Network Working Group                                         M. Boutier
Internet-Draft                                             J. Chroboczek
Intended status: Informational          PPS, University of Paris-Diderot
Expires: January 4, 2014                                    July 3, 2013


                        Source-specific Routing
            draft-boutier-homenet-source-specific-routing-00

Abstract

   Source-specific routing is a generalisation of next-hop routing in
   which the routing decision is made depending on a packet's source
   address in addition to the destination.  We describe the motivation
   for source-specific routing and our experiences with an experimental
   extension of the Babel routing protocol that implements source-
   specific routing.

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   described in the Simplified BSD License.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Source-specific routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     2.1.  Usage scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     2.2.  Routing tables  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   3.  Implementation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.  Interoperability issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     4.1.  Interoperability with next-hop routing  . . . . . . . . . . 7
     4.2.  Other forms of specific routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   5.  Applicability to link-state protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   6.  Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9


































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1.  Introduction

   The main routing paradigm deployed on the Global Internet is next-hop
   routing.  In next-hop routing, routing decisions are performed per-
   packet, and consist in examining a packet's destination address only,
   and mapping it to a next-hop router.

   The use of next-hop routing restricts the flexibility of the routing
   system in two ways.  First, since a router only controls the next
   hop, a route can only be selected by the network if it has a selected
   route as its suffix, which makes some forms of global optimisation
   difficult or impossible.  Other routing paradigms, such as circuit
   switching, label switching and source routing, do not have this
   limitation.  (Source-routing, in particular, has been proposed
   multiple times as a suitable routing paradigm for the Global Internet
   [CLARK]), but has been forbidden due to claimed security reasons
   [RFC5095].

   Second, the only decision criterion used by a router is the
   destination address.  This implies that two packets with the same
   destination are routed identically, which is not always desirable.
   There are other data in the IP header that can be reasonably used for
   making a routing decision -- the TOS octet, the flow-id, and, of
   course, the source address.


2.  Source-specific routing

   Source-specific routing is a modest extension of next-hop routing.
   In source-specific routing, just like in next-hop routing, a router's
   role is limited to computing a next hop.  Unlike in next-hop routing,
   however, it can use both the destination and the source address in
   order to perform this computation.  In effect, source-specific
   routing gives a modest amount of routing control to the sending host,
   which can choose among potentially many source addresses, while
   leaving routing decisions firmly in the control of the routers.

2.1.  Usage scenarios

2.1.1.  Simple multihoming

   Consider a multihomed network connected to two (or more) providers,
   for example a home network with two ADSL lines, or one ADSL line and
   one cellular connection.  We assume no cooperation between the two
   providers, so that there are two edge routers ("CPEs"), one for each
   provider.  We further assume that one or both ISPs might be hostile
   to multihoming, so that solutions requiring changes to the on-the-
   wire packet format are not applicable.



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               ISP A      ISP B
                 |          |
                 |          |
               CPE A      CPE B
                  \        /
                   \      /
                    \    /
               end user network

   Each provider grants the network a range of addresses that can be
   assigned to nodes.  A node can choose to configure with an address
   from one of the two ranges, or to configure two addresses, one from
   each range; it will then need to choose, for each packet being sent,
   an address to use as the source address.

   Since providers hopefully implement source address filtering [BCP38],
   the network must choose the edge router through which to route a
   packet depending on its source.

2.1.2.  Tunnels and VPNs

   Tunnels and VPNs are commonly used to establish a network-layer
   topology that is different from the physical topology, notably for
   security reasons.  In many tunnel or VPN deployments, the end network
   uses its native default route, and only routes some set of prefixes
   through the tunnel or VPN.

   In some deployments, however, the default route points at the tunnel.
   If this is done naively, the network stack attempts to route the
   encapsulated packets through the tunnel itself, which causes the
   tunnel to break.  Many workarounds are possible, the simplest being
   to point a host route towards the tunnel endpoint through the native
   interface.

   Source-specific routing provides a clean solution to that problem.
   The native default route is kept unchanged, while a source-specific
   default route is installed through the tunnel.  The source-specific
   route being more specific than the native default route, packets from
   the user network are routed through the tunnel, while the
   encapsulated packets sourced at the edge router follow the native,
   non-specific route.

2.2.  Routing tables

   In classical next-hop routing, every router maintains a routing
   table, a set of pairs (D, NH), where D is a destination prefix and NH
   the corresponding next-hop router.  When a packet with destination
   address d is routed, an entry (D, NH) such that d is in D is



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   selected, and the packet is sent to the corresponding NH.

