Network Working Group U. Chunduri, Ed.
Internet-Draft A. Clemm
Intended status: Informational Huawei Technologies
Expires: December 23, 2017 M. Menth
University of Tuebingen
June 21, 2017
Identity Use Cases in IDEAS
draft-ccm-ideas-identity-use-cases-00
Abstract
IDentity-EnAbled networkS (IDEAS) introduce the concept of Identity
into networking. This concept includes an Identity/Identifier split,
which complements existing Locator/Identifier separation
technologies. This document summarizes some conceptual use cases to
illustrate the usefulness of IDEAS.
Requirements Language
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 [RFC2119].
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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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 23, 2017.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Identity (IDy) in IDEAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Identity Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.1. Access Restriction Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Access Security and Manageability . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.5. Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
An Internet Protocol (IP) [RFC0791] address signifies both a
Communication Entity's (Section 1.1) Location and its Identification.
Location and Identification separation protocols, for example LISP
[RFC6830] and HIP [RFC7401], introduced the concept of Identifier and
separated this information from the Locator (IP address in this
case).
The Location/Identifier split separates Location and Identification
function for a specific networking device, i.e., the Identifier
denotes a device while the Locator denotes a routable network
interface. LISP and HIP are examples for protocols supporting
Location/Identifier split. With this split, multiple benefits in
networking can be realized, e.g., in the areas of mobility, network
virtualization, traffic engineering, security, software-defined
networking, and others.
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IDEAS goes one step further and makes a distinction between Identity
and Identifier, which introduces an Identity/Identifier split. The
abstraction of an Identity and the corresponding split from
Identifiers can bring additional benefits that can be combined with
Location/Identifier separation.
These potential benefits, which may not be immediately apparent,
include benefits in the areas of privacy i.e., the ability to have
multiple identifiers for the same entity which can be used for
anonymous communication, identity-based access controls at the
mapping system, and application of various policies uniformly across
Identifiers pertaining to an Identity. Identity also enables various
management aspects at the mapping system efficiently.
The above use cases are further detailed in Section 3, to show how
another abstraction of Identity from identifiers help to enable
various services in the data communication with in IDEAS.
1.1. Acronyms
Communication Entity: A device used for IP-based data
communication
Entity: Refer to Communication Entity
GRIDS: GeneRic Identity Services - a mapping and Identity
services system that will be defined in the context of IDEAS
HIP: Host Identity Protocol
IDf: Identifier - denotes information to unambiguously
identify an entity within a given scope. Examples LISP EID
[RFC6830], HIP HIT [RFC7401] There is no constraint on the
format, obfuscation or routability of an Identifier.
IDy: Identity - a unique identifier for a communications
entity that is assigned by the provider of the communications
service and that is used by the provider to identify and
authenticate the communications entity, but that is not
revealed on the wire.
LOC: Locator, for example, IPv4/IPv6 based
LISP: The Locator/ID Separation Protocol
Metadata: Metadata is data about an Identity. The metadata
may contain information such as the nature of the entity for
example or opaque information about the Identity
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2. Identity (IDy) in IDEAS
An Identity uniquely identifies a Communication Entity. IDy is a set
of bytes, which MAY have a partial structure and MAY be given by the
provider of the communication service. Typically, an IDy SHOULD NOT
be revealed on the wire for privacy reasons.
It is used for secure registration of the Communication Entity to the
provider and it MAY be represented by multiple Identifiers (IDf's) in
the data plane. IDy can be seen as a 'permanent Identifier' of a
communication entity.
Also for privacy reasons, access to the [IDy, IDf] mapping
information may be restricted to a defined set of communication
entities. These communication patterns require new, GeneRic ID
Services (GRIDS), which map these Identifiers to their Identities and
provide additional services based on the Identities (apart from the
traditional Identifier/Location mapping). In the following
(Section 3) various IDy use cases point out benefits of Identity in
IDEAS.
The following diagram Figure 1 illustrates a simplified relation of
Identity , Identifier and Locators [IDy, IDf, LOC].
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Identity (IDy) | Policy | Metadata | MI |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|
+---------------------+--------------------+
| | |
V V V
+------------------------+ +--------------+ +-------------------+
|Identifier(IDf)-1 | LOC1| | IDf-2 | LOC2 |...| IDf-n| LOC1..LOCm |
+------------------------+ +--------------+ +-------------------+
MI - Management and Security Information
Figure 1: Identity and Identifier, Location Relationship
3. Identity Use Cases
The need for an Identity can be described by a few simple uses of the
same as specified below.
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3.1. Privacy
To communicate with a device on a network, a LOC is needed. In
current [IDf, LOC] protocols, a Mapping Server (MS) stores the
[IDf,LOC] mapping. The resolution request or lookup of an IDf to the
MS will return the LOC.
Generally, an entity with a certain Identity may use various
Identifiers for communication. Only the Identifier is visible on the
wire. Changing the IDf frequently makes it hard to track the entity
by outside observers on the Internet and thus improves privacy of the
communication entities.
