implicit DSS mapping
   that covers that SYN segment (since there is not enough space in the
   SYN to include a DSS option).  The problem with that approach is that
   if a middlebox modifies the TFO data, this will not be noticed by
   MPTCP because of the absence of a DSS-checksum.  For example, a TCP
   (but not MPTCP)-aware middlebox could insert bytes at the beginning
   of the stream and adapt the TCP checksum and sequence numbers
   accordingly.  With an implicit mapping, this would give to client and
   server a different view on the DSS-mapping, with no way to detect
   this inconsistency as the DSS checksum is not present.  One way to
   solve this is to simply consider that the TFO data is not part of the
   Data Sequence Number space: the SYN with MP_CAPABLE still occupies
   the first octet of data sequence space, but then the first non-TFO
   data byte occupies the second octet.  This guarantees that, if the
   use of DSS-checksum is negotiated, all data in the data sequence
   number space is checksummed.  We also note that this does not entail
   a loss of functionality, because TFO-data is always sent when only
   one path is active.

4.  Early context creation in server

   In order to enable the server to receive and send data before the end
   of the three-way handshake, TFO allows creating state on the server
   as soon as the SYN is received if a valid cookie is provided.  The
   MPTCP state should then also be created upon SYN reception (see
   exceptions for that in Section 5).

   DISCUSSION: Doing that allows relaxing the MPTCP MP_CAPABLE exchange,
   in that the sender's and receiver's keys are no longer required in
   the third ack of the three-way handshake, because their role was
   precisely to compensate for the absence of server state until the end
   of the establishment.  The consequence is that the MP_CAPABLE option
   can simply be removed from the third ack.  However, an MPTCP option
   must still be present when concluding the three-way handshake, to

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   confirm to the server that its own MP_CAPABLE option (in the SYN+ACK)
   has been correctly received by the client.  The DSS option can
   replace the MP_CAPABLE option, while simultaneously allowing the
   transmission of more data in the third ack.  Moreover, providing a
   DSS option to the server early allows faster establishment of new
   subflows (see [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis], Section 3.1).

   In order to decide whether it can send a third ack with DSS-only
   instead of MP_CAPABLE, a client must verify if the TFO data has been
   at least partially acknowledged.  If the SYN+ACK only acknowledges
   the SYN, TFO may be not supported in the server, or the cookie may
   have been filtered by the network.  There is no guarantee that the
   MPTCP state has been created, and the third ack should contain the
   MP_CAPABLE option, with the client and server keys.

5.  Using TFO to avoid useless MPTCP negotiations

   The TFO cookie, sent in a SYN, indicates that a previous connection
   has been successfully established, and that TCP state can safely be
   created.  It does not however say anything about whether the MPTCP
   options are filtered or not in the network.  It is thus possible that
   a server creates an MPTCP context upon SYN+TFO cookie reception, then
   actually needs to discard it after having discovered that the MPTCP
   options are filtered.

   One way to solve this would be for the client to cache destinations
   that do support MPTCP.  TFO allows sending data together with the SYN
   starting at the second connection.  The first one is used to learn
   the cookie from the server.  It could also be used to learn whether
   MPTCP can be used with the peer.

   DISCUSSION: The other, compatible way to solve the problem is to
   extend TFO and cache the Multipath Capability in the cookie generated
   by the server.  The server could modify its cookie computation, to
   include multipath capability information in the cookie.  Then, upon
   SYN+TFO cookie reception, the server could easily determine if the
   initial TFO flow was a successful MPTCP connection or not.  The
   problem with this approach is that the server does not know yet
   whether the flow is multipath-capable when sending the TFO cookie.
   It could then send a first pessimistic cookie, as
   GetCookie(IP_Address, mp_capable=false) (adapted from [RFC7413],
   Section 4.1.2).  Then, when it is determined that the flow is
   Multipath Capable (third ack received with an MPTCP option), a new
   cookie=GetCookie(IP_Address, mp_capable=true) can be generated and
   sent in the FIN to ensure reliable delivery.

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6.  Using TFO with MP_JOIN

   TFO must not be used when establishing joined subflows.  Doing that
   would be in contradiction with [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis], that
   states in section 3.2 that "It is not permitted to send data while in
   the PRE_ESTABLISHED state".  Using TFO with joined subflows would
   mean that data is sent even before getting to the PRE_ESTABLISHED
   state.

7.  Connection establishment examples

   In this section we show a few examples of possible TFO+MPTCP
   establishment scenarios.  For representing segments, we use the
   Tcpdump syntax.

   Before a client can send data together with the SYN, it must request
   a cookie to the server, as shown in Figure 1.  This is done by simply
   combining the TFO and MPTCP options.

   client                                                         server
     |                                                              |
     |    S  0(0) <MP_CAPABLE>,<TFO cookie request>                 |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |
     |    S. 0(0) ack 1 <MP_CAPABLE>,<TFO cookie>                   |
     | <----------------------------------------------------------- |
     |                                                              |
     |    .  0(0) ack 1 <MP_CAPABLE>                                |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |

                         Figure 1: Cookie request

   Once this is done, the received cookie can be used for TFO, as shown
   in Figure 2.  The MP_CAPABLE is no longer required for the third ack,
   as explained in Section 4.  Note that the last segment in the figure
   has a TCP sequence number of 21, while the DSS subflow sequence
   number is 1 (because the TFO data is not part of the data sequence
   number space, as explained in Section 3.

