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Problem Statement and Considerations for ROAs issued with Multiple Prefixes
draft-yan-sidrops-roa-considerations-02

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Authors Zhiwei Yan , Jiankang Yao , Xiaowei Liu , Guanggang Geng , Yu Fu
Last updated 2019-03-10
Replaced by draft-ietf-sidrops-roa-considerations, draft-ietf-sidrops-roa-considerations, RFC 9455
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draft-yan-sidrops-roa-considerations-02
SIDR Operations                                                   Z. Yan
Internet-Draft                                                    J. Yao
Intended status: Informational                                     CNNIC
Expires: September 11, 2019                                       X. Liu
                                                                   ISCAS
                                                                 G. Geng
                                                                   CNNIC
                                                                   Y. Fu
                                                          March 10, 2019

   Problem Statement and Considerations for ROAs issued with Multiple
                                Prefixes
                draft-yan-sidrops-roa-considerations-02

Abstract

   The address space holder needs to issue an ROA object when it
   authorizes one or more ASes to originate routes to multiple prefixes.
   During the process of ROA issuance, the address space holder needs to
   specify an origin AS for a list of IP prefixes.  Besides, the address
   space holder has a free choice to put multiple prefixes into a single
   ROA or issue separate ROAs for each prefix based on the current
   specification.  This memo analyzes and presents some operational
   problems which may be caused by the misconfigurations of ROAs
   containing multiple IP prefixes.  Some suggestions and considerations
   also have been proposed.

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/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   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 September 2, 2019.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 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 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.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Problem statement and Analysis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Statistical analysis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Experimental analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.3.  Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   4.  Suggestions and Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   Route Origin Authorization (ROA) is a digitally signed object which
   is used to identify that a single AS has been authorized by the
   address space holder to originate routes to one or more prefixes
   within the address space[RFC6482].If the address space holder needs
   to authorize more than one ASes to advertise the same set of address
   prefixes, the holder must issue multiple ROAs, one per AS number.
   However, at present there are no mandatory requirements in any RFCs
   describing that the address space holders must issue a separate ROA
   for each prefix or a ROA for multiple prefixes.

   Each ROA contains an "asID" field and an "ipAddrBlocks" field.  The
   "asID" field contains one single AS number which is authorized to
   originate routes to the given IP address prefixes.  The
   "ipAddrBlocks" field contains one or more IP address prefixes to

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   which the AS is authorized to originate the routes.  The ROAs with
   multiple prefixes is a common case that each ROA contains exactly one
   AS number but may contain multiple IP address prefixes in the
   operational process of ROA issuance.

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.  Problem statement and Analysis

3.1.  Statistical analysis

   As mentioned above, the address space holder needs to issue an ROA
   object when it authorizes one or more ASes to originate routes to
   multiple prefixes.  During the process of ROA issuance, the address
   space holder needs to specify an origin AS for a list of IP prefixes.
   Besides, the address space holder has a free choice to put multiple
   prefixes into a single ROA or issue separate ROAs for each prefix
   based on the current specification.

   On our RPKI testbed, the Trust Anchor Locator (TAL) files configured
   by RP correspond to the five RIRs' RPKI Trust Anchors.  By using
   these TAL files, all the ROA objects issued in each region (the five
   RIRs) around the world are collected and validated with the RPKI
   Relying Party tools provided by rpki.net.  According to the analysis
   on these data, some statistical results are described in Table. 1.

   +----------------+------------------------+-------------------------+
   | The total      | The number of ROAs     | The number of ROAs with |
   | number of ROAs | with a single prefix   | multiple prefixes       |
   +----------------+------------------------+-------------------------+
   | 7166           | 3307                   | 3859                    |
   +----------------+------------------------+-------------------------+

                  Table.1 Statistical results of all ROAs

   As shown in Table. 1, by the July 4, 2017, the total number of ROA
   objects issued around the world is about 7166.  The result is in
   accordance with the statistics provided by RIPE NCC and Internet
   Multifeed Co.  (MF).  Based on the further analysis on these ROA
   objects, it is found that: the number of ROAs containing only one
   prefix is about 3307 (account for 46.1% of all ROA objects), and the
   number of ROAs containing two or more prefixes is about 3859 (account
   for 53.9% of all ROA objects).

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   In the 3859 ROA objects which each one contains two or more prefixes,
   the number of IP address prefixes are calculated and analyzed.  The
   statistical results are shown in Table. 2.

