Observe Notifications as CoAP Multicast Responses
draft-ietf-core-observe-multicast-notifications-10
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (core WG) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Marco Tiloca , Rikard Höglund , Christian Amsüss , Francesca Palombini | ||
| Last updated | 2024-10-21 | ||
| Replaces | draft-tiloca-core-observe-multicast-notifications | ||
| RFC stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
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draft-ietf-core-observe-multicast-notifications-10
CoRE Working Group M. Tiloca
Internet-Draft R. Höglund
Updates: 7252, 7641 (if approved) RISE AB
Intended status: Standards Track C. Amsüss
Expires: 24 April 2025
F. Palombini
Ericsson AB
21 October 2024
Observe Notifications as CoAP Multicast Responses
draft-ietf-core-observe-multicast-notifications-10
Abstract
The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) allows clients to
"observe" resources at a server, and receive notifications as unicast
responses upon changes of the resource state. In some use cases,
such as based on publish-subscribe, it would be convenient for the
server to send a single notification addressed to all the clients
observing a same target resource. This document updates RFC7252 and
RFC7641, and defines how a server sends observe notifications as
response messages over multicast, synchronizing all the observers of
a same resource on a same shared Token value. Besides, this document
defines how Group OSCORE can be used to protect multicast
notifications end-to-end between the server and the observer clients.
Discussion Venues
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Constrained RESTful
Environments Working Group mailing list (core@ietf.org), which is
archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/core/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/core-wg/observe-multicast-notifications.
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/.
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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 24 April 2025.
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
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. High-Level Overview of Available Variants . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Server-Side Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1. Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. Informative Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2.1. Transport-Specific Message Information . . . . . . . 12
4.2.2. Transport-Independent Message Information . . . . . . 16
4.3. Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.4. Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.5. Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5. Client-Side Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.1. Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.2. Informative Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.3. Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.4. Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6. Web Linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
8. Rough Counting of Clients in the Group Observation . . . . . 25
8.1. Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option . . . . . . . 25
8.2. Processing on the Client Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8.3. Processing on the Server Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
8.3.1. Request for Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
8.3.2. Collection of Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
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8.3.3. Processing of Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
8.4. Impact from Proxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
9. Protection of Multicast Notifications with Group OSCORE . . . 32
9.1. Signaling the OSCORE Group in the Informative Response . 33
9.2. Server-Side Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
9.2.1. Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
9.2.2. Informative Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
9.2.3. Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
9.2.4. Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9.3. Client-Side Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9.3.1. Informative Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9.3.2. Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
10. Example with Group OSCORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
11. Intermediaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
12. Intermediaries Together with End-to-End Security . . . . . . 45
12.1. Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option . . . . . . . . . . 46
12.2. Message Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
13. Informative Response Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
14. Transport Protocol Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
15. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
15.1. Unprotected Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
15.2. Protected Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
15.3. Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option . . . . . . . . . . 52
16. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
16.1. Media Type Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
16.2. CoAP Content-Formats Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
16.3. CoAP Option Numbers Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
16.4. Informative Response Parameters Registry . . . . . . . . 55
16.5. CoAP Transport Information Registry . . . . . . . . . . 56
16.6. Target Attributes Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
16.7. Expert Review Instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
17. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
17.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
17.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Appendix A. Different Sources for Group Observation Data . . . . 62
A.1. Topic Discovery in Publish-Subscribe Settings . . . . . . 63
A.2. Introspection at the Multicast Notification Sender . . . 64
Appendix B. Pseudo-Code for Rough Counting of Clients . . . . . 65
B.1. Client Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
B.2. Client Side - Optimized Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
B.3. Server Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Appendix C. OSCORE Group Self-Managed by the Server . . . . . . 69
Appendix D. Phantom Request as Deterministic Request . . . . . . 73
Appendix E. Example with a Proxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Appendix F. Example with a Proxy and Group OSCORE . . . . . . . 79
Appendix G. Example with a Proxy and Deterministic Requests . . 85
G.1. Assumptions and Walkthrough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
G.2. Message Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
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Appendix H. Document Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
H.1. Version -09 to -10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
H.2. Version -08 to -09 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
H.3. Version -07 to -08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
H.4. Version -06 to -07 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
H.5. Version -05 to -06 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
H.6. Version -04 to -05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
H.7. Version -03 to -04 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
H.8. Version -02 to -03 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
H.9. Version -01 to -02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
H.10. Version -00 to -01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
1. Introduction
The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) [RFC7252] has been
extended with a number of mechanisms, including resource Observation
[RFC7641]. This enables CoAP clients to register at a CoAP server as
"observers" of a resource, and hence being automatically notified
with an unsolicited response upon changes of the resource state.
CoAP supports group communication [I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis],
e.g., over IP multicast. This includes support for Observe
registration requests over multicast, in order for clients to
efficiently register as observers of a resource hosted at multiple
servers.
However, in a number of use cases, using multicast messages for
responses would also be desirable. That is, it would be useful that
a server sends observe notifications for a same target resource to
multiple observers as responses over IP multicast.
For instance, in CoAP publish-subscribe [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub],
multiple clients can subscribe to a topic, by observing the related
resource hosted at the responsible broker. When a new value is
published on that topic, it would be convenient for the broker to
send a single multicast notification at once, to all the subscriber
clients observing that topic.
A different use case concerns clients observing a same registration
resource at the CoRE Resource Directory [RFC9176]. For example,
multiple clients can benefit of observation for discovering (to-be-
created) groups that use the security protocol Group Object Security
for Constrained RESTful Environments (Group OSCORE)
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], by retrieving from the Resource
Directory updated links and descriptions to join those groups through
the respective Group Manager [I-D.tiloca-core-oscore-discovery].
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More in general, multicast notifications would be beneficial whenever
several CoAP clients observe a same target resource at a CoAP server,
and can be all notified at once by means of a single response
message. However, CoAP does not originally define response messages
addressed to multiple clients, e.g., over IP multicast. This
document fills this gap and provides the following twofold
contribution.
First, it updates [RFC7252] and [RFC7641], by defining a method to
deliver Observe notifications as CoAP responses addressed to multiple
clients, e.g., over IP multicast. In particular, the group of
potential observers entrusts the server to manage the Token space for
multicast notifications. Building on that, the server provides all
the observers of a target resource with the same Token value to bind
to their own observation, by sending a unicast informative response
to each observer client. That Token value is then used in every
multicast notification for the target resource under that
observation.
Second, this document defines how to use Group OSCORE
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] to protect multicast notifications
end-to-end between the server and the observer clients. This is also
achieved by means of the unicast informative response mentioned
above, which additionally includes parameter values used by the
server to protect every multicast notification for the target
resource by using Group OSCORE. This provides a secure binding
between each of such notifications and the observation of each of the
clients.
1.1. Terminology
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.
Readers are expected to be familiar with terms and concepts described
in CoAP [RFC7252], group communication for CoAP
[I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis], Observe [RFC7641], Concise Data
Definition Language (CDDL) [RFC8610], Concise Binary Object
Representation (CBOR) [RFC8949], Object Security for Constrained
RESTful Environments (OSCORE) [RFC8613], Group OSCORE
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], and Constrained Resource
Identifiers (CRIs) [I-D.ietf-core-href].
This document additionally defines the following terminology.
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* Traditional observation. A resource observation associated with a
single observer client, as defined in [RFC7641].
* Group observation. A resource observation associated with a group
of clients. The server sends notifications for the group-observed
resource over IP multicast to all the observer clients.
* Phantom request. The CoAP request message that the server would
have received to start a group observation on one of its
resources. A phantom request is generated inside the server and
does not hit the wire.
* Informative response. A CoAP response message that the server
sends to a given client via unicast, providing the client with
information on a group observation.
2. Prerequisites
In order to use multicast notifications as defined in this document,
the following prerequisites have to be fulfilled.
* The server and the clients need to be on a network on which
multicast notifications can reach a sufficiently large portion of
the clients. These may leverage intermediaries such as proxies,
if some clients are not able to directly listen to multicast
traffic.
* The server needs to be provisioned with multicast addresses whose
token space is placed under its control. On general purpose
networks, unmanaged multicast addresses such as "All CoAP Nodes"
(see Section 12.8 of [RFC7252]) are not suitable for this purpose.
* The server and the clients need to agree out-of-band that
multicast notifications may be used.
This document does not describe a way for a client to influence
the server's decision to start group observations and thus to use
multicast notifications. This is done on purpose.
That is, the method specified in this document is expected to be
used in situations where sending individual notifications is not
feasible, or is not preferred beyond a certain number of clients
observing a target resource.
If applications arise where a negotiation between the clients and
the server does make sense, those applications are welcome to
specify additional means for clients to opt in for receiving
multicast notifications.
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3. High-Level Overview of Available Variants
The method defined in this document fundamentally enables a server to
set up a group observation. This is associated with a phantom
observation request generated by the server, and to which the
multicast notifications of the group observation are bound.
While the server can provide the phantom request in question to the
interested clients as they reach out for registering to the group
observation, the server may alternatively distribute the phantom
request in advance by alternative means (e.g., see Appendix A).
Clients that have already retrieved the phantom request can
immediately start listening to multicast notifications if able to
directly do so, or instead instruct an assisting intermediary such as
a proxy to do that on their behalf.
The following provides an overview of the available variants to
enforce a group observation, depending on whether a proxy is deployed
or not, and on whether exchanged messages are protected end-to-end
between the observer clients and the server.
* Without proxy - This is the simplest network configuration, where
the clients participating in the group observation are capable to
listen to multicast traffic. In such a setup, the clients
directly receive multicast notifications from the server.
- Without end-to-end security - Messages pertaining to the group
observation are not protected. This basic case is defined in
Section 4 and Section 5 from the server and the client side,
respectively. An example is provided in Section 7.
- With end-to-end security - Messages pertaining to the group
observation are protected end-to-end between the clients and
the server, by using the security protocol Group OSCORE
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]. This case is defined in
Section 9. An example is provided in Section 10.
If the participating endpoints using Group OSCORE also support
the concept of Deterministic Client
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore], then the possible early
distribution of the phantom request can specifically make
available its smaller, plain version. Then, all the clients
are able to compute the same protected phantom request to use
(see Appendix D).
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* With proxy - This network configuration is expected in case (some
of) the clients participating in the group observation are not
capable to listen to multicast traffic. In such a setup, the
proxy directly receives multicast notifications from the server,
and relays them back to the clients.
- Without end-to-end security - Messages pertaining to the group
observation are not protected end-to-end between the clients
and the server. This basic case is defined in Section 11. An
example is provided in Appendix E.
- With end-to-end security - Messages pertaining to the group
observation are protected end-to-end between the clients and
the server, by using the security protocol Group OSCORE
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]. In particular, the clients
are required to separately provide the proxy with the obtained
phantom request, thus enabling the proxy to receive the
multicast notifications from the server. This case is defined
in Section 12. An example is provided in Appendix F.
If the participating endpoints using Group OSCORE also support
the concept of Deterministic Client
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore], the same advantages
mentioned above for the case without a proxy applies (see
Appendix D). In addition, this allows for a more efficient
setup and enforcement of the group observation, by reducing the
amount of message exchanges and allowing the proxy to
effectively serve protected multicast notifications from its
cache. An example is provided in Appendix G.2.
4. Server-Side Requirements
The server can, at any time, start a group observation on one of its
resources. Practically, the server may want to do that under the
following circumstances.
* In the absence of observations for the target resource, the server
receives a registration request from a first client wishing to
start a traditional observation on that resource.
* When a certain amount of traditional observations has been
established on the target resource, the server decides to make the
corresponding observer clients part of a group observation on that
resource.
The server maintains an observer counter for each group observation
to a target resource, as a rough estimation of the observers actively
taking part in the group observation.
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The server initializes the counter to 0 when starting the group
observation, and increments it after a new client starts taking part
in that group observation. Also, the server should keep the counter
up-to-date over time, for instance by using the method described in
Section 8. This allows the server to possibly terminate a group
observation in case, at some point in time, not enough clients are
estimated to be still active and interested.
4.1. Request
Assuming that the server is reachable at the address SRV_ADDR and
port number SRV_PORT, the server starts a group observation on one of
its resources as defined below. The server intends to send multicast
notifications for the target resource to the multicast IP address
GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT.
1. The server builds a phantom observation request, i.e., a GET
request with an Observe Option set to 0 (register).
2. The server selects an available value T, from the Token space of
a CoAP endpoint used for messages that have:
* As source address and port number, the IP multicast address
GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT.
* As destination address and port number, the server address
SRV_ADDR and port number SRV_PORT, intended for accessing the
target resource.
This Token space is under exclusive control of the server.
3. The server processes the phantom observation request above,
without transmitting it on the wire. The request is addressed to
the resource for which the server wants to start the group
observation, as if sent by the group of observers, i.e., with
GRP_ADDR as source address and GRP_PORT as source port.
4. Upon processing the self-generated phantom registration request,
the server interprets it as an observe registration received from
the group of potential observer clients. In particular, from
then on, the server MUST use T as its own local Token value
associated with that observation, with respect to the (previous
hop towards the) clients.
5. The server does not immediately respond to the phantom
observation request with a multicast notification sent on the
wire. The server stores the phantom observation request as is,
throughout the lifetime of the group observation.
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6. The server builds a CoAP response message INIT_NOTIF as initial
multicast notification for the target resource, in response to
the phantom observation request. This message is formatted as
other multicast notifications (see Section 4.3) and MUST include
the current representation of the target resource as payload.
The server stores the message INIT_NOTIF and does not transmit
it. The server considers this message as the latest multicast
notification for the target resource, until it transmits a new
multicast notification for that resource as a CoAP message on the
wire, after which the server deletes the message INIT_NOTIF.
4.2. Informative Response
After having started a group observation on a target resource, the
server proceeds as follows.
For each traditional observation ongoing on the target resource, the
server MAY cancel that observation. Then, the server considers the
corresponding clients as now taking part in the group observation,
for which it increases the corresponding observer counter
accordingly.
The server sends to each of such clients an informative response
message, encoded as a unicast response with response code 5.03
(Service Unavailable). As per [RFC7641], such a response does not
include an Observe Option. The response MUST be Confirmable and MUST
NOT encode link-local addresses.
The Content-Format of the informative response is set to application/
informative-response+cbor, which is registered in Section 16.2. The
payload of the informative response is a CBOR map including the
following parameters, whose CBOR abbreviations are defined in
Section 13.
* 'tp_info', with value a CBOR array. This includes the transport-
specific information required to correctly receive multicast
notifications bound to the phantom observation request.
Typically, this comprises the Token value associated with the
group observation, as well as the source and destination
addressing information of the related multicast notifications.
The CBOR array is formatted as defined in Section 4.2.1. This
parameter MUST be included.
* 'ph_req', with value the byte serialization of the transport-
independent information of the phantom observation request (see
Section 4.1), encoded as a CBOR byte string. The value of the
CBOR byte string is formatted as defined in Section 4.2.2.
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This parameter MAY be omitted, in case the phantom request is, in
terms of transport-independent information, identical to the
registration request from the client. Otherwise, this parameter
MUST be included.
Note that the registration request from the client may indeed
differ from the phantom observation request in terms of transport-
independent information, but still be acceptable for the server to
register the client as taking part in the group observation.
* 'last_notif', with value the byte serialization of the transport-
independent information of the latest multicast notification for
the target resource, encoded as a CBOR byte string. The value of
the CBOR byte string is formatted as defined in Section 4.2.2.
This parameter MAY be included.
* 'next_not_before', with value the amount of seconds that will
minimally elapse before the server sends the next multicast
notification for the group observation of the target resource,
encoded as a CBOR unsigned integer. This parameter MAY be
included.
This information can help a new client to align itself with the
server's timeline, especially in scenarios where multicast
notifications are regularly sent. Also, it can help synchronizing
different clients when orchestrating a content distribution
through multicast notifications.
The CDDL notation [RFC8610] provided below describes the payload of
the informative response.
informative_response_payload = {
0 => array, ; 'tp_info' (transport-specific information)
? 1 => bstr, ; 'ph_req' (transport-independent information)
? 2 => bstr, ; 'last_notif' (transport-independent information)
? 3 => uint ; 'next_not_before'
}
Figure 1: Format of the Informative Response Payload
Upon receiving a registration request to observe the target resource,
the server does not create a corresponding individual observation for
the requesting client. Instead, the server considers that client as
now taking part in the group observation of the target resource, of
which it increments the observer counter by 1. Then, the server
replies to the client with the same informative response message
defined above, which MUST be Confirmable.
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Note that this also applies when, with no ongoing traditional
observations on the target resource, the server receives a
registration request from a first client and decides to start a group
observation on the target resource.
4.2.1. Transport-Specific Message Information
The CBOR array specified in the 'tp_info' parameter is formatted
according to the following CDDL notation.
tp_info = [
tpi_server: CRI-no-local, ; Addressing information of the server
? tpi_details ; Further information about the request
]
tpi_details = (
+ elements ; Number, format, and encoding of the elements depend
; on the scheme-id of the CRI specified as 'tpi_server'
)
CRI-no-local = [
scheme-id,
authority
]
scheme-id = nint ; -1 - scheme-number
authority = [?userinfo, host, ?port]
userinfo = (false, text .feature "userinfo")
host = (host-ip // host-name)
host-name = (*text) ; lowercase, NFC labels
host-ip = (bytes .size 4 //
(bytes .size 16, ?zone-id))
zone-id = text
port = 0..65535
Figure 2: General Format of 'tp_info'
The following holds for the two elements 'tpi_server' and
'tpi_details'.