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   client                                                         server
     |                                                              |
     |    S  0(20) <MP_CAPABLE>,<TFO cookie>                        |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |
     |    S. 0(0) ack 21 <MP_CAPABLE>                               |
     | <----------------------------------------------------------- |
     |                                                              |
     |    .  1(100) ack 21 <DSS ack=1 seq=1 ssn=1 dlen=100>         |
     | <----------------------------------------------------------- |
     |                                                              |
     |    .  21(20) ack 101 <DSS ack=101 seq=1 ssn=1 dlen=20>       |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |

                     Figure 2: The server supports TFO

   In Figure 3, the server does not support TFO.  The client detects
   that no state is created in the server (as no data is acked), and now
   sends the MP_CAPABLE in the third ack, in order for the server to
   build its MPTCP context at then end of the establishment.  Now, the
   tfo data, retransmitted, becomes part of the data sequence mapping
   because it is effectively sent (in fact re-sent) after the
   establishment.

   client                                                         server
     |                                                              |
     |    S  0(20) <MP_CAPABLE>,<TFO cookie>                        |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |
     |    S. 0(0) ack 1 <MP_CAPABLE>                                |
     | <----------------------------------------------------------- |
     |                                                              |
     |    .  21(0) ack 1 <MP_CAPABLE>                               |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |
     |    .  1(20) ack 1 <DSS ack=1 seq=1 ssn=1 dlen=20>            |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |
     |    .  0(0) ack 21 <DSS ack=21 seq=1 ssn=1 dlen=0>            |
     | <----------------------------------------------------------- |

                 Figure 3: The server does not support TFO

   It is also possible that the server acknowledges only part of the TFO
   data, as illustrated in Figure 4.

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   client                                                         server
     |                                                              |
     |  S  0(1000) <MP_CAPABLE>,<TFO cookie>                        |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |
     |  S. 0(0) ack 501 <MP_CAPABLE>                                |
     | <----------------------------------------------------------- |
     |                                                              |
     |   .  501(500) ack 1 <DSS ack=1 seq=1 ssn=1 dlen=500>         |
     | -----------------------------------------------------------> |
     |                                                              |

                  Figure 4: Partial data acknowledgement

8.  Middlebox interactions

   [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis], Section 6, describes middlebox
   interactions for Multipath TCP.  This document does not define any
   new option compared to MPTCP or TFO.  It defines a combination of
   them.

   TFO also defines how an implementation should react when the TFO SYN
   is lost (fallback to regular TCP, [RFC7413] Section 4.2.1).

   We propose to remove the MP_CAPABLE option from the third ack when
   TFO is used, based on the assumption that the context has been
   created already in the server upon SYN reception.  Should the server
   actually not create this state, it would not be able to create its
   MPTCP state and would fallback to regular TCP.  The state is not
   created in the server if it has no TFO support or the cookie is
   invalid, but in that case only the SYN is acknowledged, and the
   client does send the MP_CAPABLE option.

   The other case where the server does not create MPTCP state is when
   the cookie includes a "mp_capable=false" information.  In that case,
   regular TCP is used to take into account middleboxes that prevent
   correct MPTCP operation.

   Even though this document presents mechanisms for collaboration
   between MPTCP and TFO, the filtering of one will not stop the other
   from working.  For example, if a TFO option is dropped, MPTCP will
   fallback to sending MP_CAPABLE in third_ack, because no TFO data is
   acked.  If the server stores MPTCP information in the cookie, this
   will be completely opaque to the network, and even to the client.
   Should that cookie be transformed or lost, it would not be accepted
   anymore by the server, which would fallback to regular MPTCP

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   communication, or regular TCP if MPTCP options are also filtered or
   modified.

   The problem of middleboxes that alter the TFO data is solved by the
   fact that TFO data is not part of the Data Sequence Number space, as
   explained in Section 3.

9.  Security considerations

   Compared to using TFO or MPTCP alone, implementing the present
   combination could lead to more state created in the server, since
   MPTCP now creates state as soon as the first SYN is received.  This
   is however not considered as a problem, for the following reasons:

   o  The server will only create state when a valid TFO cookie is
      received.  This guarantees that a successful TCP connection has
      been previously established with the same peer.

   o  It remains possible that a useless MPTCP context is created upon
      SYN reception (due to TFO support but MPTCP options being filtered
      by the network).  This is more an optimization issue than a
      security issue given the TFO cookie protection already present.
      Section 5 still proposes a solution to avoid creating MPTCP state
      in that case.

   o  When under memory pressure, a server always has the option to
      refuse the client cookie.  In that case, the session establishment
      will happen without data, and the client will send the MP_CAPABLE
      option in the third ack so that the server can create the MPTCP
      context at that time.

