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Delay-based Metric Extension for the Babel Routing Protocol
draft-ietf-babel-rtt-extension-06

Document Type Active Internet-Draft (babel WG)
Authors Baptiste Jonglez, Juliusz Chroboczek
Last updated 2024-04-16
Replaces draft-jonglez-babel-rtt-extension
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Intended RFC status Proposed Standard
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Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2023-08-13
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Consensus boilerplate Yes
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Needs a YES. Has enough positions to pass.
Responsible AD Gunter Van de Velde
Send notices to Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3@gmail.com>
IANA IANA review state Version Changed - Review Needed
draft-ietf-babel-rtt-extension-06
Network Working Group                                         B. Jonglez
Internet-Draft                                                  ENS Lyon
Intended status: Standards Track                           J. Chroboczek
Expires: 18 October 2024                     IRIF, Université Paris Cité
                                                           16 April 2024

      Delay-based Metric Extension for the Babel Routing Protocol
                   draft-ietf-babel-rtt-extension-06

Abstract

   This document defines an extension to the Babel routing protocol that
   measures the round-trip time (RTT) between routers and makes it
   possible to prefer lower latency links over higher latency ones.

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 https://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 18 October 2024.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 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
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  applicability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Specification of Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  RTT sampling  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Data structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Protocol operation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.3.  Wrap-around and node restart  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.4.  Implementation notes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  RTT-based route selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Smoothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.2.  Cost computation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.3.  Hysteresis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   5.  Backwards and forwards compatibility  . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   6.  Packet format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     6.1.  Timestamp sub-TLV in Hello TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     6.2.  Timestamp sub-TLV in IHU TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   9.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14

1.  Introduction

   The Babel routing protocol [RFC8966] does not mandate a specific
   algorithm for computing metrics; existing implementations use a
   packet-loss based metric on wireless links and a simple hop-count
   metric on all other types of links.  While this strategy works
   reasonably well in many networks, it fails to select reasonable
   routes in some topologies involving tunnels or VPNs.

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                      +------------+
                      | A (Paris)  +---------------+
                      +------------+                \
                     /                               \
                    /                                 \
                   /                                   \
     +------------+                                     +------------+
     | B  (Paris) |                                     | C  (Tokyo) |
     +------------+                                     +------------+
                   \                                   /
                    \                                 /
                     \                               /
                      +------------+                /
                      | D (Paris)  +---------------+
                      +------------+

                Figure 1: Four routers in a diamond topology

   Consider for example the topology described in Figure 1, with three
   routers A, B and D located in Paris and a fourth router C located in
   Tokyo, connected through tunnels in a diamond topology.  When routing
   traffic from A to D, it is obviously preferable to use the local
   route through B, as this is likely to provide better service quality
   and lower monetary cost than the distant route through C.  However,
   the existing implementations of Babel consider both routes as having
   the same metric, and will therefore route the traffic through C in
   roughly half the cases.

   In the first part of this document (Section 3), we specify an
   extension to the Babel routing protocol that produces a sequence of
   accurate measurements of the round-trip time (RTT) between two Babel
   neighbours.  These measurements are not directly usable as an input
   to Babel's route selection procedure, since they tend to be noisy and
   to cause a negative feedback loop, which might give rise to frequent
   oscillations.  In a second part (Section 4), we define an algorithm
   that maps the sequence of RTT samples to a link cost that can be used
   for route selection.

1.1.  applicability

   The extension defined in Section 3 provides a sequence of accurate
   but potentially noisy RTT samples.  Since the round-trip time is a
   symmetric measure of delay, this protocol is only applicable in
   environments where the symmetric delay is a good predictor of whether
   a link should be taken by routing traffic; this is the case in most
   networks known to the authors, but might not necessarily be the case
   in networks built over exotic link technologies.

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   The extension makes minimal requirements on the nodes.  In
   particular, it does not assume synchronised clocks, but only requires
   that clock drift be negligible during the time interval between two
   Hello TLVs.  Since that is on the order of a few seconds, this
   requirement is met even with cheap crystal oscillators such as the
   ones used in consumer electronics.

   The algorithm defined in Section 4 makes a number of assumptions
   about the network.  The assumption with most severe consequences is
   that all links below a certain RTT (rtt-min in Section 4.2) can be
   grouped in a single category of "good" links.  While this is the case
   in wide-area overlay networks, it makes the algorithm inapplicable in
   networks where distinguishing between low-latency links is important.