While it may be desirable to change the IDf every now and then for
privacy purposes, the notion of Identity in addition to IDf is
important a) to retain the ability to look up a communication entity
by a 'long-lived IDf' and b) to convey an authorized network entity
who is behind a given (ephemeral) IDf that is visible on the wire.
To put it simply, while the IDy of a communicating entity is
obfuscated to outside observers, it is revealed to communicating
parties with a legitimate need to know.
3.2. Policies
Networks may treat traffic differently depending on the IDy of source
or destination. E.g., certain traffic may access the network
directly, other traffic may need to pass a firewall, or other traffic
is entirely blocked. Based on IDy of communication peers involved,
and independent of the particular IDf used in a data packet (see
Section 3.1), traffic may be treated with different Quality of
Service (QoS).
Likewise, the use of alternative IDfs for the same system may allow
for different treatment of traffic for the same system depending on
how the system is referred to. This can be leveraged by combining
the enforcement of network policies with policies that guide
selective mapping responses. E.g., some requesting groups may
receive an empty response from GRIDS system for IDfs referring to a
certain IDy, others receive an IDf resulting in strict security
treatment of future traffic, and trusted groups receive an IDf
resulting in rather loose security treatment.
3.2.1. Access Restriction Policies
An entity may define that it wants to communicate only with certain
other entities. To achieve this, an entity MAY define a rule
regarding who can request and obtain its IDf. The GRIDS system will
send a negative or empty response when it detects that the
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combination of resolution query and its initiator does not pass the
rule validation test.
Moreover, network-based access control may filter based on IDfs which
are visible in the traffic, or in a more elegant way based on IDys,
which may be looked to ensure if communication is still allowed after
IDf change, for example. By basing access control on the notion of
Identity, enforcement and maintainability of access control rules is
greatly simplified as it does not need to track IDf changes or the
introduction of new IDfs for the same IDy.
3.3. Metadata
The GRIDS system is envisioned to store Metadata (Section 1.1) and
provide some search functionality. The GRIDS system with [IDy, IDf]
may be a means to find a set of IDys with certain metadata provided
that they have agreed to be searchable (allow discovery). Moreover,
their IDfs can be looked up. E.g., it may be possible to find out
the current IDfs of a set of deployed devices of particular type.
This allows to locate them via [IDf, LOC] mappings and possibly
manage them.
Identity also allows to have metadata associated it to be applied,
regardless of which IDf is used to refer it. This association makes
the management of metadata easier, because it does not need to be
maintained separately and redundantly for every IDf.
3.4. Access Security and Manageability
Identity can be used for storing access security credentials to the
GRIDS and subscription information of the user entity securely as
opposed to various Identifiers representing the entity. As secure
registration to the GRIDS would be an expensive operation, this
SHOULD be restricted to IDy and (ephemeral) IDfs can be generated and
can be given rather securely using the same secure channel.
Identity also allows separation of lifecycle of IDy to be different
from Identifiers, which enables to extend the "right-to-be-forgotten"
concerning personal data to network identifier data, if required.
There are various possible scenarios on why a long-lived IDfs by a
communication entity has to be withdrawn. Common cases involved
lost/stolen device or misused Identifiers for example.
3.5. Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN)
Entities may be only temporarily reachable on the Internet. When
they are not reachable, proxies may be used to receive their traffic.
To that end, a IDy MAY register one of the IDfs of its proxy with the
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GRIDS system that this node can, e.g., receive traffic for that node
and later forward to it when the node is again online. A major
application field may be in the IoT with mobile and intermittently
connected devices
4. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Padma Pillay-Esnault for so many conversations around
Identity and its potential uses in IDEAS.
5. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
6. Security Considerations
This document further abstracts Identity from the Identifier in
current Identifier/Locator protocols. This abstraction gives
significant security benefits in Identity enables networks with
respect to anonymization of communications on the wire and access
controls at the GRIDS specified in
[I-D.padma-ideas-problem-statement].
7. References
7.1. Normative References
[RFC0791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0791, September 1981,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc791>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
7.2. Informative References
[I-D.padma-ideas-problem-statement]
Pillay-Esnault, P., Boucadair, M., Jacquenet, C.,
Fioccola, G., and A. Nennker, "Problem Statement for
Identity Enabled Networks", draft-padma-ideas-problem-
statement-01 (work in progress), March 2017.
[RFC6830] Farinacci, D., Fuller, V., Meyer, D., and D. Lewis, "The
Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP)", RFC 6830,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6830, January 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6830>.
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[RFC7401] Moskowitz, R., Ed., Heer, T., Jokela, P., and T.
Henderson, "Host Identity Protocol Version 2 (HIPv2)",
RFC 7401, DOI 10.17487/RFC7401, April 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7401>.
Authors' Addresses
Uma Chunduri (editor)
Huawei Technologies
2330 Central Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95050
USA
Email: uma.chunduri@huawei.com
Alexander Clemm
Huawei Technologies
2330 Central Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95050
USA
Email: ludwig@clemm.org
Michael Menth
University of Tuebingen
Germany
Email: menth@uni-tuebingen.de
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