CoRE Working Group E. Dijk
Internet-Draft IoTconsultancy.nl
Obsoletes: 7390 (if approved) C. Wang
Updates: 7252, 7641, 7959 (if approved) InterDigital
Intended status: Standards Track M. Tiloca
Expires: January 9, 2020 RISE AB
July 08, 2019
Group Communication for the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)
draft-dijk-core-groupcomm-bis-01
Abstract
This document specifies the use of the Constrained Application
Protocol (CoAP) for group communication, using UDP/IP multicast as
the underlying data transport. The target application area is any
group communication use cases in resource-constrained networks. Both
unsecured and secured CoAP group communication are specified.
Security is achieved by use of the Group Object Security for
Constrained RESTful Environments (Group OSCORE) protocol. Aspects of
operation of using multicast CoAP in combination with CoAP block-wise
transfers and CoAP observe are also specified.
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
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 January 9, 2020.
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
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(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
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. General Group Communication Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Group Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.1. Group Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.2. Group Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.3. Group Creation and Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.4. Group Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. CoAP Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.1. Request/Response Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.2. Port and URI Path Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.3. Proxy Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.4. Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.5. Observing Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.6. Block-Wise Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3. Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.1. UDP/IPv6 Multicast Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.2. UDP/IPv4 Multicast Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.3. 6LoWPAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4. Interworking with Other Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4.1. MLD/MLDv2/IGMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4.2. RPL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4.3. MPL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3. Unsecured Group Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4. Secured Group Communication using Group OSCORE . . . . . . . 16
4.1. Secure Group Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.1. CoAP NoSec Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.2. Group OSCORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.2.1. Group Key Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.2.2. Source Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.2.3. Counteraction of Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.3. 6LoWPAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.4. Wi-Fi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.5. Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Appendix A. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
A.1. Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A.1.1. Distributed Device Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A.1.2. Distributed Service Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A.1.3. Directory Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
A.2. Operational Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
A.2.1. Actuator Group Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
A.2.2. Device Group Status Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
A.2.3. Network-wide Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
A.2.4. Network-wide / Group Notification . . . . . . . . . . 26
A.3. Software Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1. Introduction
This document specifies group communication using the Constrained
Application Protocol (CoAP) [RFC7252] together with UDP/IP multicast.
CoAP is a RESTful communication protocol that is used in resource-
constrained nodes, and in resource-constrained networks where packet
sizes should be small. This area of use is summarized as Constrained
RESTful Environments (CoRE).
One-to-many group communication can be achieved in CoAP, by a client
using UDP/IP multicast data transport to send multicast CoAP request
messages. In response, each server in the addressed group sends a
response message back to the client over UDP/IP unicast. Notable
CoAP implementations supporting group communication include the
framework "Eclipse Californium" 2.0.x [Californium] from the Eclipse
Foundation and the "Implementation of CoAP Server & Client in Go"
[Go-OCF] from the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF).
Both unsecured and secured CoAP group communication over UDP/IP
multicast are specified in this document. Security is achieved by
using Group Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments
(Group OSCORE) [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], which in turn builds
on Object Security for Constrained Restful Environments (OSCORE)
[I-D.ietf-core-object-security]. This method provides end-to-end
application-layer security protection of CoAP messages, by using CBOR
Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) [RFC8152] [RFC7049].
All sections in the body of this document are normative, while
appendices are informative. For additional background about use
cases for CoAP group communication in resource-constrained devices
and networks, see Appendix A.
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1.1. Scope
For group communication, only solutions that use CoAP over UDP/
multicast (both IPv6 and IPv4) are in scope. There are alternative
methods to achieve group communication using CoAP, for example
Publish-Subscribe [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub] which uses a central
broker server that CoAP clients access via unicast communication.
The alternative methods may be usable for the same or similar use
cases as are targeted in this document.
All guidelines in [RFC7390] are imported by this document which
replaces [RFC7390] in this respect. This document furthermore adds
the security solution using Group OSCORE as the default group
communication security solution for CoAP, an updated request/response
matching rule for multicast CoAP which updates [RFC7252], multicast
use of CoAP Observe which updates [RFC7641] and extension of
multicast use of CoAP block-wise transfers which updates [RFC7959].
Security solutions for group communication and configuration other
than Group OSCORE are not in scope. General principles for secure
group configuration are in scope. The experimental group
configuration protocol in Section 2.6.2 of [RFC7390] is not in the
scope of this document; thus, it remains an experimental protocol.
Since application protocols defined on top of CoAP often define their
own specific method of group configuration, the experimental protocol
of [RFC7390] has not been subject to enough experimentation to
warrant a change of this status.
1.2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
This specification requires readers to be familiar with CoAP
[RFC7252] terminology.
2. General Group Communication Operation
The general operation of group communication, applicable for both
unsecured and secured operation, is specified in this section by
going through the stack from top to bottom. First, group
configuration (e.g. group creation and maintenance which are usually
done by an application, user or commissioning entity) is considered
in Section 2.1. Then the use of CoAP for group communication
including support for protocol extensions (block-wise, Observe, PATCH
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method) follows in Section 2.2. How CoAP group messages are carried
over various transport layers is the subject of Section 2.3.
Finally, Section 2.4 covers the interworking of CoAP with other
protocols at the layers below it.
2.1. Group Configuration
2.1.1. Group Definition
A CoAP group is defined as a set of CoAP endpoints, where each
endpoint is configured to receive CoAP multicast requests that are
sent to the group's associated IP multicast address and UDP port. An
endpoint may be a member of multiple CoAP groups. Group
membership(s) of an endpoint may dynamically change over time. A
device sending a CoAP request to a group is not necessarily itself a
member of this group: it is only a member if it also has a CoAP
server endpoint listening to requests for this CoAP group. For
secure group communication, a receiver also requires the security
context to decrypt and/or verify group messages in order to be a
group member.
