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An Introduction to Semantic Routing
draft-farrel-irtf-introduction-to-semantic-routing-02

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Authors Adrian Farrel , Daniel King
Last updated 2022-01-14 (Latest revision 2022-01-07)
Replaced by draft-farrel-rtgwg-intro-to-semantic-networking
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draft-farrel-irtf-introduction-to-semantic-routing-02
IRTF                                                           A. Farrel
Internet-Draft                                        Old Dog Consulting
Intended status: Informational                                   D. King
Expires: 18 July 2022                               Lancaster University
                                                         14 January 2022

                  An Introduction to Semantic Routing
         draft-farrel-irtf-introduction-to-semantic-routing-02

Abstract

   Many proposals have been made to add semantics to IP packets by
   placing additional information existing fields, by adding semantics
   to IP addresses, or by adding fields to the packets.  The intent is
   to facilitate enhanced routing decisions based on these additional
   semantics to provide differentiated paths for different packet flows
   distinct from simple shortest path first routing.  The process is
   known as Semantic Routing.

   This document provides a brief introduction to Semantic Routing.

Status of This Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 18 July 2022.

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   Copyright (c) 2022 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
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights

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   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Objectives and Scope  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Approaches to Semantic Routing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  Packet and Service Routing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Semantic Routing Information  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Address Space Partitioning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.2.  Prefix-based Contextual Address Usage . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.3.  Semantic Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.4.  Flow Marking  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.5.  Deep Packet Inspection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.6.  Semantic Field Overloading  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.7.  IPv6 Extension Headers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.8.  New Extensions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   5.  Architectural Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.1.  Isolated Domains  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.2.  Bridged Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.3.  Semantic Prefix Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   6.  A Brief Discussion of What Constitutes Routing  . . . . . . .  11
     6.1.  Application Layer Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     6.2.  Higher-Layer Path Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     6.3.  Inter-Domain Routing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.4.  Service Function Chaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.5.  Network Layer Traffic Engineering Techniques  . . . . . .  13
     6.6.  Semantic Routing in the Network Layer . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   10. Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   11. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19

1.  Introduction

   Historically, the meaning of an IP address has been to identify an
   interface on a network device.  Network routing protocols were
   initially designed to determine paths through the network toward
   destination addresses so that IP packets with a common destination
   address converged on that destination.  Anycast and multicast
   addresses were also defined, and these new address semantics
   necessitated variations to the routing protocols, and in some cases
   the development of new protocols.

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   Over time, routing decisions were enhanced to route packets according
   to additional information carried within the packets and dependent on
   policy coded in, configured at, or signaled to the routers.  Perhaps
   the most obvious example is Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) where a
   router makes a consistent choice for forwarding packets over a number
   of parallel links or paths based on the values of a set of fields in
   the packet header.

   Upper-layer applications are placing increasingly sophisticated
   demands on the network for better quality, more predictability, and
   increased reliability.  Some of these applications are futuristic
   predictions (for example, haptic augmented reality multiplayer 3D
   worlds), some are new ideas on the threshold of roll-out (such as
   holographic conferencing), and many are rapidly developing sectors
   with established revenue streams (such as multiplayer immersive
   gaming).

   At the same time, lower-layer network technologies are advancing
   rapidly providing increased bandwidth to the home and to mobile hand-
   held devices.  These advances create an environment that enables the
   potential of advanced applications being run by very many end-users.
   This coincides with a growing trend to extend end-to-end
   communications to include machines and services, and to introduce
   routing and addressing behaviors and semantics specific to a
   particular use case and set of requirements applied within a limited
   region or domain of the Internet.  Examples of these three
   developments include 5G, predicted wireless evolutions, IoT and
   vehicular connectivity, space-terrestrial communication, industrial
   networks, cloud computing, service function chaining and network
   functions virtualization, digital twins, and data-centric data
   brokerage platforms.

