Skip to main content

Using Autonomic Control Plane for Stable Connectivity of Network OAM
draft-ietf-anima-stable-connectivity-03

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 8368.
Authors Toerless Eckert , Michael H. Behringer
Last updated 2017-07-18 (Latest revision 2017-07-03)
Replaces draft-eckert-anima-stable-connectivity
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state In WG Last Call
Document shepherd Sheng Jiang
IESG IESG state Became RFC 8368 (Informational)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to "Sheng Jiang" <jiangsheng@huawei.com>
draft-ietf-anima-stable-connectivity-03
ANIMA                                                          T. Eckert
Internet-Draft                                                    Huawei
Intended status: Informational                              M. Behringer
Expires: January 4, 2018                                    July 3, 2017

  Using Autonomic Control Plane for Stable Connectivity of Network OAM
                draft-ietf-anima-stable-connectivity-03

Abstract

   OAM (Operations, Administration and Management) processes for data
   networks are often subject to the problem of circular dependencies
   when relying on network connectivity of the network to be managed for
   the OAM operations itself.  Provisioning during device/network bring
   up tends to be far less easy to automate than service provisioning
   later on, changes in core network functions impacting reachability
   can not be automated either because of ongoing connectivity
   requirements for the OAM equipment itself, and widely used OAM
   protocols are not secure enough to be carried across the network
   without security concerns.

   This document describes how to integrate OAM processes with the
   autonomic control plane (ACP) in Autonomic Networks (AN). to provide
   stable and secure connectivity for those OAM processes.

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
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 4, 2018.

Copyright Notice

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

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://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 and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   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
     1.1.  Self dependent OAM connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.2.  Data Communication Networks (DCNs)  . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.3.  Leveraging the ACP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.1.  Stable connectivity for centralized OAM operations  . . .   4
       2.1.1.  Simple connectivity for non-autonomic NMS hosts . . .   5
       2.1.2.  Challenges and limitation of simple connectivity  . .   6
       2.1.3.  Simultaneous ACP and data plane connectivity  . . . .   7
       2.1.4.  IPv4 only NMS hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       2.1.5.  Path selection policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
       2.1.6.  Autonomic NOC device/applications . . . . . . . . . .  11
       2.1.7.  Encryption of data-plane connections  . . . . . . . .  12
       2.1.8.  Long term direction of the solution . . . . . . . . .  13
     2.2.  Stable connectivity for distributed network/OAM functions  13
   3.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   4.  No IPv4 for ACP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   7.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove]  . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18

1.  Introduction

1.1.  Self dependent OAM connectivity

   OAM (Operations, Administration and Management) processes for data
   networks are often subject to the problem of circular dependencies
   when relying on network connectivity of the network to be managed for
   the OAM operations itself:

   The ability to perform OAM operations on a network device requires
   first the execution of OAM procedures necessary to create network
   connectivity to that device in all intervening devices.  This
   typically leads to sequential, 'expanding ring configuration' from a

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 2]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   NOC (Network Operations Center).  It also leads to tight dependencies
   between provisioning tools and security enrollment of devices.  Any
   process that wants to enroll multiple devices along a newly deployed
   network topology needs to tightly interlock with the provisioning
   process that creates connectivity before the enrollment can move on
   to the next device.

   When performing change operations on a network, it likewise is
   necessary to understand at any step of that process that there is no
   interruption of connectivity that could lead to removal of
   connectivity to remote devices.  This includes especially change
   provisioning of routing, security and addressing policies in the
   network that often occur through mergers and acquisitions, the
   introduction of IPv6 or other mayor re-hauls in the infrastructure
   design.  Examples include change of IGP protocols or areas, PD
   (Provider Dependent) to PI (Provider Independent) addressing,
   systematic topology changes.

   All this circular dependencies make OAM processes complex and
   potentially fragile.  When automation is being used, for example
   through provisioning systems or network controllers, this complexity
   extends into that automation software.

1.2.  Data Communication Networks (DCNs)

   In the late 1990'th and early 2000, IP networks became the method of
   choice to build separate OAM networks for the communications
   infrastructure in service providers.  This concept was standardized
   in G.7712/Y.1703 and called "Data Communications Networks" (DCN).
   These where (and still are) physically separate IP(/MPLS) networks
   that provide access to OAM interfaces of all equipment that had to be
   managed, from PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) switches over
   optical equipment to nowadays ethernet and IP/MPLS production network
   equipment.