A CoAP Group URI has the scheme 'coap' and includes in the authority
part either an IP multicast address or a group hostname (e.g., Group
Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)) that can be resolved to an IP
multicast address. A Group URI also contains an optional UDP port
number in the authority part. Group URIs follow the regular CoAP URI
syntax (Section 6 of [RFC7252]).
Besides CoAP groups, that have relevance at the level of networked
devices, there can also be application groups defined. An
application group has relevance at the application level - for
example an application group could denote all lights in an office
room or all sensors in a hallway. There can be a one-to-one or a
one-to-many relation between CoAP groups and application groups.
2.1.2. Group Naming
For clients, it is RECOMMENDED to use by default an IP multicast
address literal in a configured Group URI, instead of a hostname.
This is because DNS infrastructure may not be deployed in many
constrained networks. In case a group hostname is used in the Group
URI, it can be uniquely mapped to an IP multicast address via DNS
resolution - if DNS client functionality is available in the clients
and the DNS service is supported in the network. Some examples of
hierarchical group FQDN naming (and scoping) for a building control
application are shown in Section 2.2 of [RFC7390].
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Application groups can be named in many ways, e.g. numbers, IDs,
strings or URIs. An application group identifier, if used, is
typically included in the path component or query component of a
Group URI. Appendix A of [I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory] shows
registration of application groups into a Resource Directory, along
with the CoAP group it maps to.
2.1.3. Group Creation and Membership
Group membership may be (factory-)preconfigured in devices or
dynamically configured in a system on-site.
To create a CoAP group, a configuring entity defines an IP multicast
address (or hostname) for the group and optionally a UDP port number
in case it differs from the default CoAP port 5683. Then, it
configures one or more devices as listeners to that IP multicast
address, with a CoAP server listening on the specific port. These
devices are the group members. The configuring entity can be a local
application with preconfiguration, a user, a cloud service, or a
local commissioning tool for example. Also, the devices sending
requests to the group in the role of CoAP clients need to be
configured with the same information, even though they are not
necessarily group members. One way to configure a client is to
supply it with a CoAP Group URI.
For unsecure group communication, any CoAP endpoint may become a
group member at any time: there is no (central) configuring entity
that needs to provide the security material for the group. This
means that group creation and membership cannot be tightly
controlled.
The IETF does not define a mandatory, standardized protocol to
accomplish these steps. For secure group communication, the part of
the process that involves secure distribution of group keys MAY use
standardized communication with a Group Manager as defined in
Section 4. [RFC7390] defines an experimental protocol for
configuration of group membership for unsecured group communication,
based on JSON-formatted configuration resources. This protocol
remains experimental.
2.1.4. Group Maintenance
Maintenance of a group includes necessary operations to cope with
changes in a system, such as: adding group members, removing group
members, reconfiguration of UDP port and/or IP multicast address,
reconfiguration of the Group URI, splitting of groups, or merging of
groups.
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For unsecured group communication (see Section 3), addition/removal
of group members is simply done by configuring these devices to
start/stop listening to the group IP multicast address, and to start/
stop the CoAP server listening to the group IP multicast address and
port.
For secured group communication (see Section 4), the protocol Group
OSCORE [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] is mandatory to implement.
When using Group OSCORE, CoAP endpoints participating to group
communication are also members of a corresponding OSCORE group, and
thus share a common set of cryptographic material. Additional
maintenance operations are discussed in Section 4.1.
2.2. CoAP Usage
2.2.1. Request/Response Model
All CoAP requests that are sent via IP multicast MUST be Non-
confirmable (Section 8.1 of [RFC7252]). The Message ID in an IP
multicast CoAP message is used for optional message deduplication as
detailed in Section 4.5 of [RFC7252].
A server MAY send back a unicast response to the CoAP group
communication request - whether it does this or not is selected by
the server application. The unicast responses received by the CoAP
client may be a mixture of success (e.g., 2.05 Content) and failure
(e.g., 4.04 Not Found) codes depending on the individual server
processing results.
TBD: the CoAP Option for No Server Response [RFC7967] can be used by
the client to influence response suppression on the server side.
Possibly we can include this information here; it specifically
targets use for multicast use cases also.
The client can distinguish the origin of multiple server responses by
the source IP address of the UDP message containing the CoAP response
or any other available unique identifier (e.g., contained in the CoAP
response payload). In case a client has sent multiple group requests
with concurrent CoAP transactions ongoing, the responses are matched
to a request using the Token value. The source endpoint of the
response is not matched to the destination endpoint of the request,
since for a multicast request these will never match. This is also
specified in Section 8.2 of [RFC7252]. As an update to the [RFC7252]
matching rule, a client MAY, in addition to the Token, match the
source port of the request to the destination port of the response,
since these will match in any correctly formatted CoAP response.
This can help a client to more easily meet the below constraint on
Token reuse or to more efficiently filter received responses.
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For multicast CoAP requests, there are additional constraints on the
reuse of Token values, compared to the unicast case. In the unicast
case, if the Observe Option [RFC7641] is not used in a request,
receiving a response effectively frees up its Token value for reuse
since no more responses will follow. However, for multicast CoAP,
the number of responses is not bounded a priori. Therefore, the
reception of a response cannot be used as a trigger to "free up" a
Token value for reuse. Reusing a Token value too early could lead to
incorrect response/request matching in the client and would be a
protocol error. Therefore, the time between reuse of Token values
used in multicast requests MUST be greater than:
NON_LIFETIME + MAX_LATENCY + MAX_SERVER_RESPONSE_DELAY
where NON_LIFETIME and MAX_LATENCY are defined in Section 4.8 of
[RFC7252]. This specification defines MAX_SERVER_RESPONSE_DELAY as
in [RFC7390], that is: the expected maximum response delay over all
servers that the client can send a multicast request to. This delay
includes the maximum Leisure time period as defined in Section 8.2 of
[RFC7252]. However, CoAP does not define a time limit for the server
response delay. Using the default CoAP parameters, the Token reuse
time MUST be greater than 250 seconds plus MAX_SERVER_RESPONSE_DELAY.