   Despite this plurality of communication scenarios, IP-based
   addressing and network layer routing have remained focused on
   identifying locations of communication and determining paths between
   those locations.  This has previously depended on higher-layer
   capabilities (e.g., for name-to-location resolution) to support those
   comprehensive communication scenarios, but that approach introduces
   latency and dependencies (e.g., changing locator assignments may
   depend on the capabilities of the upper-layer capability that are
   outside the core addressing and routing system).  Furthermore, multi-
   layer lookups and interactions may impact the efficacy of
   communication scenarios, particularly those that employ different
   routing and addressing approaches beyond just locators.

   "Semantic Routing" places the support for advanced routing and
   location functions directly at the packet routing layer, such as
   through extensions to the identification properties of addresses (so

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   that the address indicates more than just the network location) or
   through performing routing functions on an extended set of inputs
   (for example, other fields carried in packet headers).  Such an
   approach should preserve the Internet architecture as it is today
   while enabling additional routing function.

   This document provides a brief introduction to semantic routing and
   outlines the possible approaches that might be taken.  A separate
   document ([I-D.king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey]) makes a start at a
   survey of pre-existing work in this area, while
   [I-D.king-irtf-challenges-in-routing] sets out some of the issues
   that should be considered when researching, developing, or proposing
   a semantic routing scheme.

2.  Objectives and Scope

   As with all advances in Internet protocols, semantic routing may be
   considered for Internet-wide deployment or may be restricted
   (possibly only initially) to well-defined and contained networks
   referred to as "limited domains" (see [RFC8799]).  The information
   used for semantic routing may be opaque within the network (in other
   words, the additional information is not visible to the routers), may
   be transparent (so that routers may see the information, but their
   processing does not need to be changed to accommodate the information
   or its encoding), or may be active (so that semantic routing is fully
   enabled).

   Semantic routing may select paths in one domain that are not
   consistent with the paths selected in other domains.

   In any case, concern and consideration must be coexistence with, and
   backward compatibility to, existing routing and addressing schemes
   that are widely deployed.

   Further understanding of the scope of semantic routing applied to the
   routing of packets at the network layer may be gained by reading
   Section 6 to see how various other concepts of routing are out of
   scope of this work.

   A strategic objective of semantic routing, and associated semantic
   enhancements, is to enable Service Providers to modify the default
   forwarding behaviour to be based on other information present in the
   packet and policy configured or dynamically programmed into the
   routers and devices.  This is aimed to cause new and alternative path
   processing by routers, including:

   *  Determinism of quality of delivery in terms of throughput,
      latency, jitter, drop precedence.

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   *  Determinism of resilience in terms of survival of network failures
      and delivery degradation.

   *  Determinism of routing performance in terms of the volume of data
      that has to be exchanged both to establish and to maintain the
      routing tables.

   *  Deployability in terms of configuration, training, development of
      new hardware/software, and interaction with the pre-existing
      network technologies and uses.

   *  Efficiency of manageability in terms of:

      1.  diagnostic management

      2.  management of Service KPIs with/without guarantees

      3.  dynamic and controlled instantiation of management information
          in the packets.

   Issues of security and privacy have been largely overlooked within
   the routing systems.  However, there is increasing concern that
   attacks on routing systems can not only be disruptive (for example,
   causing traffic to be dropped), but may cause traffic to be routed
   via inspection points that can breach the security or privacy of the
   payloads.  While semantic routing may offer tools for increasing
   security and privacy, it is possible that semantic routing and the
   additional information that may be carried in packets to enable
   semantic routing may provide vectors for attacks or compromise
   privacy.  This must be examined by any semantic routing proposals.

3.  Approaches to Semantic Routing

   Typically, in an IP-based network packets are forwarded using the
   least-cost path to the destination IP address.  Service Providers may
   also use techniques to modify the default forwarding behavior based
   on other information present in the packet and configured or
   programmed into the routers.  These mechanisms, sometimes called
   semantic routing techniques include "Preferential Routing", "Policy-
   based Routing", and "Flow Steering".

   Examples of existing semantic routing usage in IP-based networks
   include the following.

