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Analysis of Solution Candidates to Reveal a Host Identifier (HOST_ID) in Shared Address Deployments
draft-ietf-intarea-nat-reveal-analysis-05

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 6967.
Authors Mohamed Boucadair , Dr. Joseph D. Touch , Pierre Levis , Reinaldo Penno
Last updated 2013-03-10 (Latest revision 2013-02-13)
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Suresh Krishnan
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Responsible AD Brian Haberman
Send notices to intarea-chairs@tools.ietf.org, draft-ietf-intarea-nat-reveal-analysis@tools.ietf.org
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draft-ietf-intarea-nat-reveal-analysis-05
INTAREA WG                                                  M. Boucadair
Internet-Draft                                            France Telecom
Intended status: Informational                                  J. Touch
Expires: August 18, 2013                                         USC/ISI
                                                                P. Levis
                                                          France Telecom
                                                                R. Penno
                                                                   Cisco
                                                       February 14, 2013

Analysis of Solution Candidates to Reveal a Host Identifier (HOST_ID) in
                       Shared Address Deployments
               draft-ietf-intarea-nat-reveal-analysis-05

Abstract

   This document is a collection of solutions to reveal a host
   identifier (denoted as HOST_ID) when a Carrier Grade NAT (CGN) or
   application proxies are involved in the path.  This host identifier
   is used by a remote server to sort out the packets by sending host.
   The host identifier must be unique to each host under the same shared
   IP address.

   This document analyzes a set of solution candidates to reveal a host
   identifier; no recommendation is sketched in the document.

Status of this Memo

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

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

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

   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 18, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  On HOST_ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  HOST_ID and Privacy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.1.  Privacy-related Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.  Detailed Solutions Analysis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     4.1.  Use the Identification Field of IP Header (IP-ID)  . . . .  7
       4.1.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       4.1.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.2.  Define an IP Option  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       4.2.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       4.2.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.3.  Define a TCP Option  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       4.3.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       4.3.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.4.  Inject Application Protocol Message Headers  . . . . . . . 10
       4.4.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       4.4.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.5.  PROXY Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.5.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.5.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     4.6.  Assign Port Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.6.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       4.6.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     4.7.  Host Identity Protocol (HIP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       4.7.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       4.7.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     4.8.  Use a Notification Channel (e.g., ICMP)  . . . . . . . . . 13
       4.8.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       4.8.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.9.  Use Out-of-Band Mechanisms (e.g., IDENT) . . . . . . . . . 15
       4.9.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
       4.9.2.  Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   5.  Solutions Analysis: Synthesis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   6.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   7.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   8.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     9.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     9.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

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1.  Introduction

   As reported in [RFC6269], several issues are encountered when an IP
   address is shared among several subscribers.  These issues are
   encountered in various deployment contexts: e.g., Carrier Grade NAT
   (CGN), application proxies or A+P [RFC6346].  Examples of such issues
   are: implicit identification (Section 13.2 of [RFC6269]), SPAM
   (Section 13.3 of [RFC6269]), blacklisting a mis-behaving host
   (Section 13.1 of [RFC6269]) or redirect users with infected machines
   to a dedicated portal (Section 5.1 of [RFC6269]).

   In particular, some servers use the source IPv4 address as an
   identifier to treat some incoming connections differently.  Due to
   the deployment of CGNs (e.g., NAT44 [RFC3022], NAT64 [RFC6146]), that
   address will be shared.  In particular, when a server receives
   packets from the same source address, because this address is shared,
   the server does not know which host is the sending host [RFC6269].
   The sole use of the IPv4 address is not sufficient to uniquely
   distinguish a host.  As a mitigation, it is tempting to investigate
   means which would help in disclosing an information to be used by the
   remote server as a means to uniquely disambiguate packets of hosts
   using the same IPv4 address.

   The risk of not mitigating these issues are: OPEX (Operational
   Expenditure) increase for IP connectivity service providers (costs
   induced by calls to a hotline), revenue loss for content providers
   (loss of users audience), customers unsatisfaction (low quality of
   experience, service segregation, etc.).

   The purpose of this document is to analyze a set of alternative
   channels to convey a host identifier and to assess to what extent
   they solve the problem described in Section 2.  Below are listed the
   alternatives analyzed in the document:

   o  Use the Identification field of IP header (denoted as IP-ID,
      Section 4.1).
   o  Define a new IP option (Section 4.2).
   o  Define a new TCP Option (Section 4.3).
   o  Inject application headers (Section 4.4).
   o  Enable Proxy Protocol ( (Section 4.5)).
   o  Assign port sets (Section 4.6).
   o  Activate HIP (Section 4.7).
   o  Use a notification channel (Section 4.8).
   o  Use an out-of-band mechanism (Section 4.9).