   +------------------+---------------+--------------------------------+
   | The number of    | The number of | The average number of prefixes |
   | prefixes         | ROAs          | in each ROA                    |
   +------------------+---------------+--------------------------------+
   | 37367            | 3859          | 9.68                           |
   +------------------+---------------+--------------------------------+

               Table. 2 Statistical results of the 3859 ROAs

   As described in Table. 2, there are 37367 IP address prefixes in the
   3859 ROA objects.  And the average number of prefixes in each ROA is
   9.68 (37367/3859).  In addition, four types of ROAs are analyzed and
   calculated in the 3859 ROAs: ROAs each contains
   2-10/11-50/51-100/>100 IP address prefixes.  The statistical results
   are presented in Table. 3.

   +----------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+
   | ROA      | ROA with | ROA with  | ROA with  | ROA with  | Total   |
   | types    | 2-10     | 11-50     | 51-100    | >100      |         |
   |          | prefixes | prefixes  | prefixes  | prefixes  |         |
   +----------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+
   | The      | 3263     | 496       | 60        | 40        | 3859    |
   | number   |          |           |           |           |         |
   | of ROAs  |          |           |           |           |         |
   | The      | 84.56%   | 12.85%    | 1.55%     | 1.04%     | 100.00% |
   | ratio of |          |           |           |           |         |
   | ROAs     |          |           |           |           |         |
   | The      | 12442    | 10365     | 4125      | 10435     | 37367   |
   | number   |          |           |           |           |         |
   | of       |          |           |           |           |         |
   | prefixes |          |           |           |           |         |
   | The      | 33.30%   | 27.74%    | 11.04%    | 27.93%    | 100.00% |
   | ratio of |          |           |           |           |         |
   | prefixes |          |           |           |           |         |
   +----------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+

            Table. 3 Statistical results of four types of ROAs

   As shown in Table. 3, taking the first type of ROA as an example,
   there are 3263 ROAs (account for 84.56% of the 3859 ROA objects)
   which each contains 2-10 IP address prefixes, and the total number of
   IP prefixes in these 3263 ROAs is 12442 (account for 33.29% of the
   37367 prefixes).

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   According to the third row (the ratio of ROAs) in Table. 3, it shows
   the trend that the address space holders tend to issue each ROA
   object with fewer IP prefixes (more than 60% of ROAs containing less
   than 50 prefixes), but they still tend to put multiple prefixes into
   one single ROA.

   It should also be paid more attention that among all the ROAs issued
   today, a single ROA may contain a large number of IP address
   prefixes.  In the statistical results, it is found that there exists
   two ROAs (corresponding to ASN 24440 and ASN 23752) which each
   contains more than 700 IP address prefixes (796 and 892
   respectively).

3.2.  Experimental analysis

   A large number of experiments for the process of ROA issuance have
   been made on our RPKI testbed, it is found that the misconfigurations
   during the issuance may cause the ROAs which have been issued to be
   revoked.  The corresponding scenarios are as follows.

   AS shown in Fig. 1, an ISP needed to issue two ROA objects
   respectively to authorize ASN 64500 to originate routes to IP
   prefixes 192.0.2.128/28 and ASN 64501 to originate routes to IP
   prefixes 198.51.100.128/28.  The operations are simulated on our RPKI
   testbed.

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         +-----------+
         |           |      ASNs:
         |   IANA    |----- 0-4294967295
         |           |      IP Prefixes:
         |           |      0.0.0.0/0
         +-----|-----+
               |            ASNs:
         +-----|-----+      64497-64510
         |           |      65537-65550
         |           |      IP Prefixes
         |   APNIC   ------ 192.0.2.118/25
         |           |      198.51.100.128/25
         |           |      203.0.113.128/25
         +-----|-----+
               |
         +-----|-----+      ASNs:
         |           |      64498-64505
         |           |      IP Prefixes
         |           |      192.0.2.128/26
         |  CNNIC    ------ 198.51.100.128/26
         |           |      203.0.113.128/26
         +-----|-----+
               |
         +-----|-----+
         |           |      ASNs:
         |           |      64500-64505
         |           |      IP Prefixes:
         |   ISP     ------ 192.0.2.128/27
         |           |      198.51.100.128/27
         |           |      203.0.113.128/27
         +-----+-----+
               |                     --------------
               |                 ////              \\\\
               |               //    ROA1:             \\
               ---------------| 64500->192.0.2.128/28    |
                             |       ROA2:                |
                              | 64501->198.51.100.128/28 |
                               \\                      //
                                 \\\\              ////
                                     --------------

                      Fig. 1 Scenario of ROA issuance

   The ROA objects issued by ISP could be checked with the
   "show_published_objects" command.  And as shown in Fig. 2, ISP has
   issued two ROA objects M74Rq1am9m4YUairntkXTRAx6Wg.roa and
   vulw_jMZBy7-ktn7nyhlpchBKZY.roa to respectively authorize ASN 64500