   There are other assumptions, but they are less likely to limit the
   algorithm's applicability.  The algorithm assumes that all links
   above a certain RTT (rtt-max in Section 4.2) can be assumed to be
   equally bad, and will only be used as a last resort.  In addition, in
   order to avoid oscillations, the algorithm is designed to react
   slowly to RTT variations, thus causing suboptimal routing for seconds
   or even minutes after an RTT change; while this is a desirable
   property in fixed networks, as it avoid excessive route oscillations,
   it might be an issue with networks with high rates of node mobility.

2.  Specification of Requirements

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  RTT sampling

3.1.  Data structures

   We assume that every Babel speaker maintains a local clock, that
   counts microseconds from an arbitrary origin.  We do not assume that
   clocks are synchronised: clocks local to distinct nodes need not
   share a common origin.  The protocol will eventually recover if the
   clock is stepped, so clocks need not persist across node reboots.

   Every Babel speaker maintains a Neighbour Table, described in
   Section 3.2.4 of [RFC8966].  This extension extends every entry in
   the Neighbour Table with the following data:

   *  the Origin Timestamp, a 32-bit timestamp (modulo 2^32) according
      to the neighbour's clock;

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   *  the Receive Timestamp, a 32-bit timestamp (modulo 2^32) according
      to the local clock.

   Both values are initially undefined.

3.2.  Protocol operation

   The RTT to a neighbour is estimated using an algorithm due to Mills
   [MILLS], originally developed for the HELLO routing protocol and
   later used in NTP [NTP].

   A Babel speaker periodically sends Hello messages to its neighbours
   (Section 3.4.1 of [RFC8966]).  Additionally, it occasionally sends a
   set of IHU ("I Heard You") messages, at most one per neighbour
   (Section 3.4.2 of [RFC8966]).

      A          B
        |      |
     t1 +      |
        |\     |
        | \    |
        |  \   |  Hello(t1)
        |   \  |
        |    \ |
        |     \|
        |      + t1'
        |      |
        |      |               RTT = (t2 - t1) - (t2' - t1')
        |      |
        |      + t2'
        |     /|
        |    / |
        |   /  |
        |  /   |  Hello(t2')
        | /    |  IHU(t1, t1')
        |/     |
     t2 +      |
        |      |
        v      v

                         Figure 2: Mill's algorithm

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   In order to enable the computation of RTTs, a node A MUST include in
   every Hello that it sends a timestamp t1 (according to A's local
   clock), as illustrated in Figure 2.  When a node B receives A's
   timestamped Hello, it computes the time t1' at which the Hello was
   received (according to B's local clock).  It then MUST record the
   value t1 in the Origin Timestamp field of the Neighbour Table entry
   corresponding to A, and the value t1' in the Receive Timestamp field
   of the Neighbour Table entry.

   When B sends an IHU to A, it checks whether both timestamps are
   defined in the Neighbour Table.  If that is the case, then it MUST
   ensure that its IHU TLV is sent in a packet that also contains a
   timestamped Hello TLV (either a normally scheduled Hello, or an
   unscheduled Hello, see Section 3.4.1 of [RFC8966]).  It MUST include
   in the IHU both the Origin Timestamp and the Receive Timestamp stored
   in the Neighbour Table.

   Upon receiving B's packet, A computes the time t2 (according to its
   local clock) at which it was received.  A MUST then verify that it
   contains both a Hello TLV with timestamp t2' and an IHU TLV with two
   timestamps t1 and t1'.  If that is the case, A computes the value
   RTT = (t2 - t1) - (t2' - t1') (where all computations are done modulo
   2^32), which is a measurement of the RTT between A and B.  (A then
   stores the values t2' and t2 in its Neighbour Table, as B did
   before.)

   This algorithm has a number of desirable properties.  First, the
   algorithm is symmetric: A and B use the same procedures for
   timestamping packets and computing RTT samples, and both nodes
   produce one RTT sample for each received (Hello, IHU) pair.  Second,
   since there is no requirement that t1' and t2' be equal, the protocol
   is asynchronous: the only change to Babel's message scheduling is the
   requirement that a packet containing an IHU also contain a Hello.
   Third, since it only ever computes differences of timestamps
   according to a single clock, it does not require synchronised clocks.
   Fourth, it requires very little additional state: a node only needs
   to store the two timestamps associated with the last hello received
   from each neighbour.  Finally, since it only requires piggybacking
   one or two timestamps on each Hello and IHU TLV, it makes efficient
   use of network resources.