   A synthesis is provided in Section 5 while the detailed analysis is
   elaborated in Section 4.

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   Section 3 discusses privacy issues common to all HOST_ID solutions.
   It is out of scope of this document to elaborate on privacy issues
   specific to each solution.

2.  On HOST_ID

   Policies relying on source IP address which are enforced by some
   servers will be applied to all hosts sharing the same IP address.
   For example, blacklisting the IP address of a spammer host will
   result in all other hosts sharing that address having their access to
   the requested service restricted.  [RFC6269] describes the issues in
   detail.  Therefore, due to address sharing, servers need an extra
   information than the source IP address to differentiate the sending
   host.  We call HOST_ID this information.

   HOST_ID does not reveal the identity of a user, a subscriber or an
   application.

   Because HOST_ID is used by a remote server to sort out the packets by
   sending host, HOST_ID must be unique to each host under the same IP
   address.  HOST_ID does not need to be globally unique.  Of course,
   the combination of the (public) IP source address and the identifier
   (i.e., HOST_ID) ends up being relatively unique.  As unique as
   today's 32-bit IPv4 addresses which, today, can change when a host
   re-connects.

   If the HOST_ID is put at the IP level, all packets will have to bear
   the identifier.  If it is put at a higher connection-oriented level,
   the identifier is only needed once in the session establishment phase
   (for instance TCP three-way-handshake), then, all packets received in
   this session will be attributed to the HOST_ID designated during the
   session opening.

   Within this document, we assume the address sharing function injects
   the HOST_ID.  Another deployment option to avoid potential
   performance degradation is to let the host inject its HOST_ID but the
   address sharing function will check its content (just like an IP
   anti-spoofing function).  For some proposals, the HOST_ID is
   retrieved using an out-of-band mechanism or signaled in a dedicated
   notification channel.

   Security considerations are common to all analyzed solutions (see
   Section 7).  Privacy-related aspects are discussed in Section 3.

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3.  HOST_ID and Privacy

   IP address sharing is motivated by a number of different factors.
   For years, many network operators have conserved the use of public
   IPv4 addresses by making use of Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)
   that assigns a single public IPv4 address to all hosts within the
   customer's local area network and uses NAT [RFC3022] to translate
   between locally unique private IPv4 addresses and the CPE's public
   address.  With the exhaustion of IPv4 address space, address sharing
   between customers on a much larger scale is likely to become much
   more prevalent.  While many individual users are unaware of and
   uninvolved in decisions about whether their unique IPv4 addresses get
   revealed when they send data via IP, some users realize privacy
   benefits associated with IP address sharing, and some may even take
   steps to ensure that NAT functionality sits between them and the
   public Internet.  IP address sharing makes the actions of all users
   behind the NAT function unattributable to any single host, creating
   room for abuse but also providing some identity protection for non-
   abusive users who wish to transmit data with reduced risk of being
   uniquely identified.

   The proposals considered in this document add a measure of uniqueness
   back to hosts that share a public IP address.  The extent of that
   uniqueness depends on which information is included in the HOST_ID.

   The volatility of the HOST_ID information is similar to the source IP
   address: a distinct HOST_ID may be used by the address sharing
   function when the host reboots or gets a new internal IP address.  As
   with persistent IP addresses, persistent HOST_IDs facilitate user
   tracking over time.

   As a general matter, the HOST_ID proposals do not seek to make hosts
   any more identifiable than they would be if they were using a public,
   non-shared IP address.  However, depending on the solution proposal,
   the addition of HOST_ID information may allow a device to be
   fingerprinted more easily than it otherwise would be.  Should
   multiple solutions be combined (e.g., TCP Option and XFF) that
   include different pieces of information in the HOST_ID,
   fingerprinting may become even easier.

   A HOST_ID can be spoofed as this is also the case for spoofing an IP
   address.  Furthermore, users of network-based anonymity services
   (like Tor) may be capable of stripping HOST_ID information before it
   reaches its destination.

   HOST_ID specification document(s) should explain the privacy impact
   of the solutions they specify, including the extent of HOST_ID
   uniqueness and persistence, assumptions made about the lifetime of

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   the HOST_ID, whether and how the HOST_ID can be obfuscated or
   recycled, and the impact of the use of the HOST_ID on device or
   implementation fingerprinting.  [I-D.iab-privacy-considerations]
   provides further guidance.

   For more discussion about privacy, refer to [RFC6462].