A preferred solution to meet this requirement is to generate a new
unique Token for every multicast request, such that a Token value is
never reused. If a client has to reuse Token values for some reason,
and also MAX_SERVER_RESPONSE_DELAY is unknown, then using
MAX_SERVER_RESPONSE_DELAY = 250 seconds is a reasonable guideline.
The time between Token reuses is in that case set to a value greater
than 500 seconds.
2.2.2. Port and URI Path Selection
A CoAP server that is a member of a group listens for CoAP messages
on the group's IP multicast address, usually on the CoAP default UDP
port 5683, or another non-default UDP port if configured. Regardless
of the method for selecting the port number, the same port number
MUST be used across all CoAP servers that are members of a group and
across all CoAP clients performing the group requests to that group.
The URI Path used in the request is preferably a path that is known
to be supported across all group members. However there are valid
use cases where a request is known to be successful for a subset of
the group and those group members for which the request is
unsuccessful either ignore the multicast request or respond with an
error status code.
Using different ports with the same IP multicast address is an
efficient way to create multiple CoAP groups in constrained devices,
in case the device's stack only supports a limited number of IP
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multicast group memberships. However, it must be taken into account
that this incurs additional processing overhead on each CoAP server
participating in at least one of these groups: messages to groups
that are not of interest to the node are only discarded at the higher
transport (UDP) layer instead of directly at the network (IP) layer.
Port 5684 is reserved for DTLS-secured CoAP and MUST NOT be used for
any CoAP group communication.
For a CoAP server node that supports resource discovery as defined in
Section 2.4 of [RFC7252], the default port 5683 MUST be supported
(see Section 7.1 of [RFC7252]) for the "All CoAP Nodes" multicast
group. THis implies that the receiving server when correctly
operating does not send a "ICMP Destination Unreachable - Port
Unreachable" in response to a resource discovery request.
2.2.3. Proxy Operation
CoAP (Section 5.7.2 of [RFC7252]) allows a client to request a
forward-proxy to process its CoAP request. For this purpose, the
client specifies either the request group URI as a string in the
Proxy-URI option or alternatively it uses the Proxy-Scheme option
with the group URI constructed from the usual Uri-* options. This
approach works well for unicast requests. However, there are certain
issues and limitations of processing the (unicast) responses to a
CoAP group communication request made in this manner through a proxy.
A proxy may buffer all the individual (unicast) responses to a CoAP
group communication request and then send back only a single
(aggregated) response to the client. However, there are some issues
with this aggregation approach:
o Aggregation of (unicast) responses to a CoAP group communication
request in a proxy is difficult. This is because the proxy does
not know how many members there are in the group or how many group
members will actually respond. Also, the proxy does not know how
long to wait before deciding to send back the aggregated response
to the client.
o There is no default format defined in CoAP for aggregation of
multiple responses into a single response. Such a format could be
defined based on the multipart content-format
[I-D.ietf-core-multipart-ct] but is not standardized yet
currently.
Alternatively, if a proxy does not aggregate responses and follows
the CoAP Proxy specification (Section 5.7.2 of [RFC7252]), the proxy
would forward all the individual (unicast) responses to a CoAP group
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communication request to the client. There are also issues with this
approach:
o The client may be confused as it may not have known that the
Proxy-URI contained a group URI target. That is, the client that
sent a unicast CoAP request to the proxy may be expecting only one
(unicast) response. Instead, it receives multiple (unicast)
responses, potentially leading to fault conditions in the
application.
o Each individual CoAP response will appear to originate (based on
its IP source address) from the CoAP Proxy, and not from the
server that produced the response. This makes it impossible for
the client to identify the server that produced each response,
unless the server identity is contained as a part of the response
payload.
Due to the above issues, a CoAP Proxy SHOULD NOT support processing
an IP multicast CoAP request but rather return a 501 (Not
Implemented) response in such case. The exception case here (i.e.,
to support it) is when all the following conditions are met:
o The CoAP Proxy MUST be explicitly configured (whitelist) to allow
proxied IP multicast requests by specific client(s).
o The proxy SHOULD return individual (unicast) CoAP responses to the
client (i.e., not aggregated). If a (future) standardized
aggregation format is being used, then aggregated responses may be
sent.
o It MUST be known to the person/entity doing the configuration of
the proxy, or otherwise verified in some way, that the client
configured in the whitelist supports receiving multiple responses
to a proxied unicast CoAP request.
The operation of HTTP-to-CoAP proxies for multicast CoAP requests is
specified in Section 8.4 and 10.1 of [RFC8075]. In this case, the
"application/http" media type can be used to let the proxy return
multiple CoAP responses - each translated to a HTTP response - back
to the HTTP client. Of course the HTTP client in this case needs to
be aware that it is receiving this format and needs to be able to
decode from it the responses of multiple servers. The above
restrictions listed for CoAP Proxies still apply to HTTP-to-CoAP
proxies: specifically, the IP address of the sender of each CoAP
response cannot be determined from the application/http response.
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2.2.4. Congestion Control
CoAP group communication requests may result in a multitude of
responses from different nodes, potentially causing congestion.