   *  Using addresses to identify different device types so that their
      traffic may be handled differently [SEMANTICRTG].

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   *  Expressing how a packet should be handled, prioritized, or
      allocated network resources as it is forwarded through the network
      [TERASTREAMref].

   *  Deriving IP addresses from the lower layer identifiers and using
      addresses depending on the underlying connectivity (for example,
      [RFC6282].

   *  Indicating the application or network function on a destination
      device or at a specific location; or enable Service Function
      Chaining (SFC).

   *  Providing semantics specific to mobile networks so that a user or
      device may move through the network without disruption to their
      service [CONTENT-RTG-MOBILEref].

   *  Enabling optimized multicast traffic distribution by encoding
      multicast tree and replication instructions within addresses
      [MULTICAST-SRref].

   *  Content-based routing (CBR), forwarding of the packet based on
      message content rather than the destination addresses
      [OPENSRNref].

   *  Identifying hierarchical connectivity so that routing can be
      simplified [EIBPref].

   *  Providing geographic location information within addresses
      [GEO-IPref].

   *  Using cryptographic algorithms to mask the identity of the source
      or destination, masking routing tables within the domain, while
      still enabling packet forwarding across the network
      [BLIND-FORWARDINGref].

   A more comprehensive list of existing implementations and research
   projects can be found in [I-D.king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey].

   Semantic routing, operates to forward packets dependent on
   information carried in the packets and rules present in the routers.
   Those rules could be:

   *  Built into the routers

   *  Configured network-wide in the routers

   *  Configured per-router in a relatively static way

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   *  Programmed to the routers in a dynamic way, for example, through
      software defined networking (SDN)

   *  Distributed dynamically through the network using routing or
      signalling protocols

   Semantic routing will also require information about network state
   and capabilities just as existing shortest path first routing systems
   do.  That may require information (such as link delays or other
   qualitative attributes) to be collected by network nodes and
   distributed between routers by routing protocols.  Alternatively,
   this information could be collected centrally by a network controller
   and used to derive the rules installed in the routers.

   Forwarding by the router is based on a look-up of the semantic
   routing information carried in the packet (see Section 4) and
   forwarding instructions programmed into the forwarding element.  The
   actions to perform may be derived by the router based on the rules
   and information that the router has collected, or may be programmed
   directly from the network controller.

3.1.  Packet and Service Routing

   Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network
   or between or across multiple networks.  For example, IP routing uses
   IP addresses for source and destination identification and is
   typically used for packet networks, such as the Internet.  IP routing
   assumes that network addresses are structured and facilitates routing
   entries in a routing table entry to represent a group of IP capable
   devices.

   While service routing and information-centric networking (ICN) can
   operate directly on top of layer 2 protocols (for example,
   [RFC9139]), in the context of this document, we are concerned with
   the function of service routing and ICN in IP networks.  Like any new
   spanning-layer style protocol, deployment considerations for ICN on
   the Internet make tunneling through IP a required part of any co-
   existence or transition.  The approach taken in this case, is to
   create an overlay layer on top of the IP network.  Control of the
   overlay necessitates augmentation of existing routing mechanisms, or
   entirely new discovery, propagation and resource management protocols
   and procedures.

   By contrast, explicit service-based IP routing
   [I-D.jiang-service-oriented-ip] abstracts the service actions that
   the network can provide into a number of classes called Service
   Action Types (SATs).  Each packet is marked with the relevant SAT,
   and the packets are routed to the next available SAT provider (not

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   the destination IP address).  In this approach, a distinct
   encapsulation is needed and may carry native IP packets as payload,
   while transition experiments may utilise an overlay on top of IP.

   IP Routing and service routing are not the same thing.

4.  Semantic Routing Information

   The subsections below describe some of the common techniques to
   enable semantic routing in more detail.  The sections are unordered
   and no meaning should be assigned to how one approach is presented
   before another.  They are not a complete list of possible approaches.

