Transport-Independent Path Layer State Management
draft-trammell-plus-statefulness-04

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Network Working Group                                      M. Kuehlewind
Internet-Draft                                               B. Trammell
Intended status: Informational                                ETH Zurich
Expires: May 17, 2018                                      J. Hildebrand
                                                       November 13, 2017

           Transport-Independent Path Layer State Management
                  draft-trammell-plus-statefulness-04

Abstract

   This document describes a simple state machine for stateful network
   devices on a path between two endpoints to associate state with
   traffic traversing them on a per-flow basis, as well as abstract
   signaling mechanisms for driving the state machine.  This state
   machine is intended to replace the de-facto use of the TCP state
   machine or incomplete forms thereof by stateful network devices in a
   transport-independent way, while still allowing for fast state
   timeout of non-established or undesirable flows.

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
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on May 17, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 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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   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect

Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 1]
Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017

   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  State Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Uniflow States  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.2.  Biflow States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.3.  Additional States and Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   4.  Abstract Signaling Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Flow Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.2.  Association and Confirmation Signaling  . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.2.1.  Start-of-flow versus continual signaling  . . . . . .  10
     4.3.  Bidirectional Stop Signaling  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       4.3.1.  Authenticated Stop Signaling  . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     4.4.  Separate Utility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   5.  Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.1.  Middlebox Deployment  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.2.  Endpoint Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   6.  Signal mappings for transport protocols . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.1.  Signal mapping for TCP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.2.  Signal mapping for QUIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17

1.  Introduction

   The boundary between the network and transport layers was originally
   defined to be that between information used (and potentially
   modified) hop-by-hop, and that used end-to-end.  End-to-end
   information in the transport layer is associated with state at the
   endpoints, but processing of network-layer information was assumed to
   be stateless.

   The widespread deployment of stateful middleboxes in the Internet,
   such as network address and port translators (NAPT), firewalls that