* The 'tpi_server' element MUST be present and specifies:
- The transport protocol used to transport a CoAP response from
the server, i.e., a multicast notification in this document;
and
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- The addressing information of the server, i.e., the source
addressing information of the multicast notifications that are
sent for the group observation.
Such addressing information MUST be equal to the destination
addressing information of the registration requests sent by the
clients to observe the target resource at the server.
This element specifies a CRI [I-D.ietf-core-href], of which both
'scheme' and 'authority' are given, while 'path', 'query', and
'fragment' are not given. The CRI scheme is given as a negative
integer 'scheme-id', with value taken from the "Scheme ID" column
of the "CoAP Transport Information" registry defined in
Section 16.5 of this document.
Consistent with Section 5.1.1 of [I-D.ietf-core-href], a 'scheme-
id' with value ID denotes the CRI scheme that has CRI scheme
number equal to (-1 - ID). The latter identifies the
corresponding URI scheme, per the associated entry in the "CRI
Scheme Numbers" registry defined in Section 11.1 of
[I-D.ietf-core-href].
Furthermore, the CRI scheme determines how many elements are
required in the 'tpi_details' element of the 'tp_info' array, as
well as what information they convey, their encoding, and their
semantics.
* The 'tpi_details' element MAY be present and specifies transport-
specific information related to a pertinent request message, i.e.,
the phantom observation request in this document.
The exact format of 'tpi_details' depends on the CRI scheme of the
CRI specified by the 'tpi_server' element.
In the "CoAP Transport Information" registry defined in
Section 16.5 of this document, the entry corresponding to a
certain CRI scheme specifies the list of elements composing
'tpi_details' for that CRI scheme, as value of the column
"Transport Information Details". Within 'tpi_details', its
elements MUST be ordered according to what is specified in the
column "Transport Information Details" of the "CoAP Transport
Information" registry.
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Section 14 registers an entry in the "CoAP Transport Information"
registry, for the CRI scheme identified by the negative integer -1
("coap"). This value is used as 'scheme-id' for the CRI in the
'tpi_server' element, when CoAP responses are transported over UDP.
In such a case, the full encoding of the 'tp_info' CBOR array is as
defined in Section 4.2.1.1.
If a future specification defines the use of CoAP multicast
notifications transported over different transport protocols, then
that specification MUST perform the following actions, unless those
have been already performed for different reasons:
* Define the elements in 'tpi_details', as to what information they
convey, their encoding, and their semantics.
* Register an entry in the "CoAP Transport Information" registry
defined in Section 16.5 of this document.
The value of the column "Scheme ID" is the negative integer ID to
be used as 'scheme-id' for the CRI specified by the 'tpi_server'
element, which provides source addressing information of the
multicast notifications. The same use applies to the CRI
specified by an element of 'tpi_details', which provides
destination addressing information of the multicast notifications.
As a pre-condition for such a registration, it is REQUIRED that
the "CRI Scheme Numbers" registry defined in Section 11.1 of
[I-D.ietf-core-href] includes an entry where the value in the
column "CRI scheme number" is (-1 - ID).
4.2.1.1. UDP Transport-Specific Information
When CoAP multicast notifications are transported over UDP as per
[RFC7252] and [I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis], the server specifies the
'tp_info' CBOR array as follows.
* In the 'tpi_server' element, the CRI has 'scheme-id' with value -1
("coap"), while 'authority' conveys addressing information of the
server, i.e., the source addressing information of the multicast
notifications that are sent for the group observation.
This information consists of the IP address SRV_ADDR (expressed as
a literal or resulting from a name resolution) and the port number
SRV_PORT of the server hosting the target resource, and from where
the server will send multicast notifications for the target
resource.
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* The 'tpi_details' element MUST be present and in turn includes the
following two elements:
- 'tpi_client' is a CRI, with the same format of 'tpi_server'
(see Section 4.2.1). In particular, the CRI has 'scheme-id'
with value -1 ("coap"), while 'authority' conveys the
destination addressing information of the multicast
notifications that the server sends for the group observation.
This information consists of the IP multicast address GRP_ADDR
(expressed as a literal or resulting from a name resolution)
and the port number GRP_PORT, where the server will send
multicast notifications for the target resource.
- 'tpi_token' is a CBOR byte string, with value the Token value
of the phantom observation request generated by the server (see
Section 4.1). Note that the same Token value is used for the
multicast notifications bound to that phantom observation
request (see Section 4.3).
The CDDL notation in Figure 3 describes the format of the 'tp_info'
CBOR array when using UDP as transport protocol.
tp_info_coap_udp = [
tpi_server: CRI-no-local, ; Source addressing information
; of the multicast notifications
tpi_client: CRI-no-local, ; Destination addressing information
; of the multicast notifications
tpi_token: bstr ; Token value of the phantom request and
; associated multicast notifications
]
Figure 3: Format of 'tp_info' with UDP as Transport Protocol
The CBOR diagnostic notation in Figure 4 provides an example of the
'tp_info' CBOR array when using UDP as transport protocol. In the
example, SRV_ADDR is 2001:db8::ab, SRV_PORT is 5683 (omitted in the
CRI of 'tpi_server' as it is the CoAP default port number), GRP_ADDR
is ff35:30:2001:db8::23, and GRP_PORT is 61616.
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[ / tp_info /
[ / tpi_server /
-1, / scheme-id -- equivalent to "coap" /
h'20010db80000000000000000000000ab' / host-ip /
],
[ / tpi_client /
-1, / scheme-id -- equivalent to "coap" /
h'ff35003020010db80000000000000023', / host-ip /
61616 / port /
],
h'7b' / tpi_token /
]
Figure 4: Example of 'tp_info' with UDP as Transport Protocol
4.2.2. Transport-Independent Message Information
For both the parameters 'ph_req' and 'last_notif' in the informative
response, the value of the CBOR byte string is the concatenation of
the following components, in the order specified below.
When defining the value of each component, "CoAP message" refers to
the phantom observation request for the 'ph_req' parameter, and to
the corresponding latest multicast notification for the 'last_notif'
parameter.
* A single byte, with value the content of the Code field in the
CoAP message.
* The byte serialization of the complete sequence of CoAP options in
the CoAP message.
* If the CoAP message includes a non-zero length payload, the one-
byte Payload Marker (0xff) followed by the payload.
4.3. Notifications
Upon a change in the status of the target resource under group
observation, the server sends a multicast notification, intended to
all the clients taking part in the group observation of that
resource. In particular, each of such multicast notifications is
formatted as follows.
* It MUST be Non-confirmable.
* It MUST include an Observe Option, as per [RFC7641].
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* It MUST have the same Token value T of the phantom registration
request that started the group observation.
That is, every multicast notification for a target resource is not
bound to the observation requests from the different clients, but
instead to the phantom registration request associated with the
whole set of clients taking part in the group observation of that
resource.
The Token value T is specified by an element of 'tpi_details'
within the 'tp_info' parameter, in the informative response sent
to the observer clients. In particular, when transporting CoAP
over UDP, the Token value is specified by the element 'tpi_token'
(see Section 4.2.1.1).
* It MUST be sent from the same IP address SRV_ADDR and port number
SRV_PORT where: i) the original Observe registration requests are
sent to by the clients; and ii) the corresponding informative
responses are sent from by the server (see Section 4.2). That is,
redirection MUST NOT be used.
The addressing information above is provided to the observer
clients through the CRI specified by the element 'tpi_server'
within the 'tp_info' parameter, in the informative response (see
Section 4.2.1).
* It MUST be sent to the IP multicast address GRP_ADDR and port
number GRP_PORT.
The addressing information above is provided to the observer
clients through the CRI specified by an element of 'tpi_details'
within the 'tp_info' parameter, in the informative response. In
particular, when transporting CoAP over UDP, the CRI is conveyed
by the element 'tpi_client' (see Section 4.2.1.1).
For each target resource with an active group observation, the server
MUST store the latest multicast notification.
4.4. Congestion Control
In order to not cause congestion, the server should conservatively
control the sending of multicast notifications. In particular:
* The multicast notifications MUST be Non-confirmable.
* In constrained environments such as low-power, lossy networks
(LLNs), the server should only support multicast notifications for
resources that are small. Following related guidelines from
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Section 3.6 of [I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis], this can consist,
for example, in having the payload of multicast notifications as
limited to approximately 5% of the IP Maximum Transmit Unit (MTU)
size, so that it fits into a single link-layer frame in case IPv6
over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) (see
Section 4 of [RFC4944]) is used.
* The server SHOULD provide multicast notifications with the
smallest possible IP multicast scope that fulfills the application
needs. For example, following related guidelines from Section 3.6
of [I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis], site-local scope is always
preferred over global scope IP multicast, if this fulfills the
application needs. Similarly, realm-local scope is always
preferred over site-local scope, if this fulfills the application
needs. Ultimately, it is up to the server administrator to
explicitly configure the most appropriate IP multicast scope.
* Following related guidelines from Section 4.5.1 of [RFC7641], the
server SHOULD NOT send more than one multicast notification every
3 seconds, and SHOULD use an even less aggressive rate when
possible (see also Section 3.1.2 of [RFC8085]). The transmission
rate of multicast notifications should also take into account the
avoidance of a possible "broadcast storm" problem [MOBICOM99].
This prevents a following, considerable increase of the channel
load, whose origin would be likely attributed to a router rather
than to the server.
4.5. Cancellation
At any point in time, the server may want to cancel a group
observation of a target resource. For instance, the server may
realize that no clients or not enough clients are interested in
taking part in the group observation anymore. A possible approach
that the server can use to assess this is defined in Section 8.
In order to cancel the group observation, the server sends a
multicast response with response code 5.03 (Service Unavailable),
signaling that the group observation has been terminated. The
response has the same Token value T of the phantom registration
request, it has no payload, and it does not include an Observe
Option.
The server sends the response to the same multicast IP address
GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT used to send the multicast
notifications related to the target resource. Finally, the server
releases the resources allocated for the group observation, and
especially frees up the Token value T used at its CoAP endpoint.
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5. Client-Side Requirements
5.1. Request
A client sends an observation request to the server as described in
[RFC7641], i.e., a GET request with an Observe Option set to 0
(register). The request MUST NOT encode link-local addresses. If
the server is not configured to accept registrations on that target
resource specifically for a group observation, this would still
result in a positive notification response to the client as described
in [RFC7641], in case the server is able and willing to add the
client to the list of observers.
In a particular setup, the information typically specified in the
'tp_info' parameter of the informative response (see Section 4.2) can
be pre-configured on the server and the clients. For example, the
destination multicast address and port number where to send multicast
notifications for a group observation, as well as the associated
Token value to use, can be set aside for particular tasks (e.g.,
enforcing observations of a specific resource). Alternative
mechanisms can rely on using some bytes from the hash of the
observation request as the last bytes of the multicast address or as
part of the Token value.
In such a particular setup, the client may also have an early
knowledge of the phantom request, i.e., it will be possible for the
server to safely omit the parameter 'ph_req' from the informative
response to the observation request (see Section 4.2). In this case,
the client can include a No-Response Option [RFC7967] with value 16
in its Observe registration request, which results in the server
suppressing the informative response. As a consequence, the
observation request only informs the server that there is one
additional client interested to take part in the group observation.
While the considered client is able to simply set up its multicast
address and start receiving multicast notifications for the group
observation, sending an observation request as above allows the
server to increment the observer counter. This helps the server to
assess the current number of clients interested in the group
observation over time (e.g., by using the method in Section 8), which
in turn can play a role in deciding to cancel the group observation
(see Section 4.5).
5.2. Informative Response
Upon receiving the informative response defined in Section 4.2, the
client proceeds as follows.
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1. The client configures an observation of the target resource. To
this end, it relies on a CoAP endpoint used for messages having:
* As source address and port number, the server address SRV_ADDR
and port number SRV_PORT intended for accessing the target
resource. These are specified by the CRI conveyed by the
element 'tpi_server' within the 'tp_info' parameter, in the
informative response (see Section 4.2.1).
If the port number is not present in the CRI, then the client
MUST use as SRV_PORT the default port number defined for the
URI scheme that corresponds to the CRI scheme number (e.g.,
5683 when the URI scheme is "coap").
* As destination address and port number, the IP multicast
address GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT. These are
specified by the CRI conveyed by a dedicated element of
'tpi_details' within the 'tp_info' parameter, in the
informative response. In particular, when transporting CoAP
over UDP, the CRI is conveyed by the element 'tpi_client' (see
Section 4.2.1.1).
If the port number is not present in the CRI, then the client
MUST use as GRP_PORT the default port number defined for the
URI scheme that corresponds to the CRI scheme number (e.g.,
5683 when the URI scheme is "coap").
2. The client rebuilds the phantom registration request as follows.
* The client uses the Token value T, specified by a dedicated
element of 'tpi_details' within the 'tp_info' parameter, in
the informative response. In particular, when transporting
CoAP over UDP, the Token value is specified by the element
'tpi_token' (see Section 4.2.1.1).
* If the 'ph_req' parameter is not present in the informative
response, the client uses the transport-independent
information from its original Observe registration request.
* If the 'ph_req' parameter is present in the informative
response, the client uses the transport-independent
information specified in the parameter.
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3. If the informative response includes the parameter 'ph_req', and
the transport-independent information specified therein differs
from the one in the original Observe registration request, then
the client checks whether a response to the rebuilt phantom
request can, if available in a cache entry, be used to satisfy
the original observation request. If this is not the case, the
client SHOULD explicitly withdraw from the group observation.
4. The client stores the phantom registration request, as associated
with the observation of the target resource. In particular, the
client MUST use the Token value T of this phantom registration
request as its own local Token value associated with that group
observation, with respect to the server. The particular way to
achieve this is implementation specific.
5. If the informative response includes the parameter 'last_notif',
the client rebuilds the latest multicast notification, by using:
* The same Token value T used at Step 2; and
* The transport-independent information, specified in the
'last_notif' parameter of the informative response.
6. If the informative response includes the parameter 'last_notif',
the client processes the multicast notification rebuilt at Step 5
as defined in Section 3.2 of [RFC7641]. In particular, the value
of the Observe Option is used as initial baseline for
notification reordering in this group observation.
7. If a traditional observation to the target resource is ongoing,
the client MAY silently cancel it without notifying the server.
If any of the expected fields in the informative response are not
present or malformed, the client MAY try sending a new registration
request to the server (see Section 5.1). If the client chooses not
to, then the client SHOULD explicitly withdraw from the group
observation.
Appendix A describes possible alternative ways for clients to
retrieve the phantom registration request and other information
related to a group observation.
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5.3. Notifications
After having successfully processed the informative response as
defined in Section 5.2, the client will receive, accept, and process
multicast notifications about the state of the target resource from
the server, as responses to the phantom registration request and with
Token value T.
The client relies on the value of the Observe Option for notification
reordering, as defined in Section 3.4 of [RFC7641].
5.4. Cancellation
At a certain point in time, a client may become not interested in
receiving further multicast notifications about a target resource.
When this happens, the client can simply "forget" about being part of
the group observation for that target resource, as per Section 3.6 of
[RFC7641].
When, later on, the server sends the next multicast notification, the
client will not recognize the Token value T in the message. Since
the multicast notification is Non-confirmable, it is OPTIONAL for the
client to reject the multicast notification with a Reset message, as
defined in Section 3.5 of [RFC7641].
In case the server has canceled a group observation as defined in
Section 4.5, the client simply forgets about the group observation
and frees up the used Token value T for that endpoint, upon receiving
the multicast error response defined in Section 4.5.
6. Web Linking
The possible use of multicast notifications in a group observation
may be indicated by a target attribute "gp-obs" in a web link
[RFC8288] to a resource, e.g., using a link-format document
[RFC6690].
The "gp-obs" attribute is a hint, indicating that the server might
send multicast notifications for observations of the resource
targeted by the link. Note that this is simply a hint, i.e., it does
not include any information required to participate in a group
observation, and to receive and process multicast notifications.
A value MUST NOT be given for the "gp-obs" attribute and any present
value MUST be ignored by the recipient. The "gp-obs" attribute MUST
NOT appear more than once in a given link-value; occurrences after
the first MUST be ignored by the recipient.
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The example in Figure 5 shows a use of the "gp-obs" attribute: the
client does resource discovery on a server and gets back a list of
resources, one of which includes the "gp-obs" attribute indicating
that the server might send multicast notifications for observations
of that resource. The CoRE Link-Format notation from Section 5 of
[RFC6690] is used.
REQ: GET /.well-known/core
RES: 2.05 Content
</sensors/temp>;gp-obs,
</sensors/light>;if="sensor"
Figure 5: The Web Link
7. Example
The following example refers to two clients C1 and C2 that register
to observe a resource /r at a server S, which has address SRV_ADDR
and listens to the port number SRV_PORT. Before the following
exchanges occur, no clients are observing the resource /r , which has
value "1234".
The server S sends multicast notifications to the IP multicast
address GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT, and starts the group
observation upon receiving a registration request from a first client
that wishes to start a traditional observation on the resource /r.
The following notation is used for the payload of the informative
responses:
* The application-extension identifier "cri" defined in Appendix C
of [I-D.ietf-core-href] is used to notate a CBOR Extended
Diagnostic Notation (EDN) literal for a CRI.
* 'bstr(X)' denotes a CBOR byte string with value the byte
serialization of X, with '|' denoting byte concatenation.