   The approaches described here have many advantages and disadvantages.
   The purpose here is not to determine which approach is best or most
   appropriate, and so those advantages and disadvantages are not
   discussed.  The reader will inevitably have a preference and see
   drawbacks.

4.1.  Address Space Partitioning

   In some cases, an address prefix is assigned a special purpose and
   meaning.  When such an address appears in the packet's address field,
   a router can know from the prefix that particular routing/forwarding
   actions are required.  An example of this approach is seen in
   multicast addressing.

4.2.  Prefix-based Contextual Address Usage

   The owner of a prefix to use the low-order bits of an address for
   their own purposes.

   The semantics of such an approach might be coordinated between prefix
   owners, or could be indicated through information that is part of the
   encoding, and is standardised.

4.3.  Semantic Addressing

   Semantic addressing is a term applied to any approach that adds
   semantics to IP addresses.  This includes the mechanisms described in
   Section 4.1 and Section 4.2.  Other semantic addressing proposals
   suggest variable address lengths, hierarchical addresses, or a
   structure to addresses so that they can carry additional information
   in a common way.

   In any case, semantic addressing intends to facilitate routing
   decisions based solely on the address and without the need to find
   and process information carried in other fields within the packets.

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4.4.  Flow Marking

   Flow marking is a way of indicating, in a simple field in the packet
   header, the treatment that the packet should receive in the network.
   In IPv4 the six-bit DSCP field is commonly used for this purpose.  In
   IPv6, while the Traffic Class field could be used, it is generally
   recommended that the Flow Label field should serve this and a more
   general purpose.

4.5.  Deep Packet Inspection

   The term "deep packet inspection" (DPI) is used here to mean that the
   router examines various packet fields, including those beyond the IP
   packet header.  For example, many router processes may look at the
   "five-tuple" consisting of:

   *  source address

   *  destination address

   *  next protocol

   *  transport protocol source port

   *  transport protocol destination port

4.6.  Semantic Field Overloading

   "Overloading" is a term applied to placing additional semantics on
   the contents of a field beyond how it is specified.  This is
   relatively hard to do in an IPv6 header because the number of fields
   is small, and all fields have specific meanings that are needed in
   all cases.  In IPv4 there may be more opportunity to use some fields
   in very controlled situations to carry additional semantics that can
   be used for semantic routing.

4.7.  IPv6 Extension Headers

   IPv6 defines extension headers explicitly for carrying information
   that may be used by routers along the path.  This information can be
   used to instruct all routers, only the router indicated by the
   destination address, or by the ultimate destination of the packet.

   Extension headers may carry any information to enable semantic
   routing.

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4.8.  New Extensions

   Another approach is to define a new protocol extension to carry
   information on which semantic routing can be performed.  Such an
   extension could be in the form of a new extension header (see
   Section 4.7) or as a new shim encapsulation immediately after the IP
   header.

5.  Architectural Considerations

   Some semantic routing proposals are intended to be deployed in
   limited domains [RFC8799] (networks) that are IP-based, while other
   proposals are intended for use across the Internet.  The impact the
   proposals have on routing systems may require clean-slate solutions,
   hybrid solutions, extensions to existing routing protocols, or
   potentially no changes at all.

   Semantic data may be applied in several ways to integrate with
   existing routing architectures.  The most obvious is to build an
   overlay such that IP is used only to route packets between network
   nodes that utilize the semantics at a higher layer.  An overlay may
   be achieved in a higher protocol layer, or may be performed using
   tunneling techniques (such as IP-in-IP) to traverse the areas of the
   IP network that cannot parse additional semantics thereby joining
   together those nodes that use the semantic data.

   The application of semantics may also be constrained to within a
   limited domain.  In some cases, such a domain will use IP, but be
   disconnected from Internet (see Section 5.1).  In other cases,
   traffic from within the domain is exchanged with other domains that
   are connected together across an IP-based network using tunnels or
   via application gateways (see Section 5.2).  And in still another
   case traffic from the domain is routed across the Internet to other
   nodes and this requires backward-compatible routing approaches (see
   Section 5.3).