   In principle, this algorithm is inaccurate in the presence of clock
   drift (i.e., when A's and B's clocks are running at different
   frequencies).  However, t2' - t1' is usually on the order of a few
   seconds, and significant clock drift is unlikely to happen at that
   time scale.

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   In order for RTT values to be consistent between implementations,
   timestamps need to be computed at roughly the same point in the
   network stack.  Transmit timestamps SHOULD be computed just before
   the packet is passed to the network stack (i.e., before it is
   subjected to any queueing delays), and receive timestamps SHOULD be
   computed just after the packet is received from the network stack.

3.3.  Wrap-around and node restart

   Timestamp values are a count of microseconds stored as a 32-bit
   unsigned integer; thus, they wrap around every 71 minutes or so.
   What is more, a node may occasionally reboot and restart its clock at
   an arbitrary origin.  For these reasons, very old timestamps or
   nonsensical timestamps MUST NOT be used to yield RTT samples.

   The following algorithm can be used to achieve that.  When a node
   receives a packet containing a Hello and an IHU, it compares the
   current local time t2 with the Origin Timestamp contained in the IHU;
   if the Origin Timestamp appears to be in the future, or if it is in
   the past by more than a time T (the value T = 3 minutes is
   recommended), then the timestamps are still recorded in the neighbour
   table, but are not used for computation of an RTT sample.

   Similary, the node compares the Hello's timestamp with the Receive
   Timestamp recorded in the Neighbour Table; if the Hello's timestamp
   appears to be older than the recorded timestamp, or if it appears to
   be more recent by an interval larger than the value T, then the
   timestamps are not used for computation of an RTT sample.

   Finally, in order to avoid using stale data, if a node does not
   successfully compute an RTT sample for a given neighbour for a time
   T2, it SHOULD discard any RTT-related state for that neighbour (such
   as the smoothed RTT, see Section 4.1).  The default value
   T2 = 3 minutes is RECOMMENDED.

3.4.  Implementation notes

   The accuracy of the computed RTT samples depends on Transmit
   Timestamps being computed as late as possible before a packet
   containing a Hello TLV is passed to the network stack, and Receive
   Timestamps being computed as early as possible after reception of a
   packet containing a (Hello, IHU) pair.  We have found the following
   implementation strategy to be useful.

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   When a Hello TLV is buffered for transmission, we insert a PadN sub-
   TLV (Section 4.7.2 of [RFC8966]) with a length of 4 octets within the
   TLV.  When the packet is ready to be sent, we check whether it
   contains a 4-octet PadN sub-TLV; if that's the case, we overwrite the
   PadN sub-TLV with a Timestamp sub-TLV with the current time, and send
   out the packet.

   Conversely, when a packet is received, we immediately compute the
   current time and record it with the received packet.  We then process
   the packet as usual, and use the recorded timestamp in order to
   compute an RTT sample.

   The protocol is designed to survive the clock being reset when a node
   reboots; on POSIX systems, this makes it possible to use the
   CLOCK_MONOTONIC clock for computing timestamps.  If CLOCK_MONOTONIC
   is not available, CLOCK_REALTIME may be used, since the protocol is
   able to survive the clock being occasionally stepped.

4.  RTT-based route selection

   The protocol described above yields a series of RTT samples.  While
   these samples are fairly accurate, they are not directly usable as an
   input to the route selection procedure, for at least three reasons.

   First of all, in the presence of bursty traffic, routers experience
   transient congestion, which causes occasional spikes in the measured
   RTT.  Thus, the RTT signal may be noisy, and requires smoothing
   before it can be used for route selection.

   Second, using the RTT signal for route selection gives rise to a
   negative feedback loop: when a route has a low RTT, it is deemed to
   be more desirable, which causes it to be used for more data traffic,
   which may lead to congestion, which in turn increases the RTT.
   Without some form of hysteresis, using RTT for route selection would
   lead to oscillations between parallel routes, which would lead to
   packet reordering and negatively affect upper-layer protocols (such
   as TCP).

   Third, even in the absence of congestion, the RTT tends to exhibit
   some variation.  If the RTTs of two parallel routes oscillate around
   a common value, using the RTT as input to route selection will cause
   frequent routing oscillations, which, again, indicates the need for
   some form of hysteresis.

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   In this section, we describe an algorithm that integrates smoothing
   and hysteresis and has been shown to behave well both in simulation
   and experimentally over the Internet [DELAY-BASED], and is
   RECOMMENDED when RTT information is being used for route selection.
   The algorithm is structured as follows:

   *  the RTT values are first smoothed in order to avoid instabilities
      due to outliers (Section 4.1);

   *  the resulting smoothed samples are mapped to a cost using a
      bounded, non-linear mapping, which avoids instabilities at the
      lower and at the upper end of the RTT range (Section 4.2);

   *  finally, a hysteresis filter is applied in order to limit the
      amount of oscillation in the middle of the RTT range
      (Section 4.3).