3.1.  Privacy-related Considerations

   Whatever the channel used to convey the HOST_ID, the following design
   consideration are to be taken into account:

   Uniqueness of identifiers in HOST_ID:  It is recommended that
      HOST_IDs be limited to providing local uniqueness rather than
      global uniqueness.

   Refresh rate of HOST_ID:  Address sharing function should not use
      permanent HOST_ID values.

   Manipulate HOST_IDs:  Address sharing function should be able to
      strip, re-write and add HOST_ID fields.

   Interference between HOST_IDs:  An address sharing function, able to
      inject HOST_IDs in several layers, should reveal subsets of the
      same information (e.g., full IP address, lower 16 bits of IP
      address, etc.).

4.  Detailed Solutions Analysis

4.1.  Use the Identification Field of IP Header (IP-ID)

4.1.1.  Description

   IP-ID (Identification field of IP header) can be used to insert an
   information which uniquely distinguishes a host among those sharing
   the same IPv4 address.  An address sharing function can re-write the
   IP-ID field to insert a value unique to the host (16 bits are
   sufficient to uniquely disambiguate hosts sharing the same IP
   address).  Note that this field is not altered by some NATs; hence
   some side effects such as counting hosts behind a NAT as reported in
   [Count].

   The address sharing function injecting the HOST_ID must follow the
   rules defined in [RFC6864]; in particular the same HOST_ID is not re-
   assigned to another host sharing the same IP address during a given
   time interval.

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   A variant of this approach relies upon the format of certain packets,
   such as TCP SYN, where the IP-ID can be modified to contain a 16 bit
   HOST_ID.

   Address sharing devices performing this function would require to
   indicate they are performing this function out of band, possibly
   using a special DNS record.

4.1.2.  Analysis

   This usage is not consistent with the fragment reassembly use of the
   Identification field [RFC0791] or the updated handling rules for the
   Identification field [RFC6864].

   Complications may arise if the packet is fragmented before reaching
   the device injecting the HOST_ID.  To appropriately handle those
   packets, the address sharing function will need to maintain a lot of
   state.

   Another complication to be encountered is where translation is
   balanced among several NATs; setting the appropriate HOST_ID by a
   given NAT would alter the coordination between those NATs.  Of
   course, one can argue this coordinated NAT scenario is not a typical
   deployment scenario but still using IP-ID as a channel to convey a
   HOST_ID is broken.

4.2.  Define an IP Option

4.2.1.  Description

   A solution alternative to convey the HOST_ID is to define an IP
   option [RFC0791].  HOST_ID IP option can be inserted by the address
   sharing function to uniquely distinguish a host among those sharing
   the same IP address.  An example of such option is documented in
   [I-D.chen-intarea-v4-uid-header-option].  This IP option allows to
   convey an IPv4 address, an IPv6 prefix, a GRE key, IPv6 Flow Label,
   etc.

   Another way for using IP option has been described in Section 4.6 of
   [RFC3022].

4.2.2.  Analysis

   This proposal can apply for any transport protocol.  Nevertheless, it
   is widely known that routers (and other middleboxes) filter IP
   options.  IP packets with IP options can be dropped by some IP nodes.
   Previous studies demonstrated that "IP Options are not an option"
   (Refer to [Not_An_Option], [Options]).

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   As a conclusion, using an IP option to convey a host-hint is not
   viable.

4.3.  Define a TCP Option

4.3.1.  Description

   HOST_ID may be conveyed in a dedicated TCP Option.  An example is
   specified in [I-D.wing-nat-reveal-option] which defines a new TCP
   Option called USER_HINT.  This option encloses the TCP client's
   identifier (e.g., the lower 16 bits of their IPv4 address, their VLAN
   ID, VRF ID, subscriber ID).  The address sharing device inserts this
   TCP Option into the TCP SYN packet.

4.3.2.  Analysis

   Using a new TCP Option to convey the HOST_ID does not require any
   modification to the applications but it is applicable only for TCP-
   based applications.  Applications relying on other transport
   protocols are therefore left unsolved.

   [I-D.wing-nat-reveal-option] discusses the interference with other
   TCP Options.

   The risk to experience session failures due to handling a new TCP
   Option is low as measured in [Options].
   [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation] provides a detailed
   implementation and experimentation report of HOST_ID TCP Option.
   [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation] investigated in depth the
   impact of activation HOST_ID in host, address sharing function and
   the enforcement of policies at the server side.
   [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation] reports a failure ratio of
   0.103% among top 100000 websites.

