Experimental Option for TCP Host Identification
draft-williams-exp-tcp-host-id-opt-04
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draft-williams-exp-tcp-host-id-opt-04
Network Working Group B. Williams
Internet-Draft Akamai, Inc.
Intended status: Experimental M. Boucadair
Expires: April 27, 2015 France Telecom
D. Wing
Cisco Systems, Inc.
October 24, 2014
Experimental Option for TCP Host Identification
draft-williams-exp-tcp-host-id-opt-04
Abstract
Recent IETF proposals have identified benefits to more distinctly
identifying the hosts that are hidden behind a shared address/prefix
sharing device or application-layer proxy. Analysis indicates that
the use of a TCP option for this purpose can be successfully applied
to a broad range of use cases. This document describes a common
experimental TCP option format for host identification.
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 April 27, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 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
(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
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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.
1. Introduction
A broad range of issues associated with address sharing have been
well documented in [RFC6269] and
[I-D.boucadair-intarea-host-identifier-scenarios]. In addition,
[RFC6967] provides analysis of various solutions to the problem of
revealing the sending host's identifier (HOST_ID) information to the
receiver, indicating that a solution using a TCP [RFC0793] option for
this purpose is among the possible approaches that could be applied
with limited performance impact and a high success ratio. The
purpose of this document is to define such a TCP option in order to
factilitate further validation of the mechanism.
Multiple recent Internet Drafts define TCP options for the purpose of
host identification: [I-D.wing-nat-reveal-option],
[I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation], and
[I-D.williams-overlaypath-ip-tcp-rfc]. Specification of multiple
option formats to serve the purpose of host identification increases
the burden for potential implementers and presents interoperability
challenges as well. This document defines a common TCP option format
that supersedes all three of the above proposals.
The option defined in this document uses the TCP experimental option
codepoint sharing mechanism defined in [RFC6994] and is intended to
allow broad deployment of the mechanism on the public Internet in
order to validate the utility of this option format for the intended
use cases.
Section 5 of this document discusses compatibility between this new
TCP option and existing commonly deployed TCP options.
1.1. Important Use Cases
This memo focuses primarily on the carrier grade NAT (CGN),
application proxy, and overlay network use cases described in
[I-D.boucadair-intarea-host-identifier-scenarios]. This means that
the option could either be applied to an individual TCP packet at the
connection endpoint (e.g. an application proxy or a transport layer
overlay network) or at an address-sharing middle box (e.g. a CGN or a
network layer overlay network). See Section 4 below for additional
details about the types of devices that could add the option to a TCP
packet, as well as limitations on use of the option when it is to be
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inserted by an address-sharing middlebox, including issues related to
packet fragmentation.
The receiver-side use cases considered by this memo include the
following:
o Differentiating between attack and non-attack traffic when the
source of the attack is sharing an address with non-attack
traffic.
o Application of per-client policies for resource utilization, etc.
when multiple clients are sharing a common address.
o Improving server-side load-balancing decisions by allowing the
load for multiple clients behind a shared address to be assigned
to different servers, even when session-affinity is required at
the application layer.
In all of the above cases, differentiation between address-sharing
clients commonly needs to be performed by a network function that
does not process the application layer protocol (e.g. HTTP) or the
sercurity protocol (e.g. TLS), because the action needs to be
performed prior to decryption or parsing the application layer. Due
to this, a solution implemented within the application layer or
security protocol cannot fully meet the receiver-side requirements.
At the same time, as noted in [RFC6967], use of an IP option for this
purpose has a low success rate. For these reasons, using a TCP
option to deliver the host identifier has been selected as the most
effective way to satisfy these specific use cases.
1.2. Experiment Goals
The extensive testing effort documented in
[I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation] confirmed that a TCP option
could be used for host identification purposes without significant
disruption of TCP connectivity to legacy servers that do no support
the option. It also showed how mechanisms available in existing TCP
implementations could make use of such a TCP option for improved
diagnostics and/or packet filtering.
Specification of the TCP option described in this memo will allow
further experiments to be conducted in order to assess the viability
of the option for the receiver-side use cases discussed above:
o Differentiate between attack and non-attack traffic.
o Enforce per-client policies.
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o Assist load-balancing decision-making.
In particular, real-world deployment of the option is expected to
provide opportunities for engagement with a broader range of both
application and middleware implementations in order to develop a more
complete picture of how well the option meets the use-case
requirements.
In addition, continued experimentation on the open internet following
publication of this memo is expected to allow further refinement of
requirements related to the values used to populate the option and
how those values can be interpretted by the receiver. There is a
tradeoff between providing the expected functionality to the receiver
and protecting the privacy of the sender, and additional work is
necessary in order to find the right balance.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
3. Option Format
When used for host identification, the TCP experimental option uses
the experiment identification mechanism described in [RFC6994] and
has the following format and content.