4.1.  Smoothing

   The RTT samples provided by Mills' algorithm are fairly accurate, but
   noisy: experiments indicate the occasional presence of individual
   samples that are much larger than the expected value.  Thus, some
   form of smoothing SHOULD be applied in order to avoid instabilities
   due to occasional outliers.

   An implementation MAY use the exponential average algorithm, which is
   simple to implement and appears to yield good results in practice
   [DELAY-BASED].  The algorithm is parameterised by a constant α, where
   0 < α < 1, which controls the amount of smoothing being applied.  Fr
   each neighbour, it maintains a smoothed value RTT which is initially
   undefined.  When the first sample RTT0 is measured, the smoothed
   value is set to the value of RTT0.  At each new sample RTTn, the
   smoothed value is set to a weighted average of the previous smoothed
   value and the new sample:

       RTT := α RTT + (1 - α) RTTn

   The smoothing constant α SHOULD be between 0.8 and 0.9; the value
   0.836 is the RECOMMENDED default.

4.2.  Cost computation

   The smoothed RTT value obtained in the previous step needs to be
   mapped to a link cost, suitable for input to the metric computation
   procedure (Section 3.5.2 of [RFC8966]).  Obviously, the mapping
   should be monotonic (larger RTTs imply larger costs).  In addition,
   the mapping should be constant beyond a certain value (all very bad
   links are equally bad), so that congested links do not contribute to

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   routing instability.  The mapping should also be constant around 0,
   so that small oscillations in the RTT of low-RTT links do not
   contribute to routing instability.

     cost
       ^
       |
       |
       |                           C + max-rtt-penalty
       |                       +---------------------------
       |                      /.
       |                     / .
       |                    /  .
       |                   /   .
       |                  /    .
       |                 /     .
       |                /      .
       |               /       .
       |              /        .
       |             /         .
     C +------------+          .
       |            .          .
       |            .          .
       |            .          .
       |            .          .
     0 +---------------------------------------------------->
       0         rtt-min    rtt-max                          RTT

                  Figure 3: Mapping from RTT to link cost

   Implementations SHOULD use the mapping described in figure Figure 3,
   which is parameterised by three parameters rtt-min, rtt-max, and max-
   rtt-penalty.  For RTT values below rtt-min, the link cost is just the
   nominal cost C of a single hop.  Between rtt-min and rtt-max, the
   cost increases linearly; above rtt-max, the constant value max-rtt-
   penalty is added to the nominal cost.

   The value rtt-min should be slightly larger than the RTT of a local,
   uncongested link.  The value rtt-max should be the RTT above which a
   link should be avoided if possible, either because it is a long-
   distance link or because it is congested; reducing the value of rtt-
   max improves stability, but prevents the protocol from discriminating
   between high-latency links.  As to max-rtt-penalty, it controls how
   much the protocol will penalise long-distance links.  The default
   values rtt-min = 10ms, rtt-max = 120ms, and max-rtt-penalty = 150 are
   RECOMMENDED.

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4.3.  Hysteresis

   Even after applying a bounded mapping from smoothed RTT to a cost
   value, the cost may fluctuate when a link's RTT is between rtt-min
   and rtt-max.  Implementations SHOULD use a robust hysteresis
   algorithm, such as the one described in Appendix A.3 of [RFC8966].

5.  Backwards and forwards compatibility

   This protocol extension stores the data that it requires within sub-
   TLVs of Babel's Hello and IHU TLVs.  As discussed in Appendix D of
   [RFC8966], implementations that do not understand this extension will
   silently ignore the sub-TLVs while parsing the rest of the TLVs that
   they contain.  In effect, this extension supports building hybrid
   networks consisting of extended and unextended routers, and while
   such networks might suffer from sub-optimal routing, they will not
   suffer from blackholes or routing loops.

   If a sub-TLV defined in this extension is longer than expected, the
   additional data is silently ignored.  This provision is made in order
   to allow a future version of this protocol to extend the packet
   format with additional data, for example high-precision or absolute
   timestamps.

6.  Packet format

   This extension defines the Timestamp sub-TLV whose Type field has
   value 3.  This sub-TLV can be contained within a Hello sub-TLV, in
   which case it carries a single timestamp, or within an IHU sub-TLV,
   in which case it carries two timestamps.