Therefore, both the sending of IP multicast requests and the sending
of the unicast CoAP responses to these multicast requests should be
conservatively controlled.
CoAP [RFC7252] reduces IP multicast-specific congestion risks through
the following measures:
o A server may choose not to respond to an IP multicast request if
there's nothing useful to respond to (e.g., error or empty
response); see Section 8.2 of [RFC7252].
o A server should limit the support for IP multicast requests to
specific resources where multicast operation is required
(Section 11.3 of [RFC7252]).
o An IP multicast request MUST be Non-confirmable (Section 8.1 of
[RFC7252]).
o A response to an IP multicast request SHOULD be Non-confirmable
(Section 5.2.3 of [RFC7252]).
o A server does not respond immediately to an IP multicast request
and should first wait for a time that is randomly picked within a
predetermined time interval called the Leisure (Section 8.2 of
[RFC7252]).
Additional guidelines to reduce congestion risks defined in this
document are as follows:
o A server in an LLN should only support group communication GET for
resources that are small. For example, the payload of the
response is limited to approximately 5% of the IP Maximum Transmit
Unit (MTU) size, so it fits into a single link-layer frame in case
IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) (see
Section 4 of [RFC4944]) is used.
o A server SHOULD minimize the payload length in response to a
multicast GET on "/.well-known/core" by using hierarchy in
arranging link descriptions for the response. An example of this
is given in Section 5 of [RFC6690].
o A server MAY minimize the payload length of a response to a
multicast GET (e.g., on "/.well-known/core") using CoAP block-wise
transfers [RFC7959] in case the payload is long, returning only a
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first block of the CoRE Link Format description. For this reason,
a CoAP client sending an IP multicast CoAP request to "/.well-
known/core" SHOULD support block-wise transfers.
o A client SHOULD use CoAP group communication with the smallest
possible IP multicast scope that fulfills the application needs.
As an example, site-local scope is always preferred over global
scope IP multicast if this fulfills the application needs.
Similarly, realm-local scope is always preferred over site-local
scope if this fulfills the application needs.
2.2.5. Observing Resources
The CoAP Observe Option [RFC7641] is a protocol extension of CoAP,
that allows a CoAP client to retrieve a representation of a resource
and automatically keep this representation up-to-date over a longer
period of time. The client gets notified when the representation has
changed. [RFC7641] does not mention whether the Observe Option can
be combined with CoAP multicast.
This section updates [RFC7641] with the use of the Observe Option in
a CoAP multicast GET request. This is a useful way to start
observing a particular resource on all members of a (multicast) group
at the same time. Group members that do not have this resource or do
not allow the GET method on it will either respond with an error
status - 4.04 Not Found or 4.05 Method Not Allowed respectively - or
will silently ignore the request, depending on server-specific
configuration.
A client that sends a multicast GET request with the Observe Option
MAY repeat this request using the same Token value and same Observe
Option value, in order to ensure that enough (or all) group members
have been reached with the request. This is useful in case a number
of group members did not respond to the initial request. This client
MAY also use the same Message ID to avoid that group members that had
already received the initial request would respond again. If the
client uses a different, fresh Message ID then all group members that
receive this new message will respond again.
A client that sends a multicast GET request with the Observe Option
MAY send a new unicast request with the same Token value and same
Observe Option value, in order to ensure that the specific server
receives the request. This is useful in case a specific group
member, that was expected to respond to the initial group request,
did not respond to the initial request. The client in this case
always uses a Message ID that differs from the initial message.
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In the above client behaviors, the Token value is kept identical to
the initial request to avoid that the client is included in more than
one entry in the list of observers (Section 4.1 of [RFC7641]). While
a Token value is in use for observing a group, this Token value
cannot be reused by the same client endpoint for other purposes.
Another endpoint on the client i.e. using a different UDP source port
MAY re-use the Token value but only if the client implements the
optional updated matching rule of Section 2.2.1.
Before repeating a request as specified above, the client SHOULD wait
for at least the expected round-trip time plus the Leisure time
period defined in Section 8.2 of [RFC7252] to allow the server the
time to respond.
For observing a group of servers through a CoAP-to-CoAP proxy or
HTTP-CoAP proxy, the limitations stated in Section 2.2.3 apply.
2.2.6. Block-Wise Transfer
Section 2.8 of [RFC7959] specifies how a client can use block-wise
transfer (Block2 Option) in a multicast GET request to limit the size
of the initial response of each server. The client has to use
unicast for any further requests to retrieve more blocks of the
resource. Also, a server (group member) that needs to respond to a
multicast request with a particularly large resource can use block-
wise transfer (Block2 Option) at its own initiative to limit the size
of the initial response. Again, a client would have to use unicast
for any further requests to retrieve more blocks of the resource.
TBD: below solution for multicast block-wise Block1 is used e.g. for
efficiently distributing large data/software updates using multicast.
It is non-trivial to do right and needs testing. For this reason, we
may decide to move this into a separate draft.
This section specifies in addition the use of CoAP block-wise
transfers for multicast PUT/POST/PATCH/iPATCH requests in order to
efficiently distribute a large request payload as multiple blocks to
all members of a CoAP group. The Block1 Option [RFC7959] is then
used by the client in each block-wise request and a server uses the
Block1 Option in its response to confirm reception of a block and
optionally to indicate in the first block-wise response that it
prefers a smaller block size.
Prior to starting a block-wise multicast request, the client SHOULD
already store a list of those members of the CoAP group that need to
properly receive the request payload. These members are expected to
support block-wise CoAP and are also expected to support the specific
resource to which the request will be sent. Obtaining such list can
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be achieved in various ways such as by group configuration, and/or
CoAP discovery, and/or first sending one or more non-block-wise
multicast requests to the same group and collect the responses.