5.1.  Isolated Domains

   Some IP network domains are entirely isolated from the Internet and
   other IP-based networks.  In these cases, there is no risk to
   external networks from any semantic routing schemes carried out
   within the domain.

   Many approaches in isolated domains will utilize environment-specific
   routing protocols.  For example, those suited to constrained
   environments (for IoT) or mobile environments (for smart vehicles).
   Such routing protocols can be optimized for the exchange of
   information specific to semantic routing.

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5.2.  Bridged Domains

   In some deployments, it will be desirable to connect a number of
   isolated domains to build a larger network.  These domains may be
   connected (or bridged) over an IP network or even over the Internet.

   Ideally, the function of the bridged domains should not be impeded by
   how they are connected, and the operation of the IP network providing
   the connectivity should not be compromised by the act of carrying
   traffic between the domains.  This can generally be achieved by
   tunneling the packets between domains using any tunneling technique,
   and this will not require the IP network to know about the semantic
   routing used by the domains.

   An alternative to tunneling is achieved using gateway functionality
   where packets from a domain are mapped at the domain boundary to
   produce regular IP packets that are sent across the IP network to the
   boundary of the destination domain where they are mapped back into
   packets for use within that domain.

5.3.  Semantic Prefix Domains

   A semantic prefix domain [I-D.jiang-semantic-prefix] is a portion of
   the Internet over which a consistent set of semantic-based policies
   are administered in a coordinated fashion.  This is achieved by
   assigning a routable address prefix (or a set of prefixes) for use
   with semantic addressing and routing so that packets may be routed
   through the regular IP network (or the Internet) using the prefix and
   without encountering or having to use any semantic addressing.  Once
   delivered to the semantic prefix domain, a packet can be subjected to
   whatever semantic routing is enabled in the domain.

6.  A Brief Discussion of What Constitutes Routing

   This section provides an overview of what is considered as "routing"
   in the scope of this document.  There are many functions in the
   Internet that contain the concept of routing, but not all of them
   apply to the scope of this document which is concerned with routing
   packets at the network layer.  A more throrough catalogue of
   approaches to routing and the applications of semantic routing can be
   found in [I-D.king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey].

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6.1.  Application Layer Routing

   Routing in the application layer concerns the choice of application-
   level components that are distributed across the network.  The choice
   may be dependent on the services being delivered, knowledge about the
   locations in the network that can provide the services, knowledge of
   the network capabilities, and preferences expressed by an application
   or user.  In this sense, the routing choice consists of constructing
   an "application layer path" and may be performed at the head end or
   along the path.  Packets are carried between components across the
   underlying network, using normal transport and network layer
   protocols that may, themselves, involve routing.  Thus, application
   layer routing is concerned with selecting a series of components
   based on the potential to carry traffic between them, but without
   concern for how the packets are routed within the network.

   Application layer routing may be used in concepts such as Content
   Distribution Networking (CDN) and computation in the network (COIN).

   The ALTO architecture and protocol [RFC7285] is intended to allow the
   network to answer queries about the availability and characteristics
   of paths between application-level components to enable choices to be
   made by providers of function or content about which components to
   select.  This is a server-based approach because it would be
   impractical to scale the network reporting all available paths to all
   destinations to every client, or for the network edge to be able to
   answer queries from their clients.

6.2.  Higher-Layer Path Selection

   There is another high-level path selection scenario that is more
   concerned with selecting outbound paths from the source than in
   determining destinations or next application-layer hops (as described
   in Section 6.1.  For example, consider a mobile phone that is
   connected to WiFi and 5G.  Further, consider that the WiFi network is
   dual-homed to two different ISPs.  This gives an application a choice
   of three different paths depending on the known (or advertised)
   capabilities of the networks.

   This type of scenario is being examined by the Path Aware Networking
   Research Group (PANRG) where, rather than consulting a server to
   supply the most appropriate path, the source host or application
   should learn about the potential paths and pick between them.