   Such DCN provide stable connectivity not subject to aforementioned
   problems because they are separate network entirely, so change
   configuration of the production IP network is done via the DCN but
   never affects the DCN configuration.  Of course, this approach comes
   at a cost of buying and operating a separate network and this cost is
   not feasible for many networks, most notably smaller service
   providers, most enterprises and typical IoT networks.

1.3.  Leveraging the ACP

   One goal of the Autonomic Networks Autonomic Control plane (ACP as
   defined in [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane] ) in Autonomic
   Networks is to provide similar stable connectivity as a DCN, but

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 3]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   without having to build a separate DCN.  It is clear that such 'in-
   band' approach can never achieve fully the same level of separation,
   but the goal is to get as close to it as possible.

   This solution approach has several aspects.  One aspect is designing
   the implementation of the ACP in network devices to make it actually
   perform without interruption by changes in what we will call in this
   document the "data-plane", aka: the operator or controller configured
   services planes of the network equipment.  This aspect is not
   currently covered in this document.

   Another aspect is how to leverage the stable IPv6 connectivity
   provided by the ACP to build actual OAM solutions.  This is the
   current scope of this document.

2.  Solutions

2.1.  Stable connectivity for centralized OAM operations

   The ANI is the "Autonomic Networking Infrastructure" consisting of
   secure zero touch Bootstrap (BRSKI -
   [I-D.ietf-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra]), Generic Signaling (GRASP -
   [I-D.ietf-anima-grasp] and Autonomic Control Plane (ACP -
   [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane] ).  See
   [I-D.ietf-anima-reference-model]  for an overview of the ANI and how
   its components interact and [RFC7575] for concepts and terminology of
   ANI and autonomic networks.

   This section describes stable connectivity for centralized OAM
   operations via ACP/ANI starting by what we expect to be the easiest
   short-term deployment option.  It then describes limitation/
   challenges of that approach and their solutions/workarounds to finish
   with the preferred target option of autonomic NOC devices in
   Section 2.1.6.

   This order was choosen because it helps to explain how simple initial
   use of ACP can be, how difficult workarounds can become (and
   therefore what to avoid), and finally because one very promising
   long-term solution alternative is exactly like the most easy short-
   term solution only virtualized and automated.

   In the most common case, OAM operations will be performed by one or
   more applications running on a variety of centralized NOC systems
   that communicate with network devices.  We describe differently
   advanced approaches to leverage the ACP for stable connectivity
   leveraging the ACP.  The descriptions will show that there is a wide
   range of options, some of which are simple, some more complex.

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 4]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   Most easily we think there are three stages of interest:

   o  There are simple options described first that we consider to be
      good starting points to operationalize the use of the ACP for
      stable connectivity.

   o  The are more advanced intermediate options that try to establish
      backward compatibility with existing deployed approached such as
      leveraging NAT (Network Address Translation).  Selection and
      deployment of these approaches needs to be carefully vetted to
      ensure that they provide positive RoI.  This very much depends on
      the operational processes of the network operator.

   o  It seems clearly feasible to build towards a long-term
      configuration that provides all the desired operational, zero
      touch and security benefits of an autonomic network, but a range
      of details for this still have to be worked out.

2.1.1.  Simple connectivity for non-autonomic NMS hosts

   In the most simple deployment case, the ACP extends all the way into
   the NOC via an autonomic device set up as an ACP edge device
   providing native access to the ACP for NMS hosts (as defined in
   section 6.1 of [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane].  It acts as
   the default-router to those hosts and provides them with only IPv6
   connectivity into the ACP - but no IPv4 connectivity.  NMS hosts with
   this setup need to support IPv6 but require no other modifications to
   leverage the ACP.

   Note that even though the ACP only uses IPv6, it can and should be
   used to provide stable connectivity for management of any network:
   IPv4 only, dual-stack or IPv6 only.

   This setup is sufficient for troubleshooting OAM operations such as
   SSH into network devices, NMS that perform SNMP read operations for
   status checking, for software downloads into autonomic devices and so
   on.  In conjunction with otherwise unmodified OAM operations via
   separate NMS hosts it can provide a good subset of the interesting
   stable connectivity goals from the ACP.