The reason that the client should be aware of these group members is
the following: after sending the first block (0), the client SHOULD
first collect all group member responses to the first block before
proceeding with further blocks. One or more of the group members MAY
indicate a preference for a smaller block size in the Block1 Option
in its first response. The client SHOULD use the smallest value over
all collected responses as the block size to use for the remaining
block-wise messages.
Since not all group member responses may be received, due to message
loss, the client MAY resend the multicast request (with the same
Message ID and Token) to collect the missing responses, or it MAY
resend the block 0 request as a Confirmable or Non-Confirmable
unicast request (with the same Message ID and Token) directly to the
non-responsive group member(s), or it uses a combination of these.
The reason to use the same Message ID here is to avoid that a group
member server processes the request more than once.
TBD: open point - the server needs to treat a unicast message (with
token T and MID M) as a duplicate of a prior multicast message (with
token T and MID M). The deduplication rules allow this; however to
be checked if a practical implementation also allows this?
TBD: open point - the time that the process takes to collect all
"missing" responses for the first block (0), might take longer than
the "operation timeout time" of the entire blockwise request per
[RFC7959]. So for this case, the operation timeout time needs to be
set longer than usual, or alternatively, the stateless-server mode of
update needs to be mandated. In this case each block that is written
produces a 2.04 not 2.31. First block with PUT may respond a 2.01.
TBD: if strict order of blocks is required by a server, the protocol
must wait and collect again all responses after each block.
TBD: a protocol may be more efficient that first sends all blocks
(without waiting for all responses every step) and then later checks
which blocks are missing with all servers individually. These can be
resent then (in unicast or multicast if many servers miss that
block).
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2.3. Transport
TBD: Mark [RFC8323] (TCP, TLS, WebSockets) as not applicable for this
form of groupcomm, as well as CoAP-over-SMS.
2.3.1. UDP/IPv6 Multicast Transport
TBD: include the "Exceptions" cases here of RFC 7390 Section 2.10.
State that IPv6 multicast is prerequisite. Also mention the All-
CoAP-nodes IPv6 addresses.
2.3.2. UDP/IPv4 Multicast Transport
TBD: includes the "Exceptions" cases here of RFC 7390 2.10. State
that IPv4 multicast is prerequisite. mention All-CoAP-nodes IPv4
addresses and the like
2.3.3. 6LoWPAN
TBD: 6lowpan-specific considerations to go here. Specifically, a
multicast request should preferably fit in one L2 frame to avoid the
strong performance drop that comes with 6LoWPAN-fragmentation and
reassembly. Also reference [RFC7346] for the realm-local scope.
2.4. Interworking with Other Protocols
2.4.1. MLD/MLDv2/IGMP
TBD: see Section 4.2 of [RFC7390] and include the content here or
refer to it.
2.4.2. RPL
TBD: see Section 4.3 of [RFC7390] and include the content here or
refer to it.
2.4.3. MPL
TBD: see Section 4.4. [RFC7390] and include the content here or
refer to it.
3. Unsecured Group Communication
CoAP group communication can operate in CoAP NoSec (No Security)
mode, without using application-layer and transport-layer security
mechanisms. The NoSec mode uses the "coap" scheme, and is defined in
Section 9 of [RFC7252]. Before using this mode of operation, the
security implications (Section 5.1) must be well understood.
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4. Secured Group Communication using Group OSCORE
The application-layer protocol Object Security for Constrained
RESTful Environments (OSCORE) [I-D.ietf-core-object-security]
provides end-to-end encryption, integrity and replay protection of
CoAP messages exchanged between two CoAP endpoints. These can act
both as CoAP Client as well as CoAP Server, and share an OSCORE
Security Context used to protect and verify exchanged messages. The
use of OSCORE does not affect the URI scheme and OSCORE can therefore
be used with any URI scheme defined for CoAP.
OSCORE uses COSE [RFC8152] to perform encryption, signing and Message
Authentication Code operations, and to efficiently encode the result
as a COSE object. In particular, OSCORE takes as input an
unprotected CoAP message and transforms it into a protected CoAP
message, by using Authenticated Encryption Algorithms with Additional
Data (AEAD).
OSCORE makes it possible to selectively protect different parts of a
CoAP message in different ways, so still allowing intermediaries
(e.g., CoAP proxies) to perform their intended funtionalities. That
is, some message parts are encrypted and integrity protected; other
parts only integrity protected to be accessible to, but not
modifiable by, proxies; and some parts are kept as plain content to
be both accessible to and modifiable by proxies. Such differences
especially concern the CoAP options included in the unprotected
message.
Group OSCORE [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] builds on OSCORE, and
provides end-to-end security of CoAP messages exchanged between
members of an OSCORE group, while fulfilling the same security
requirements.
In particular, Group OSCORE protects CoAP requests sent over IP
multicast by a CoAP client, as well as multiple corresponding CoAP
responses sent over IP unicast by different CoAP servers. However,
the same keying material can also be used to protect CoAP requests
sent over IP unicast to a single CoAP server in the OSCORE group, as
well as the corresponding responses.
Group OSCORE uses digital signatures to ensure source authentication
of all messages exchanged within the OSCORE group. That is, sender
devices sign their outgoing messages by means of their own private
key, and embed the signature in the protected CoAP message.
A Group Manager is responsible for one or multiple OSCORE groups. In
particular, the Group Manager acts as repository of public keys of
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group members; manages, renews and provides keying material in the
group; and drives the join process for new group members.
As recommended in [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], a CoAP endpoint
can join an OSCORE group by using the method described in
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore] and based on the ACE framework
for Authentication and Authorization in constrained environments
[I-D.ietf-ace-oauth-authz].