   Some downsides have been raised against defining a TCP Option to
   reveal a host identity:

   o  Conveying an IP address in a TCP Option may be seen as a violation
      of OSI layers but since IP addresses are already used for the
      checksum computation, this is not seen as a blocking point.
      Moreover, updated version of [I-D.wing-nat-reveal-option] does not
      allow anymore to convey an IP address (the HOST_ID is encoded in
      16bits).

   o  TCP Option space is limited, and might be consumed by the TCP
      client.  [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation] discusses two
      approaches to sending the HOST_ID: sending the HOST_ID in the TCP
      SYN (which consumes more bytes in the TCP header of the TCP SYN)

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      and sending the HOST_ID in a TCP ACK (which consumes only two
      bytes in the TCP SYN).  Content providers may find it more
      desirable to receive the HOST_ID in the TCP SYN, as that more
      closely preserves the HOST_ID received in the source IP address as
      per current practices.  It is more complicated to implement
      sending the HOST_ID in a TCP ACK, as it can introduce MTU issues
      if the ACK packet also contains TCP data, or a TCP segment is
      lost.  Note [I-D.wing-nat-reveal-option] allows only to enclose
      the HOST_ID in the TCP SYN packet.

   o  When there are several NATs in the path, the original HOST_ID may
      be lost.  The loss of the original HOST_ID may not be a problem as
      the target usage is between proxies or a CGN and server.  Only the
      information leaked in the communication leg is likely to be
      useful.

   o  Interference with usages such as Forwarded HTTP header (see
      Section 4.4) should be elaborated to specify the behavior of
      servers when both options are used; in particular specify which
      information to use: the content of the TCP Option or what is
      conveyed in the application headers.

   o  When load-balancers or proxies are in the path, this option does
      not allow to preserve the original source IP address and source
      port.  Preserving such information is required for logging
      purposes for instance (e.g., [RFC6302]).
      [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation] defines a TCP Option which
      allows to reveal various combinations of source information (e.g.,
      source port, source port and source IP address, source IPv6
      prefix, etc.).

   More discussion about issues raised when extending TCP can be found
   at [ExtendTCP].

4.4.  Inject Application Protocol Message Headers

4.4.1.  Description

   Another option is to not require any change at the transport nor the
   IP levels but to convey at the application payload the required
   information which will be used to disambiguate hosts.  This format
   and the related semantics depend on its application (e.g., HTTP, SIP,
   SMTP, etc.).

   For HTTP, Forwarded header ([I-D.ietf-appsawg-http-forwarded]) can be
   used to display the original IP address when an address sharing
   device is involved.  Service Providers operating address sharing
   devices can enable the feature of injecting the Forwarded header

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   which will enclose the original IPv4 address or the IPv6 prefix part
   (see the example shown in Figure 1).  The address sharing device has
   to strip all included Forwarded headers before injecting their own.
   Servers may rely on the contents of this field to enforce some
   policies such as blacklisting misbehaving users.

   Note that X-Forwarded-For (XFF) header is obsoleted by
   [I-D.ietf-appsawg-http-forwarded].

                 Forwarded: for=192.0.2.1,for=[2001:db8::1]
                 Forwarded: proto=https;by=192.0.2.15

                    Figure 1: Example of Forwarded-For

4.4.2.  Analysis

   Not all applications impacted by the address sharing can support the
   ability to disclose the original IP address.  Only a subset of
   protocols (e.g., HTTP) can rely on this solution.

   For the HTTP case, to prevent users injecting invalid HOST_IDs, an
   initiative has been launched to maintain a list of trusted ISPs using
   XFF: See for example the list available at: [Trusted_ISPs] of trusted
   ISPs as maintained by Wikipedia.  If an address sharing device is on
   the trusted XFF ISPs list, users editing Wikipedia located behind the
   address sharing device will appear to be editing from their
   "original" IP address and not from the NATed IP address.  If an
   offending activity is detected, individual hosts can be blacklisted
   instead of all hosts sharing the same IP address.

   XFF header injection is a common practice of load balancers.  When a
   load balancer is in the path, the original content of any included
   XFF header should not be stripped.  Otherwise the information about
   the "origin" IP address will be lost.

   When several address sharing devices are crossed, Forwarded header
   can convey the list of IP addresses (e.g., Figure 1).  The origin
   HOST_ID can be exposed to the target server.

   Injecting Forwarded header also introduces some implementation
   complexity if the HTTP packet is at or close to the MTU size.

   It has been reported that some "poor" implementation may encounter
   some parsing issues when injecting XFF header.

   For encrypted HTTP traffic, injecting Forwarded header may be broken.