   Because the ACP provides 'only' for IPv6 connectivity, and because
   the addressing provided by the ACP does not include any addressing
   structure that operations in a NOC often relies on to recognize where
   devices are on the network, it is likely highly desirable to set up
   DNS (Domain Name System - see [RFC1034]) so that the ACP IPv6
   addresses of autonomic devices are known via domain names with
   logical names.  For example, if DNS in the network was set up with
   names for network devices as devicename.noc.example.com, then the ACP

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 5]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   address of that device could be mapped to devicename-
   acp.noc.exmaple.com.

2.1.2.  Challenges and limitation of simple connectivity

   This simple connectivity of non-autonomic NMS hosts suffers from a
   range of possible challenges (operators may not be able to do it this
   way) or limitations (operator can not achieve desired goals with this
   setup).  The following list summarizes these and the following
   sections describe additional mechanisms to overcome them.

   Note that these challenges and limitations exist because the ACP is
   primarily designed to support distributed ASA in the most
   leightweight fashion but not mandatorily require support for
   additional mechanisms to best support centralized NOC operations.  It
   is this document that describes additional (short term) workarounds
   and (long term) extensions.

   1.  Limitation: NMS hosts can not directly probe whether the desired
       so called 'data-plane' network connectivity works because they do
       not directly have access to it.  This problem is not dissimilar
       to probing connectivity for other services (such as VPN services)
       that they do not have direct access to, so the NOC may already
       employ appropriate mechanisms to deal with this issue (probing
       proxies).  See Section 2.1.3 for solutions.

   2.  Challenge: NMS hosts need to support IPv6 which often is still
       not possible in many enterprise networks.  See Section 2.1.4 for
       (highly undesirable) workarounds.

   3.  Limitation: Performance of the ACP will be limited versus normal
       'data-plane' connectivity.  The setup of the ACP will often
       support only non-hardware accelerated forwarding.  Running a
       large amount of traffic through the ACP, especially for tasks
       where it is not necessary will reduce its performance/
       effectiveness for those operations where it is necessary or
       highly desirable.  See Section 2.1.5 for solutions.

   4.  Limitation: Security of the ACP is reduced by exposing the ACP
       natively (and unencrypted) into a LAN In the NOC where the NOC
       devices are attached to it.  See Section 2.1.7 for solutions.

   These four problems can be tackled independently of each other by
   solution improvements.  Combining these solutions improvements
   together ultimately leads towards the target long term solution.

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 6]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

2.1.3.  Simultaneous ACP and data plane connectivity

   Simultaneous connectivity to both ACP and data-plane can be achieved
   in a variety of ways.  If the data-plane is only IPv4, then any
   method for dual-stack attachment of the NOC device/application will
   suffice: IPv6 connectivity from the NOC provides access via the ACP,
   IPv4 will provide access via the data-plane.  If as explained above
   in the most simple case, an autonomic device supports native
   attachment to the ACP, and the existing NOC setup is IPv4 only, then
   it could be sufficient to simply attach the ACP device(s) as the IPv6
   default-router to the NOC LANs and keep the existing IPv4 default
   router setup unchanged.

   If the data-plane of the network is also supporting IPv6, then the
   NOC devices that need access to the ACP should have a dual-homing
   IPv6 setup.  One option is to make the NOC devices multi-homed with
   one logical or physical IPv6 interface connecting to the data-plane,
   and another into the ACP.  The LAN that provides access to the ACP
   should then be given an IPv6 prefix that shares a common prefix with
   the IPv6 ULA (see [RFC4193]) of the ACP so that the standard IPv6
   interface selection rules on the NOC host would result in the desired
   automatic selection of the right interface: towards the ACP facing
   interface for connections to ACP addresses, and towards the data-
   plane interface for anything else.  If this can not be achieved
   automatically, then it needs to be done via simple IPv6 static routes
   in the NOC host.

   Providing two virtual (eg: dot1q subnet) connections into NOC hosts
   may be seen as undesired complexity.  In that case the routing policy
   to provide access to both ACP and data-plane via IPv6 needs to happen
   in the NOC network itself: The NMS host gets a single attachment
   interface but still with the same two IPv6 addresses as in before -
   one for use towards the ACP, one towards the data-plane.  The first-
   hop router connecting to the NMS host would then have separate
   interfaces: one towards the data-plane, one towards the ACP.  Routing
   of traffic from NMS hosts would then have to be based on the source
   IPv6 address of the host: Traffic from the address designated for ACP
   use would get routed towards the ACP, traffic from the designated
   data-plane address towards the data-plane.