* 'OPT' denotes a sequence of CoAP options. This refers to the
phantom registration request encoded by the 'ph_req' parameter, or
to the corresponding latest multicast notification encoded by the
'last_notif' parameter.
* 'PAYLOAD' denotes a CoAP payload. This refers to the latest
multicast notification encoded by the 'last_notif' parameter.
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C1 --------------------- [ Unicast ] ------------------------> S /r
| GET |
| Token: 0x4a |
| Observe: 0 (register) |
| Uri-Path: "r" |
| <Other options> |
| |
| ( S allocates the available Token value 0x7b ) |
| |
| ( S sends to itself a phantom observation request PH_REQ |
| as coming from the IP multicast address GRP_ADDR ) |
| .---------------------------------------------------- |
| / |
| \ |
| `---------------------------------------------------> | /r
| GET |
| Token: 0x7b |
| Observe: 0 (register) |
| Uri-Path: "r" |
| <Other options> |
| |
| ( S creates a group observation of /r ) |
| |
| ( S increments the observer counter |
| for the group observation of /r ) |
| |
C1 <-------------------- [ Unicast ] ------------------------- S
| 5.03 |
| Token: 0x4a |
| Content-Format: application/informative-response+cbor |
| Max-Age: 0 |
| <Other options> |
| Payload: { |
| / tp_info / 0 : [ |
| cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/', |
| cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/', |
| 0x7b |
| ], |
| / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 | OPT | 0xff | PAYLOAD) |
| } |
| |
C2 --------------------- [ Unicast ] ------------------------> S /r
| GET |
| Token: 0x01 |
| Observe: 0 (register) |
| Uri-Path: "r" |
| <Other options> |
| |
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| ( S increments the observer counter |
| for the group observation of /r ) |
| |
C2 <-------------------- [ Unicast ] ------------------------- S
| 5.03 |
| Token: 0x01 |
| Content-Format: application/informative-response+cbor |
| Max-Age: 0 |
| <Other options> |
| Payload: { |
| / tp_info / 0 : [ |
| cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/', |
| cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/', |
| 0x7b |
| ], |
| / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 | OPT | 0xff | PAYLOAD) |
| } |
| |
| ( The value of the resource /r changes to "5678" ) |
| |
+--+ |
C1 | |
| <------------------ [ Multicast ] ----------------------- S
C2 | ( Destination address/port: GRP_ADDR/GRP_PORT ) |
+--+ |
| 2.05 |
| Token: 0x7b |
| Observe: 11 |
| <Other options> |
| Payload: "5678" |
| |
Figure 6: Example of Group Observation
8. Rough Counting of Clients in the Group Observation
This section specifies a method that the server can use to keep an
estimate of still active and interested clients, without creating
undue traffic on the network.
8.1. Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option
In order to enable the rough counting of still active and interested
clients, a new CoAP option is introduced, which SHOULD be supported
by clients that listen to multicast responses.
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The option is called Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider and has the
properties summarized in Table 1, which extends Table 4 of [RFC7252].
The option is not Critical, not Safe-to-Forward, and integer valued.
Since the option is not Safe-to-Forward, the column "N" indicates a
dash for "not applicable".
+=====+=+=+=+===+=====================+========+========+=========+
| No. |C|U|N| R | Name | Format | Length | Default |
+=====+=+=+=+===+=====================+========+========+=========+
| TBD | |x|-| | Multicast-Response- | uint | 0-1 | (none) |
| | | | | | Feedback-Divider | | | |
+-----+-+-+-+---+---------------------+--------+--------+---------+
Table 1: The Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option.
C=Critical, U=Unsafe, N=NoCacheKey, R=Repeatable
The Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option is of class E for
OSCORE [RFC8613][I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm].
8.2. Processing on the Client Side
Upon receiving a response with a Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider
Option, a client that is interested in continuing receiving multicast
notifications for the target resource SHOULD acknowledge its
interest, as described below.
The client picks an integer random number I, from 0 inclusive to the
number Z = (2^Q) exclusive, where Q is the value specified in the
option and "^" is the exponentiation operator. If I is different
from 0, the client takes no further action. Otherwise, the client
should wait a random fraction of the Leisure time (see Section 8.2 of
[RFC7252]), and then registers a regular unicast observation on the
same target resource.
To this end, the client essentially follows the steps that got it
originally subscribed to group notifications for the target resource.
In particular, the client sends an observation request to the server,
i.e., a GET request with an Observe Option set to 0 (register). The
request MUST be addressed to the same target resource, and MUST have
the same destination IP address and port number used for the original
registration request, regardless of the source IP address and port
number of the received multicast notification.
Since the Observe registration is only done for its side effect of
showing as an attempted observation at the server, the client MUST
send the unicast request in a non confirmable way, and with the
maximum No-Response setting [RFC7967]. In the request, the client
MUST include a Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option, whose
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value MUST be set to 0. As per Section 3.2 of [RFC7252], this is
represented with an empty option value (a zero-length sequence of
bytes). The client does not need to wait for responses, and can keep
processing further notifications on the same Token.
The client MUST ignore the Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider
Option, if the multicast notification is retrieved from the
'last_notif' parameter of an informative response (see Section 4.2).
A client includes the Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option only
in a re-registration request triggered by the server as described
above, and MUST NOT include it in any other request.
Appendix B.1 and Appendix B.2 provide a description in pseudo-code of
the operations above performed by the client.
8.3. Processing on the Server Side
In order to avoid needless use of network resources, a server SHOULD
keep a rough, updated count of the number of clients taking part in
the group observation of a target resource. To this end, the server
updates the value COUNT of the associated observer counter (see
Section 4), for instance by using the method described below.
8.3.1. Request for Feedback
When it wants to obtain a new estimated count, the server considers a
number M of confirmations it would like to receive from the clients.
It is up to applications to define policies about how the server
determines and possibly adjusts the value of M.
Then, the server computes the value Q = max(L, 0), where:
* L is computed as L = ceil(log2(N / M)).
* N is the current value of the observer counter, possibly rounded
up to 1, i.e., N = max(COUNT, 1).
Finally, the server sets Q as the value of the Multicast-Response-
Feedback-Divider Option, which is sent within a successful multicast
notification.
If several multicast notifications are sent in a burst fashion, it is
RECOMMENDED for the server to include the Multicast-Response-
Feedback-Divider Option only in the first notification of such a
burst.
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8.3.2. Collection of Feedback
The server collects unicast observation requests from the clients,
for an amount of time of MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT seconds. During this
time, the server regularly increments the observer counter when
adding a new client to the group observation (see Section 4.2).
It is up to applications to define the value of
MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT, which has to take into account the
transmission time of the multicast notification and of unicast
observation requests, as well as the leisure time of the clients,
which may be hard to know or estimate for the server.
If this information is not known to the server, it is recommended to
define MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT as follows.
MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT = MAX_RTT + MAX_CLIENT_REQUEST_DELAY
where MAX_RTT is as defined in Section 4.8.2 of [RFC7252] and has
default value 202 seconds, while MAX_CLIENT_REQUEST_DELAY is
equivalent to MAX_SERVER_RESPONSE_DELAY defined in Section 3.1.5 of
[I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis] and has default value 250 seconds. In
the absence of more specific information, the server can thus
consider a conservative MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT of 452 seconds.
If more information is available in deployments, a much shorter
MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT can be set. This can be based on a realistic
round trip time (replacing MAX_RTT) and on the largest leisure time
configured on the clients (replacing MAX_CLIENT_REQUEST_DELAY), e.g.,
DEFAULT_LEISURE = 5 seconds, thus shortening MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT to
a few seconds.
8.3.3. Processing of Feedback
Once MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT seconds have passed, the server counts the
R confirmations arrived as unicast observation requests to the target
resource, since the multicast notification with the Multicast-
Response-Feedback-Divider Option has been sent. In particular, the
server considers a unicast observation request as a confirmation from
a client only if it includes a Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider
Option with value 0.
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Then, the server computes a feedback indicator as E = R * (2^Q),
where "^" is the exponentiation operator. According to what is
defined by application policies, the server determines the next time
when to ask clients for their confirmation, e.g., after a certain
number of multicast notifications has been sent. For example, the
decision can be influenced by the reception of no confirmations from
the clients, i.e., R = 0, or by the value of the ratios (E/N) and (N/
E).
Finally, the server computes a new estimated count of the observers.
To this end, the server first considers COUNT' as the current value
of the observer counter at this point in time. Note that COUNT' may
be greater than the value COUNT used at the beginning of this
process, if the server has incremented the observer counter upon
adding new clients to the group observation (see Section 4.2).
In particular, the server computes the new estimated count value as
COUNT' + ((E - N) / D), where D > 0 is an integer value used as
dampener. This step has to be performed atomically. That is, until
this step is completed, the server MUST hold the processing of an
observation request for the same target resource from a new client.
Finally, the server considers the result as the current observer
counter, and assesses it for possibly canceling the group observation
(see Section 4.5).
This estimate is skewed by packet loss, but it gives the server a
sufficiently good estimation for further counts and for deciding when
to cancel the group observation. It is up to applications to define
policies about how the server takes the newly updated estimate into
account and determines whether to cancel the group observation.
As an example, if the server currently estimates that N = COUNT = 32
observers are active and considers a constant M = 8, it sends out a
notification with Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider with value Q =
2. Then, out of 18 actually active clients, 5 send a re-registration
request based on their random draw, of which one request gets lost,
thus leaving 4 re-registration requests received by the server.
Also, no new clients have been added to the group observation during
this time, i.e., COUNT' is equal to COUNT. As a consequence,
assuming that a dampener value D = 1 is used, the server computes the
new estimated count value as 32 + (16 - 32) = 16, and keeps the group
observation active.
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To produce a most accurate updated counter, a server can include a
Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option with value Q = 0 in its
multicast notifications, as if M is equal to N. This will trigger
all the active clients to state their interest in continuing
receiving notifications for the target resource. Thus, the amount R
of arrived confirmations is affected only by possible packet loss.
Appendix B.3 provides a description in pseudo-code of the operations
above performed by the server, including example behaviors for
scheduling the next count update and deciding whether to cancel the
group observation.
8.4. Impact from Proxies
Section 11 specifies how the approach presented in Section 4 and
Section 5 works when a proxy is used between the origin clients and
the origin server. That is, the clients register as observers at the
proxy, which in turn registers as a participant to the group
observation at the server, receives the multicast notifications from
the server, and forwards those to the clients. In such a case, the
following applies.
* Since the Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option is not Safe-
to-Forward, the proxy needs to recognize and understand the option
in order to participate to the rough counting process.
If the proxy receives a request that includes the Multicast-
Response-Feedback-Divider Option but the proxy does not recognize
and understand the option, then the proxy has to stop processing
the request and sends a 4.02 (Bad Option) response to the observer
client (see Section 5.7.1 of [RFC7252]). This results in the
client terminating its observation at the proxy, after which the
client stops receiving notifications for the group observation.
If the proxy receives a multicast notification that includes the
Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option but the proxy does not
recognize and understand the option, then the proxy has to stop
processing the received multicast notification and sends a 5.02
(Bad Gateway) response to each of the observer clients (see
Section 5.7.1 of [RFC7252]). This results in all the observer
clients terminating their observation at the proxy, after which
they stop receiving notifications for the group observation.
Consequently, the proxy may decide to forget about its
participation to the group observation at the server.
This is not an issue if communications between the origin
endpoints are protected end-to-end, i.e., both for the requests
from the origin clients by using OSCORE or Group OSCORE, as well
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as for the multicast notifications from the origin server by using
Group OSCORE (see Section 9 and Section 12). In fact, in such a
case, the Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option is protected
end-to-end as well, and is thus hidden from the proxy.
Therefore, if the server uses the rough counting process defined
in this section but communications are not protected end-to-end
between the origin endpoints, then it is practically required that
the proxy recognizes and understands the Multicast-Response-
Feedback-Divider Option. If that is not the case, then every
execution of the rough counting process will effectively prevent
the clients from receiving further notifications for the group
observation, until they register again as observers at the proxy.
* The following holds when the proxy receives a multicast
notification including the Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider
Option.
- If the multicast notification is not protected end-to-end by
using Group OSCORE (see Section 11), then the Multicast-
Response-Feedback-Divider Option is visible to the proxy.
In this case, the proxy proceeds like defined in Section 8.2
for an origin client, i.e., by answering to the server on its
own in case it picks a random number I equal to 0. When doing
so, the proxy will be counted by the server as a single client.
Furthermore, the proxy MUST remove the option before forwarding
the notification to (the previous hop towards) any of the
origin clients.
The proxy would have to rely on separate means for asserting
whether the origin clients are still interested in the
observation, e.g., by regularly forwarding notifications to the
clients as unicast, Confirmable response messages.
When no interested origin clients remain, the proxy can simply
forget about being part of the group observation for the target
resource at the server, like an origin client would do (see
Section 5.4).
- If the multicast notification is protected end-to-end by using
Group OSCORE (see Section 9 and Section 12), then the
Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider Option is protected end-to-
end as well, and is thus hidden from the proxy. As a
consequence, the proxy forwards the notification to (the
previous hop towards) any of the origin clients, each of which
answers to the server if it picks a random number I equal to 0.
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9. Protection of Multicast Notifications with Group OSCORE
A server can protect multicast notifications by using the security
protocol Group OSCORE [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], thus ensuring
that they are protected end-to-end for the observer clients. This
requires that both the server and the clients interested in receiving
multicast notifications from that server are members of the same
OSCORE group.
In some settings, the OSCORE group to refer to can be pre-configured
on the clients and the server. In such a case, a server which is
aware of such pre-configuration can simply assume a client to be
already member of the correct OSCORE group.
In any other case, the server MAY communicate to clients what OSCORE
group they are required to join, by providing additional guidance in
the informative response as described in Section 9.1. Note that
clients can already be members of the right OSCORE group, in case
they have previously joined it to securely communicate with the same
server or with other servers to access their resources.
Both the clients and the server MAY join the OSCORE group by using
the approach described in [I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore] and
based on the ACE framework for Authentication and Authorization in
constrained environments [RFC9200]. Further details on how to
discover the OSCORE group and join it are out of the scope of this
document.
If multicast notifications are protected using Group OSCORE, then the
original registration requests and related unicast (notification)
responses MUST also be protected, including and especially the
informative responses from the server. An exception is the case
discussed in Appendix D, where the informative response from the
server is not protected.
In order to protect unicast messages exchanged between the server and
each client, including the original client registration (see
Section 5), alternative security protocols than Group OSCORE can be
used, such as OSCORE [RFC8613] and/or DTLS [RFC9147]. However, it is
RECOMMENDED to use OSCORE or Group OSCORE.
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9.1. Signaling the OSCORE Group in the Informative Response
This section describes a mechanism for the server to communicate to
the client what OSCORE group to join, in order to decrypt and verify
the multicast notifications protected with Group OSCORE. The client
MAY use the information provided by the server to start the ACE
joining procedure described in [I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore].
The mechanism defined in this section is OPTIONAL to support for the
client and server.
Additionally to what is defined in Section 4, the CBOR map in the
informative response payload contains the following fields, whose
CBOR abbreviations are defined in Section 13.
* 'join_uri', with value the URI for joining the OSCORE group at the
respective Group Manager, encoded as a CBOR text string. If the
procedure described in [I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore] is used
for joining, this field specifically indicates the URI of the
group-membership resource at the Group Manager.
* 'sec_gp', with value the name of the OSCORE group, encoded as a
CBOR text string.
* Optionally, 'as_uri', with value the URI of the Authorization
Server associated with the Group Manager for the OSCORE group,
encoded as a CBOR text string.
* Optionally, 'hkdf', with value the HKDF Algorithm used in the
OSCORE group, encoded as a CBOR text string or integer. The value
is taken from the 'Value' column of the "COSE Algorithms" registry
[COSE.Algorithms].
* Optionally, 'cred_fmt', with value the format of the
authentication credentials used in the OSCORE group, encoded as a
CBOR integer. The value is taken from the 'Label' column of the
"COSE Header Parameters" Registry [COSE.Header.Parameters].
Consistently with Section 2.4 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm],
acceptable values denote a format that MUST explicitly provide the
comprehensive set of information related to the public key
algorithm, including, e.g., the used elliptic curve (when
applicable).
At the time of writing this specification, acceptable formats of
authentication credentials are CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs) and CWT
Claim Sets (CCSs) [RFC8392], X.509 certificates [RFC5280], and
C509 certificates [I-D.ietf-cose-cbor-encoded-cert]. Further
formats may be available in the future, and would be acceptable to
use as long as they comply with the criteria defined above.
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[ As to C509 certificates, there is a pending registration
requested by draft-ietf-cose-cbor-encoded-cert. ]
* Optionally, 'gp_enc_alg', with value the Group Encryption
Algorithm used in the OSCORE group to encrypt messages protected
with the group mode, encoded as a CBOR text string or integer.
The value is taken from the 'Value' column of the "COSE
Algorithms" registry [COSE.Algorithms].
* Optionally, 'sign_alg', with value the Signature Algorithm used to
sign messages in the OSCORE group, encoded as a CBOR text string
or integer. The value is taken from the 'Value' column of the
"COSE Algorithms" registry [COSE.Algorithms].
* Optionally, 'sign_params', encoded as a CBOR array and including
the following two elements:
- 'sign_alg_capab': a CBOR array, with the same format and value
of the COSE capabilities array for the algorithm indicated in
'sign_alg', as specified for that algorithm in the
'Capabilities' column of the "COSE Algorithms" Registry
[COSE.Algorithms].