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4.5.  PROXY Protocol

4.5.1.  Description

   The solution, referred to as Proxy Protocol [Proxy], does not require
   any application-specific knowledge.  The rationale behind this
   solution is to prepend each connection with a line reporting the
   characteristics of the other side's connection as shown in the
   example depicted in Figure 2.  The header line shown in this example
   is for a TCP over IPv4 connection received from 192.0.2.1:56324 and
   destined to 192.0.2.15:443.  "PROXY" string is used to identify the
   Proxy Protocol while "\r\n" indicates CRLF.

                   PROXY TCP4 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.15 56324 443\r\n

                Figure 2: Example of PROXY conection report

   Upon receipt of a message conveying this line, the server removes the
   line.  The line is parsed to retrieve the transported protocol.  The
   content of this line is recorded in logs and used to enforce
   policies.

4.5.2.  Analysis

   This solution can be deployed in a controlled environment but it can
   not be deployed to all access services available in the Internet.  If
   the remote server does not support the Proxy Protocol, the session
   will fail.  Other complications will raise due to the presence of
   firewalls for instance.

   As a consequence, this solution is broken and can not be recommended.

4.6.  Assign Port Sets

4.6.1.  Description

   This solution does not require any action from the address sharing
   function to disclose a host identifier.  Instead of assuming all
   transport ports are associated with one single host, each host under
   the same external IP address is assigned a restricted port set.
   These port sets are then advertised to remote servers using off-line
   means.  This announcement is not required for the delivery of
   internal services (i.e., offered by the service provider deploying
   the address sharing function) relying on implicit identification.

   Port sets assigned to hosts may be static or dynamic.

   Port set announcements to remote servers do not require to reveal the

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   identity of individual hosts but only to advertise the enforced
   policy to generate non-overlapping port sets (e.g., the transport
   space associated with an IP address is fragmented to contiguous
   blocks of 2048 port numbers).

   An example of such option is documented in [RFC6346].

4.6.2.  Analysis

   The solution does not require defining new fields nor options; it is
   policy-based.

   The solution may contradict the port randomization ([RFC6056]) as
   identified in [RFC6269].  A mitigation would be to avoid assigning
   static port sets to individual hosts.

   The method is convenient for the delivery of services offered by the
   service provider offering also the IP connectivity service.

4.7.  Host Identity Protocol (HIP)

4.7.1.  Description

   [RFC5201] specifies an architecture which introduces a new namespace
   to convey an identity information.

4.7.2.  Analysis

   This solution requires both the client and the server to support HIP
   [RFC5201].  Additional architectural considerations are to be taken
   into account such as the key exchanges, etc.

   An alternative deployment model, which does not require the client to
   be HIP-enabled, is the address sharing function behave as a UDP/
   TCP-HIP relay.  This model is also not viable as it assumes all
   servers are ported to be HIP-enabled.

4.8.  Use a Notification Channel (e.g., ICMP)

4.8.1.  Description

   Another alternative is to convey the HOST_ID using a separate
   notification channel than the packets issued to invoke the service.

   An implementation example is defined in
   [I-D.yourtchenko-nat-reveal-ping].  This solution relies on a
   mechanism where the address sharing function encapsulates the
   necessary differentiating information into an ICMP Echo Request

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   packet that it sends in parallel with the initial session creation
   (e.g., SYN).  The information included in the ICMP Request Data
   portion describes the five-tuples as seen on both of the sides of the
   address sharing function.

4.8.2.  Analysis

   o  This ICMP proposal is valid for any transport protocol that uses a
      port number.  Address sharing function may be configurable with
      the transport protocol which is allowed to trigger those ICMP
      messages.
   o  A hint should be provided to the ultimate server (or intermediate
      nodes) an ICMP Echo Request conveys a HOST_ID.  This may be
      implemented using magic numbers.
   o  Even if ICMP packets are blocked in the communication path, the
      user connection does not have to be impacted.
   o  Some implementations requiring to delay the establishment of a
      session until receiving the companion ICMP Echo Request, may lead
      to some user experience degradation.
   o  Because of the presence of load-balancers in the path, the
      ultimate server receiving the SYN packet may not be the one which
      may receive the ICMP message conveying the HOST_ID.
   o  Because of the presence of load-balancers in the path, the port
      number assigned by address sharing may be lost.  Therefore the
      mapping information conveyed in the ICMP may not be sufficient to
      associate a SYN packet with a received ICMP.
   o  The proposal is not compatible with the presence of cascaded NAT.
      The main reason is each NAT in the path will generate an ICMP
      message to reveal the internal host identifier.  Because these
      messages will be translated by the downstream address sharing
      devices, the remote server will receive multiple ICMP messages and
      will need to decide which host identifier to use.
   o  The ICMP proposal will add a traffic overhead for both the server
      and the address sharing device.
   o  The ICMP proposal is similar to other mechanisms (e.g., syslog,
      netflow) for reporting dynamic mappings to a mediation platform
      (mainly for legal traceability purposes).  Performance degradation
      are likely to be experienced by address sharing functions because
      ICMP messages are to be sent in particular for each new
      instantiated mapping (and also even if the mapping exists).
   o  In some scenarios (e.g., Section 3 of
      [I-D.boucadair-pcp-nat-reveal]), HOST_ID should be interpreted by
      intermediate devices which embed Policy Enforcement Points (PEP,
      [RFC2753]) responsible for granting access to some services.
      These PEPs need to inspect all received packets in order to find
      the companion (traffic) messages to be correlated with ICMP
      messages conveying HOST_IDs.  This induces more complexity to
      these intermediate devices.