   In the most simple case, we get the following topology: Existing NMS
   hosts connect via an existing NOClan and existing first hop Rtr1 to
   the data-plane.  Rtr1 is not made autonomic, but instead the edge
   router of the Autonomic network ANrtr is attached via a separate
   interface to Rtr1 and ANrtr provides access to the ACP via
   ACPaccessLan.  Rtr1 is configured with the above described IPv6
   source routing policies and the NOC-app-devices are given the
   secondary IPv6 address for connectivity into the ACP.

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 7]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

                                     --... (data-plane)
 NOC-app-device(s) -- NOClan -- Rtr1
                                     --- ACPaccessLan -- ANrtr ... (ACP)

                                 Figure 1

   If Rtr1 was to be upgraded to also implement Autonomic Networking and
   the ACP, the picture would change as follows:

                                                ---- ... (data-plane)
       NOC-app-device(s) ---- NOClan --- ANrtr1
                                         .  .   ---- ... (ACP)
                                         \-/
                                         (ACP to data-plane loopback)

                                 Figure 2

   In this case, ANrtr1 would have to implement some more advanced
   routing such as cross-VRF routing because the data-plane and ACP are
   most likely run via separate VRFs.  A workaround without additional
   software functionality could be a physical external loopback cable
   into two ports of ANrtr1 to connect the data-plane and ACP VRF as
   shown in the picture.  A (virtual) software loopback between the ACP
   and data plane VRF would of course be the better solution.

2.1.4.  IPv4 only NMS hosts

   The ACP does not support IPv4 to ensure long term simplicity: Single
   stack IPv6 management of the network via ACP and (as needed) data
   plane.  Independent of whether the data plane is dual-stack, has IPv4
   as a service or is single stack IPv6.  Dual plane management, IPv6
   for the ACP, IPv4 for the data plane is likewise an architecturally
   simple option.

   The downside of this architectural decision is the potential need for
   short-term workarounds when the operational practices in a network
   that can not meet these target expectations.  This section motivates
   when and why these workarounds may be necessary and describes them.
   All the workarounds described in this section are HIGHLY UNDESIRABLE.
   The only long term solution is to enable IPv6 on NMS hosts.

   Most network equipment today supports IPv6 but it is by far not
   ubiquitously supported in NOC backend solutions (HW/SW), especially
   not in the product space for enterprises.  Even when it is supported,
   there are often additional limitations or issues using it in a dual

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 8]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   stack setup or the operator mandates for simplicity single stack for
   all operations.  For these reasons an IPv4 only management plane is
   still required and common practice in many enterprises.  Without the
   desire to leverage the ACP, this required and common practice is not
   a problem for those enterprises even when they run dual stack in the
   network.  Therefore we document these workarounds here because it is
   a short term deployment challence specific to the operations of the
   ACP.

   To bridge an IPv4 only management plane with the ACP, IPv4 to IPv6
   NAT can be used.  This NAT setup could for example be done in Rt1r1
   in above picture to also support IPv4 only NMS hots connected to
   NOClan.

   To support connections initiated from IPv4 only NMS hosts towards the
   ACP of network devices, it is necessary to create a static mapping of
   ACP IPv6 addresses into an unused IPv4 address space and dynamic or
   static mapping of the IPv4 NOC application device address (prefix)
   into IPv6 routed in the ACP.  The main issue in this setup is the
   mapping of all ACP IPv6 addresses to IPv4.  Without further network
   intelligence, this needs to be a 1:1 address mapping because the
   prefix used for ACP IPv6 addresses is too long to be mapped directly
   into IPv4 on a prefix basis.

   One could implement in router software dynamic mappings by leveraging
   DNS, but it seems highly undesirable to implement such complex
   technologies for something that ultimately is a temporary problem
   (IPv4 only NMS hosts).  With today's operational directions it is
   likely more preferable to automate the setup of 1:1 NAT mappings in
   that NAT router as part of the automation process of network device
   enrollment into the ACP.

   The ACP can also be used for connections initiated by the network
   device into the NMS hosts.  For example syslog from autonomic
   devices.  In this case, static mappings of the NMS hosts IPv4
   addresses are required.  This can easily be done with a static prefix
   mapping into IPv6.