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6.3.  Inter-Domain Routing

   A lot of effort has been devoted to consideration of end-to-end paths
   for IP traffic across multiple autonomous systems (ASes).  For
   example, the BGP Add-Paths feature [RFC7911] allows the advertisement
   of multiple paths so that a single, "best" path can be determined.
   These approaches, however, are principally concerned with overall
   reachability, and then with selecting the path with the fewest
   transit autonomous systems.  They are less capable of selecting an
   overall least cost path or of considering other traffic engineering
   constraints in the selection of end-to-end paths.  Such path
   computation requires the features outlined in Section 6.5 as
   assembled into an architectural solution in [RFC7926].

   Thus, routing in this scenario is about the selection of the next AS
   along the path, and possibly a choice of the right AS border router
   (ASBR) to facilitate that route.

6.4.  Service Function Chaining

   Service Function Chaining (SFC) [RFC7665] is applied at the network
   layer to steer packet flows through network functions (such as
   security or load balancing).  A chain of services to be delivered
   (the service function chain) is realised as sequence of service
   instances (the service function path).  Packets are tunneled between
   the service instances using encapsulation so that the end-to-end
   payload packet is unchanged.  A variety of network layer
   encapsulation have been considered including the Network Service
   Header (NSH) [RFC8300], MPLS [RFC8595], and Segment Routing
   [I-D.li-spring-sr-sfc-control-plane-framework].

   The Segment Routing concept of Network Programming [RFC8986], offers
   a similar approach to SFC, but may be more widely applicable.

   The tunneled packets can be freely routed in the network using
   conventional shortest path techniques or the mechanisms described in
   Section 6.5 and Section 6.6.

6.5.  Network Layer Traffic Engineering Techniques

   Techniques for achieving packet-level traffic engineering in the
   network layer are described in [I-D.ietf-teas-rfc3272bis].  Traffic
   engineering (TE) is the process of selecting an end-to-end path that
   considers many attributes of metrics of the links in the network in
   order to satisfy a set of constraints or requirements imposed by the
   sender of the traffic.  For example, the sender may want to use only
   secure links, or may know the bandwidth requirements of the flow, or
   may need at least a specific end-to-end latency, or indeed any

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   combination of this type of constraint.

   Routing for TE may be performed in advance of sending the traffic
   (for example, by computing a path at the sender or by using a tool
   such as the Path Computation Element (PCE) [RFC4655].  In this case,
   some form of encapsulation is needed to bind the traffic flow to the
   selected route: MPLS or Segment Routing may be used.

   Alternatively, the network may be tuned through appropriate use of
   routing protocol metrics, routing algorithms, and statically
   configured routes, so that packets will be forwarded along traffic
   engineered paths.

6.6.  Semantic Routing in the Network Layer

   Semantic routing, as already explained, is about taking routing
   decisions based on "additional" information carried in packets in
   order to provide the behavior and network services most suited to the
   traffic.  This approach builds on the techniques described in
   Section 6.5 but frees up the network to make individual decisions for
   each packet based on changing network conditions as well as the
   information in the packets.

   A raft of potential solutions have been proposed for caryring the
   necessary information in the packets, and it is not the purpose of
   this document to examine them in detail or make suggestions about
   which is better.  The solutions vary from simply using existing
   fields in the IP header (such as the ToS field), or examining fields
   below the IP header (such as the transport ports), through
   "overloading" existing fields in the packet header (such as the
   destination address), all the way to adding new information in an
   additional encapsulation as proposed by the Application-aware
   Networking (APN) effort [I-D.li-apn-framework].

7.  Security Considerations

   Semantic routing must give full consideration to the security and
   privacy issues that are introduced by these mechanisms.  Placing
   additional information into packet header fields might reveal details
   of what the packet is for, what function the user is performing, who
   the user is, etc.  Furthermore, in-flight modification of the
   additional information might not directly change the destination of
   the packet, but might change how the packet is handled within the
   network and at the destination.