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4.9.  Use Out-of-Band Mechanisms (e.g., IDENT)

4.9.1.  Description

   Another alternative is to retrieve the HOST_ID using a dedicated
   query channel.

   An implementation example may rely on the Identification Protocol
   (IDENT, [RFC1413]).  This solution assumes address sharing function
   implements the server part of IDENT while remote servers implement
   the client part of the protocol.  IDENT needs to be updated (see
   [IDENT_NAT]) to be able to return a host identifier instead of the
   user-id as defined in [RFC1413].  The IDENT response syntax uses the
   same USERID field described in [RFC1413] but rather than returning a
   username, a host identifier (e.g., a 16 bit value) is returned
   [IDENT_NAT].  For any new incoming connection, the server contacts
   the IDENT server to retrieve the associated identifier.  During that
   phase, the connection may be delayed.

4.9.2.  Analysis

   o  IDENT is specific to TCP.  Alternatives out-of-band mechanism may
      be design to cover other transport protocols such as TCP and UDP.
   o  This solution requires the address sharing function to embed an
      IDENT server.
   o  A hint should be provided to the ultimate server (or intermediate
      nodes) the address sharing function implements IDENT protocol.  A
      solution example is to publish this capability using DNS; other
      solutions can be envisaged.
   o  An out-of-band mechanism may require some administrative setup
      (e.g., contract agreement) between the entity managing the address
      sharing function and the entity managing the remote server.  This
      deployment is not deployable in the Internet at large because
      establishing and maintaining agreements between ISPs and all
      service actors is heavy and not scalable.
   o  Some implementations requiring to delay the establishment of a
      session until receiving the companion IDENT response, may lead to
      some user experience degradation.
   o  The IDENT proposal will add a traffic overhead for both the server
      and the address sharing device.
   o  Performance degradation are likely to be experienced by address
      sharing functions embedding the IDENT server.  This is even
      exacerbated if the address sharing function has to handle an IDENT
      query for each new instantiated mapping (and also even if the
      mapping exists).
   o  In some scenarios (e.g., Section 3 of
      [I-D.boucadair-pcp-nat-reveal]), HOST_ID should be interpreted by
      intermediate devices which embed Policy Enforcement Points (PEP,

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      [RFC2753]) responsible for granting access to some services.
      These PEPs need to inspect all received packets in order to
      generate the companion IDENT queries.  This may induce more
      complexity to these intermediate devices.
   o  IDENT queries may be generated by non legitimate TCP servers.
      This would require the address sharing function to enforce some
      policies (e.g., rate limit queries, filter based on the source IP
      address, etc.).

5.  Solutions Analysis: Synthesis

   The following Table 1 summarizes the approaches analyzed in this
   document.

   o  "Success ratio" indicates the ratio of successful communications
      with remote servers when the HOST_ID is injected using a candidate
      solution.
   o  "Deployable today" indicates if the solution can be generalized
      without any constraint on current architectures and practices.
   o  "Possible Perf Impact" indicates the level of expected performance
      degradation.  The rationale behind the indicated potential
      performance degradation is whether the injection requires some
      treatment at the IP level or not.
   o  "OS TCP/IP Modif" indicates whether a modification of the OS
      TCP/IP stack is required at the server side.