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   to originate routes to IP prefixes 192.0.2.128/28 and ASN 64501 to
   originate routes to IP prefixes 198.51.100.128/28.

   test@~$cat ISPROA.csv
   192.0.2.128/28  64500 Group1
   198.51.100.128/28  64501 Group2
   test@~$ rpkic -i ISP load_roa_requests ISPROA.csv
   test@~$ rpkic -i ISP show_published_objects
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/duPylfF7Hv31rpOa4dVVCZnRkmk.crl
   2017-07-19T10:34:04Z 594CB167AF4E81424EBEA7C1A5FD8DDE216D5C69
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/duPylfF7Hv31rpOa4dVVCZnRkmk.mft
   2017-07-19T10:34:04Z 17C98CBFB179D60D9D0A6D52C2629B7A8DEA8A9C
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/M74Rq1am9m4YUairntkXTRAx6Wg.roa
   2017-07-19T09:20:20Z 0CFD927D1522BF43FC52B748F274646387569222
   64500 192.0.2.128/28
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/vulw_jMZBY7-KTN7nyhlpchBKZY.roa
   2017-07-19T10:34:04Z 305866D0c4ee5e156ebeda811d3540bf0e094043
   64501 198.51.100.128/28

                    Fig. 2 Check the ROAs issued by ISP

   Then, ISP wanted to authorize ASN 64501 to originate routes to
   another IP prefixes 203.0.113.128/28, so it modified the ISPROA.csv
   file and operated the "load_roa_requests" command again.

   test@~$cat ISPROA.csv
   192.0.2.128/28  64500 Group1
   198.51.100.128/28  64501 Group2
   203.0.113.128/28  64501 Group2
   test@~$ rpkic -i ISP load_roa_requests ISPROA.csv
   test@~$ rpkic -i ISP show_published_objects
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/duPylfF7Hv31rpOa4dVVCZnRkmk.crl
   2017-07-19T10:38:03Z 2606EAA75AB60BE7785AE0CB0599D984AFD5BDB5
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/duPylfF7Hv31rpOa4dVVCZnRkmk.mft
   2017-07-19T10:38:03Z 10F3F9249F0A6A636BF8143075693681B45A4BC2
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/M74Rq1am9m4YUairntkXTRAx6Wg.roa
   2017-07-19T09:20:20Z 0CFD927D1522BF43FC52B748F274646387569222
   64500 192.0.2.128/28
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/vO3whtjMpYxxyva4BxRqI2H8eqA.roa
   2017-07-19T10:38:03Z 4B85FDBABEC567A9DD8DA5745B34A201390F4530
   64501 198.51.100.128/28,203.0.113.128/28

                      Fig. 3 Add a new authorization

   As shown in Fig. 3, so a new ROA object
   vO3WhtjMpYxxyva4BxRqI2H8eqA.roa which contained two IP prefixes was
   issued.  It should be noticed that in the ISPROA.csv file the third
   column of the last two lines (with respect to ASN 64501) are set as

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   the same label "Group2" to make sure that the authorizations to the
   two IP prefixes will be issued into a single ROA.

   Now, ISP wants to authorize ASN 64500 to originate routes to IP
   prefixes 203.0.113.128/28 as well, but when it modifies the
   ISPROA.csv file, it appends 204.0.113.128/28 (or any prefixes that do
   not belong to ISP) instead of 203.0.113.128/28 into the ISPROA.csv
   file by mistake.  And then, when it operates the "load_roa_requests"
   command, something unexpected happened.

   test@~$cat ISPROA.csv
   192.0.2.128/28  64500 Group1
   204.0.113.128/28 64500 Group1
   198.51.100.128/28  64501 Group2
   203.0.113.128/28  64501 Group2
   test@~$ rpkic -i ISP load_roa_requests ISPROA.csv
   test@~$ rpkic -i ISP show_published_objects
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/duPylfF7Hv31rpOa4dVVCZnRkmk.crl
   2017-07-19T12:39:47Z 2DD037213237D72AF6CE95F8F37D1F08E8B49A37
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/duPylfF7Hv31rpOa4dVVCZnRkmk.mft
   2017-07-19T12:39:47Z 735D9723B8C6D8214DA78117D27E529AA47E14B6
   rsync://ubuntu/rpki/IANA/APNIC/CNNIC/ISP/vO3whtjMpYxxyva4BxRqI2H8eqA.roa
   2017-07-19T10:38:03Z 4B85FDBABEC567A9DD8DA5745B34A201390F4530
   64501 198.51.100.128/28,203.0.113.128/28

             Fig. 4 Add an incorrect authorization by mistake

   As shown in Fig. 4, a legitimate ROA object was revoked because of
   ISP's misconfiguration.  Obviously, this misconfiguration may lead to
   some serious consequences to RPKI (such as legitimate BGP routes are
   misclassified as "not found").