A CoAP endpoint can discover OSCORE groups and retrieve information
to join them through their Group Managers by using the method
described in [I-D.tiloca-core-oscore-discovery] and based on the CoRE
Resource Directory [I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory].
If security is required, CoAP group communication as described in
this specification MUST use Group OSCORE. In particular, a CoAP
group as defined in Section 2.1.1 and using secure group
communication is associated to an OSCORE group, which includes:
o All members of the CoAP group, i.e. the CoAP endpoints configured
(also) as CoAP servers and listening to the group's multicast IP
address.
o All further CoAP endpoints configured only as CoAP clients, that
send (multicast) CoAP requests to the CoAP group.
4.1. Secure Group Maintenance
Additional key management operations on the OSCORE group are
required, depending also on the security requirements of the
application (see Section 5.2). That is:
o Adding new members to a CoAP group or enabling new client-only
endpoints to interact with that group require also that each of
such members/endpoints join the corresponding OSCORE group. By
doing so, they are securely provided with the necessary
cryptographic material. In case backward security is needed, this
also requires to first renew such material and distribute it to
the current members/endpoints, before new ones are added and join
the OSCORE group.
o In case forward security is needed, removing members from a CoAP
group or stopping client-only endpoints from interacting with that
group requires removing such members/endpoints from the
corresponding OSCORE group. To this end, new cryptographic
material is generated and securely distributed only to the
remaining members/endpoints. This ensures that only the members/
endpoints intended to remain are able to continue participating to
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secure group communication, while the evicted ones are not able
to.
The key management operations mentioned above are entrusted to the
Group Manager responsible for the OSCORE group
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm], and it is RECOMMENDED to perform
them according to the approach described in
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore].
5. Security Considerations
This section provides security considerations for CoAP group
communication using IP multicast.
5.1. CoAP NoSec Mode
CoAP group communication, if not protected, is vulnerable to all the
attacks mentioned in Section 11 of [RFC7252] for IP multicast.
Thus, for sensitive and mission-critical applications (e.g., health
monitoring systems and alarm monitoring systems), it is NOT
RECOMMENDED to deploy CoAP group communication in NoSec mode.
Without application-layer security, CoAP group communication SHOULD
only be deployed in applications that are non-critical, and that do
not involve or may have an impact on sensitive data and personal
sphere. These include, e.g., read-only temperature sensors deployed
in non-sensitive environments, where the client reads out the values
but does not use the data to control actuators or to base an
important decision on.
Discovery of devices and resources is a typical use case where NoSec
mode is applied, since the devices involved do not have yet
configured any mutual security relations at the time the discovery
takes place.
5.2. Group OSCORE
Group OSCORE provides end-to-end application-level security. This
has many desirable properties, including maintaining security
assurances while forwarding traffic through intermediaries (proxies).
Application-level security also tends to more cleanly separate
security from the dynamics of group membership (e.g., the problem of
distributing security keys across large groups with many members that
come and go).
For sensitive and mission-critical applications, CoAP group
communication MUST be protected by using Group OSCORE as specified in
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[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]. The same security considerations
from Section 8 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] hold for this
specification.
5.2.1. Group Key Management
A key management scheme for secure revocation and renewal of group
keying material, namely group rekeying, should be adopted in OSCORE
groups. In particular, the key management scheme should preserve
backward and forward security in the OSCORE group, if the application
requires so (see Section 2.1 of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]).
Group policies should also take into account the time that the key
management scheme requires to rekey the group, on one hand, and the
expected frequency of group membership changes, i.e. nodes' joining
and leaving, on the other hand.
In fact, it may be desirable to not rekey the group upon every single
membership change, in case members' joining and leaving are frequent,
and at the same time a single group rekeying instance takes a non
negligible time to complete.
In such a case, the Group Manager may consider to rekey the group,
e.g., after a minum number of nodes have joined or left the group
within a pre-defined time interval, or according to communication
patterns with predictable intervals of network inactivity. This
would prevent paralizing communications in the group, when a slow
rekeying scheme is used and frequently invoked.
This comes at the cost of not continuously preserving backward and
forward security, since group rekeying might not occur upon every
single group membership change. That is, latest joined nodes would
have access to the key material used prior to their join, and thus be
able to access past group communications protected with that key
material. Similarly, until the group is rekeyed, latest left nodes
would preserve access to group communications protected with the
retained key material.
5.2.2. Source Authentication
CoAP endpoints using Group OSCORE countersign their outgoing
messages, by means of the countersignature algorithm used in the
OSCORE group. This ensures source authentication of messages
exchanged by CoAP endpoints through CoAP group communication. In
fact, it allows to verify that a received message has actually been
originated by a specific and identified member of the OSCORE group.
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Appendix F of [I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm] discusses a number of
cases where a recipient CoAP endpoint may skip the verification of
countersignatures, possibly on a per-message basis. However, this is
NOT RECOMMENDED. That is, a CoAP endpoint receiving a message
secured with Group OSCORE SHOULD always verify the countersignature.
5.2.3. Counteraction of Attacks
Group OSCORE addresses security attacks mentioned in Sections
11.2-11.6 of [RFC7252], with particular reference to their execution
over IP multicast. That is: it provides confidentiality and
integrity of request/response data through proxies also in multicast
settings; it prevents amplification attacks carried out through
responses to injected requests over IP multicast; it limits the
impact of attacks based on IP spoofing; it prevents cross-protocol
attacks; it derives the group key material from, among other things,
a Master Secret securely generated by the Group Manager and provided
to CoAP endpoints upon their joining of the OSCORE group;
countersignatures assure source authentication of exchanged CoAP
messages, and hence prevent a group member to be used for subverting
security in the whole group.