- 'sign_key_type_capab': a CBOR array, with the same format and
value of the COSE capabilities array for the COSE key type of
the keys used with the algorithm indicated in 'sign_alg', as
specified for that key type in the 'Capabilities' column of the
"COSE Key Types" Registry [COSE.Key.Types].
The values of 'sign_alg', 'sign_params', and 'cred_fmt' provide an
early knowledge of the format of authentication credentials as well
as of the type of public keys used in the OSCORE group. Thus, the
client does not need to ask the Group Manager for this information as
a preliminary step before the (ACE) join process, or to perform a
trial-and-error exchange with the Group Manager upon joining the
group. Hence, the client is able to provide the Group Manager with
its own authentication credential in the correct expected format and
including a public key of the correct expected type, at the very
first step of the (ACE) join process.
The values of 'hkdf', 'gp_enc_alg', and 'sign_alg' provide an early
knowledge of the algorithms used in the OSCORE group. Thus, the
client is able to decide whether to actually proceed with the (ACE)
join process, depending on its support for the indicated algorithms.
As mentioned above, since this mechanism is OPTIONAL, all the fields
are OPTIONAL in the informative response. However, the 'join_uri'
and 'sec_gp' fields MUST be present if the mechanism is implemented
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and used. If any of the fields are present without the 'join_uri'
and 'sec_gp' fields present, the client MUST ignore these fields,
since they would not be sufficient to start the (ACE) join procedure.
When this happens, the client MAY try sending a new registration
request to the server (see Section 5.1). If the client chooses not
to, then the client SHOULD explicitly withdraw from the group
observation.
Appendix C describes a possible alternative approach, where the
server self-manages the OSCORE group, and provides the observer
clients with the necessary keying material in the informative
response. The approach in Appendix C MUST NOT be used together with
the mechanism defined in this section for indicating what OSCORE
group to join.
9.2. Server-Side Requirements
When using Group OSCORE to protect multicast notifications, the
server performs the operations described in Section 4, with the
following differences.
9.2.1. Registration
The phantom registration request MUST be protected, by using Group
OSCORE. In particular, the group mode of Group OSCORE defined in
Section 7 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] MUST be used.
The server protects the phantom registration request as defined in
Section 7.1 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], as if it was the
actual sender, i.e., by using its Sender Context. As a consequence,
the server consumes the current value of its Sender Sequence Number
SN in the OSCORE group, and hence updates it to SN* = (SN + 1).
Consistently, the OSCORE Option in the phantom registration request
includes:
* As 'kid', the Sender ID of the server in the OSCORE group.
* As 'piv', the Partial IV encoding the previously consumed Sender
Sequence Number value SN of the server in the OSCORE group, i.e.,
(SN* - 1).
9.2.2. Informative Response
The value of the CBOR byte string in the 'ph_req' parameter encodes
the phantom observation request as a message protected with Group
OSCORE (see Section 9.2.1). Consequently, the following applies:
* The specified Code is always 0.05 (FETCH).
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* The sequence of CoAP options will be limited to the outer, non
encrypted options.
* A payload is always present, as the authenticated ciphertext
followed by the signature.
Note that, in terms of transport-independent information, the
registration request from the client typically differs from the
phantom request. Thus, the server has to include the 'ph_req'
parameter in the informative response. An exception is the case
discussed in Appendix D.
Similarly, the value of the CBOR byte string in the 'last_notif'
parameter encodes the latest multicast notification as a message
protected with Group OSCORE (see Section 9.2.3). This applies also
to the initial multicast notification INIT_NOTIF built at Step 6 of
Section 4.1.
Optionally, the informative response includes information on the
OSCORE group to join, as additional parameters (see Section 9.1).
9.2.3. Notifications
The server MUST protect every multicast notification for the target
resource with Group OSCORE. In particular, the group mode of Group
OSCORE defined in Section 7 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] MUST
be used.
The process described in Section 7.3 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] applies, with the following
additions when building the two OSCORE 'external_aad' to encrypt and
sign the multicast notification (see Section 3.4 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]).
* The 'request_kid' is the 'kid' value in the OSCORE Option of the
phantom registration request, i.e., the Sender ID of the server.
* The 'request_piv' is the 'piv' value in the OSCORE Option of the
phantom registration request, i.e., the Partial IV encoding the
consumed Sender Sequence Number SN of the server.
* The 'request_kid_context' is the 'kid context' value in the OSCORE
Option of the phantom registration request, i.e., the Group
Identifier value (Gid) of the OSCORE group used as ID Context.
Note that these same values are used to protect each and every
multicast notification sent for the target resource under this group
observation.
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9.2.4. Cancellation
When canceling a group observation (see Section 4.5), the multicast
response with error code 5.03 (Service Unavailable) is also protected
with Group OSCORE, as per Section 7.3 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]. The server MUST use its own Sender
Sequence Number as Partial IV to protect the error response, and
include its encoding as the Partial IV in the OSCORE Option of the
response.
9.3. Client-Side Requirements
When using Group OSCORE to protect multicast notifications, the
client performs as described in Section 5, with the following
differences.
9.3.1. Informative Response
Upon receiving the informative response from the server, the client
performs as described in Section 5.2, with the following additions.
When performing Step 2, the client expects the 'ph_req' parameter to
be included in the informative response, which is otherwise
considered malformed. An exception is the case discussed in
Appendix D.
Once completed Step 2, the client decrypts and verifies the rebuilt
phantom registration request as defined in Section 7.2 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], with the following differences.
* The client MUST NOT perform any replay check. That is, the client
skips Step 3 in Section 8.2 of [RFC8613].
* If decryption and verification of the phantom registration request
succeed:
- The client MUST NOT update the Replay Window in the Recipient
Context associated with the server. That is, the client skips
the second bullet of Step 6 in Section 8.2 of [RFC8613].
- The client MUST NOT take any further process as normally
expected according to [RFC7252]. That is, the client skips
Step 8 in Section 8.2 of [RFC8613]. In particular, the client
MUST NOT deliver the phantom registration request to the
application, and MUST NOT take any action in the Token space of
its unicast endpoint where the informative response has been
received.
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- The client stores the values of the 'kid', 'piv', and 'kid
context' fields from the OSCORE Option of the phantom
registration request.
* If decryption and verification of the phantom registration request
fail, the client MAY try sending a new registration request to the
server (see Section 5.1). If the client chooses not to, then the
client SHOULD explicitly withdraw from the group observation.
After successful decryption and verification, the client performs
Step 3 in Section 5.2, considering the decrypted phantom registration
request.
If the informative response includes the parameter 'last_notif', the
client also decrypts and verifies the latest multicast notification
rebuilt at Step 5 in Section 5.2, just like it would for the
multicast notifications transmitted as CoAP messages on the wire (see
Section 9.3.2). If decryption and verification succeed, the client
proceeds with Step 6, considering the decrypted latest multicast
notification. Otherwise, the client proceeds to Step 7.
9.3.2. Notifications
After having successfully processed the informative response as
defined in Section 9.3.1, the client will decrypt and verify every
multicast notification for the target resource as defined in
Section 7.4 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], with the following
difference.
For both decryption and signature verification, the client MUST set
the 'external_aad' defined in Section 3.4 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] as follows. The particular way to
achieve this is implementation specific.
* 'request_kid' takes the value of the 'kid' field from the OSCORE
Option of the phantom registration request (see Section 9.3.1).
* 'request_piv' takes the value of the 'piv' field from the OSCORE
Option of the phantom registration request (see Section 9.3.1).
* 'request_kid_context' takes the value of the 'kid context' field
from the OSCORE Option of the phantom registration request (see
Section 9.3.1).
Note that these same values are used to decrypt and verify each and
every multicast notification received for the target resource under
this group observation.
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10. Example with Group OSCORE
The following example refers to two clients C1 and C2 that register
to observe a resource /r at a server S, which has address SRV_ADDR
and listens to the port number SRV_PORT. Before the following
exchanges occur, no clients are observing the resource /r , which has
value "1234".
The server S sends multicast notifications to the IP multicast
address GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT, and starts the group
observation upon receiving a registration request from a first client
that wishes to start a traditional observation on the resource /r.
Pairwise communication over unicast is protected with OSCORE, while S
protects multicast notifications with Group OSCORE. Specifically:
* C1 and S have a pairwise OSCORE Security Context. In particular,
C1 has 'kid' = 0x01 as Sender ID, and SN_1 = 101 as Sender
Sequence Number. Also, S has 'kid' = 0x03 as Sender ID, and SN_3
= 301 as Sender Sequence Number.
* C2 and S have a pairwise OSCORE Security Context. In particular,
C2 has 'kid' = 0x02 as Sender ID, and SN_2 = 201 as Sender
Sequence Number. Also, S has 'kid' = 0x04 as Sender ID, and SN_4
= 401 as Sender Sequence Number.
* S is a member of the OSCORE group with name "myGroup", and 'kid
context' = 0x57ab2e as Group ID. In the OSCORE group, S has 'kid'
= 0x05 as Sender ID, and SN_5 = 501 as Sender Sequence Number.
The following notation is used for the payload of the informative
responses:
* The application-extension identifier "cri" defined in Appendix C
of [I-D.ietf-core-href] is used to notate a CBOR Extended
Diagnostic Notation (EDN) literal for a CRI.
* 'bstr(X)' denotes a CBOR byte string with value the byte
serialization of X, with '|' denoting byte concatenation.
* 'OPT' denotes a sequence of CoAP options. This refers to the
phantom registration request encoded by the 'ph_req' parameter, or
to the corresponding latest multicast notification encoded by the
'last_notif' parameter.
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* 'PAYLOAD' denotes an encrypted CoAP payload. This refers to the
phantom registration request encoded by the 'ph_req' parameter, or
to the corresponding latest multicast notification encoded by the
'last_notif' parameter.
* 'SIGN' denotes the signature appended to an encrypted CoAP
payload. This refers to the phantom registration request encoded
by the 'ph_req' parameter, or to the corresponding latest
multicast notification encoded by the 'last_notif' parameter.
C1 ---------------- [ Unicast w/ OSCORE ] ------------------> S /r
| 0.05 (FETCH) |
| Token: 0x4a |
| OSCORE: {kid: 0x01; piv: 101; ...} |
| <Other class U/I options> |
| 0xff |
| Encrypted_payload { |
| 0x01 (GET), |
| Observe: 0 (register), |
| Uri-Path: "r", |
| <Other class E options> |
| } |
| |
| ( S allocates the available Token value 0x7b ) |
| |
| ( S sends to itself a phantom observation request PH_REQ |
| as coming from the IP multicast address GRP_ADDR ) |
| .------------------------------------------------------- |
| / |
| \ |
| `------------------------------------------------------> | /r
| 0.05 (FETCH) |
| Token: 0x7b |
| OSCORE: {kid: 0x05 ; piv: 501; |
| kid context: 0x57ab2e; ...} |
| <Other class U/I options> |
| 0xff |
| Encrypted_payload { |
| 0x01 (GET), |
| Observe: 0 (register), |
| Uri-Path: "r", |
| <Other class E options> |
| } |
| <Signature> |
| |
| ( S steps SN_5 in the Group OSCORE |
| Security Context: SN_5 <-- 502 ) |
| |
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| |
| ( S creates a group observation of /r ) |
| |
| ( S increments the observer counter |
| for the group observation of /r ) |
| |
C1 <--------------- [ Unicast w/ OSCORE ] -------------------- S
| 2.05 (Content) |
| Token: 0x4a |
| OSCORE: {piv: 301; ...} |
| Max-Age: 0 |
| <Other class U/I options> |
| 0xff |
| Encrypted_payload { |
| 5.03 (Service Unavailable), |
| Content-Format: application/informative-response+cbor, |
| <Other class E options>, |
| 0xff, |
| Payload { |
| / tp_info / 0 : [ |
| cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/', |
| cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/', |
| 0x7b |
| ], |
| / ph_req / 1 : bstr(0x05 | OPT | 0xff | |
| PAYLOAD | SIGN), |
| / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 | OPT | 0xff | |
| PAYLOAD | SIGN), |
| / join_uri / 4 : "coap://myGM/ace-group/myGroup", |
| / sec_gp / 5 : "myGroup" |
| } |
| } |
| |
C2 ---------------- [ Unicast w/ OSCORE ] ------------------> S /r
| 0.05 (FETCH) |
| Token: 0x01 |
| OSCORE: {kid: 0x02; piv: 201; ...} |
| <Other class U/I options> |
| 0xff |
| Encrypted_payload { |
| 0x01 (GET), |
| Observe: 0 (register), |
| Uri-Path: "r", |
| <Other class E options> |
| } |
| |
| ( S increments the observer counter |
| for the group observation of /r ) |
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| |
C2 <--------------- [ Unicast w/ OSCORE ] -------------------- S
| 2.05 (Content) |
| Token: 0x01 |
| OSCORE: {piv: 401; ...} |
| Max-Age: 0 |
| <Other class U/I options> |
| 0xff, |
| Encrypted_payload { |
| 5.03 (Service Unavailable), |
| Content-Format: application/informative-response+cbor, |
| <Other class E options>, |
| 0xff, |
| Payload { |
| / tp_info / 0 : [ |
| cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/', |
| cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/', |
| 0x7b |
| ], |
| / ph_req / 1 : bstr(0x05 | OPT | 0xff | |
| PAYLOAD | SIGN), |
| / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 | OPT | 0xff | |
| PAYLOAD | SIGN), |
| / join_uri / 4 : "coap://myGM/ace-group/myGroup", |
| / sec_gp / 5 : "myGroup" |
| } |
| } |
| |
| ( The value of the resource /r changes to "5678" ) |
| |
+--+ |
C1 | |
| <----------- [ Multicast w/ Group OSCORE ] -------------- S
C2 | (Destination address/port: GRP_ADDR/GRP_PORT) |
+--+ |
| 2.05 (Content) |
| Token: 0x7b |
| OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502; ...} |
| <Other class U/I options> |
| 0xff |
| Encrypted_payload { |
| 2.05 (Content), |
| Observe: [empty], |
| <Other class E options>, |
| 0xff, |
| Payload: "5678" |
| } |
| <Signature> |
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| |
Figure 7: Example of Group Observation with Group OSCORE
The two external_aad used to encrypt and sign the multicast
notification above have 'request_kid' = 5, 'request_piv' = 501, and
'request_kid_context' = 0x57ab2e. These values are specified in the
'kid', 'piv', and 'kid context' field of the OSCORE Option of the
phantom observation request, which is encoded in the 'ph_req'
parameter of the unicast informative response to the two clients.
Thus, the two clients can build the two same external_aad for
decrypting and verifying this multicast notification and the
following ones in the group observation.
11. Intermediaries
This section specifies how the approach presented in Section 4 and
Section 5 works when a proxy is used between the clients and the
server. In addition to what is specified in Section 5.7 of [RFC7252]
and Section 5 of [RFC7641], the following applies.
A client sends its original observation request to the proxy. If the
proxy is not already registered at the server for that target
resource, the proxy forwards the observation request to the server,
hence registering itself as an observer. If the server has an
ongoing group observation for the target resource or decides to start
one, the server considers the proxy as taking part in the group
observation, and replies to the proxy with an informative response.
Upon receiving an informative response, the proxy performs as
specified for the client in Section 5, with the peculiarity that
"consuming" the last notification (if present) means populating its
cache.
In particular, by using the information retrieved from the
informative response, the proxy configures an observation of the
target resource at the origin server, acting as a client directly
taking part in the group observation.
As a consequence, the proxy listens to the IP multicast address and
port number indicated by the server, i.e., per the CRI specified by a
dedicated element of 'tpi_details' within the 'tp_info' parameter, in
the informative response. In particular, when transporting CoAP over
UDP, the CRI is conveyed by the element 'tpi_client' (see
Section 4.2.1.1).
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Furthermore, multicast notifications will match the phantom request
stored at the proxy, based on the Token value specified by a
dedicated element of 'tpi_details' within the 'tp_info' parameter, in
the informative response. In particular, when transporting CoAP over
UDP, the Token value is specified by the element 'tpi_token' (see
Section 4.2.1.1).
Then, the proxy performs the following actions.
* If the 'last_notif' field is not present, the proxy responds to
the client with an Empty Acknowledgement (if indicated by the
message type, and if the proxy has not already done so).
* If the 'last_notif' field is present, the proxy rebuilds the
latest multicast notification, as defined in Section 5. Then, the
proxy responds to the client, by forwarding back the latest
multicast notification.
When responding to an observation request from a client, the proxy
also adds that client (and its Token) to the list of its registered
observers for the target resource, next to the older observations.
Upon receiving a multicast notification from the server, the proxy
forwards it back separately to each observer client over unicast.
Note that the notification forwarded back to a certain client has the
same Token value of the original observation request sent by that
client to the proxy.
Note that the proxy configures the observation of the target resource
at the server only once, when receiving the informative response
associated with a (newly started) group observation for that target
resource.
After that, when receiving an observation request from a following
new client to be added to the same group observation, the proxy does
not take any further action with the server. Instead, the proxy
responds to the client either with the latest multicast notification
if available from its cache, or with an Empty Acknowledgement
otherwise, as defined above.
As a result, the observer counter at the server (see Section 4) is
not incremented when a new origin client behind the proxy registers
as an observer at the proxy. Instead, the observer counter takes
into account only the proxy, which has registered as observer at the
server and has received the informative response from the server.
An example is provided in Appendix E.
