Asymmetric IPv6 for IoT Networks
draft-jiang-asymmetric-ipv6-03

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Network Working Group                                           S. Jiang
Internet-Draft                              Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
Intended status: Informational                                     G. Li
Expires: 16 November 2020                            Huawei Technologies
                                                         B. E. Carpenter
                                                       Univ. of Auckland
                                                             15 May 2020

                    Asymmetric IPv6 for IoT Networks
                     draft-jiang-asymmetric-ipv6-03

Abstract

   This document describes a new approach to IPv6 header compression for
   use in scenarios where minimizing packet size is crucial but routing
   performance must be maximised.

Status of This Memo

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

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 16 November 2020.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 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
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   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Jiang, et al.           Expires 16 November 2020                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft               Asymmetric IPv6                    May 2020

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Proposed Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Address Transformation at the Gateway . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Routing without Decompression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Address Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Compatibility with Existing Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  Relationship to Static Context Header Compression . . . . . .   7
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   10. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   11. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Appendix A.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove] . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   The large address space of IPv6 is essential for the massive
   expansion of the network edge that will be caused by "Internet of
   Things" (IoT) technology over low-power or 5G links.  However, the
   size of a raw IPv6 packet header causes difficulty due to the small
   maximum transmission units (MTU) allowed by typical low-power, low-
   cost link layers.  For 5G, the importance of header overhead in small
   packets is discussed in [NGMN-5G].  Thus header compression,
   including address compression, is an important issue.  This decreases
   the size of raw packets, but compressed IP addresses are not
   routeable except by decompressing them completely in every forwarding
   node.  There are two issues here.  The first is the extra computation
   resource needed for compressing or decompressing in constrained IoT
   nodes.  The second is that full-length IPv6 routing will consume more
   memory to store routing tables and packet queues (assuming that
   routing is not bypassed by tunnelling).  Such resource consumption is
   very undesirable in constrained nodes with limited storage, CPU
   power, and battery capacity.

   To mitigate these issues, here we propose a solution enabling the
   shortening of IPv6 addresses inside packets, and the routing of
   packets according to short addresses, without needing the overhead of
   a decompression step prior to route lookup.  Considering that the
   scale and size of edge networks may vary widely, different lengths of
   short address can be used in different domains.

   As an illustrative example, consider an edge network which is known
   to never require more than a few hundred nodes, which in most cases