   In a source-specific router, the routing table is a set of triples of
   the form (D, S, NH), where D is a destination prefix, S a source
   prefix, and NH the next-hop router.  When a packet with destination d
   and source s is routed, an entry (D, S, NH) is selected such that d
   is in D and s is in S, and the packet is sent to the corresponding
   NH.

2.2.1.  Ambiguity

   The two procedures described above omit an important detail: in
   general, there are multiple routing table entries that match a given
   packet.  A router must therefore choose one among these entries in
   order to determine a next hop.

   In next-hop routing, if two routing table entries overlap, then one
   is necessarily more specific than the other; the "longest prefix
   rule" specifies that the most specific applicable routing table entry
   is chosen.  In source-specific routing, this is no longer the case:
   there might, in general, be multiple applicable entries with none
   being included in the others.

   Consider the following fragment of a routing table:

      (2001:DB8:0:1::/64, ::/0, A)
      (::/0, 2001:DB8:0:2::/64, B)

   This specifies that all packets with destination in 2001:DB8:0:1::/64
   are to be routed through A, while packets with a source in 2001:DB8:
   0:2::/64 are to be routed through B. A packet with source 2001:DB8:0:
   2::42 and destination 2001:DB8:0:1::57 matches both rules, although
   neither is more specific than the other.

   We say that a routing table such as the above is ambiguous.  Most
   practical routing tables with source-specific routes turn out to be
   ambiguous.

2.2.2.  Resolving ambiguity

   In the presence of ambiguity, routing tables should be considered by
   destination first; intuitively, "the destination wins".  (We are
   indebted to Fred Baker, who explained that to us.)

   Consider the following network topology:

     ::/0 --- A --- B --- C --- 2001:DB8:0:1::/64




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   Suppose that the routing table at B contains a source-specific
   default route through A and a non-specific route towards 2001:DB8:0:
   1::/64 through C. The correct behaviour is clearly to send a packet
   destined to 2001:DB8:0:1::/64 through C -- this is the only choice
   that has a chance of getting the packet to the right destination.

   It is important to note that all routers in the same routing domain
   must have the exact same behaviour in the presence of ambiguity, lest
   persistent routing loops occur.  Indeed, consider again the example
   above; if router C implements a "source first" disambiguation
   behaviour, then it will send B's packets back to B, which in turn
   will send it back to B, etc.

2.2.3.  Disambiguation routes

   Ideally, we would like the lower layers of the system (the OS kernel,
   the line cards, etc.) to implement source-specific routing tables out
   of the box, with the right disambiguation behaviour already present.
   In practice, however, we have found that such lower-layer support
   either doesn't exist, doesn't work, or has a behaviour different from
   the one desired.

   In order to work with the limitations of the lower layers, we
   introduce disambiguation routes.  A disambiguation route is a route
   that covers the intersection of two ambiguous routes, and therefore
   specifies the behaviour of packets that match both.  Disambiguation
   routes do not appear on the wire, and in our implementation are not
   even inserted into the RIB; they are computed and inserted into the
   FIB on the fly, at route selection time.  From the point of view of
   the routing protocol, disambiguation routes are a lower level
   implementation detail.

   Interestingly enough, we have found that we do not need to maintain a
   list of disambiguation routes that we have installed: when removing a
   route from the FIB, the set of disambiguation routes that need to be
   removed can be computed on the fly, similarly to what happens during
   route insertion.


3.  Implementation

   We have implemented a source-specific variant of the Babel routing
   protocol [BABEL] for the Linux kernel.  We first attempted to use the
   source-specific API provided by Linux; it turns out that this API is
   specific to IPv6, and only works in a very restricted case,
   insufficient for our needs.

   We have therefore chosen to use the "rule" API, which allows a



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   routing daemon to use multiple routing tables that are combined using
   a fairly flexible set of "rules".  We use a dynamically allocated set
   of routing tables, and manage routing rules on the fly.  The use of
   disambiguation routes is essential to obtaining the right behaviour.


4.  Interoperability issues

4.1.  Interoperability with next-hop routing

   In many networks, only some routers will need to perform source-
   specific routing decisions.  For example, in a typical multihomed
   network the two specific default routes will match in most of the
   network, and only be distinguished near the edge routers.  Our
   implementation allows running a base version of Babel within most of
   the network, and only run a source-specific daemon where the specific
   routes are distinct.

   Source-specific routes are encoded within the protocol as a new TLV
   type, in accordance with the Babel extension mechanism [BABEL-EXT].
   This new TLV will be silently ignored by base Babel routers, which
   will therefore route packets following non-specific routes only.