   Overall, the use of NAT is especially subject to the RoI (Return of
   Investment) considerations, but the methods described here may not be
   too different from the same problems encountered totally independent
   of AN/ACP when some parts of the network are to introduce IPv6 but
   NMS hosts are not (yet) upgradeable.

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018                [Page 9]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

2.1.5.  Path selection policies

   As mentioned above, the ACP is not expected to have high performance
   because its primary goal is connectivity and security, and for
   existing network device platforms this often means that it is a lot
   more effort to implement that additional connectivity with hardware
   acceleration than without - especially because of the desire to
   support full encryption across the ACP to achieve the desired
   security.

   Some of these issues may go away in the future with further adoption
   of the ACP and network device designs that better tender to the needs
   of a separate OAM plane, but it is wise to plan for even long-term
   designs of the solution that does NOT depend on high-performance of
   the ACP.  This is opposite to the expectation that future NMS hosts
   will have IPv6, so that any considerations for IPv4/NAT in this
   solution are temporary.

   To solve the expected performance limitations of the ACP, we do
   expect to have the above describe dual-connectivity via both ACP and
   data-plane between NOC application devices and AN devices with ACP.
   The ACP connectivity is expected to always be there (as soon as a
   device is enrolled), but the data-plane connectivity is only present
   under normal operations but will not be present during eg: early
   stages of device bootstrap, failures, provisioning mistakes or during
   network configuration changes.

   The desired policy is therefore as follows: In the absence of further
   security considerations (see below), traffic between NMS hosts and AN
   devices should prefer data-plane connectivity and resort only to
   using the ACP when necessary, unless it is an operation known to be
   so much tied to the cases where the ACP is necessary that it makes no
   sense to try using the data plane.  An example here is of course the
   SSH connection from the NOC into a network device to troubleshoot
   network connectivity.  This could easily always rely on the ACP.
   Likewise, if an NMS host is known to transmit large amounts of data,
   and it uses the ACP, then its performance need to be controlled so
   that it will not overload the ACP performance.  Typical examples of
   this are software downloads.

   There is a wide range of methods to build up these policies.  We
   describe a few:

   Ideally, a NOC system would learn and keep track of all addresses of
   a device (ACP and the various data plane addresses).  Every action of
   the NOC system would indicate via a "path-policy" what type of
   connection it needs (eg: only data-plane, ACP-only, default to data-
   plane, fallback to ACP,...).  A connection policy manager would then

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 10]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   build connection to the target using the right address(es).  Shorter
   term, a common practice is to identify different paths to a device
   via different names (eg: loopback vs. interface addresses).  This
   approach can be expanded to ACP uses, whether it uses NOC system
   local names or DNS.  We describe example schemes using DNS:

   DNS can be used to set up names for the same network devices but with
   different addresses assigned: One name (name.noc.example.com) with
   only the data-plane address(es) (IPv4 and/or IPv6) to be used for
   probing connectivity or performing routine software downloads that
   may stall/fail when there are connectivity issues.  One name (name-
   acp.noc.example.com) with only the ACP reachable address of the
   device for troubleshooting and probing/discovery that is desired to
   always only use the ACP.  One name with data plane and ACP addresses
   (name-both.noc.example.com).

   Traffic policing and/or shaping of at the ACP edge in the NOC can be
   used to throttle applications such as software download into the ACP.

   MP-TCP (Multipath TCP -see [RFC6824]) is a very attractive candidate
   to automate the use of both data-plane and ACP and minimize or fully
   avoid the need for the above mentioned logical names to pre-set the
   desired connectivity (data-plane-only, ACP only, both).  For example,
   a set-up for non MP-TCP aware applications would be as follows:

   DNS naming is set up to provide the ACP IPv6 address of network
   devices.  Unbeknownst to the application, MP-TCP is used.  MP-TCP
   mutually discovers between the NOC and network device the data-plane
   address and caries all traffic across it when that MP-TCP sub-flow
   across the data-plane can be built.

   In the Autonomic network devices where data-plane and ACP are in
   separate VRFs, it is clear that this type of MP-TCP sub-flow creation
   across different VRFs is new/added functionality.  Likewise the
   policies of preferring a particular address (NOC-device) or VRF (AN
   device) for the traffic is potentially also a policy not provided as
   a standard.