   Timestamps are encoded as 32-bit unsigned integers (modulo 2^32),
   expressed in units of one microsecond, counting from an arbitrary
   origin.  Timestamps wrap around every 4295 seconds, or rougly 71
   minutes (see also Section 3.3).

6.1.  Timestamp sub-TLV in Hello TLVs

   When contained within a Hello TLV, the Timestamp sub-TLV has the
   following format:

    0                   1                   2                   3
    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |   Type = 3    |    Length     |      Transmit timestamp       |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |          (continued)          |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

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   Fields:

   Type      Set to 3 to indicate a Timestamp sub-TLV.

   Length    The length of the body in octets, exclusive of the Type and
             Length fields.

   Transmit timestamp  The time at which the packet containing this sub-
             TLV was sent, according to the sender's clock.

   If the Length field is larger than the expected 4 octets, the sub-TLV
   MUST be processed normally (the first 4 octets are interpreted as
   described above), and any extra data contained in this sub-TLV MUST
   be silently ignored.  If the Length field is smaller than the
   expected 4 octets, then this sub-TLV MUST be ignored (and the
   remainder of the enclosing TLV processed as usual).

6.2.  Timestamp sub-TLV in IHU TLVs

   When contained in an IHU TLV, the Timestamp sub-TLV has the following
   format:

    0                   1                   2                   3
    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |   Type = 3    |    Length     |        Origin timestamp       |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |          (continued)          |        Receive timestamp      |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |          (continued)          |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   Fields:

   Type      Set to 3 to indicate a Timestamp sub-TLV.

   Length    The length of the body in octets, exclusive of the Type and
             Length fields.

   Origin timestamp  A copy of the transmit timestamp of the last
             Timestamp sub-TLV contained in a Hello TLV received from
             the node to which the enclosing IHU TLV applies.

   Receive timestamp  The time, according to the sender's clock, at
             which the last timestamped Hello TLV was received from the
             node to which the enclosing IHU TLV applies.

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   If the Length field is larger than the expected 8 octets, the sub-TLV
   MUST be processed normally (the first 8 octets are interpreted as
   described above), and any extra data contained in this sub-TLV MUST
   be silently ignored.  If the Length field is smaller than the
   expected 8 octets, then this sub-TLV MUST be ignored (and the
   remainder of the enclosing TLV processed as usual).

7.  IANA Considerations

   IANA has added the following entry to the "Babel Sub-TLV Types"
   registry:

                  +======+===========+=================+
                  | Type | Name      | Reference       |
                  +======+===========+=================+
                  | 3    | Timestamp | (this document) |
                  +------+-----------+-----------------+

                                 Table 1

8.  Security Considerations

   This extension adds additional timestamping data to two of the TLVs
   sent by a Babel router.  By broadcasting the value of a reasonably
   accurate local clock, they might make a node more susceptible to
   timing attacks.

   Broadcasting an accurate time raises privacy issues.  The timestamps
   used by this protocol have an arbitrary origin, and therefore do not
   leak a node's boot time or timezone.  However, having access to
   accurate timestamps could allow an attacker to determine the physical
   location of a node.  Nodes might avoid disclosure of location
   information by not including timestamp sub-TLVs in the TLVs that they
   send, which will cause their neighbours to fall back to hop-count
   routing.

9.  Acknowledgements

   The authors are indebted to Jean-Paul Smets, who prompted the
   investigation that originally lead to this protocol.  We are also
   grateful to Donald Eastlake, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen, Maria Matejka,
   David Schinazi, Pacal Thubert, Steffen Vogel, and Ondřej Zajiček.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

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   [RFC8966]  Chroboczek, J. and D. Schinazi, "The Babel Routing
              Protocol", RFC 8966, DOI 10.17487/RFC8966, January 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8966>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [DELAY-BASED]
              Jonglez, B. and J. Chroboczek, "A delay-based routing
              metric", March 2014.  Available online from
              http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3488

   [MILLS]    Mills, D., "DCN Local-Network Protocols", RFC 891,
              December 1983, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc891>.

   [NTP]      Mills, D., Martin, J., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch, "Network
              Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms
              Specification", RFC 5905, June 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5905>.

Authors' Addresses

   Baptiste Jonglez
   ENS Lyon
   France
   Email: baptiste.jonglez@ens-lyon.org

   Juliusz Chroboczek
   IRIF, Université Paris Cité
   Case 7014
   75205 Paris Cedex 13
   France
   Email: jch@irif.fr

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