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             +-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
             |IP-ID| IP   | TCP  |HTTP  |PROXY|Port | HIP |ICMP |IDENT|
             |     |Option|Option|Header|     | Set |     |     |     |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   UDP       | Yes | Yes  | No   | No   | No  | Yes |     | Yes | No  |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   TCP       | Yes | Yes  | Yes  | No   | Yes | Yes |     | Yes | Yes |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   HTTP      | Yes | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes | Yes |     | Yes | Yes |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   Encrypted | Yes | Yes  | Yes  | No   | Yes | Yes |     | Yes | Yes |
   Traffic   |     |      |      |      |     |     |     |     |     |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   Success   | 100%| 30%  | 99%  | 100% | Low | 100%|Low  |~100%|~100%|
   Ratio     |     |      |      |      |     |     |     |     |     |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   Possible  | Low | High | Low  |  Med | High| No  | N/A | High|High |
   Perf      |  to |      |  to  |   to |     |     |     |     |     |
   Impact    | Med |      | Med  | High |     |     |     |     |     |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   OS TCP/IP | Yes | Yes  | Yes  | No   | No  | No  |     | Yes | Yes |
   Modif     |     |      |      |      |     |     |     |     |     |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   Deployable| Yes | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | No  | Yes | No  | Yes | Yes |
   Today     |     |      |      |      |     |     |     |     |     |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
   Notes     | (1) |  (8) | (8)  |  (2) | (8) | (1) | (4) | (6) | (1) |
             | (7) |      |      |      |     | (3) | (7) | (8) | (6) |
             |     |      |      |      |     | (7) |     |     | (8) |
   ----------+-----+------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
    Notes:
    (1)  Requires mechanism to advertise NAT is participating in this
         scheme (e.g., DNS PTR record).
    (2)  This solution is widely deployed (e.g., HTTP Severs,
         Load-Balancers, etc.).
    (3)  When the port set is not advertised, the solution is less
         efficient for third-party services.
    (4)  Requires the client and the server to be HIP-compliant and HIP
         infrastructure to be deployed. If the client and the server are
         HIP-enabled, the address sharing function does not need to
         insert an identifier. If the client is not HIP-enabled,
         designing the device that performs address sharing to act
         as a UDP/TCP-HIP relay is not viable.
    (6)  The solution is inefficient in some scenarios (see Section 5)
    (7)  The solution is a theoretical construct.
    (8)  The solution is a documented proposal.

                  Table 1: Summary of analyzed solutions.

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   Provided success ratio figures for TCP and IP options are inspired
   from the results documented in [Options]
   [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation][ExtendTCP].

   The provided success ratio for IP-ID is theoretical; it assumes the
   address sharing function follows the rules in [RFC6864] to re-write
   the IP Identification field.

   Since PROXY and HIP are not widely deployed, the success ratio to
   establish a communication with remote servers using these protocols
   is low.

   The success ratio for the ICMP-based solution is implementation-
   specific but it is likely to be close to 100%.  A remote server which
   does not support the ICMP-based solution will ignore received
   companion ICMP messages.  An upgraded server will need to hold
   accepting a session until receiving the companion ICMP message.  The
   success ratio depends on how efficient the solution is implemented at
   the server side.

   The success ratio for IDENT solution is implementation-specific but
   it is likely to be close to 100%.  A remote server which does not
   support IDENT will accept a session establishment request following
   its normal operation.  An upgraded server will need to hold accepting
   a session until receiving the response to IDENT request it will send
   to the host.  The success ratio depends on how efficient the solution
   is implemented at the server side.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not require any action from IANA.

7.  Security Considerations

   The same security concerns apply for the injection of an IP option,
   TCP Option and application-related content (e.g., Forwarded HTTP
   header) by the address sharing device.  If the server trusts the
   content of the HOST_ID field, a third party user can be impacted by a
   misbehaving user to reveal a "faked" HOST_ID (e.g., original IP
   address).

   HOST_ID may be used to leak information about the internal structure
   of a network behind an address sharing function.  If this behavior is
   undesired for the network administrator, the address sharing function
   can be configured to strip any existing HOST_ID in received packets
   from internal hosts.

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   HOST_ID specification documents should elaborate further on threats
   inherent to each individual solution to convey the HOST_ID (e.g., use
   of the IP-ID field to count hosts behind a NAT [Count]).

8.  Acknowledgments

   Many thanks to D. Wing, C. Jacquenet, J. Halpern and B. Haberman for
   their review, comments and inputs.

   Thanks also to P. McCann, T. Tsou, Z. Dong, B. Briscoe, T. Taylor, M.
   Blanchet, D. Wing and A. Yourtchenko for the discussions in Prague.

   Some of the issues related to defining a new TCP Option have been
   raised by L. Eggert.

   Privacy text is provided by A. Cooper.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC0791]  Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
              September 1981.

   [RFC3022]  Srisuresh, P. and K. Egevang, "Traditional IP Network
              Address Translator (Traditional NAT)", RFC 3022,
              January 2001.

   [RFC6056]  Larsen, M. and F. Gont, "Recommendations for Transport-
              Protocol Port Randomization", BCP 156, RFC 6056,
              January 2011.

9.2.  Informative References

   [Count]    "A technique for counting NATted hosts",
              <http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/fnat.pdf>.