3.3.  Problem statement

   It shows that the misconfigurations of ROAs containing multiple IP
   address prefixes may lead to much more serious consequences than ROAs
   with fewer IP address prefixes.  According to the above statistical
   and experimental analysis, misconfigurations of the ROAs which
   contain more than 300 IP address prefixes may cause a large-scale
   network interruption.

   Another potential influence of misconfigurations of ROAs containing
   multiple IP prefixes on BGP routers may be considered.  For the ROA
   containing multiple prefixes, once increase or delete one <AS,
   ip_prefix> pair in it, this ROA will be reissued.  Through
   sychronization with repository, RPs fetch a new ROA object and then
   notify and send all the <AS, ip_prefix> pairs in this ROA to BGP
   routers.  That is to say, the update of the ROA containing multiple

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   IP address prefixes will lead to redundant transmission between RP
   and BGP routers . So frequent update of these ROAs will increase the
   convergency time of BGP routers and reduce their performance
   obviously.

4.  Suggestions and Considerations

   Based on the statistical and experimental analysis, following
   suggestions should be considered during the process of ROA issuance:

   1) The issuance of ROAs containing a large number of IP prefixes may
   lead to misconfigurations more easily than ROAs with fewer IP
   prefixes.

   A ROA which contains a large number of IP prefixes is more vulnerable
   to misconfigurations, because any misconfiguration of these prefixes
   may cause the legitimate ROA to be revoked.  Besides, since the
   misconfigurations of ROAs containing a larger number of IP address
   prefixes may lead to much more serious consequences (a large-scale
   network interruption) than ROAs with fewer IP address prefixes, it is
   suggested to avoid issuing ROAs with a large number of IP address
   prefixes.

   So it is also recommended in the last paragraph of the section 4.2.5
   of [I-D.ietf-sidr-rpki-validation-reconsidered] that opterators MAY
   issue separate ROAs for each IP address prefix, so that the loss of
   on IP address prefix from the VRS-IP of any certificate along the
   path to the trust anchor would not invalidate authorizations for
   other IP address prefixes.

   2) The number of ROAs containing multiple IP prefixes should be
   limited and the number of IP prefixes in each ROA should also be
   limited.

   The extreme case (a single ROA can only contain one IP address
   prefix) may lead to too much ROA objects globally, which may in turn
   become a burden for RPs to synchronize and validate all these ROA
   objects with the fully deployment of RPKI.  So a tradeoff between the
   number of ROAs and the number of IP prefixes in a single ROA should
   be considered.

   3) A safeguard scheme is essential to protect the process of ROA
   issuance

   Considering the misconfigurations during the process of ROA issuance
   are inevitable and the serious consequences they may lead to, a
   safeguard scheme to protect and monitor the process of ROA issuance
   should be considered.

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5.  Security Considerations

   TBD.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not request any IANA action.

7.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thanks the valuable comments made by
   members of sidrops WG.

   This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool [RFC2629].

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [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/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC6482]  Lepinski, M., Kent, S., and D. Kong, "A Profile for Route
              Origin Authorizations (ROAs)", RFC 6482,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6482, February 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6482>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-rpki-validation-reconsidered]
              Huston, G., Michaelson, G., Martinez, C., Bruijnzeels, T.,
              Newton, A., and D. Shaw, "RPKI Validation Reconsidered",
              draft-ietf-sidr-rpki-validation-reconsidered-10 (work in
              progress), December 2017.

   [RFC2629]  Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2629, June 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2629>.

Authors' Addresses

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   Zhiwei Yan
   CNNIC
   No.4 South 4th Street, Zhongguancun
   Beijing, 100190
   P.R. China

   Email: yanzhiwei@cnnic.cn

   Jiankang Yao
   CNNIC
   4 South 4th     Street,Zhongguancun,Haidian     District
   Beijing, Beijing  100190
   China

   Phone: +86 10   5881 3007
   Email: yaojk@cnnic.cn

   Xiaowei Liu
   ISCAS
   Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences
   Beijing, 100190
   P.R. China

   Email: liuxiaowei@iscas.ac.cn

   Guanggang Geng
   CNNIC
   No.4 South 4th Street, Zhongguancun
   Beijing, 100190
   P.R. China

   Email: gengguanggang@cnnic.cn

   Yu Fu

   Email: eleven711711@foxmail.com

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