2.1.6.  Autonomic NOC device/applications

   Setting up connectivity between the NOC and autonomic devices when
   the NOC device itself is non-autonomic is as mentioned in the
   beginning a security issue.  It also results as shown in the previous
   paragraphs in a range of connectivity considerations, some of which
   may be quite undesirable or complex to operationalize.

   Making NMS hosts autonomic and having them participate in the ACP is
   therefore not only a highly desirable solution to the security

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 11]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   issues, but can also provide a likely easier operationalization of
   the ACP because it minimizes NOC-special edge considerations - the
   ACP is simply built all the way automatically, even inside the NOC
   and only authorized and authenticate NOC devices/applications will
   have access to it.

   Supporting the ACP all the way into an application device requires
   implementing the following aspects in it: AN bootstrap/enrollment
   mechanisms, the secure channel for the ACP and at least the host side
   of IPv6 routing setup for the ACP.  Minimally this could all be
   implemented as an application and be made available to the host OS
   via eg: a tap driver to make the ACP show up as another IPv6 enabled
   interface.

   Having said this: If the structure of NMS hosts is transformed
   through virtualization anyhow, then it may be considered equally
   secure and appropriate to construct (physical) NMS host system by
   combining a virtual AN/ACP enabled router with non-AN/ACP enabled
   NOC-application VMs via a hypervisor, leveraging the configuration
   options described in the previous sections but just virtualizing
   them.

2.1.7.  Encryption of data-plane connections

   When combining ACP and data-plane connectivity for availability and
   performance reasons, this too has an impact on security: When using
   the ACP, the traffic will be mostly encryption protected, especially
   when considering the above described use of AN application devices.
   If instead the data-plane is used, then this is not the case anymore
   unless it is done by the application.

   The simplest solution for this problem exists when using AN capable
   NMS hosts, because in that case the communicating AN capable NMS host
   and the AN network device have certificates through the AN enrollment
   process that they can mutually trust (same AN domain).  In result,
   data-plane connectivity that does support this can simply leverage
   TLS/dTLS with mutual AN-domain certificate authentication - and does
   not incur new key management.

   If this automatic security benefit is seen as most important, but a
   "full" ACP stack into the NMS host is unfeasible, then it would still
   be possible to design a stripped down version of AN functionality for
   such NOC hosts that only provides enrollment of the NOC host into the
   AN domain to the extend that the host receives an AN domain
   certificate, but without directly participating in the ACP
   afterwards.  Instead, the host would just leverage TLS/dTLS using its
   AN certificate via the data-plane with AN network devices as well as

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 12]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   indirectly via the ACP with the above mentioned in-NOC network edge
   connectivity into the ACP.

   When using the ACP itself, TLS/dTLS for the transport layer between
   NMS hosts and network device is somewhat of a double price to pay
   (ACP also encrypts) and could potentially be optimized away, but
   given the assumed lower performance of the ACP, it seems that this is
   an unnecessary optimization.

2.1.8.  Long term direction of the solution

   If we consider what potentially could be the most lightweight and
   autonomic long term solution based on the technologies described
   above, we see the following direction:

   1.  NMS hosts should at least support IPv6.  IPv4/IPv6 NAT in the
       network to enable use of ACP is long term undesirable.  Having
       IPv4 only applications automatically leverage IPv6 connectivity
       via host-stack options is likely non-feasible (NOTE: this has
       still to be vetted more).

   2.  Build the ACP as a lightweight application for NMS hosts so ACP
       extends all the way into the actual NMS hosts.

   3.  Leverage and as necessary enhance MP-TCP with automatic dual-
       connectivity: If the MP-TCP unaware application is using ACP
       connectivity, the policies used should add sub-flow(s) via the
       data-plane and prefer them.

   4.  Consider how to best map NMS host desires to underlying transport
       mechanisms: With the above mentioned 3 points, not all options
       are covered.  Depending on the OAM operation, one may still want
       only ACP, only data-plane, or automatically prefer one over the
       other and/or use the ACP with low performance or high-performance
       (for emergency OAM actions such as countering DDoS).  It is as of
       today not clear what the simplest set of tools is to enable
       explicitly the choice of desired behavior of each OAM operations.
       The use of the above mentioned DNS and MP-TCP mechanisms is a
       start, but this will require additional thoughts.  This is likely
       a specific case of the more generic scope of TAPS.