0 1 2 3
01234567 89012345 67890123 45678901
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Kind | Length | ExID |
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Host ID ...
+--------+---
Kind: The option kind value is 253
Length: The length of the option is variable, based on the required
size of the host identifier (e.g. a 2 octet host ID will require a
length of 6, while a 4 octet host ID will require a length of 8).
ExID: The experiment ID value is 0x0348 (840).
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Host ID: The host identifier is an application dependent value with
an interpretation agreed upon by the sender and the receiver.
When multiple host identifiers are necessary (e.g. a list of IP
addresses, an IP address and a port number), the HOST_ID option is
included multiple times within the packet, once for each identifier.
While this approach significantly increases option space utilization
when multiple identifiers are included, cases where only a single
identifier is included are more common and thus it is beneficial to
optimize for those cases.
4. Option Use
This section describes requirements associated with the use of the
option, including: which hosts are allowed to include the option,
expected option values, and segments that include the option.
4.1. Sending Host Requirements
The HOST_ID option MUST only be added by the sending host or any
device involved in the forwarding path that changes IP addresses
and/or TCP port numbers (e.g., NAT44 [RFC3022], Layer-2 Aware NAT,
DS-Lite AFTR [RFC6333], NPTv6 [RFC6296], NAT64 [RFC6146], Dual-Stack
Extra Lite [RFC6619], TCP Proxy, etc.). The HOST_ID option MUST NOT
be added or modified en-route by any device that does not modify IP
addresses and/or TCP port numbers.
4.2. Option Value Requirements
The information conveyed in the HOST_ID option is intended to
uniquely identify the sending host to the best capability of the
machine that adds the option to the segment, while at the same time
avoiding inclusion of information that does not assist this purpose.
In addition, the option is not intended to be used to expose
information about the sending host that could not be discovered by
observing segments in transit on some portion of the internet path
between the sender and the receiver. As noted in Section 1.2,
identifying the optimal set of values to use for this purpose is one
of the experiment goals for this document. For this reason, the
document attempts to provide a high degree of flexibility for the
machine that adds the option to TCP segments.
The HOST_ID option value MUST correlate to IP addresses and/or TCP
port numbers that were changed by the inserting host/device (i.e.,
some of the IP address and /or port number bits are used to generate
the HOST_ID).
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Intermediary devices (e.g. address sharing device) SHOULD be
configurable to enable including the HOST_ID TCP option. These
devices MUST be configured with the type of information to populate
the HOST_ID TCP option (e.g. certain bits of the source IPv6 address,
the full source IPv6 address, certain bits of the source IPv4
address, the full source IPv4 address, the source port number, etc.).
The device MAY be configured to include multiple identifiers (e.g.
both a source IP address and a source port number). In such case,
the device MUST insert two instances of the HOST_ID option, each of
which contains the appropriate information. Note, there is no need
to signal the semantic of the included data as this specification
assumes the service is aware of that information by out of band means
(e.g. both the service and the address sharing device are managed by
the same administrative entity).
The device MUST be configured with the behavior to follow when a
HOST_ID TCP option is already present in the segment:
o If the device is configured to strip any existing HOST_ID TCP
option, it MUST remove all occurrences of the HOST_ID in a
received TCP segment.
o If the device is configured to strip existing HOST_ID TCP options
and insert a local HOST_ID TCP Option, it MUST remove all
occurrences of the HOST_ID in a received TCP segment and then MUST
include a local HOST_ID TCP option. The device MAY be configured
to use existing HOST_ID TCP options as differentiators when
selecting the value to use in the local HOST_ID TCP option.
o The device MAY be configured to maintain any existing HOST_ID TCP
option(s) in the received segments, the device MUST NOT remove
those instances of the option. Furthermore, it MUST add a new
HOST_ID TCP option while preserving the order of appearance in the
TCP option space. In particular, the local HOST_ID TCP option
MUST appear as the last occurrence of the HOST_ID TCP option in
the segment.
Note: Because the order of appearance of TCP options could be
modified by some middleboxes, deployments MUST NOT rely on
option order to provide additional meaning to the individual
options. Instead, as indicated above, the full set of option
values, with their lengths, MUST be treated as a single unified
identifier.
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4.3. Segment Inclusion Requirements
A sending host or intermediary device that is configured to include
the HOST_ID option MUST include the option in SYN segments.
The sending host or intermediary device cannot determine whether the
option value is used in a stateful manner by the receiver, nor can it
determine whether SYN cookies are in use by the receiver. For this
reason, the option MUST be included in all segments until return
segments from the receiver positively indicate that the TCP
connection is fully established on the receiver (e.g. the return
segment either includes or acknowledges data).