   It should also be considered how packet encryption techniques that
   are increasingly popular for end-to-end or edge-to-edge security may
   obscure the semantic information carried in some fields of the packet

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   header or found deeper in the packet.  This may render some semantic
   routing techniques impractical and may dictate other methods of
   carrying the necessary information to enable semantic routing.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no requests for IANA action.

9.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to Brian Carpenter and Dave Oran for helpful discussions and
   clarifications.

10.  Contributors

               TBD

11.  Informative References

   [BLIND-FORWARDINGref]
              Simsek, I., "On-Demand Blind Packet Forwarding",
              Paper 30th International Telecommunication Networks and
              Applications Conference (ITNAC), 2020, 2020,
              <https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings-article/
              itnac/2020/09315187/1qmfFPPggrC>.

   [CONTENT-RTG-MOBILEref]
              Liu, H. and W. He, "Rich Semantic Content-oriented Routing
              for mobile Ad Hoc Networks", Paper The International
              Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN2014), 2014,
              2014, <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6799682>.

   [EIBPref]  Shenoy, N., "Can We Improve Internet Performance? An
              Expedited Internet Bypass Protocol", Presentation 28th
              IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, 2020,
              <https://icnp20.cs.ucr.edu/Slides/NIPAA/D-3_invited.pptx>.

   [GEO-IPref]
              Dasu, T., Kanza, Y., and D. Srivastava, "Geotagging IP
              Packets for Location-Aware Software-Defined Networking in
              the Presence of Virtual Network Functions", Paper 25th ACM
              SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in
              Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017),
              2017, <https://about.att.com/ecms/dam/sites/labs_research/
              content/publications/
              AI_Geotagging_IP_Packets_for_Location.pdf>.

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   [I-D.ietf-teas-rfc3272bis]
              Farrel, A., "Overview and Principles of Internet Traffic
              Engineering", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              ietf-teas-rfc3272bis-13, 8 November 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-teas-
              rfc3272bis-13.txt>.

   [I-D.jiang-semantic-prefix]
              Jiang, S., Sun, Q., Farrer, I., Bo, Y., and T. Yang,
              "Analysis of Semantic Embedded IPv6 Address Schemas", Work
              in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-jiang-semantic-prefix-
              06, 15 July 2013, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-
              jiang-semantic-prefix-06.txt>.

   [I-D.jiang-service-oriented-ip]
              Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and G. Li, "Service Oriented
              Internet Protocol", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-jiang-service-oriented-ip-03, 14 May 2020,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-jiang-service-
              oriented-ip-03.txt>.

   [I-D.king-irtf-challenges-in-routing]
              King, D. and A. Farrel, "Challenges for the Internet
              Routing Infrastructure Introduced by Semantic Routing",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-king-irtf-
              challenges-in-routing-04, 8 November 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-king-irtf-
              challenges-in-routing-04.txt>.

   [I-D.king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey]
              King, D. and A. Farrel, "A Survey of Semantic Internet
              Routing Techniques", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey-03, 26 November
              2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-king-irtf-
              semantic-routing-survey-03.txt>.

   [I-D.li-apn-framework]
              Li, Z., Peng, S., Voyer, D., Li, C., Liu, P., Cao, C.,
              Mishra, G., Ebisawa, K., Previdi, S., and J. N. Guichard,
              "Application-aware Networking (APN) Framework", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-apn-framework-04, 25
              October 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-li-
              apn-framework-04.txt>.

   [I-D.li-spring-sr-sfc-control-plane-framework]
              Li, C., Sawaf, A. E., Hu, R., and Z. Li, "A Framework for
              Constructing Service Function Chaining Systems Based on
              Segment Routing", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-

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              li-spring-sr-sfc-control-plane-framework-05, 21 October
              2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-li-spring-sr-
              sfc-control-plane-framework-05.txt>.

   [MULTICAST-SRref]
              Jia, W. and W. He, "A Scalable Multicast Source Routing
              Architecture for Data Center Networks", Paper IEEE Journal
              on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 32, no. 1, pp.
              116-123, January 2014, 2014,
              <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6799682>.