2.2.  Stable connectivity for distributed network/OAM functions

   The ANI (ACP, Bootstrap, GRASP) can provide via the GRASP protocol
   common direct-neighbor discovery and capability negotiation (GRASP
   via ACP and/or data-plane) and stable and secure connectivity for
   functions running distributed in network devices (GRASP via ACP).  It
   can therefore eliminate the need to re-implement similar functions in

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 13]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   each distributed function in the network.  Today, every distributed
   protocol does this with functional elements usually called "Hello"
   mechanisms and with often protocol specific security mechanisms.

   KARP (Keying and Authentication for Routing Protocols, see [RFC6518])
   has tried to start provide common directions and therefore reduce the
   re-invention of at least some of the security aspects, but it only
   covers routing-protocols and it is unclear how well it applicable to
   a potentially wider range of network distributed agents such as those
   performing distributed OAM functions.  The ACP can help in these
   cases.

3.  Security Considerations

   In this section, we discuss only security considerations not covered
   in the appropriate sub-sections of the solutions described.

   Even though ACPs are meant to be isolated, explicit operator
   misconfiguration to connect to insecure OAM equipment and/or bugs in
   ACP devices may cause leakage into places where it is not expected.
   Mergers/Aquisitions and other complex network reconfigurations
   affecting the NOC are typical examples.

   ULA addressing as proposed in this document is preferred over
   globally reachable addresses because it is not routed in the global
   Internet and will therefore be subject to more filtering even in
   places where specific ULA addresses are being used.

   Randomn ULA addressing provides more than sufficient protection
   against address collision even though there is no central assignment
   authority.  This is helped by the expectation, that ACPs are never
   expected to connect all together, but only few ACPs may ever need to
   connect together, eg: when mergers and aquisitions occur.

   If packets with unexpected ULA addresses are seen and one expects
   them to be from another networks ACP from which they leaked, then
   some form of ULA prefix registrastion (not allocation) can be
   beneficial.  Some voluntary registries exist, for example
   https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/, although none of them is
   preferrable because of being operated by some recognized authority.
   If an operator would want to make its ULA prefix known, it might need
   to register it with multiple existing registries.

   ULA Centrally assigned ULA addresses (ULA-C) was an attempt to
   introduce centralized registration of randomly assigned addresses and
   potentially even carve out a different ULA prefix for such addresses.
   This proposal is currently not proceeding, and it is questionable

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 14]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   whether the stable connectivity use case provides sufficient
   motivation to revive this effort.

   Using current registration options implies that there will not be
   reverse DNS mapping for ACP addresses.  For that one will have to
   rely on looking up the unknown/unexpected network prefix in the
   registry registry to determine the owner of these addresses.

   Reverse DNS resolution may be beneficial for specific already
   deployed insecure legacy protocols on NOC OAM systems that intend to
   communicate via the ACP (eg: TFTP) and leverages reverse-DNS for
   authentication.  Given how the ACP provides path security except
   potentially for the last-hop in the NOC, the ACP does make it easier
   to extend the lifespan of such protocols in a secure fashion as far
   to just the transport is concerned.  The ACP does not make reverse
   DNS lookup a secure authentication method though.  Any current and
   future protocols must rely on secure end-to-end communications (TLD,
   dTLS) and identification and authentication via the certificates
   assigned to both ends.  This is enabled by the certificate mechanisms
   of the ACP.

   If DNS and especially reverse DNS are set up, then it should be set
   up in an automated fashion, linked to the autonomic registrar backend
   so that the DNS and reverse DNS records are actually derived from the
   subject name elements of the ACP device certificates in the same way
   as the autonomic devices themselves will derive their ULA addresses
   from their certificates to ensure correct and consistent DNS entries.

   If an operator feels that reverse DNS records are beneficial to its
   own operations but that they should not be made available publically
   for "security" by concealment reasons, then the case of ACP DNS
   entries is probably one of the least problematic use cases for split-
   DNS: The ACP DNS names are only needed for the NMS hosts intending to
   use the ACP - but not network wide across the enterprise.

4.  No IPv4 for ACP

   The ACP is targeted to be IPv6 only, and the prior explanations in
   this document show that this can lead to some complexity when having
   to connect IPv4 only NOC solutions, and that it will be impossible to
   leverage the ACP when the OAM agents on an ACP network device do not
   support IPv6.  Therefore, the question was raised whether the ACP
   should optionally also support IPv4.