   Hybrid networks consisting of base and source-specific routers do not
   cause persistent routing loops.  However, since non-specific routers
   do not see source-specific routes, they might drop packets unless
   they have enough non-specific routes; distributing a non-specific
   default route throughout the network solves this particular issue in
   all cases.

   Additionally, since non-specific routers do not propagate specific
   routes, packets may end up routed to the wrong destination unless
   there are enough specific routers to propagate all the specific
   routes throughout the network.  A simple solution is to ensure that
   the specific routers form a connected subgraph, which, at worst, can
   be achieved by using tunnels.  Intuitively, such a network consists
   of a source-specific backbone together with a set of non-specific
   leaf networks.

4.2.  Other forms of specific routing

   The technology described in this document is fully general, and
   applies equally well to other forms of specific routing (say, TOS-
   specific or flow-id-specific routing).  In the presence of multiple
   forms of specific routing, a natural question to ask is whether they
   can interoperate in a single routing domain.

   In general, such interoperability is possible assuming that the



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   preference rules of all the implementations are subsets of a single
   total order on all of the routing criteria; equivalently, there must
   exist a consistent linearisation of all of the orderings used by the
   different implementations.  Indeed, consider again a simple linear
   topology:

     X --- A --- B --- Y

   Suppose that X announces a source-specific default route, while Y
   announces a flow-id-specific default route.  A packet that matches
   both routes must be treated consistently by A and B, lest a routing
   loop arise.

   A simple (if brutal) way of meeting the linearisation requirement is
   to require all routers to be specific in one dimension only: to allow
   a router to perform source-specific routing, flow-id-specific
   routing, but not both at the same time.


5.  Applicability to link-state protocols

   While our implementation is an extension of the Babel routing
   protocol, our work applies equally well to any distance vector
   routing protocol, such as RIPv2, RIPng or EIGRP.  The question
   remains about link-state routing protocols.

   The currently deployed link-state protocols (OSPF and IS-IS) are
   actually hybrid protocols: they divide the network into areas, and
   perform link-state routing within areas and distance-vector routing
   within areas.  We are therefore confident that our techniques can be
   used to extend link-state protocols with source-specific inter-area
   routing (a simplified case of that has been implemented for OSPF
   [STENBERG]); in OSPF terms, source-specific routes are analoguous to
   Type 5 LSAs.

   Whether it is possible to extend the current link-state protocols
   with support for intra-area source-specific routing, or whether it is
   desirable to do so, are currently open questions.


6.  Conclusions

   Source-specific routing is a modest extension to ordinary next-hop
   routing that makes a number of useful scenarios possible.  In this
   document, we have described the difficulties associated with source-
   specific routing, and described the solution we adopted within our
   implementation of source-specific routing within the Babel routing
   protocol.



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   We expect our experience to be useful to future implementers of
   source-specific routing within other routing protocols.


7.  References

   [BABEL]    Chroboczek, J., "The Babel Routing Protocol", RFC 6126,
              February 2011.

   [BABEL-EXT]
              Chroboczek, J., "Extension Mechanism for the Babel Routing
              Protocol", Internet
              Draft draft-chroboczek-babel-extension-mechanism-00,
              June 2013.

   [BAKER]    Baker, F., "IPv6 Source/Destination Routing using OSPFv3",
              Internet Draft draft-baker-ipv6-ospf-dst-src-routing-00,
              February 2013.

   [BCP38]    Ferguson, P. and D. Senie, "Network Ingress Filtering:
              Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source
              Address Spoofing", BCP 38, RFC 2827, May 2000.

   [CLARK]    Reed, D. and D. Clark, "Source Routing for Campus-wide
              Internet Transport", September 1980.

   [RFC5095]  Abley, J., Savola, P., and G. Neville-Neil, "Deprecation
              of Type 0 Routing Headers in IPv6", RFC 5095,
              December 2007.

   [STENBERG]
              Stenberg, M., "Hnet (core) package", 2012,
              <https://github.com/fingon/hnet-core>.

   [TROAN]    Troan, O. and L. Colitti, "IPv6 Multihoming with Source
              Address Dependent Routing (SADR)", Internet
              Draft draft-troan-homenet-sadr-00.














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Authors' Addresses

   Matthieu Boutier
   PPS, University of Paris-Diderot
   Case 7014
   75205 Paris Cedex 13,
   France

   Email: boutier@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr


   Juliusz Chroboczek
   PPS, University of Paris-Diderot
   Case 7014
   75205 Paris Cedex 13,
   France

   Email: jch@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr

































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