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In the general case with a chain of two or more proxies, every proxy
in the chain takes the role of client with the (next hop towards the)
origin server. Note that the proxy adjacent to the origin server is
the only one in the chain that receives informative responses, and
that listens to an IP multicast address and port number to receive
notifications for the group observation. Furthermore, every proxy in
the chain takes the role of server with the (previous hop towards
the) origin client.
12. Intermediaries Together with End-to-End Security
As defined in Section 9, Group OSCORE can be used to protect
multicast notifications end-to-end between the origin server and the
origin clients. In such a case, additional actions are required when
also the informative responses from the origin server are protected
specifically end-to-end, by using OSCORE or Group OSCORE.
In fact, the proxy adjacent to the origin server is not able to
access the encrypted payload of such informative responses. Hence,
the proxy cannot retrieve the 'ph_req' and 'tp_info' parameters
necessary to correctly receive multicast notifications and forward
them back to the clients.
Then, differently from what is defined in Section 11, each proxy
receiving an informative response simply forwards it back to the
client that has sent the corresponding observation request. Note
that the proxy does not even realize that the message is an actual
informative response, since the outer Code field is set to 2.05
(Content).
Upon receiving the informative response, the client does not
configure an observation of the target resource. Instead, the client
performs a new observe registration request, by transmitting the re-
built phantom request as intended to reach the proxy adjacent to the
origin server. In particular, the client includes the new Listen-To-
Multicast-Responses CoAP option defined in Section 12.1, to provide
that proxy with the transport-specific information required for
receiving multicast notifications for the group observation.
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As a result, the observer counter at the server (see Section 4) is
incremented when, after having received the original observation
request from a new origin client, the origin server replies with the
informative response. In particular, the observer counter at the
server reliably takes into account the new, different origin clients
behind the proxy, which the server distinguishes through their
security identity specified by the pair (OSCORE Sender ID, OSCORE ID
Context) in the OSCORE Option of their original observation request.
Note that this does not hold anymore if the origin endpoints use
phantom observation requests as deterministic requests (see
Appendix D).
Details on the additional message exchange and processing are defined
in Section 12.2.
12.1. Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option
In order to allow the proxy to listen to the multicast notifications
sent by the server, a new CoAP option is introduced. This option
MUST be supported by clients interested to take part in group
observations through intermediaries, and by proxies that collect
multicast notifications and forward them back to the observer
clients.
The option is called Listen-To-Multicast-Response, is intended only
for requests, and has the properties summarized in Table 2, which
extends Table 4 of [RFC7252]. The option is critical and not Safe-
to-Forward. Since the option is not Safe-to-Forward, the column "N"
indicates a dash for "not applicable".
+=====+=+=+=+===+=====================+========+========+=========+
| No. |C|U|N| R | Name | Format | Length | Default |
+=====+=+=+=+===+=====================+========+========+=========+
| TBD |x|x|-| | Listen-To- | (*) | 3-1024 | (none) |
| | | | | | Multicast-Responses | | | |
+-----+-+-+-+---+---------------------+--------+--------+---------+
Table 2: The Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option. C=Critical,
U=Unsafe, N=NoCacheKey, R=Repeatable
The Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option includes the byte
serialization of a CBOR array. This specifies transport-specific
message information required for listening to the multicast
notifications of a group observation, and intended to the proxy
adjacent to the origin server sending those notifications. In
particular, the serialized CBOR array has the same format specified
in Section 4.2.1 for the 'tp_info' parameter of the informative
response defined in Section 4.2.
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The Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option is of class U for OSCORE
[RFC8613][I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm].
12.2. Message Processing
Compared to Section 11, the following additions apply when
informative responses are protected end-to-end between the origin
server and the origin clients.
After the origin server sends an informative response, each proxy
simply forwards it back to the (previous hop towards the) origin
client that has sent the observation request.
Once received the informative response, the origin client proceeds in
a different way than in Section 9.3.1:
* The client performs all the additional decryption and verification
steps of Section 9.3.1 on the phantom request specified in the
'ph_req' parameter and on the last notification specified in the
'last_notif' parameter (if present).
* The client builds a ticket request (see Appendix B of
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore]), as intended to reach the
proxy adjacent to the origin server. The ticket request is
formatted as follows.
- The Token is chosen as the client sees fit. In fact, there is
no reason for this Token to be the same as the phantom
request's.
- The outer Code field, the outer CoAP options, and the encrypted
payload with AEAD tag (protecting the inner Code, the inner
CoAP options, and the possible plain CoAP payload) concatenated
with the signature are the same of the phantom request used for
the group observation. That is, they are as specified in the
'ph_req' parameter of the received informative response.
- An outer Observe Option is included and set to 0 (register).
This will usually be set in the phantom request already.
- The client includes: the outer option Proxy-Uri or Proxy-Cri
[I-D.ietf-core-href]; or the outer options (Uri-Host, Uri-
Port), together with the outer option Proxy-Scheme or Proxy-
Scheme-Number [I-D.ietf-core-href]. These options are set in
order to specify the same request URI of the original
registration request sent by the client.
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- The new option Listen-To-Multicast-Responses is included as an
outer option. The value is set to the byte serialization of
the CBOR array specified by the 'tp_info' parameter of the
informative response.
Note that, except for transport-specific information such as
the Token and Message ID values, every different client
participating in the same group observation (hence rebuilding
the same phantom request) will build the same ticket request.
Note also that, identically to the phantom request, the ticket
request is still protected with Group OSCORE, i.e., it has the
same OSCORE Option, encrypted payload, and signature.
Then, the client sends the ticket request to the next hop towards the
origin server. Every proxy in the chain forwards the ticket request
to the next hop towards the origin server, until the last proxy in
the chain is reached. This last proxy, adjacent to the origin
server, proceeds as follows.
* The proxy MUST NOT further forward the ticket request to the
origin server.
* The proxy removes the option Proxy-Uri, or Proxy-Scheme, or Proxy-
Cri, or Proxy-Scheme-Number from the ticket request.
* The proxy removes the Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option from
the ticket request, and extracts the transport-specific
information conveyed therein.
* The proxy rebuilds the phantom request associated with the group
observation, by using the ticket request as directly providing the
required transport-independent information. This includes the
outer Code field, the outer CoAP options, and the encrypted
payload with AEAD tag concatenated with the signature.
* The proxy configures an observation of the target resource at the
origin server, acting as a client directly taking part in the
group observation. To this end, the proxy uses the rebuilt
phantom request and the transport-specific information retrieved
from the Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option. The particular way
to achieve this is implementation specific.
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After that, the proxy listens to the IP multicast address and port
number indicated in the Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option, i.e.,
per the CRI specified by a dedicated element of 'tpi_details' within
the serialized CBOR array conveyed in the option. In particular,
when transporting CoAP over UDP, the CRI is conveyed by the element
'tpi_client' (see Section 4.2.1.1).
Furthermore, multicast notifications will match the phantom request
stored at the proxy, based on the Token value specified by a
dedicated element of 'tpi_details' within the serialized CBOR array
conveyed in the Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option. In particular,
when transporting CoAP over UDP, the Token value is specified by the
element 'tpi_token' (see Section 4.2.1.1).
An example is provided in Appendix F.
13. Informative Response Parameters
This document defines a number of fields used in the informative
response defined in Section 4.2.
The table below summarizes them and specifies the CBOR key to use as
abbreviation, instead of the full descriptive name. Note that the
media type application/informative-response+cbor MUST be used when
these fields are transported.
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+=================+==========+========================+=============+
| Name | CBOR Key | CBOR Type | Reference |
+=================+==========+========================+=============+
| tp_info | 0 | array | Section 4.2 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| ph_req | 1 | byte string | Section 4.2 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| last_notif | 2 | byte string | Section 4.2 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| next_not_before | 3 | unsigned integer | Section 4.2 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| join_uri | 4 | text string | Section 9.1 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| sec_gp | 5 | text string | Section 9.1 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| as_uri | 6 | text string | Section 9.1 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| hkdf | 7 | integer or text | Section 9.1 |
| | | string | |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| cred_fmt | 8 | integer | Section 9.1 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| gp_enc_alg | 9 | integer or text | Section 9.1 |
| | | string | |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| sign_alg | 10 | integer or text | Section 9.1 |
| | | string | |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| sign_params | 11 | array | Section 9.1 |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| gp_material | 12 | map | Appendix C |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| srv_cred | 13 | byte string | Appendix C |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| srv_identifier | 14 | byte string | Appendix C |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| exi | 15 | unsigned integer | Appendix C |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
| exp | 16 | unsigned integer | Appendix C |
+-----------------+----------+------------------------+-------------+
Table 3: Informative Response Parameters.
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14. Transport Protocol Information
Section 4.2.1.1 defines the transport-specific information that the
server has to specify as elements of 'tpi_details' within the
'tp_info' parameter of the informative response defined in
Section 4.2, when CoAP responses are transported over UDP.
Table 4 defines the corresponding entry that Section 16.5 registers
in the "CoAP Transport Information" registry defined in this
document.
+===========+============+=====================+=================+
| Scheme ID | URI Scheme | Transport | Reference |
| | Name | Information Details | |
+===========+============+=====================+=================+
| -1 | coap | tpi_client | Section 4.2.1.1 |
| | | tpi_token | of [RFC-XXXX] |
+-----------+------------+---------------------+-----------------+
Table 4: CoAP Transport Information for CoAP over UDP.
Note to RFC Editor: In the table above, please replace "[RFC-XXXX]"
with the RFC number of this specification and delete this paragraph.
15. Security Considerations
In addition to the security considerations from [RFC7252], [RFC7641],
[I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis], [RFC8613], and
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], the following considerations hold
for this document.
15.1. Unprotected Communications
In case communications are not protected, the server might not be
able to effectively authenticate a new client when it registers as an
observer. Section 7 of [RFC7641] specifies how, in such a case, the
server must strictly limit the number of notifications sent between
receiving acknowledgements from the client, as confirming to be still
interested in the observation; i.e., any notifications sent in Non-
confirmable messages must be interspersed with confirmable messages.
This is not possible to achieve by the same means when using the
communication model defined in this document, since multicast
notifications are sent as Non-confirmable messages. Nonetheless, the
server might obtain such acknowledgements by other means.
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For instance, the method defined in Section 8 to perform the rough
counting of still interested clients triggers (some of) them to
explicitly send a new observation request to acknowledge their
interest. Then, the server can decide to terminate the group
observation altogether, in case not enough clients are estimated to
be still active.
If the method defined in Section 8 is used, the server SHOULD NOT
send more than a strict number of multicast notifications for a given
group observation, without having first performed a new rough
counting of active clients. Note that, when using the method defined
in Section 8 with unprotected communications, an adversary can craft
and inject multiple new observation requests including the Multicast-
Response-Feedback-Divider Option, hence inducing the server to
overestimate the number of still interested clients, and thus to
inappropriately continue the group observation.
15.2. Protected Communications
If multicast notifications for an observed resource are protected
using Group OSCORE as per Section 9, it is ensured that those are
securely bound to the phantom registration request that started the
group observation of that resource. Furthermore, the following
applies.
* The original registration requests and related unicast
(notification) responses MUST also be protected, including and
especially the informative responses from the server. An
exception is the case discussed in Appendix D, where the
informative response from the server is not protected.
Protecting informative responses from the server prevents on-path
active adversaries from altering the conveyed IP multicast address
and serialized phantom registration request.
* A re-registration request, possibly including the Multicast-
Response-Feedback-Divider Option to support the rough counting of
clients (see Section 8), MUST also be protected.
15.3. Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option
The CoAP option Listen-To-Multicast-Responses defined in Section 12.1
is of class U for OSCORE and Group OSCORE
[RFC8613][I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm].
This allows the proxy adjacent to the origin server to access the
option value conveyed in a ticket request (see Section 12.2), and to
retrieve from it the transport-specific information about a phantom
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request. By doing so, the proxy becomes able to configure an
observation of the target resource and to receive multicast
notifications that match the phantom request.
Any proxy in the chain, as well as further possible intermediaries or
on-path active adversaries, are thus able to remove the option or
alter its content, before the ticket request reaches the proxy
adjacent to the origin server.
Removing the option would result in the proxy adjacent to the origin
server to not configure the group observation, if that has not
happened yet. In such a case, the proxy would not receive the
corresponding multicast notifications to be forwarded back to the
clients.
Altering the option content would result in the proxy adjacent to the
origin server to incorrectly configure a group observation (e.g., as
based on a wrong multicast IP address) hence preventing the correct
reception of multicast notifications and their forwarding to the
clients; or to configure bogus group observations that are currently
not active on the origin server.
In order to prevent what is described above, the ticket requests
conveying the Listen-To-Multicast-Responses Option can be
additionally protected hop-by-hop, e.g., by using OSCORE (see
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-capable-proxies]) and/or DTLS [RFC9147].
16. IANA Considerations
This document has the following actions for IANA.
Note to RFC Editor: Please replace all occurrences of "[RFC-XXXX]"
with the RFC number of this specification and delete this paragraph.
16.1. Media Type Registrations
This document registers the media type "application/informative-
response+cbor" for error messages as informative response defined in
Section 4.2, when carrying parameters encoded in CBOR. This
registration follows the procedures specified in [RFC6838].
* Type name: application
* Subtype name: informative-response+cbor
* Required parameters: N/A
* Optional parameters: N/A
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* Encoding considerations: Must be encoded as a CBOR map containing
the parameters defined in Section 4.2 of [RFC-XXXX].
* Security considerations: See Section 15 of [RFC-XXXX].
* Interoperability considerations: N/A
* Published specification: [RFC-XXXX]
* Applications that use this media type: The type is used by CoAP
servers and clients that support error messages as informative
response defined in Section 4.2 of [RFC-XXXX].
* Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
* Additional information: N/A
* Person & email address to contact for further information: CoRE WG
mailing list (core@ietf.org) or IETF Applications and Real-Time
Area (art@ietf.org)
* Intended usage: COMMON
* Restrictions on usage: None
* Author/Change controller: IETF
* Provisional registration: No
16.2. CoAP Content-Formats Registry
IANA is asked to add the following entry to the "CoAP Content-
Formats" registry within the "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE)
Parameters" registry group.
Content Type: application/informative-response+cbor
Content Coding: -
ID: TBD
Reference: [RFC-XXXX]
16.3. CoAP Option Numbers Registry
IANA is asked to enter the following option numbers to the "CoAP
Option Numbers" registry within the "Constrained RESTful Environments
(CoRE) Parameters" registry group.
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+========+=====================================+============+
| Number | Name | Reference |
+========+=====================================+============+
| TBD | Multicast-Response-Feedback-Divider | [RFC-XXXX] |
+--------+-------------------------------------+------------+
| TBD | Listen-To-Multicast-Responses | [RFC-XXXX] |
+--------+-------------------------------------+------------+
Table 5: Registrations in the CoAP Option Numbers Registry
16.4. Informative Response Parameters Registry
This document establishes the "Informative Response Parameters"
registry within the "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE)
Parameters" registry group.
The registration policy is either "Private Use", "Standards Action
with Expert Review", or "Specification Required" or "Expert Review"
per [RFC8126]. "Expert Review" guidelines are provided in
Section 16.7.
All assignments according to "Standards Action with Expert Review"
are made on a "Standards Action" basis per Section 4.9 of [RFC8126]
with "Expert Review" additionally required per Section 4.5 of
[RFC8126]. The procedure for early IANA allocation of "standards
track code points" defined in [RFC7120] also applies. When such a
procedure is used, IANA will ask the designated expert(s) to approve
the early allocation before registration. In addition, working group
chairs are encouraged to consult the expert(s) early during the
process outlined in Section 3.1 of [RFC7120].
The columns of this registry are:
* Name: This is a descriptive name that enables easier reference to
the item. The name MUST be unique. It is not used in the
encoding.
* CBOR Key: This is the value used as the CBOR map key of the item.
These values MUST be unique. The value can be a positive integer,
a negative integer, or a text string. Different ranges of values
use different registration policies [RFC8126]. Integer values
from -256 to 255 as well as text strings of length 1 are
designated as "Standards Action With Expert Review". Integer
values from -65536 to -257 and from 256 to 65535 as well as text
strings of length 2 are designated as "Specification Required".
Integer values greater than 65535 as well as text strings of
length greater than 2 are designated as "Expert Review". Integer
values less than -65536 are marked as "Private Use".
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* CBOR Type: This contains the CBOR type of the item, or a pointer
to the registry that defines its type, when that depends on
another item.
* Reference: This contains a pointer to the public specification for
the item.
This registry has been initially populated by the entries in Table 3.
The "Reference" column for all of those entries refers to sections of
this document.
16.5. CoAP Transport Information Registry
This document establishes the "CoAP Transport Information" registry
within the "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Parameters"
registry group.
The registration policy is "Expert Review" [RFC8126]. "Expert
Review" guidelines are provided in Section 16.7.
The columns of this registry are:
* Scheme ID: This field contains the value used as 'scheme-id' to
identify a CRI scheme, per Section 5.1.1 of [I-D.ietf-core-href].
The value is a negative integer and MUST be unique.
As a pre-condition for registering a value ID, it is REQUIRED that
the "CRI Scheme Numbers" registry defined in Section 11.1 of
[I-D.ietf-core-href] includes an entry where the value in the
column "CRI scheme number" is (-1 - ID).
* URI Scheme Name: This field contains a text string. Its value is
the name of the URI scheme that corresponds to the CRI scheme
identified by the value of the "Scheme ID" field in the present
entry.