   [OPENSRNref]
              Ren, P., Wang, X., Zhao, B., Wu, C., and H. Sun, "OpenSRN:
              A Software-defined Semantic Routing Network Architecture",
              Paper IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops
              (INFOCOM WKSHPS), Hong Kong, 2015, 2015,
              <https://www.researchgate.net/
              publication/308827498_OpenSRN_A_software-
              defined_semantic_routing_network_architecture>.

   [RFC4655]  Farrel, A., Vasseur, J.-P., and J. Ash, "A Path
              Computation Element (PCE)-Based Architecture", RFC 4655,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4655, August 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4655>.

   [RFC6282]  Hui, J., Ed. and P. Thubert, "Compression Format for IPv6
              Datagrams over IEEE 802.15.4-Based Networks", RFC 6282,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6282, September 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6282>.

   [RFC7285]  Alimi, R., Ed., Penno, R., Ed., Yang, Y., Ed., Kiesel, S.,
              Previdi, S., Roome, W., Shalunov, S., and R. Woundy,
              "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol",
              RFC 7285, DOI 10.17487/RFC7285, September 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7285>.

   [RFC7665]  Halpern, J., Ed. and C. Pignataro, Ed., "Service Function
              Chaining (SFC) Architecture", RFC 7665,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7665, October 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7665>.

   [RFC7911]  Walton, D., Retana, A., Chen, E., and J. Scudder,
              "Advertisement of Multiple Paths in BGP", RFC 7911,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7911, July 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7911>.

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   [RFC7926]  Farrel, A., Ed., Drake, J., Bitar, N., Swallow, G.,
              Ceccarelli, D., and X. Zhang, "Problem Statement and
              Architecture for Information Exchange between
              Interconnected Traffic-Engineered Networks", BCP 206,
              RFC 7926, DOI 10.17487/RFC7926, July 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7926>.

   [RFC8300]  Quinn, P., Ed., Elzur, U., Ed., and C. Pignataro, Ed.,
              "Network Service Header (NSH)", RFC 8300,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8300, January 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8300>.

   [RFC8595]  Farrel, A., Bryant, S., and J. Drake, "An MPLS-Based
              Forwarding Plane for Service Function Chaining", RFC 8595,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8595, June 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8595>.

   [RFC8799]  Carpenter, B. and B. Liu, "Limited Domains and Internet
              Protocols", RFC 8799, DOI 10.17487/RFC8799, July 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8799>.

   [RFC8986]  Filsfils, C., Ed., Camarillo, P., Ed., Leddy, J., Voyer,
              D., Matsushima, S., and Z. Li, "Segment Routing over IPv6
              (SRv6) Network Programming", RFC 8986,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8986, February 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8986>.

   [RFC9139]  Gündoğan, C., Schmidt, T., Wählisch, M., Scherb, C.,
              Marxer, C., and C. Tschudin, "Information-Centric
              Networking (ICN) Adaptation to Low-Power Wireless Personal
              Area Networks (LoWPANs)", RFC 9139, DOI 10.17487/RFC9139,
              November 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9139>.

   [SEMANTICRTG]
              Strassner, J., Sung-Su, K., and J. Won-Ki, "Semantic
              Routing for Improved Network Management in the Future
              Internet", Book Chapter Springer, Recent Trends in
              Wireless and Mobile Networks, 2010, 2010,
              <https://link.springer.com/
              chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-14171-3_14>.

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   [TERASTREAMref]
              Zaluski, B., Rajtar, B., Habjani, H., Baranek, M., Slibar,
              N., Petracic, R., and T. Sukser, "Terastream
              implementation of all IP new architecture", Paper 36th
              International Convention on Information and Communication
              Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO),
              2013, 2013,
              <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6596297>.

Authors' Addresses

   Adrian Farrel
   Old Dog Consulting
   United Kingdom

   Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk

   Daniel King
   Lancaster University
   United Kingdom

   Email: d.king@lancaster.ac.uk

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