5.3. 6LoWPAN
Editor Note, TBD: identify if multi-fragment multicast requests have
a negative effect on security and, if so, advice here on trying to
avoid such requests. Also an attacker could use multi-fragment to
occupy reassembly buffers of many routing 6LoWPAN nodes.
5.4. Wi-Fi
TBD: Wi-Fi specific security considerations; see also Section 5.3.1
of [RFC7390].
5.5. Monitoring
TBD: see Section 5.4 of [RFC7390].
6. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
7. References
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7.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-core-object-security]
Selander, G., Mattsson, J., Palombini, F., and L. Seitz,
"Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments
(OSCORE)", draft-ietf-core-object-security-16 (work in
progress), March 2019.
[I-D.ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm]
Tiloca, M., Selander, G., Palombini, F., and J. Park,
"Group OSCORE - Secure Group Communication for CoAP",
draft-ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm-04 (work in progress),
March 2019.
[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>.
[RFC4944] Montenegro, G., Kushalnagar, N., Hui, J., and D. Culler,
"Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4
Networks", RFC 4944, DOI 10.17487/RFC4944, September 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4944>.
[RFC6690] Shelby, Z., "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link
Format", RFC 6690, DOI 10.17487/RFC6690, August 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6690>.
[RFC7049] Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object
Representation (CBOR)", RFC 7049, DOI 10.17487/RFC7049,
October 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7049>.
[RFC7252] Shelby, Z., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "The Constrained
Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7252,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7252, June 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7252>.
[RFC7641] Hartke, K., "Observing Resources in the Constrained
Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7641,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7641, September 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7641>.
[RFC7959] Bormann, C. and Z. Shelby, Ed., "Block-Wise Transfers in
the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7959,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7959, August 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7959>.
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[RFC8075] Castellani, A., Loreto, S., Rahman, A., Fossati, T., and
E. Dijk, "Guidelines for Mapping Implementations: HTTP to
the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 8075,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8075, February 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8075>.
[RFC8152] Schaad, J., "CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE)",
RFC 8152, DOI 10.17487/RFC8152, July 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8152>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8323] Bormann, C., Lemay, S., Tschofenig, H., Hartke, K.,
Silverajan, B., and B. Raymor, Ed., "CoAP (Constrained
Application Protocol) over TCP, TLS, and WebSockets",
RFC 8323, DOI 10.17487/RFC8323, February 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8323>.
7.2. Informative References
[Californium]
Eclipse Foundation, "Eclipse Californium", March 2019,
<https://github.com/eclipse/californium/tree/2.0.x/
californium-core/src/main/java/org/eclipse/californium/
core>.
[Go-OCF] Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), "Implementation of
CoAP Server & Client in Go", March 2019,
<https://github.com/go-ocf/go-coap>.
[I-D.ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-oscore]
Tiloca, M., Park, J., and F. Palombini, "Key Management
for OSCORE Groups in ACE", draft-ietf-ace-key-groupcomm-
oscore-01 (work in progress), March 2019.
[I-D.ietf-ace-oauth-authz]
Seitz, L., Selander, G., Wahlstroem, E., Erdtman, S., and
H. Tschofenig, "Authentication and Authorization for
Constrained Environments (ACE) using the OAuth 2.0
Framework (ACE-OAuth)", draft-ietf-ace-oauth-authz-24
(work in progress), March 2019.
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[I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub]
Koster, M., Keranen, A., and J. Jimenez, "Publish-
Subscribe Broker for the Constrained Application Protocol
(CoAP)", draft-ietf-core-coap-pubsub-08 (work in
progress), March 2019.
[I-D.ietf-core-multipart-ct]
Fossati, T., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "Multipart
Content-Format for CoAP", draft-ietf-core-multipart-ct-03
(work in progress), March 2019.
[I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory]
Shelby, Z., Koster, M., Bormann, C., Stok, P., and C.
Amsuess, "CoRE Resource Directory", draft-ietf-core-
resource-directory-22 (work in progress), July 2019.
[I-D.tiloca-core-oscore-discovery]
Tiloca, M., Amsuess, C., and P. Stok, "Discovery of OSCORE
Groups with the CoRE Resource Directory", draft-tiloca-
core-oscore-discovery-02 (work in progress), March 2019.
[RFC7346] Droms, R., "IPv6 Multicast Address Scopes", RFC 7346,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7346, August 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7346>.
[RFC7390] Rahman, A., Ed. and E. Dijk, Ed., "Group Communication for
the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7390,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7390, October 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7390>.
[RFC7967] Bhattacharyya, A., Bandyopadhyay, S., Pal, A., and T.
Bose, "Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) Option for
No Server Response", RFC 7967, DOI 10.17487/RFC7967,
August 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7967>.
Appendix A. Use Cases
To illustrate where and how CoAP-based group communication can be
used, this section summarizes the most common use cases. These use
cases include both secured and non-secured CoAP usage. Each
subsection below covers one particular category of use cases for
CoRE. Within each category, a use case may cover multiple
application areas such as home IoT, commercial building IoT (sensing
and control), industrial IoT/control, or environmental sensing.
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A.1. Discovery
Discovery of physical devices in a network, or discovery of
information entities hosted on network devices, are operations that
are usually required in a system during the phases of setup or
(re)configuration. When a discovery use case involves devices that
need to interact without having been configured previously with a
common security context, unsecured CoAP communication is typically
used. Discovery may involve a request to a directory server, which
provides services to aid clients in the discovery process. One
particular type of directory server is the CoRE Resource Directory
[I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory]; and there may be other types of
directories that can be used with CoAP.