Given the value ID of the "Scheme ID" field in the present entry,
then the value of the "URI Scheme Name" field MUST be the same as
in the column "URI scheme name" of the entry of the "CRI Scheme
Numbers" registry where the value in the column "CRI scheme
number" is (-1 - ID).
* Transport Information Details: This field contains a lists of text
strings. Each text string is the name of an element that provides
transport-specific information related to a pertinent CoAP
request. Optional elements are prepended by '?', and MUST be
specified next to each other as last ones.
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* Reference: This contains a pointer to the public specification for
the item.
This registry has been initially populated by the entry in Table 4.
16.6. Target Attributes Registry
IANA is asked to register the following entry in the "Target
Attributes" registry within the "Constrained RESTful Environments
(CoRE) Parameters" registry group.
* Attribute Name: gp-obs
* Brief Description: Observable resource supporting group
observation
* Change Controller: IETF
* Reference: Section 6 of [RFC-XXXX]
16.7. Expert Review Instructions
"Standards Action with Expert Review", "Specification Required", and
"Expert Review" are three of the registration policies defined for
the IANA registries established in this document. This section gives
some general guidelines for what the experts should be looking for,
but they are being designated as experts for a reason, so they should
be given substantial latitude.
Expert reviewers should take into consideration the following points:
* Point squatting should be discouraged. Reviewers are encouraged
to get sufficient information for registration requests to ensure
that the usage is not going to duplicate one that is already
registered and that the point is likely to be used in deployments.
The zones tagged as "Private Use" are intended for testing
purposes and closed environments. Code points in other ranges
should not be assigned for testing.
* Specifications are required for the "Standards Action With Expert
Review" range of point assignment. Specifications should exist
for "Specification Required" ranges, but early assignment before a
specification is available is considered to be permissible. When
specifications are not provided, the description provided needs to
have sufficient information to identify what the point is being
used for.
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* Experts should take into account the expected usage of fields when
approving point assignment. Documents published via Standards
Action can also register points outside the Standards Action
range. The length of the encoded value should be weighed against
how many code points of that length are left, the size of device
it will be used on, and the number of code points left that encode
to that size.
17. References
17.1. Normative References
[COSE.Algorithms]
IANA, "COSE Algorithms",
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/cose/
cose.xhtml#algorithms>.
[COSE.Header.Parameters]
IANA, "COSE Header Parameters",
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/cose/cose.xhtml#header-
parameters>.
[COSE.Key.Types]
IANA, "COSE Key Types",
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/cose/cose.xhtml#key-
type>.
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore]
Tiloca, M., Park, J., and F. Palombini, "Key Management
for OSCORE Groups in ACE", Work in Progress, Internet-
Draft, draft-ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore-16, 6 March
2023, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
ace-key-groupcomm-oscore-16>.
[I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis]
Dijk, E., Wang, C., and M. Tiloca, "Group Communication
for the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-core-groupcomm-bis-
11, 24 April 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-core-groupcomm-bis-11>.
[I-D.ietf-core-href]
Bormann, C. and H. Birkholz, "Constrained Resource
Identifiers", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-core-href-16, 24 July 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-core-
href-16>.
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[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]
Tiloca, M., Selander, G., Palombini, F., Mattsson, J. P.,
and R. Höglund, "Group Object Security for Constrained
RESTful Environments (Group OSCORE)", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm-23, 26
September 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm-23>.
[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>.
[RFC4944] Montenegro, G., Kushalnagar, N., Hui, J., and D. Culler,
"Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4
Networks", RFC 4944, DOI 10.17487/RFC4944, September 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4944>.
[RFC6838] Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13,
RFC 6838, DOI 10.17487/RFC6838, January 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6838>.
[RFC7120] Cotton, M., "Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Code
Points", BCP 100, RFC 7120, DOI 10.17487/RFC7120, January
2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7120>.
[RFC7252] Shelby, Z., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "The Constrained
Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7252,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7252, June 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7252>.
[RFC7641] Hartke, K., "Observing Resources in the Constrained
Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7641,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7641, September 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7641>.
[RFC7967] Bhattacharyya, A., Bandyopadhyay, S., Pal, A., and T.
Bose, "Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) Option for
No Server Response", RFC 7967, DOI 10.17487/RFC7967,
August 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7967>.
[RFC8085] Eggert, L., Fairhurst, G., and G. Shepherd, "UDP Usage
Guidelines", BCP 145, RFC 8085, DOI 10.17487/RFC8085,
March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8085>.
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[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8126>.
[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>.
[RFC8288] Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 8288,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8288, October 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8288>.
[RFC8610] Birkholz, H., Vigano, C., and C. Bormann, "Concise Data
Definition Language (CDDL): A Notational Convention to
Express Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and
JSON Data Structures", RFC 8610, DOI 10.17487/RFC8610,
June 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8610>.
[RFC8613] Selander, G., Mattsson, J., Palombini, F., and L. Seitz,
"Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments
(OSCORE)", RFC 8613, DOI 10.17487/RFC8613, July 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8613>.
[RFC8949] Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object
Representation (CBOR)", STD 94, RFC 8949,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8949, December 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8949>.
[RFC9203] Palombini, F., Seitz, L., Selander, G., and M. Gunnarsson,
"The Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments
(OSCORE) Profile of the Authentication and Authorization
for Constrained Environments (ACE) Framework", RFC 9203,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9203, August 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9203>.
17.2. Informative References
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore]
Amsüss, C. and M. Tiloca, "Cacheable OSCORE", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-amsuess-core-cachable-
oscore-09, 8 July 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-amsuess-core-
cachable-oscore-09>.
[I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub]
Jimenez, J., Koster, M., and A. Keränen, "A publish-
subscribe architecture for the Constrained Application
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Protocol (CoAP)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-core-coap-pubsub-14, 18 April 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-core-
coap-pubsub-14>.
[I-D.ietf-core-coral]
Amsüss, C. and T. Fossati, "The Constrained RESTful
Application Language (CoRAL)", Work in Progress, Internet-
Draft, draft-ietf-core-coral-06, 4 March 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-core-
coral-06>.
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-capable-proxies]
Tiloca, M. and R. Höglund, "OSCORE-capable Proxies", Work
in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-core-oscore-
capable-proxies-02, 8 July 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-core-
oscore-capable-proxies-02>.
[I-D.ietf-cose-cbor-encoded-cert]
Mattsson, J. P., Selander, G., Raza, S., Höglund, J., and
M. Furuhed, "CBOR Encoded X.509 Certificates (C509
Certificates)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-cose-cbor-encoded-cert-11, 8 July 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-cose-
cbor-encoded-cert-11>.
[I-D.tiloca-core-oscore-discovery]
Tiloca, M., Amsüss, C., and P. Van der Stok, "Discovery of
OSCORE Groups with the CoRE Resource Directory", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-tiloca-core-oscore-
discovery-16, 4 September 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-tiloca-core-
oscore-discovery-16>.
[MOBICOM99]
Ni, S., Tseng, Y., Chen, Y., and J. Sheu, "The Broadcast
Storm Problem in a Mobile Ad Hoc Network", Proceedings of
the 5th annual ACM/IEEE international conference on Mobile
computing and networking , August 1999,
<https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~culler/cs294-
f03/papers/bcast-storm.pdf>.
[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280>.
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[RFC6690] Shelby, Z., "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link
Format", RFC 6690, DOI 10.17487/RFC6690, August 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6690>.
[RFC7519] Jones, M., Bradley, J., and N. Sakimura, "JSON Web Token
(JWT)", RFC 7519, DOI 10.17487/RFC7519, May 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7519>.
[RFC8392] Jones, M., Wahlstroem, E., Erdtman, S., and H. Tschofenig,
"CBOR Web Token (CWT)", RFC 8392, DOI 10.17487/RFC8392,
May 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8392>.
[RFC9147] Rescorla, E., Tschofenig, H., and N. Modadugu, "The
Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) Protocol Version
1.3", RFC 9147, DOI 10.17487/RFC9147, April 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9147>.
[RFC9176] Amsüss, C., Ed., Shelby, Z., Koster, M., Bormann, C., and
P. van der Stok, "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE)
Resource Directory", RFC 9176, DOI 10.17487/RFC9176, April
2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9176>.
[RFC9200] Seitz, L., Selander, G., Wahlstroem, E., Erdtman, S., and
H. Tschofenig, "Authentication and Authorization for
Constrained Environments Using the OAuth 2.0 Framework
(ACE-OAuth)", RFC 9200, DOI 10.17487/RFC9200, August 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9200>.
Appendix A. Different Sources for Group Observation Data
While the clients usually receive the phantom registration request
and other information related to the group observation through an
informative response (see Section 4.2), the server can make the same
data available through different means, such as the following ones.
In such a case, the server has to first start the group observation
(see Section 4.1), before making the corresponding data available.
A client that receives such information from different sources may be
able to simply set up the right multicast address and start receiving
multicast notifications for the group observation. In such a case,
the client does not need to perform additional setup traffic, e.g.,
in order to configure a proxy for listening to multicast
notifications on its behalf (see Section 11 and Section 12).
Consequently, the server will not receive an observation request due
to that client, will not follow-up with a corresponding informative
response, and thus its observer counter (see Section 4) is not
incremented to reflect the presence of the new client.
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A.1. Topic Discovery in Publish-Subscribe Settings
In a Publish-Subscribe scenario [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub], a group
observation can be discovered along with topic metadata.
To this end, together with topic metadata, the server has to publish
the same information associated with the group observation that would
be conveyed in the informative response returned to observer clients
(see Section 4.2).
This information especially includes the phantom observation request
associated with the group observation, as well as the addressing
information of the server and the addressing information where
multicast notifications are sent to.
Figure 8 provides an example where a group observation is discovered.
The example assumes a CoRAL namespace [I-D.ietf-core-coral], that
contains properties analogous to those in the content-format
application/informative-response+cbor.
Note that the information about the transport protocol used for the
group observation is not expressed through a dedicated element
equivalent to 'tp_id' of the informative response (see
Section 4.2.1). Instead, it is expressed through the scheme
component of the two URIs specified as 'tp_info_srv' and
'tp_info_cli', where the former specifies the addressing information
of the server (like 'tpi_server' in Section 4.2.1.1), while the
latter specifies the addressing information where multicast
notifications are sent to (like 'tpi_client' in Section 4.2.1.1).
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Request:
GET </ps/topics?rt=oic.r.temperature>
Accept: application/coral+cbor
Response:
2.05 Content
Content-Format: application/coral+cbor
rdf:type [ = <http://example.org/pubsub/topic-list>,
topic [ = </ps/topics/1234>,
tp_info_srv <coap://[2001:db8::1]>,
tp_info_token "7b"^^xsd::hexBinary,
tp_info_cli <coap://[ff35:30:2001:db8::123]>,
ph_req "0160.."^^xsd::hexBinary,
last_notif "256105.."^^xsd::hexBinary,
]
]
Figure 8: Group Observation Discovery in a Pub-Sub Scenario
With this information from the topic discovery step, the client can
already set up its multicast address and start receiving multicast
notifications for the group observation in question. Clients that
are not directly able to listen to multicast notifications can
instead rely on a proxy to do so on their behalf (see Section 11 and
Section 12).
In heavily asymmetric networks like municipal notification services,
discovery and notifications do not necessarily need to use the same
network link. For example, a departure monitor could use its (costly
and usually-off) cellular uplink to discover the topics it needs to
update its display to, and then listen on a LoRA-WAN interface for
receiving the actual multicast notifications.
A.2. Introspection at the Multicast Notification Sender
For network debugging purposes, it can be useful to query a server
that sends multicast responses as matching a phantom registration
request.
Such an interface is left for other documents to specify on demand.
As an example, a possible interface can be as follows, and relies on
the already known Token value of intercepted multicast notifications
associated with a phantom registration request.
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Request:
GET </.well-known/core/mc-sender?token=6464>
Response:
2.05 Content
Content-Format: application/informative-response+cbor
{
/ tp_info / 0 : [
[ / tpi_server /
-1, / scheme-id -- equivalent to "coap" /
h'20010db80000000000000000000000ab' / host-ip /
],
[ / tpi_client /
-1, / scheme-id -- equivalent to "coap" /
h'ff35003020010db80000000000000023', / host-ip /
61616 / port /
],
h'7b' / tpi_token /
],
/ ph_req / 1 : h'0160/.../',
/ last_notif / 2 : h'256105/.../'
}
Figure 9: Group Observation Discovery with Server Introspection
For example, a network sniffer could offer sending such a request
when unknown multicast notifications are seen in the network.
Consequently, it can associate those notifications with a URI, or
decrypt them if member of the correct OSCORE group.
Appendix B. Pseudo-Code for Rough Counting of Clients
This appendix provides a description in pseudo-code of the two
algorithms used for the rough counting of active observers, as
defined in Section 8.
In particular, Appendix B.1 describes the algorithm for the client
side, while Appendix B.2 describes an optimized version for
constrained clients. Finally, Appendix B.3 describes the algorithm
for the server side.
B.1. Client Side
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input: int Q, // Value of the MRFD option
int LEISURE_TIME, // DEFAULT_LEISURE from RFC 7252,
// unless overridden
output: None
int RAND_MIN = 0;
int RAND_MAX = (2^Q) - 1;
int I = randomInteger(RAND_MIN, RAND_MAX);
if (I == 0) {
float fraction = randomFloat(0, 1);
Timer t = new Timer();
t.setAndStart(fraction * LEISURE_TIME);
while(!t.isExpired());
Request req = new Request();
// Initialize as NON and with maximum
// No-Response settings, set options ...
Option opt = new Option(OBSERVE);
opt.set(0);
req.setOption(opt);
opt = new Option(MRFD);
opt.set(0);
req.setOption(opt);
req.send(SRV_ADDR, SRV_PORT);
}
B.2. Client Side - Optimized Version
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input: int Q, // Value of the MRFD option
int LEISURE_TIME, // DEFAULT_LEISURE from RFC 7252,
// unless overridden
output: None
const unsigned int UINT_BIT = CHAR_BIT * sizeof(unsigned int);
if (respond_to(Q) == true) {
float fraction = randomFloat(0, 1);
Timer t = new Timer();
t.setAndStart(fraction * LEISURE_TIME);
while(!t.isExpired());
Request req = new Request();
// Initialize as NON and with maximum
// No-Response settings, set options ...
Option opt = new Option(OBSERVE);
opt.set(0);
req.setOption(opt);
opt = new Option(MRFD);
opt.set(0);
req.setOption(opt);
req.send(SRV_ADDR, SRV_PORT);
}
bool respond_to(int Q) {
while (Q >= UINT_BIT) {
if (rand() != 0) return false;
Q -= UINT_BIT;
}
unsigned int mask = ~((~0u) << Q);
unsigned int masked = mask & rand();
return masked == 0;
}
B.3. Server Side
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input: int COUNT, // Current observer counter
int M, // Desired number of confirmations
int MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT,
Response notification, // Multicast notification to send
output: int NEW_COUNT // Updated observer counter
int D = 4; // Dampener value
int RETRY_NEXT_THRESHOLD = 4;
float CANCEL_THRESHOLD = 0.2;
int N = max(COUNT, 1);
int Q = max(ceil(log2(N / M)), 0);
Option opt = new Option(MRFD);
opt.set(Q);
notification.setOption(opt);
<Finalize the notification message>
notification.send(GRP_ADDR, GRP_PORT);
Timer t = new Timer();
t.setAndStart(MAX_CONFIRMATION_WAIT); // Time t1
while(!t.isExpired());
// Time t2
int R = <number of requests to the target resource
received between t1 and t2, and including
the MRFD option with value 0>;
int E = R * (2^Q);
// Determine after how many multicast notifications
// the next count update will be performed
if ((R == 0) || (max(E/N, N/E) > RETRY_NEXT_THRESHOLD)) {
<Next count update with the next multicast notification>
}
else {
<Next count update after 10 multicast notifications>
}
// Compute the new count estimate
int COUNT_PRIME = <current value of the observer counter>;
int NEW_COUNT = COUNT_PRIME + ((E - N) / D);
// Determine whether to cancel the group observation
if (NEW_COUNT < CANCEL_THRESHOLD) {
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<Cancel the group observation>;
return 0;
}
return NEW_COUNT;
Appendix C. OSCORE Group Self-Managed by the Server
For simple settings, where no pre-arranged group with suitable
memberships is available, the server can be responsible to set up and
manage the OSCORE group used to protect the group observation.
In such a case, a client would implicitly request to join the OSCORE
group when sending the observe registration request to the server.
When replying, the server includes the group keying material and
related information in the informative response (see Section 4.2).
Additionally to what is defined in Section 4, the CBOR map in the
informative response payload contains the following fields, whose
CBOR abbreviations are defined in Section 13.
* 'gp_material': this element is a CBOR map, which includes what the
client needs in order to set up the Group OSCORE Security Context.
This parameter has as value a subset of the
Group_OSCORE_Input_Material object, which is defined in
Section 6.3 of [I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore] and extends the
OSCORE_Input_Material object encoded in CBOR as defined in
Section 3.2.1 of [RFC9203].
In particular, the following elements of the
Group_OSCORE_Input_Material object are included, using the same
CBOR abbreviations from the OSCORE Security Context Parameters
Registry, as in Section 6.3 of
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore].
- 'ms', 'contexId', 'cred_fmt', 'sign_enc_alg', 'sign_alg', and
'sign_params'. These elements MUST be included.