   [ExtendTCP]
              Honda, M., Nishida, Y., Raiciu, C., Greenhalgh, A.,
              Handley, M. and H. Tokuda,, "Is it still possible to
              extend TCP?", November 2011,
              <http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/mboxes.pdf>.

   [I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation]
              Abdo, E., Boucadair, M., and J. Queiroz, "HOST_ID TCP
              Options: Implementation & Preliminary Test Results",

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              draft-abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation-03 (work in
              progress), July 2012.

   [I-D.boucadair-pcp-nat-reveal]
              Boucadair, M., Reddy, T., Patil, P., and D. Wing, "Using
              PCP to Reveal a Host behind NAT",
              draft-boucadair-pcp-nat-reveal-00 (work in progress),
              November 2012.

   [I-D.chen-intarea-v4-uid-header-option]
              Wu, Y., Ji, H., Chen, Q., and T. ZOU), "IPv4 Header Option
              For User Identification In CGN Scenario",
              draft-chen-intarea-v4-uid-header-option-00 (work in
              progress), March 2011.

   [I-D.iab-privacy-considerations]
              Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols",
              draft-iab-privacy-considerations-03 (work in progress),
              July 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-appsawg-http-forwarded]
              Petersson, A. and M. Nilsson, "Forwarded HTTP Extension",
              draft-ietf-appsawg-http-forwarded-10 (work in progress),
              October 2012.

   [I-D.wing-nat-reveal-option]
              Yourtchenko, A. and D. Wing, "Revealing hosts sharing an
              IP address using TCP option",
              draft-wing-nat-reveal-option-03 (work in progress),
              December 2011.

   [I-D.yourtchenko-nat-reveal-ping]
              Yourtchenko, A., "Revealing hosts sharing an IP address
              using ICMP Echo Request",
              draft-yourtchenko-nat-reveal-ping-00 (work in progress),
              March 2012.

   [IDENT_NAT]
              Wing, D., "Using the Identification Protocol with an
              Address Sharing Device", August 2012,
              <draft-wing-intarea-ident>.

   [Not_An_Option]
              R. Fonseca, G. Porter, R. Katz, S. Shenker, and I.
              Stoica,, "IP options are not an option", 2005, <http://
              www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2005/

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              EECS-2005-24.html>.

   [Options]  Alberto Medina, Mark Allman, Sally Floyd, "Measuring
              Interactions Between Transport Protocols and Middleboxes",
              2005, <http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2004/papers/
              p336-medina.pdf>.

   [Proxy]    Tarreau, W., "The PROXY protocol", November 2010, <http://
              haproxy.1wt.eu/download/1.5/doc/proxy-protocol.txt>.

   [RFC1413]  St. Johns, M., "Identification Protocol", RFC 1413,
              February 1993.

   [RFC2753]  Yavatkar, R., Pendarakis, D., and R. Guerin, "A Framework
              for Policy-based Admission Control", RFC 2753,
              January 2000.

   [RFC5201]  Moskowitz, R., Nikander, P., Jokela, P., and T. Henderson,
              "Host Identity Protocol", RFC 5201, April 2008.

   [RFC6146]  Bagnulo, M., Matthews, P., and I. van Beijnum, "Stateful
              NAT64: Network Address and Protocol Translation from IPv6
              Clients to IPv4 Servers", RFC 6146, April 2011.

   [RFC6269]  Ford, M., Boucadair, M., Durand, A., Levis, P., and P.
              Roberts, "Issues with IP Address Sharing", RFC 6269,
              June 2011.

   [RFC6302]  Durand, A., Gashinsky, I., Lee, D., and S. Sheppard,
              "Logging Recommendations for Internet-Facing Servers",
              BCP 162, RFC 6302, June 2011.

   [RFC6346]  Bush, R., "The Address plus Port (A+P) Approach to the
              IPv4 Address Shortage", RFC 6346, August 2011.

   [RFC6462]  Cooper, A., "Report from the Internet Privacy Workshop",
              RFC 6462, January 2012.

   [RFC6864]  Touch, J., "Updated Specification of the IPv4 ID Field",
              RFC 6864, February 2013.

   [Trusted_ISPs]
              "Trusted XFF list", <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
              XFF_project#Trusted_XFF_list>.

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Authors' Addresses

   Mohamed Boucadair
   France Telecom
   Rennes,   35000
   France

   Email: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com

   Joe Touch
   USC/ISI

   Email: touch@isi.edu

   Pierre Levis
   France Telecom
   Caen,   14000
   France

   Email: pierre.levis@orange.com

   Reinaldo Penno
   Cisco
   USA

   Email: repenno@cisco.com

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