   The decision not to include IPv4 for ACP as something that is
   considered in the use cases in this document is because of the
   following reasons:

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 15]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   In SP networks that have started to support IPv6, often the next
   planned step is to consider moving out IPv4 from a native transport
   as just a service on the edge.  There is no benefit/need for multiple
   parallel transport families within the network, and standardizing on
   one reduces OPEX and improves reliability.  This evolution in the
   data plane makes it highly unlikely that investing development cycles
   into IPv4 support for ACP will have a longer term benefit or enough
   critical short-term use-cases.  Support for only IPv4 for ACP is
   purely a strategic choice to focus on the known important long term
   goals.

   In other type of networks as well, we think that efforts to support
   autonomic networking is better spent in ensuring that one address
   family will be support so all use cases will long-term work with it,
   instead of duplicating effort into IPv4.  Especially because auto-
   addressing for the ACP with IPv4 would be more ecomplex than in IPv6
   due to the IPv4 addressing space.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests no action by IANA.

6.  Acknowledgements

   This work originated from an Autonomic Networking project at cisco
   Systems, which started in early 2010 including customers involved in
   the design and early testing.  Many people contributed to the aspects
   described in this document, including in alphabetical order: BL
   Balaji, Steinthor Bjarnason, Yves Herthoghs, Sebastian Meissner, Ravi
   Kumar Vadapalli.  The author would also like to thank Michael
   Richardson, James Woodyatt and Brian Carpenter for their review and
   comments.  Special thanks to Sheng Jiang for his thorough review.

7.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove]

      03: Integrated fixed from Shepherd review (Sheng Jiang).

      01: Refresh timeout.  Stable document, change in author
      association.

      01: Refresh timeout.  Stable document, no changes.

      00: Changed title/dates.

      individual-02: Updated references.

      individual-03: Modified ULA text to not suggest ULA-C as much
      better anymore, but still mention it.

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 16]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

      individual-02: Added explanation why no IPv4 for ACP.

      individual-01: Added security section discussing the role of
      address prefix selection and DNS for ACP.  Title change to
      emphasize focus on OAM.  Expanded abstract.

      individual-00: Initial version.

8.  References

   [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane]
              Behringer, M., Eckert, T., and S. Bjarnason, "An Autonomic
              Control Plane", draft-ietf-anima-autonomic-control-
              plane-06 (work in progress), March 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra]
              Pritikin, M., Richardson, M., Behringer, M., Bjarnason,
              S., and K. Watsen, "Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key
              Infrastructures (BRSKI)", draft-ietf-anima-bootstrapping-
              keyinfra-06 (work in progress), May 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-grasp]
              Bormann, C., Carpenter, B., and B. Liu, "A Generic
              Autonomic Signaling Protocol (GRASP)", draft-ietf-anima-
              grasp-14 (work in progress), July 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-reference-model]
              Behringer, M., Carpenter, B., Eckert, T., Ciavaglia, L.,
              Pierre, P., Liu, B., Nobre, J., and J. Strassner, "A
              Reference Model for Autonomic Networking", draft-ietf-
              anima-reference-model-04 (work in progress), July 2017.

   [RFC1034]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
              STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC1034, November 1987,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1034>.

   [RFC4193]  Hinden, R. and B. Haberman, "Unique Local IPv6 Unicast
              Addresses", RFC 4193, DOI 10.17487/RFC4193, October 2005,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4193>.

   [RFC6518]  Lebovitz, G. and M. Bhatia, "Keying and Authentication for
              Routing Protocols (KARP) Design Guidelines", RFC 6518,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6518, February 2012,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6518>.

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 17]
Internet-Draft         AN Stable Connectivity OAM              July 2017

   [RFC6824]  Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., and O. Bonaventure,
              "TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple
              Addresses", RFC 6824, DOI 10.17487/RFC6824, January 2013,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6824>.

   [RFC7575]  Behringer, M., Pritikin, M., Bjarnason, S., Clemm, A.,
              Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and L. Ciavaglia, "Autonomic
              Networking: Definitions and Design Goals", RFC 7575,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7575, June 2015,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7575>.

Authors' Addresses

   Toerless Eckert
   Futurewei Technologies Inc.
   2330 Central Expy
   Santa Clara  95050
   USA

   Email: tte+ietf@cs.fau.de

   Michael H. Behringer

   Email: michael.h.behringer@gmail.com

Eckert & Behringer       Expires January 4, 2018               [Page 18]