Editor's note: as per the text above, the referred version of
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore] still uses 'sign_enc_alg'
as parameter name. The next version of
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore] will be updated in order to
use 'gp_enc_alg' instead, consistently with the naming used in
the latest version of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm].
- 'hkdf' and 'salt'. These elements MAY be included.
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The 'group_senderId' element of the Group_OSCORE_Input_Material
object MUST NOT be included.
Note that no information is provided as related to the AEAD
Algorithm, or to the Pairwise Key Agreement Algorithm and its
parameters. In fact, the clients and the server will never use
the pairwise mode of Group OSCORE as per Section 8 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], and will not need to compute a
cofactor Diffie-Hellman shared secret in this OSCORE group. It
follows that:
- In the Common Context of the Group OSCORE Security Context, the
parameter AEAD Algorithm and the parameter Pairwise Key
Agreement Algorithm are not set (see Section 2.1.1 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] and Section 2.1.10 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]).
- Consistently, when building the two OSCORE 'external_aad' to
process messages protected with Group OSCORE in this OSCORE
group, (see Section 3.4 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]),
the elements 'alg_aead' and 'alg_pairwise_key_agreement' within
the 'algorithms' arrays are set to the CBOR simple value null
(0xf6).
* 'srv_cred': this element is a CBOR byte string, with value the
original binary representation of the server's authentication
credential used in the OSCORE group. In particular, the original
binary representation complies with the format specified by the
'cred_fmt' element of 'gp_material'.
* 'srv_identifier': this element is encoded as a CBOR byte string,
with value the Sender ID that the server has in the OSCORE group.
* 'exi': this element has as value the residual lifetime of the
keying material of the OSCORE group specified in the 'gp_material'
parameter, encoded as a CBOR unsigned integer.
The value represents the residual lifetime of the keying material
in seconds, i.e., the number of seconds between the current time
at the server and the time when the keying material expires. Upon
receiving the informative response containing the 'exi' parameter,
a client determines the expiration time of the keying material by
adding the number of seconds specified in the 'exi' parameter to
its current time.
If the server has a reliable way to synchronize its internal clock
with UTC, then the server includes also the following field:
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* 'exp': this element has as value the expiration time of the keying
material of the OSCORE group specified in the 'gp_material'
parameter, encoded as a CBOR unsigned integer.
The value represents the number of seconds from
1970-01-01T00:00:00Z UTC until the specified UTC date/time,
ignoring leap seconds, analogous to what is specified for
NumericDate in Section 2 of [RFC7519].
If a client has a reliable way to synchronize its internal clock with
UTC and the 'exp' parameter is present in the informative response,
then the client MUST use the 'exp' parameter value as expiration time
for the group keying material.
Note that the informative response does not require to include an
explicit proof-of-possession (PoP) of the server's private key.
Although the server is also acting as Group Manager and a PoP
evidence of the Group Manager's private key is included in a full-
fledged Join Response (see Section 6.3 of
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore]), such proof-of-possession will
be achieved through every multicast notification that the server
sends, as protected with the group mode of Group OSCORE and including
a signature computed with its private key.
A client receiving an informative response uses the information above
to set up the Group OSCORE Security Context, as described in
Section 2 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]. Note that the client
does not obtain a Sender ID of its own, hence it installs the
Security Context like a "silent server" would, i.e., without Sender
Context. From then on, the client uses the received keying material
to process the incoming multicast notifications from the server.
Since the server is also acting as Group Manager, the authentication
credential of the server provided in the 'srv_cred' element of the
informative response is also used in the 'gm_cred' element of the
external_aad for encrypting and signing the phantom request and
multicast notifications (see Section 3.4 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]).
Furthermore, the server complies with the following points.
* The server MUST NOT self-manage OSCORE groups and provide the
related keying material in the informative response for any other
purpose than the protection of the phantom requests and the
multicast notifications in group observations that it hosts, as
defined in this document.
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The server MAY use the same self-managed OSCORE group to protect
the phantom request and the multicast notifications of multiple
group observations that it hosts.
* The server MUST NOT provide in the informative response the keying
material of other OSCORE groups it is or has been a member of.
Upon expiration of the group keying material as indicated in the
informative response by the 'exp' parameter (if present) and the
'exi' parameter:
* The server MUST stop using the keying material and MUST cancel the
group observations for which that keying material is used (see
Section 4.5 and Section 9.2.4). If the server creates a new group
observation as a replacement or follow-up using the same OSCORE
group:
- The server MUST update the OSCORE Master Secret.
- The server MUST update the ID Context used as Group Identifier
(Gid), consistently with Section 12.2 of
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm].
- The server MAY update the OSCORE Master Salt.
* The client MUST stop using the keying material and MAY re-register
the observation at the server.
Before the keying material has expired, the server can send a
multicast response with response code 5.03 (Service Unavailable) to
the observing clients, protected with the current keying material.
In particular, while it is analogous to the informative response
defined in Section 4.2, this response has the following differences:
* it additionally contains the abovementioned parameters for the
next group keying material to be used; and
* it MAY omit the 'tp_info' and 'ph_req' parameters, since the
associated information is immutable throughout the observation
lifetime.
The response has the same Token value T of the phantom registration
request and it does not include an Observe Option. The server MUST
use its own Sender Sequence Number as Partial IV to protect the error
response, and include its encoding as the Partial IV in the OSCORE
Option of the response.
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When some clients leave the OSCORE group and forget about the group
observation, the server does not have to provide the remaining
clients with any stale Sender IDs, as normally required for Group
OSCORE (see Section 12.2 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]). In
fact, only two entities in the group have a Sender ID, i.e., the
server and possibly the Deterministic Client, if the optimization
defined in this appendix is combined with the use of phantom requests
as deterministic requests (see Appendix D). In particular, both of
them never change their Sender ID during the group lifetime, and they
both remain part of the group until the group ceases to exist.
As an alternative to renewing the keying material before it expires,
the server can simply cancel the group observation (see Section 4.5
and Section 9.2.4), which results in the eventual re-registration of
the clients that are still interested in the group observation.
Applications requiring backward security or forward security are
REQUIRED to use an actual group joining process (usually through a
dedicated Group Manager), e.g., the ACE joining procedure defined in
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore]. The server can facilitate the
clients by providing them with information about the OSCORE group to
join, as described in Section 9.1.
Appendix D. Phantom Request as Deterministic Request
In some settings, the server can assume that all the approaching
clients already have the exact phantom observation request to use,
together with the transport-specific information required to listen
to corresponding multicast notifications.
For instance, the clients can be pre-configured with the phantom
observation request, or they may be expected to retrieve it through
dedicated means (see Appendix A). In either case, the server would
already have started the group observation, before the associated
phantom observation request was disseminated.
Then, the clients either set up the multicast address and group
observation for listening to multicast notifications (if able to
directly do so), or rely on a proxy to do so on their behalf (see
Section 11 and Section 12).
If Group OSCORE is used to protect the group observation (see
Section 9), and the OSCORE group supports the concept of
Deterministic Client [I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore], then the
server and each client in the OSCORE group can also independently
compute the protected phantom observation request.
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In such a case, the unprotected version of the phantom observation
request can be made available to the clients as a smaller, plain CoAP
message. As above, this can be pre-configured on the clients, or
they can obtain it through dedicated means (see Appendix A). In
either case, the clients and the server can independently protect the
plain CoAP message by using the approach defined in Section 3 of
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore], thus all computing the same
protected deterministic request. The latter is used as the actual
phantom observation request that the protected multicast
notifications will match under the group observation in question.
When receiving the deterministic request, the server can clearly
understand what is happening. In fact, as the result of an early
check, the server recognizes the phantom request among the stored
ones. This relies on a byte-by-byte comparison of the incoming
message minus the transport-related fields, i.e., by considering
only: i) the outer REST code; ii) the outer options; and iii) the
ciphertext from the message payload.
If the server recognizes the received deterministic request as one of
its self-generated deterministic phantom requests, then the server
does not perform any Group OSCORE processing on it. This opens for
replying with an unprotected response, although not indicating any
OSCORE-related error. In particular, the server MUST reply with an
informative response that MUST NOT be protected. If a proxy is
deployed between the clients and the server, the proxy is thus able
to retrieve from the informative response everything needed to set
itself as an observer in the group observation, and to start
listening to multicast notifications.
If relying on a proxy, each client sends the deterministic request to
the proxy as a ticket request (see Section 12). However, differently
from what is defined in Section 12 where the ticket request is not a
deterministic request, the clients do not include a Listen-to-
Multicast-Responses Option. This results in the proxy forwarding the
ticket request (i.e., the phantom observation request) to the server
and obtaining the information required to listen to multicast
notifications, unless the proxy has already set itself to do so.
Also, the proxy will be able to serve multicast notifications from
its cache as per [I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore]. An example
considering such a setup is shown in Appendix G.
Note that the phantom registration request is, in terms of transport-
independent information, identical to the same deterministic request
possibly sent by each client (e.g., if a proxy is deployed). Thus,
if the server receives such a phantom registration request, the
informative response may omit the 'ph_req' parameter (see
Section 4.2). If a client receives an informative response that
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includes the 'ph_req' parameter, and this specifies transport-
independent information different from the one of the sent
deterministic request, then the client considers the informative
response malformed.
When using a deterministic request as a phantom observation request,
the observer counter at the server (see Section 4) is not reliably
incremented when new clients start participating in the group
observation. In fact:
* If a proxy is not deployed, the clients simply set up the right
multicast address and port number, and starts listening to
multicast notifications bound to the deterministic request.
Hence, the observer counter at the server is not incremented as
new clients start listening to multicast notifications.
* If a proxy is deployed, the origin server increments its observer
counter after having sent the informative response to the proxy,
as a reply to the deterministic request forwarded to the origin
server on behalf of the first origin client that contacted the
proxy. After that, the same deterministic request sent by any
origin client will not be forwarded to the origin server, but will
instead produce a cache hit at the proxy that will serve the
client accordingly. Hence, the observer counter at the server is
not further incremented as additional, new origin clients start
participating in the group observation through the proxy.
In either case, the security identity associated with the sender of
any deterministic request in the OSCORE group is exactly the same
one, i.e., the pair (SID, OSCORE ID Context), where SID is the OSCORE
Sender ID of the Deterministic Client in the OSCORE group, which all
the clients in the group rely on to produce deterministic requests.
If the optimization defined in Appendix C is also used, the
'gp_material' element in the informative response from the server
MUST also include the following elements from the
Group_OSCORE_Input_Material object.
* 'alg', as per Section 6.3 of [I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore].
* 'det_senderId' and 'det_hash_alg', defined in Section 4 of
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore]. These specify the Sender ID
of the Deterministic Client in the OSCORE group, and the hash
algorithm used to compute the deterministic request (see
Section 3.4.1 of [I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore]).
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Note that, like in Appendix C, no information is provided as related
to the Pairwise Key Agreement Algorithm and its parameters. In fact,
the clients and the server will not need to compute a cofactor
Diffie-Hellman shared secret in this OSCORE group. It follows that:
* In the Common Context of the Group OSCORE Security Context, the
parameter Pairwise Key Agreement Algorithm is not set (see
Section 2.1.10 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]).
* Consistently, when building the two OSCORE 'external_aad' to
process messages protected with Group OSCORE in this OSCORE group,
(see Section 3.4 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]), the element
'alg_pairwise_key_agreement' within the 'algorithms' arrays is set
to the CBOR simple value null (0xf6).
If a deterministic request is used as phantom observation request for
a group observation, the server does not assist clients that are
interested to take part in the group observation but do not support
deterministic requests. This is consistent with the fact that the
setup in question already relies on a lot of agreed pre-
configuration.
Therefore, the following holds when a group observation for a target
resource relies on a deterministic request as a phantom observation
request.
* Every client interested to take part in such a group observation:
has to support deterministic requests; and has to know the phantom
observation request, as a result of pre-configuration or following
its retrieval through dedicated means (see Appendix A).
* The server does not simultaneously run a parallel group
observation for the same target resource, as associated with a
different phantom observation request and intended to clients that
do not support deterministic requests.
* If the server receives an observation request for the target
resource that differs from the specific deterministic request
associated with the group observation for that target resource,
then the server replies as usual with an informative response,
including: the transport-specific information, the phantom request
(i.e., the expected deterministic request), and (optionally) the
latest notification.
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Appendix E. Example with a Proxy
This section provides an example when a proxy P is used between the
clients and the server. The same assumptions and notation used in
Section 7 are used for this example. In addition, the proxy has
address PRX_ADDR and listens to the port number PRX_PORT.
Unless explicitly indicated, all messages transmitted on the wire are
sent over unicast.
C1 C2 P S
| | | |
| | | | (The value of the resource /r is "1234")
| | | |
+------------>| | Token: 0x4a
| GET | | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | Proxy-Uri: "coap://sensor.example/r"
| | | |
| | +------->| Token: 0x5e
| | | GET | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Uri-Path: "r"
| | | |
| | | | (S allocates the available Token value 0x7b)
| | | |
| | | | (S sends to itself a phantom observation
| | | | request PH_REQ as coming from the
| | | | IP multicast address GRP_ADDR)
| | | |
| | | .-----+
| | | / |
| | | \ |
| | | `---->| Token: 0x7b
| | | GET | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Uri-Path: "r"
| | | |
| | | | (S creates a group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | | | (S increments the observer counter
| | | | for the group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |<-------+ Token: 0x5e
| | | 5.03 | Content-Format: application/
| | | | informative-response+cbor
| | | | Max-Age: 0
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| | | | <Other options>
| | | | Payload: {
| | | | / tp_info / 0 : [
| | | | cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/',
| | | | cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/',
| | | | 0x7b],
| | | | / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 | OPT | 0xff |
| | | | PAYLOAD)
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | | (PAYLOAD in 'last_notif' : "1234")
| | | |
| | | |
| | | | (The proxy starts listening to the
| | | | GRP_ADDR address and the GRP_PORT port.)
| | | |
| | | | (The proxy adds C1 to its list of observers.)
| | | |
|<------------+ | Token: 0x4a
| 2.05 | | | Observe: 54120
| | | | <Other options>
| | | | Payload: "1234"
| | | |
... ... ... ...
| | | |
| +----->| | Token: 0x01
| | GET | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | Proxy-Uri: "coap://sensor.example/r"
| | | |
| | | | (The proxy has a fresh cache representation)
| | | |
| |<-----+ | Token: 0x01
| | 2.05 | | Observe: 54120
| | | | <Other options>
| | | | Payload: "1234"
| | | |
... ... ... ...
| | | |
| | | | (The value of the resource
| | | | /r changes to "5678".)
| | | |
| | | (#) |
| | |<-------+ Token: 0x7b
| | | 2.05 | Observe: 11
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| | | | <Other options>
| | | | Payload: "5678"
| | | |
|<------------+ | Token: 0x4a
| 2.05 | | | Observe: 54123
| | | | <Other options>
| | | | Payload: "5678"
| | | |
| |<-----+ | Token: 0x01
| | 2.05 | | Observe: 54123
| | | | <Other options>
| | | | Payload: "5678"
| | | |
(#) Sent over IP multicast to GROUP_ADDR:GROUP_PORT.
Figure 10: Example of Group Observation with a Proxy
Note that the proxy has all the information to understand the
observation request from C2, and can immediately start to serve the
still fresh values.
This behavior is mandated by Section 5 of [RFC7641], i.e., the proxy
registers itself only once with the next hop and fans out the
notifications it receives to all the registered clients.
Appendix F. Example with a Proxy and Group OSCORE
This section provides an example when a proxy P is used between the
clients and the server, and Group OSCORE is used to protect multicast
notifications end-to-end between the server and the clients.
The same assumptions and notation used in Section 10 are used for
this example. In addition, the proxy has address PRX_ADDR and
listens to the port number PRX_PORT.
Unless explicitly indicated, all messages transmitted on the wire are
sent over unicast and protected with OSCORE end-to-end between a
client and the server.