4.3.1. Alternative SYN Cookie Support
The authors have also considered an alternative approach to SYN
cookie support in which the receiving host (i.e. the host that
accepts the TCP connection) to echo the option back to the sender in
the SYN/ACK segment when a SYN cookie is being sent. This would
allow the sending host to determine whether further inclusion of the
option is necessary. This approach would have the benefit of not
requiring inclusion of the option in non-SYN packets if SYN cookies
had not been used. Unfortunately, this approach fails if the sending
host itself does not support the option, since an intermediate node
would have no way to determine that SYN cookies had been used.
4.3.2. Packet Fragmentation
The option SHOULD NOT be included in packets if the resulting packet
would require local fragmentation.
5. Interaction with Other TCP Options
This section details how the HOST_ID option functions in conjunction
with other TCP options.
5.1. Option Space
TCP provides for a maximum of 40 octets for TCP options. As
discussed in Appendix A of Multipath TCP (MPTCP) [RFC6824], a typical
SYN from modern, popular operating systems contain several TCP
options (MSS, window scale, SACK permitted, and timestamp) which
consume 19-24 octets depending on word alignment of the options. The
initial SYN from a multipath TCP client would consume an additional
16 octets.
HOST_ID needs at least 6 octets to be useful, so 9-21 octets are
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sufficient for many scenarios that benefit from HOST_ID. However, 4
octets are not enough space for the HOST_ID option. Thus, a TCP SYN
containing all the typical TCP options (MSS, window Scale, SACK
permitted, timestamp), and also containing multipath capable or
multipath join, and also being word aligned, has insufficient space
to also accommodate HOST_ID. This means something has to give. The
choices are to avoid word alignment in that case (freeing 5 octets),
remove a TCP option from the original TCP SYN, or avoid adding the
HOST_ID option. We expect to learn from deployment experience during
the experiment which of these options, or a combination of these
options, is best.
5.2. Authentication Option (TCP-AO)
The TCP-AO option [RFC5925] supports a "TCP option flag" to indicate
whether TCP options other than TCP-AO are included in the MAC
calculation (Section 3.1 of [RFC5925]). When the options are not
included in the MAC calculation, the use of HOST_ID option does not
interfere with TCP-AO option. However, because TCP-AO provides
integrity protection of the source IP address, TCP-AO is broken in
the presence of NAT.
Because TCP-AO is incompatible with address sharing, an experimental
extension to TCP-AO (called TCP-AO-NAT) is introduced in [RFC6978].
Injecting a HOST_ID TCP option does not interfere with the use of
TCP-AO-NAT because the TCP options are not included in the MAC
calculation.
6. Security Considerations
Security (including privacy) considerations common to all HOST_ID
solutions are discussed in [RFC6967].
The content of the HOST_ID option MUST NOT be used for purposes that
require a trust relationship between the sender and the receiver
(e.g. billing and/or intrusion prevention) unless a mechanism outside
the scope of this specification is used to ensure the necessary level
of trust.
When the receiving network uses the values provided by the option in
a way that does not require trust (e.g. maintaining session affinity
in a load-balancing system), then use of a mechanism to enforce the
trust relationship is OPTIONAL.
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7. Privacy Considerations
Sending a TCP SYN across the public Internet necessarily discloses
the public IP address of the sending host. When an intermediate
address sharing device is deployed on the public Internet (see
[I-D.boucadair-intarea-host-identifier-scenarios] for examples),
anonymity of the hosts using the device will be increased, with hosts
represented by multiple source IP addresses on the ingress side of
the device using a single source IP address on the egress side. The
HOST_ID TCP option removes that increased anonymity, taking
information that was already visible in TCP packets on the public
Internet on the ingress side of the address sharing device and making
it available on the egress side of the device as well. In some
cases, an explicit purpose of the address sharing device is
anonymity, in which case use of the HOST_ID TCP option would be
incompatible with the purpose of the device.
The HOST_ID option MUST NOT be used to provide client geographic or
network location information that was not publicly visible in IP
packets for the TCP flows processed by the inserting host. For
example, the client's IP address MAY be used as the HOST_ID option
value, but any geographic or network location information derived
from the client's IP address MUST NOT be used as the HOST_ID value.
The HOST_ID option MAY provide differentiating information that is
locally unique such that individual TCP flows processed by the
inserting host can be reliably identified. The HOST_ID option MUST
NOT provide client identification information that was not publicly
visible in IP packets for the TCP flows processed by the inserting
host.
The HOST_ID option MUST be stripped from IP packets traversing middle
boxes that provide network-based anonymity services.
8. IANA Considerations
This document specifies a new TCP option that uses the shared
experimental options format [RFC6994], with ExID=0x0348 (840) in
network-standard byte order. This ExID has already been registered
with IANA.
9. Acknowledgements
Many thanks to J. Touch, M. Scharf, W. Eddy, T. Reddy, and Y. Nishida
for their comments.