A.1.1. Distributed Device Discovery
Device discovery is the discovery and identification of networked
devices - optionally only devices of a particular class, type, model,
or brand. Group communication is used for distributed device
discovery, if a central directory server is not used. Typically in
distributed device discovery, a multicast request is sent to a
particular address (or address range) and multicast scope of
interest, and any devices configured to be discoverable will respond
back. For the alternative solution of centralized device discovery a
central directory server is accessed through unicast, in which case
group communication is not needed. This requires that the address of
the central directory is either preconfigured in each device or
configured during operation using a protocol.
In CoAP, device discovery can be implemented by CoAP resource
discovery requesting (GET) a particular resource that the sought
device class, type, model or brand is known to respond to. It can
also be implemented using CoAP resource discovery (Section 7 of
[RFC7252]) and the CoAP query interface defined in Section 4 of
[RFC6690] to find these particular resources. Also, a multicast GET
request to /.well-known/core can be used to discover all CoAP
devices.
A.1.2. Distributed Service Discovery
Service discovery is the discovery and identification of particular
services hosted on network devices. Services can be identified by
one or more parameters such as ID, name, protocol, version and/or
type. Distributed service discovery involves group communication to
reach individual devices hosting a particular service; with a central
directory server not being used.
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In CoAP, services are represented as resources and service discovery
is implemented using resource discovery (Section 7 of [RFC7252]) and
the CoAP query interface defined in Section 4 of [RFC6690].
A.1.3. Directory Discovery
This use case is a specific sub-case of Distributed Service Discovery
(Appendix A.1.2), in which a device needs to identify the location of
a Directory on the network to which it can e.g. register its own
offered services, or to which it can perform queries to identify and
locate other devices/services it needs to access on the network.
Section 3.3 of [RFC7390] shows an example of discovering a CoRE
Resource Directory using CoAP group communication. As defined in
[I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory], a resource directory is a web
entity that stores information about web resources and implements
REST interfaces for registration and lookup of those resources. For
example, a device can register itself to a resource directory to let
it be found by other devices and/or applications.
A.2. Operational Phase
Operational phase use cases describe those operations that occur most
frequently in a networked system, during its operational lifetime and
regular operation. Regular usage is when the applications on
networked devices perform the tasks they were designed for and
exchange of application-related data using group communication
occurs. Processes like system reconfiguration, group changes,
system/device setup, extra group security changes, etc. are not part
of regular operation.
A.2.1. Actuator Group Control
Group communication can be beneficial to control actuators that need
to act in synchrony, as a group, with strict timing (latency)
requirements. Examples are office lighting, stage lighting, street
lighting, or audio alert/Public Address systems. Sections 3.4 and
3.5 of [RFC7390] show examples of lighting control of a group of
6LoWPAN-connected lights.
A.2.2. Device Group Status Request
To properly monitor the status of systems, there may be a need for
ad-hoc, unplanned status updates. Group communication can be used to
quickly send out a request to a (potentially large) number of devices
for specific information. Each device then responds back with the
requested data. Those devices that did not respond to the request
can optionally be polled again via reliable unicast communication to
complete the dataset. The device group may be defined e.g. as "all
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temperature sensors on floor 3", or "all lights in wing B". For
example, it could be a status request for device temperature, most
recent sensor event detected, firmware version, network load, and/or
battery level.
A.2.3. Network-wide Query
In some cases a whole network or subnet of multiple IP devices needs
to be queried for status or other information. This is similar to
the previous use case except that the device group is not defined in
terms of its function/type but in terms of its network location.
Technically this is also similar to distributed service discovery
(Appendix A.1.2) where a query is processed by all devices on a
network - except that the query is not about services offered by the
device, but rather specific operational data is requested.
A.2.4. Network-wide / Group Notification
In some cases a whole network, or subnet of multiple IP devices, or a
specific target group needs to be notified of a status change or
other information. This is similar to the previous two use cases
except that the recipients are not expected to respond with some
information. Unreliable notification can be acceptable in some use
cases, in which a recipient does not respond with a confirmation of
having received the notification. In such a case, the receiving CoAP
server does not have to create a CoAP response. If the sender needs
confirmation of reception, the CoAP servers can be configured for
that resource to respond with a 2.xx success status after processing
a notification request successfully.
A.3. Software Update
Multicast can be useful to efficiently distribute new software
(firmware, image, application, etc.) to a group of multiple devices.
In this case, the group is defined in terms of device type: all
devices in the target group are known to be capable of installing and
running the new software. The software is distributed as a series of
smaller blocks that are collected by all devices and stored in
memory. All devices in the target group are usually responsible for
integrity verification of the received software; which can be done
per-block or for the entire software image once all blocks have been
received. Due to the inherent unreliability of CoAP multicast, there
needs to be a backup mechanism (e.g. implemented using CoAP unicast)
by which a device can individually request missing blocks of a whole
software image/entity. Prior to multicast software update, the group
of recipients can be separately notified that there is new software
available and coming, using the above network-wide or group
notification.
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Acknowledgments
The authors sincerely thank Thomas Fossati and Jim Schaad for their
comments and feedback.
The work on this document has been partly supported by VINNOVA and
the Celtic-Next project CRITISEC.
Authors' Addresses
Esko Dijk
IoTconsultancy.nl
-------
Utrecht
The Netherlands
Email: esko.dijk@iotconsultancy.nl
Chonggang Wang
InterDigital
1001 E Hector St, Suite 300
Conshohocken PA 19428
United States
Email: Chonggang.Wang@InterDigital.com
Marco Tiloca
RISE AB
Isafjordsgatan 22
Kista SE-16440 Stockholm
Sweden
Email: marco.tiloca@ri.se
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