C1 C2 P S
| | | |
| | | | (The value of the resource /r is "1234")
| | | |
+-------------->| | Token: 0x4a
| FETCH | | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x01; piv: 101; ...}
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| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Proxy-Scheme: "coap"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | +-------->| Token: 0x5e
| | | FETCH | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x01; piv: 101; ...}
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | |
| | | | (S allocates the available
| | | | Token value 0x7b .)
| | | |
| | | | (S sends to itself a phantom observation
| | | | request PH_REQ as coming from the
| | | | IP multicast address GRP_ADDR)
| | | (#) |
| | | .------+
| | | / |
| | | \ |
| | | `----->| Token: 0x7b
| | | FETCH | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 501;
| | | | kid context: 0x57ab2e; ...}
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
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| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
| | | | (S steps SN_5 in the Group OSCORE
| | | | Security Context : SN_5 <-- 502)
| | | |
| | | | (S creates a group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | | |
| | | | (S increments the observer counter
| | | | for the group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | |<--------+ Token: 0x5e
| | | 2.05 | OSCORE: {piv: 301; ...}
| | | | Max-Age: 0
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 5.03 (Service Unavailable),
| | | | Content-Format: application/
| | | | informative-response+cbor,
| | | | <Other class E options>,
| | | | 0xff,
| | | | Payload {
| | | | / tp_info / 0 : [
| | | | cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/',
| | | | cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/',
| | | | 0x7b],
| | | | / ph_req / 1 : bstr(0x05 |
| | | | OPT | 0xff |
| | | | PAYLOAD | SIGN),
| | | | / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 |
| | | | OPT | 0xff |
| | | | PAYLOAD | SIGN),
| | | | / join_uri / 4 : "coap://myGM/
| | | | ace-group/myGroup",
| | | | / sec_gp / 5 : "myGroup"
| | | | }
| | | | }
| | | |
|<--------------+ | Token: 0x4a
| 2.05 | | | OSCORE: {piv: 301; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | (Same Encrypted_payload)
| | | |
| (#) | | |
+-------------->| | Token: 0x4b
| FETCH | | | Observe: 0 (register)
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| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05 ; piv: 501;
| | | | kid context: 0x57ab2e; ...}
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Proxy-Scheme: "coap"
| | | | Listen-To-Multicast-Responses: {
| | | | [cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/',
| | | | cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/',
| | | | 0x7b]
| | | | }
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
| | | | (The proxy starts listening to the
| | | | GRP_ADDR address and the GRP_PORT port.)
| | | |
| | | | (The proxy adds C1 to
| | | | its list of observers.)
| | | |
|<--------------+ |
| | ACK | |
... ... ... ...
| | | |
| +------>| | Token: 0x01
| | FETCH | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x02; piv: 201; ...}
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Proxy-Scheme: "coap"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | +-------->| Token: 0x5f
| | | FETCH | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x02; piv: 201; ...}
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| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | | (S increments the observer counter
| | | | for the group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | |<--------+ Token: 0x5f
| | | 2.05 | OSCORE: {piv: 401; ...}
| | | | Max-Age: 0
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 5.03 (Service Unavailable),
| | | | Content-Format: application/
| | | | informative-response+cbor,
| | | | <Other class E options>,
| | | | 0xff,
| | | | Payload {
| | | | / tp_info / 0 : [
| | | | cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/',
| | | | cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/',
| | | | 0x7b],
| | | | / ph_req / 1 : bstr(0x05 |
| | | | OPT | 0xff |
| | | | PAYLOAD | SIGN),
| | | | / last_notif / 2 : bstr(0x45 |
| | | | OPT | 0xff |
| | | | PAYLOAD | SIGN),
| | | | / join_uri / 4 : "coap://myGM/
| | | | ace-group/myGroup",
| | | | / sec_gp / 5 : "myGroup"
| | | | }
| | | | }
| | | |
| |<------+ | Token: 0x01
| | 2.05 | | OSCORE: {piv: 401; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | (Same Encrypted_payload)
| | (#) | |
| +------>| | Token: 0x02
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| | FETCH | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 501;
| | | | kid context: 57ab2e; ...}
| | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Proxy-Scheme: "coap"
| | | | Listen-To-Multicast-Responses: {
| | | | [cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/',
| | | | cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/',
| | | | 0x7b]
| | | | }
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
| | | | (The proxy adds C2 to
| | | | its list of observers.)
| |<------+ |
| | ACK | |
| | | |
... ... ... ...
| | | |
| | | | (The value of the resource
| | | | /r changes to "5678".)
| | | |
| | | (##) |
| | |<--------+ Token: 0x7b
| | | 2.05 | Observe: 11
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 2.05 (Content),
| | | | Observe: [empty],
| | | | <Other class E options>,
| | | | 0xff,
| | | | Payload: "5678"
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| (#) | | |
|<--------------+ | Token: 0x4b
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| 2.05 | | | Observe: 54123
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | (Same Encrypted_payload and Signature)
| | (#) | |
| |<------+ | Token: 0x02
| | 2.05 | | Observe: 54123
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | (Same Encrypted_payload and signature)
| | | |
(#) Sent over unicast, and protected with Group OSCORE end-to-end
between the server and the clients.
(##) Sent over IP multicast to GROUP_ADDR:GROUP_PORT, and protected
with Group OSCORE end-to-end between the server and the clients.
Figure 11: Example of Group Observation with a Proxy and Group OSCORE
Unlike in the unprotected example in Appendix E, the proxy does _not_
have all the information to perform request deduplication, and can
only recognize the identical request once the client sends the ticket
request.
Appendix G. Example with a Proxy and Deterministic Requests
This section provides an example when a proxy P is used between the
clients and the server, and Group OSCORE is used to protect multicast
notifications end-to-end between the server and the clients.
In addition, the phantom request is especially a deterministic
request (see Appendix D), which is protected with the pairwise mode
of Group OSCORE as defined in [I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore].
G.1. Assumptions and Walkthrough
The example provided in this appendix as reflected by the message
exchange shown in Appendix G.2 assumes the following.
1. The OSCORE group supports deterministic requests. Thus, the
server creates the phantom request as a deterministic request
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore], stores it locally as one of
its issued phantom requests, and starts the group observation.
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2. The server makes the phantom request available through other
means, e.g., a pub-sub broker, together with the transport-
specific information for listening to multicast notifications
bound to the phantom request (see Appendix A).
3. Since the phantom request is a deterministic request, the server
can more efficiently make it available in its smaller, plain
version. The clients can obtain it from the particular
alternative source and protect it as per Section 3 of
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore], thus all computing the same
deterministic request to be used as phantom observation request.
4. If the client does not rely on a proxy between itself and the
server, it simply sets the group observation and starts
listening to multicast notifications. Building on Step 2 above,
the same would happen if the phantom request was not
specifically a deterministic request.
5. If the client relies on a proxy between itself and the server,
it uses the phantom request as a ticket request (see
Section 12). However, unlike the case considered in Section 12
where the ticket request is not a deterministic request, the
client does not include a Listen-to-Multicast-Responses Option
in the phantom request sent to the proxy.
6. Unlike for the case considered in Section 12, here the proxy
does not know that the request is exactly a ticket request for
subscribing to multicast notifications. Thus, the proxy simply
forwards the ticket request to the server like it normally
would.
7. The server receives the ticket request, which is a deviation
from the case where the ticket request is not a deterministic
request and stops at the proxy (see Section 12). Then, the
server recognizes the phantom request among the stored ones,
through a byte-by-byte comparison of the incoming message minus
the transport-related fields (see Appendix D). Consequently,
the server does not perform any Group OSCORE processing on it.
8. The server replies with an unprotected informative response (see
Section 4.2), including: the transport-specific information,
(optionally) the phantom request, and (optionally) the latest
notification.
Note that the phantom request can be omitted, since it is the
deterministic phantom request from the client, and thus "in
terms of transport-independent information, identical to the
registration request from the client" (see Section 4.2).
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9. From the received informative response, the proxy retrieves
everything needed to set itself as an observer in the group
observation, and it starts listening to multicast notifications.
If the informative response included a latest notification, the
proxy caches it and forwards it back to the client, otherwise it
replies with an empty ACK (if it has not done it already and the
request from the client was Confirmable).
10. Like in the case with a non-deterministic phantom request
considered in Section 12, the proxy fans out the multicast
notifications to the origin clients as they come. Also, as new
clients following the first one contact the proxy, this does not
have to contact the server again as in Section 12, since the
deterministic phantom request would produce a cache hit as per
[I-D.amsuess-core-cachable-oscore]. Thus, the proxy can serve
such clients with the latest fresh multicast notification from
its cache.
G.2. Message Exchange
The same assumptions and notation used in Section 10 are used for
this example. As a recap of some specific values:
* Two clients C1 and C2 register to observe a resource /r at a
server S, which has address SRV_ADDR and listens to the port
number SRV_PORT. Before the following exchanges occur, no clients
are observing the resource /r , which has value "1234".
* The server S sends multicast notifications to the IP multicast
address GRP_ADDR and port number GRP_PORT, and starts the group
observation already after creating the deterministic phantom
request to early disseminate.
* S is a member of the OSCORE group with 'kid context' = 0x57ab2e as
Group ID. In the OSCORE group, S has 'kid' = 0x05 as Sender ID,
and SN_5 = 501 as Sender Sequence Number.
In addition:
* The proxy has address PRX_ADDR and listens to the port number
PRX_PORT.
* The deterministic client in the OSCORE group has 'kid' = 0x09.
Unless explicitly indicated, all messages transmitted on the wire are
sent over unicast and protected with Group OSCORE end-to-end between
a client and the server.
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C1 C2 P S
| | | |
| | | | (The value of the resource /r is "1234")
| | | |
| | | | (S allocates the available
| | | | Token value 0x7b .)
| | | |
| | | | (S sends to itself a phantom observation
| | | | request PH_REQ as coming from the
| | | | IP multicast address GRP_ADDR.
| | | | The Group OSCORE processing occurs as
| | | | specified for a deterministic request)
| | | |
| | | .------+
| | | / |
| | | \ |
| | | `----->| Token: 0x7b
| | | FETCH | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x09 ; piv: 0 ;
| | | | kid context: 0x57ab2e ; ... }
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | | (S creates a group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | | | (The server does not respond to PH_REQ.
| | | | The server stores PH_REQ locally and
| | | | makes it available at an external source)
| | | |
| | | |
| | | | (C1 obtains PH_REQ and sends it to P)
| | | |
| | | |
+-------------->| | Token: 0x4a
| FETCH | | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x09 ; piv: 0 ;
| | | | kid context: 0x57ab2e ; ... }
| | | | Proxy-Scheme: "coap"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
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| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | +-------->| Token: 0x5e
| | | FETCH | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x09 ; piv: 0 ;
| | | | kid context: 0x57ab2e ; ... }
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | | (S recognizes PH_REQ through byte-by-byte
| | | | comparison against the stored one, and
| | | | skips any Group OSCORE processing)
| | | |
| | | | (S prepares the "last notification"
| | | | response defined below)
| | | |
| | | | 0x45 (2.05 Content)
| | | | Observe: 10
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05 ; piv: 501 ; ...}
| | | | Max-Age: 3000
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x45 (2.05 Content),
| | | | Observe: [empty],
| | | | Payload: "1234"
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
| | | | (S increments the observer counter
| | | | for the group observation of /r)
| | | |
| | | | (S responds to the proxy with an
| | | | unprotected informative response)
| | | (#) |
| | |<--------+ Token: 0x5e
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| | | 5.03 | Content-Format: application/
| | | | informative-response+cbor
| | | | Max-Age: 0
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Payload {
| | | | / tp_info / 0 : [
| | | | cri'coap://SRV_ADDR:SRV_PORT/',
| | | | cri'coap://GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT/',
| | | | 0x7b],
| | | | / last_notif / 2 : <this conveys
| | | | the "last notification"
| | | | response prepared above>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | | (P extracts PH_REQ and starts listening
| | | | to multicast notifications with Token
| | | | 0x7b at GRP_ADDR:GRP_PORT)
| | | |
| | | | (P extracts the "last notification"
| | | | response, caches it and forwards
| | | | it back to C1)
| | | |
|<--------------+ | Token: 0x4a
| 2.05 | | | Observe: 54120
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05 ; piv: 501 ; ...}
| | | | Max-Age: 2995
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x45 (2.05 Content),
| | | | Observe: [empty],
| | | | Payload: "1234"
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
... ... ... ...
| | | |
| | | | (C2 obtains PH_REQ and sends it to P)
| | | |
| +------>| | Token: 0x01
| | FETCH | | Uri-Host: "sensor.example"
| | | | Observe: 0 (register)
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x09 ; piv: 0 ;
| | | | kid context: 0x57ab2e; ...}
| | | | Proxy-Scheme: "coap"
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
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| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x01 (GET),
| | | | Observe: 0 (register),
| | | | Uri-Path: "r",
| | | | <Other class E options>
| | | | }
| | | |
| | | | (P serves C2 from it cache)
| | | |
| |<------+ | Token: 0x01
| | 2.05 | | Observe: 54120
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05 ; piv: 501 ; ...}
| | | | Max-Age: 1800
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x45 (2.05 Content),
| | | | Observe: [empty],
| | | | Payload: "1234"
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
... ... ... ...
| | | |
| | | | (The value of the resource
| | | | /r changes to "5678".)
| | | |
| | | (##) |
| | |<--------+ Token: 0x7b
| | | 2.05 | Observe: 11
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502 ; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | Encrypted_payload {
| | | | 0x45 (2.05 Content),
| | | | Observe: [empty],
| | | | <Other class E options>,
| | | | 0xff,
| | | | Payload: "5678"
| | | | }
| | | | <Signature>
| | | |
| | | | (P updates its cache entry
| | | | with this notification)
| | | |
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|<--------------+ | Token: 0x4a
| 2.05 | | | Observe: 54123
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502 ; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | (Same Encrypted_payload and signature)
| | | |
| |<------+ | Token: 0x01
| | 2.05 | | Observe: 54123
| | | | OSCORE: {kid: 0x05; piv: 502 ; ...}
| | | | <Other class U/I options>
| | | | 0xff
| | | | (Same Encrypted_payload and signature)
| | | |
(#) Sent over unicast and unprotected.
(##) Sent over IP multicast to GROUP_ADDR:GROUP_PORT, and protected
with Group OSCORE end-to-end between the server and the clients.
Figure 12: Example of Group Observation with a Proxy and Group
OSCORE, where the Phantom Request is a Deterministic Request
Appendix H. Document Updates
This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
H.1. Version -09 to -10
* Fixed section numbers of referred documents.
* Revised registration policies in the IANA considerations.
* Clarifications and editorial improvements.
H.2. Version -08 to -09
* Revised 'tp_info' also to use CRIs for transport information.
* Section restructuring: impact from proxies on rough counting of
clients.
* Revised and repositioned text on deterministic phantom requests.
* Fixes in the examples with message exchanges.
* Clarifications and editorial improvements.
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H.3. Version -07 to -08
* Fixed the CDDL definition 'srv_addr' in 'tp_info'.
* Early mentioning that 'srv_addr' cannot instruct redirection.
* The replay protection of multicast notifications is as per Group
OSCORE.
* Consistently use the format uint for the Multicast-Response-
Feedback-Divider Option.
* Fixed consumption of proxy-related options in a ticket request
sent to the proxy.
* Possible use of the option Proxy-Cri or Proxy-Scheme-Number in a
ticket request.
* Explained non-provisioning of some parameters in self-managed
OSCORE groups.
* Use of 'exi' for relative expiration time in self-managed OSCORE
groups.
* Improved notation in the examples of message exchanges with proxy.
* Clarifications and editorial improvements.
H.4. Version -06 to -07
* Added more details on proxies that do not support the Multicast-
Response-Feedback-Divider Option.
* Added more details on the reliability of the client rough
counting.
* Added more details on the unreliability of counting new clients,
when the phantom request is obtained from other sources or is an
OSCORE deterministic request.
* Revised parameter naming.
* Fixes in IANA considerations.
* Editorial improvements.
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H.5. Version -05 to -06
* Clarified rough counting of clients when a proxy is used
* IANA considerations: registration of target attribute "gp-obs"
* Editorial improvements.
H.6. Version -04 to -05
* If the phantom request is an OSCORE deterministic request, there
is no parallel group observation for clients that lack support.
* Clarification on pre-configured clients.
* Clarified early publication of phantom request.
* Fixes in IANA considerations.
* Fixed example with proxy and Group OSCORE.
* Editorial improvements.
H.7. Version -03 to -04
* Added a new section on prerequisites.
* Added a new section overviewing alternative variants.
* Consistent renaming of 'cli_addr' to 'cli_host' in 'tp_info'.
* Added pre-requirements for early retrieval of phantom request.
* Revised example with early retrieval of phantom request.
* Clarified use, rationale and example of phantom request as
deterministic request.
* Editorial improvements.
H.8. Version -02 to -03
* Distinction between authentication credential and public key.
* Fixed processing of informative response at the client, when Group
OSCORE is used.
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* Discussed scenarios with pre-configured address/port and Token
value.
H.9. Version -01 to -02
* Clarifications on client rough counting and IP multicast scope.
* The 'ph_req' parameter is optional in the informative response.
* New parameter 'next_not_before' for the informative response.
* Optimization when rekeying the self-managed OSCORE group.
* Security considerations on unsecured multicast notifications.
* Protection of the ticket request sent to a proxy.
* RFC8126 terminology in IANA considerations.
* Editorial improvements.
H.10. Version -00 to -01
* Simplified cancellation of the group observation, without using a
phantom cancellation request.
* Aligned parameter semantics with core-oscore-groupcomm and ace-
key-groupcomm-oscore.
* Clarifications about self-managed OSCORE group and use of
deterministic requests for cacheable OSCORE.
* New example with a proxy, Group OSCORE and a deterministic phantom
request.
* Fixes in the examples and editorial improvements.
Acknowledgments
The authors sincerely thank Carsten Bormann, Klaus Hartke, Jaime
Jiménez, John Preuß Mattsson, Jim Schaad, Ludwig Seitz, and Göran
Selander for their comments and feedback.
The work on this document has been partly supported by the Sweden's
Innovation Agency VINNOVA and the Celtic-Next projects CRITISEC and
CYPRESS; and by the H2020 project SIFIS-Home (Grant agreement
952652).
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Authors' Addresses
Marco Tiloca
RISE AB
Isafjordsgatan 22
SE-16440 Stockholm Kista
Sweden
Email: marco.tiloca@ri.se
Rikard Höglund
RISE AB
Isafjordsgatan 22
SE-16440 Stockholm Kista
Sweden
Email: rikard.hoglund@ri.se
Christian Amsüss
Hollandstr. 12/4
1020 Vienna
Austria
Email: christian@amsuess.com
Francesca Palombini
Ericsson AB
Torshamnsgatan 23
SE-16440 Stockholm Kista
Sweden
Email: francesca.palombini@ericsson.com
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