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10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC0793] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, September 1981.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation]
Abdo, E., Boucadair, M., and J. Queiroz, "HOST_ID TCP
Options: Implementation & Preliminary Test Results",
draft-abdo-hostid-tcpopt-implementation-03 (work in
progress), July 2012.
[I-D.boucadair-intarea-host-identifier-scenarios]
Boucadair, M., Binet, D., Durel, S., Chatras, B., Reddy,
T., Williams, B., Sarikaya, B., Xue, L., and R. Wheeldon,
"Scenarios with Host Identification Complications",
draft-boucadair-intarea-host-identifier-scenarios-07 (work
in progress), July 2014.
[I-D.williams-overlaypath-ip-tcp-rfc]
Williams, B., "Overlay Path Option for IP and TCP",
draft-williams-overlaypath-ip-tcp-rfc-04 (work in
progress), June 2013.
[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.
[RFC3022] Srisuresh, P. and K. Egevang, "Traditional IP Network
Address Translator (Traditional NAT)", RFC 3022,
January 2001.
[RFC5925] Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
Authentication Option", RFC 5925, June 2010.
[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.
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Roberts, "Issues with IP Address Sharing", RFC 6269,
June 2011.
[RFC6296] Wasserman, M. and F. Baker, "IPv6-to-IPv6 Network Prefix
Translation", RFC 6296, June 2011.
[RFC6333] Durand, A., Droms, R., Woodyatt, J., and Y. Lee, "Dual-
Stack Lite Broadband Deployments Following IPv4
Exhaustion", RFC 6333, August 2011.
[RFC6619] Arkko, J., Eggert, L., and M. Townsley, "Scalable
Operation of Address Translators with Per-Interface
Bindings", RFC 6619, June 2012.
[RFC6824] Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., and O. Bonaventure,
"TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple
Addresses", RFC 6824, January 2013.
[RFC6967] Boucadair, M., Touch, J., Levis, P., and R. Penno,
"Analysis of Potential Solutions for Revealing a Host
Identifier (HOST_ID) in Shared Address Deployments",
RFC 6967, June 2013.
[RFC6978] Touch, J., "A TCP Authentication Option Extension for NAT
Traversal", RFC 6978, July 2013.
[RFC6994] Touch, J., "Shared Use of Experimental TCP Options",
RFC 6994, August 2013.
Appendix A. Change History
[Note to RFC Editor: Please remove this section prior to
publication.]
A.1. Changes from version 03 to 04
Improve discussion of RFC6967.
Don't use "message" to describe TCP segments.
Add reference to RFC6994 to section 3.
Clarify that this draft superseeds earlier drafts.
Improve discussion of SYN cookie handling.
Remove lower case uses of keywords (e.g. must, should, etc.)
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throughout the document.
Some stronger privacy guidance, replacing SHOULD with MUST.
Add an experiment goal related to optimal option value.
Add text related to the identification goals of the option value
(still needs more work).
A.2. Changes from version 02 to 03
Clarification of arguments in favor of this approach.
Add discussion of important use cases.
Clarification of experiment goals and earlier test results.
A.3. Changes from version 01 to 02
Add note re: order of appearance.
A.4. Changes from version 00 to 01
Add discussion of experiment goals.
Limit external references to the earlier drafts.
Add guidance to limit the types of device that add the option.
Improve/correct discussion of TCP-AO and security.
Appendix B. Open Issues
[Note to RFC Editor: Please remove this section prior to
publication.]
Add discussion of non-local fragmentation.
Evaluate the reliability of attempts to exclude the option when local
fragmentation would be required.
Clarify exactly what the identifier is identifying.
Improve discussion on interpretation of multiple instances of the
option, including order of interpretation and set interpretation.
Evaluate whether use of multiple identifiers should be constrained.
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Discuss the possibility of the option value changing over the life of
the connection.
Clarify use cases related to stripping and replacing the option.
Make this draft self-contained, rather than referring readers to use-
cases and requirements contained in other I.D.s that were never
published as RFCs.
Add discussion of TCP Fast Open.
Add experiment goal related to identifying methods for receiver-side
use of data conveyed in the option.
Re-evaluate all use of MUST, MAY, SHOULD thoughout the document.
Clarify use of SHOULD rather than MUST where possible, or perhaps
generally.
Correct some discussion of TCP-AO and TCP-AO-NAT.
Clarify the security requirements re: trust relationship.
Clarify privacy considerations regarding NATs that separate private
and public networks.
Remove restatement of requirements from other documents.
Authors' Addresses
Brandon Williams
Akamai, Inc.
8 Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
USA
Email: brandon.williams@akamai.com
Mohamed Boucadair
France Telecom
Rennes, 35000
Fance
Email: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com
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Dan Wing
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
USA
Email: dwing@cisco.com
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