   As mentioned in Section 2, it may be required to reduce the length of
   the cookie when MPTCP and TFO are used together.  This can become a
   security issue when attackers and networks become fast enough for a
   brute force attack to be successful.  An option to solve this would
   be to use TCP payload to store additional options, as suggested in
   [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis], Section 5.  Another way would be to
   allow longer TCP options by using an "Extended Data Offset Option"
   [I-D.touch-tcpm-tcp-edo].  The problem with this is that the most
   problematic segment in the present case is the SYN (with long TFO
   cookie and MP_CAPABLE MPTCP option), for which it is more difficult
   to apply the Extended Data Offset Option ([I-D.touch-tcpm-tcp-edo],
   Section 7.7).

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10.  Conclusion

   In this document, we have proposed minor extensions to MPTCP and TFO
   to allow them to operate together.  In particular, we proposed
   excluding the TFO data from the data sequence number space.  We
   explained that TFO allows to relax the MPTCP establishment in that
   the MP_CAPABLE option of the third ack can be removed in some cases.
   We also emphasized that such a combination augments the size of the
   TCP options, already quite large, although the combination is still
   possible with common TCP options and limited cookie length.  We also
   proposed a way to cache multipath capability information in the
   client or in the TFO cookie.  Finally, we examined potential
   middlebox interaction problems, or security problems that would arise
   from that combined operation.

11.  Acknowledgements

   This work was supported by the FP7-Trilogy2 project and by the
   Belgian Walloon Region under its FIRST Spin-Off Program (RICE
   project).

12.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis]
              Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., Bonaventure, O., and C.
              Paasch, "TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with
              Multiple Addresses", draft-ietf-mptcp-rfc6824bis-09 (work
              in progress), July 2017.

   [I-D.touch-tcpm-tcp-edo]
              Touch, J. and W. Eddy, "TCP Extended Data Offset Option",
              draft-touch-tcpm-tcp-edo-03 (work in progress), July 2014.

   [MultipathTCP-Linux]
              Paasch, C., Barre, S., and . et al, "Multipath TCP in the
              Linux kernel", n.d., <http://www.multipath-tcp.org>.

   [RFC7413]  Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
              Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7413>.

Appendix A.  Implementation status

   In this section, we present the report of the implementation of this
   draft inside the Linux reference implementation of Multipath TCP
   [MultipathTCP-Linux].  The support of TFO in the MPTCP stack has been
   implemented on the 3.14 kernel (MPTCP v0.89).

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   The main design choices of this implementation are the following:

   o  Minimize the modification to the current MPTCP and TFO stacks,
      i.e. let the TFO stack deal with sending data, receiving data
      inside the SYN.

   o  Create the MPTCP state when receiving a SYN with a valid token on
      the server side as defined in Section 4.

   o  Map the remaining data segments in the receive and send buffers to
      MPTCP data sequence numbers.

   This latter point needs further explanation.  First, in the current
   reference implementation of MPTCP, the MPTCP state is created upon
   reception of the SYN+ACK on the client-side.  The implementation
   however did the MPTCP state allocation before processing the actual
   acknowledgement at the subflow level.  This means that data (even
   acknowledged by the SYN+ACK) remains in the send buffer at the time
   of the allocation (which contained only the SYN in the case of
   regular MPTCP).  We modified this behaviour to ensure that only
   unacknowledged data remains in the send buffer when allocating the
   state.  Moreover, as the data was initially sent over the regular TCP
   flow, they had no MPTCP sequence numbers (the MPTCP state did not
   exist during the initial sendto() call).  After the allocation of the
   MPTCP state, we modify these sequence numbers such that they are
   mapped starting at "IDSN + 1".  This effectively gives the data
   sequence number "IDSN + 1" to the first byte following the
   establishement, since the acknowledged TFO data has been removed
   fromt the queues at this point.  This data will then follow the same
   path as for data sent via a regular write() call.

   As is the case for unacknowledged data on the client-side, the
   server-side can also have data in the receive buffer (the data sent
   in the SYN).  We perform the same operation by mapping this data from
   TCP to MPTCP sequence numbers.  TFO data is then mapped ahead of the
   IDSN, so as to ensure, again, that the first byte following the
   establishment has the data sequence number "IDSN + 1".

   As of this writing, the implementation still generates a regular
   third acknowledgment with a MP_CAPABLE option (see Section 4) and it
   does not take benefit from the TFO cache to avoid useless MPTCP
   negotiation (see Section 5).

Authors' Addresses

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   Sebastien Barre
   Tessares

   Email: sebastien.barre@tessares.net

   Gregory Detal
   Tessares

   Email: gregory.detal@tessares.net

   Olivier Bonaventure
   UCLouvain and Tessares

   Email: Olivier.Bonaventure@tessares.net

   Christoph Paasch
   Apple

   Email: cpaasch@apple.com

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