Network Working Group Karim El Malki
INTERNET-DRAFT Gonzalo Camarillo
Expires: December 2003 Ericsson
Jasminko Mulahusic
Mikael Lind
TeliaSonera
Hesham Soliman
Flarion
June 17, 2003
IPv6-IPv4 Translators in 3GPP Networks
<draft-elmalki-v6ops-3gpp-translator-00.txt>
Status of this memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
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The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
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This document is an individual submission to the IETF. Comments
should be directed to the authors.
Abstract
There have been discussions on the v6ops mailing list and at IETF
meetings regarding the suitability of translators (e.g. NAT-PT) as
mechanisms for IPv4 to IPv6 transition. It has often been stated that
NAT-PT is not a mechanism to be recommended in general to solve the
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IPv6-IPv4 transition problem and some modifications to NAT-PT have
been proposed. However there have also been discussions regarding
special scenarios where some form of translators could be deployed if
their use is documented appropriately. The aim of this draft is to
document the rationale for using translators in 3GPP networks, in
particular for IPv6-only IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and to
describe possible solutions to the problem and the interactions with
SIP.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction.....................................................2
2. 3GPP Network Requirements, SIP Requirements and constraints......3
3. Analysis of current SIP solutions for IPv6/v4 transition.........4
3.1 SIP Layer.......................................................4
3.2 Media Layer.....................................................4
4. IPv4/v6 Transition Solution for IMS..............................5
4.1 Reference Architecture for the solution.........................6
4.1.1 SIP Edge Proxy................................................6
4.1.2 IP Address and Port Mapper (IPAPM)............................7
4.2 IMS Generated INVITE............................................7
4.3 Internet Generated INVITE.......................................8
4.4 IPAPM Operation and State Installation..........................9
4.5 Private Addressing in IPv4 User Agent..........................10
4.5.1 IMS Generated INVITE.........................................10
4.5.2 Internet (private IPv4) Generated INVITE.....................11
4.6 Examples.......................................................12
5. Application proxies and NAT-PT for non-IMS services.............12
6. Security Considerations.........................................14
7. IANA Considerations.............................................14
8. Contributors....................................................14
9. Acknowledgements................................................14
10. Author's Addresses.............................................14
11. References.....................................................15
1. Introduction
3GPP has adopted IPv6 as its only mechanism to deploy new IP
multimedia subsystem (IMS) services such as messaging or voice and
video over IP. 3GPP networks have different constraints from other
types of networks, therefore it is important to consider the special
requirements which make translators an attractive solution for
transitioning 3GPP networks. The 3GPP scenarios and analysis drafts
[1][2] describe the 3GPP network and transition mechanisms which
could be used in such networks. These should be used as reference
together with RFC 3114 [3] when reading this document. The aim of
this draft is to document the reasons why translation can be an
attractive mechanism in 3GPP networks and to formulate a solution to
the 3GPP IPv6-to-IPv4 translation problem. This solution considers
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the impacts on SIP, which is used in the IPv6-only 3GPP IMS, and aims
to reuse solutions and approaches from the SIP and SIPPING WGs.
2. 3GPP Network Requirements, SIP Requirements and constraints
A 3GPP host communicates using PDP Contexts, which are layer-2 point-
to-point communication channels between 3GPP hosts and the 3GPP
network. Before being able to send any IP packets, a host needs to
activate a PDP Context. It is during the PDP context activation that
a host normally acquires an IP address. One of the special
characteristics of PDP Contexts is that a PDP context can only be
used to carry IPv4 or IPv6 packets but not both. The ôPDP Typeö which
is requested by the 3GPP host when establishing a PDP Context will be
either set to ôIPv4ö or ôIPv6ö.
The 3GPP IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) will be used to provide new
multimedia services (e.g. messaging, video, voice, audio) to 3GPP
hosts. In order to access IMS services the 3GPP host must use a PDP
Context of type IPv6 (we will call this an IPv6 PDP Context from now
on). The IMS is based on SIP [4].
One essential requirement in 3GPP networks is that 3GPP hosts using
IMS applications over IPv6 must be able to communicate with non-3GPP
IPv4 hosts (e.g. on Internet) that use SIP applications. In order to
achieve this, some kind of translation must be available between 3GPP
network realms and the Internet.
Another important requirement is to minimize the number of active PDP
Contexts a host has on any given time. A reason for this is that
there are practical constraints on the number of PDP Contexts which a
3GPP host may establish. If a host uses many PDP Contexts it consumes
extra resources in the 3GPP network. That is because each PDP Context
requires a state to be maintained in the 3GPP network. In addition,
each PDP Context would normally require radio signaling and a new
radio channel to be established to the 3GPP host. Therefore each
additional PDP Context also consumes extra radio resources required
to establish the radio channel. For these reasons, any transition
solution should support the case where a 3GPP host utilises only one
IPv6 PDP Context, without the need to activate additional IPv4 PDP
Contexts.
As specified in [4] SIP messages may be end-to-end integrity
protected, therefore it may not possible to modify them en-route. In
general the SIP WG discourages the use of intermediaries which alter
the contents of SIP messages. This is a very important consideration
for a 3GPP Translator solution.
Also, it is preferred to limit impacts to the installed IPv4 user
agent base and aim for a solution where most of the changes are made
to the 3GPP user agent and IMS. That is because it will obviously be
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harder to require changes to SIP user agents on Internet than to
require new functionality in 3GPP user agents which still have to be
deployed.
3. Analysis of current SIP solutions for IPv6/v4 transition
A complete solution for IPv6/v4 transition needs to handle both the
SIP layer and the media layer (e.g. RTP). Vanilla SIP can handle
heterogeneous IPv6/v4 networks at the SIP layer as long as proxies
are properly configured. However, end-points using different address
spaces need to implement extensions in order to exchange media
between them. These extensions affect the session description
protocol in use (e.g. SDP) and the SIP offer/answer state machine.
3.1 SIP Layer
A SIP user agent is typically reachable through the SIP server that
handles its domain. If the publicly available SIP URI for a
particular user is sip:user@example.com, requests sent to that user
will be routed to the SIP server at example.com. The proxy or user
agent sending the request will perform a DNS lookup for example.com
in order to obtain the IP address of the SIP server. Therefore, if
the SIP server of a domain is a dual-stack proxy that supports IPv4
and IPv6, it will be able to receive requests from IPv4-only and from
IPv6-only hosts. Then, the SIP server will relay the request to the
user agent using the address provided by the user agent at
registration time (which could be IPv4 or IPv6).
The SIP server that receives a request using IPv6 and relays it to
the user agent using IPv4, or vice versa, needs to remain in the path
traversed by subsequent requests between both user agents. Therefore,
such a SIP server should always be configured to Record-Route in that
situation.
3.2 Media Layer
SIP establishes media sessions using the offer/answer model [5]. One
end-point, the offerer, sends a session description (the offer) to
the other end-point, the answerer. The offer contains all the media
parameters needed to exchange media with the offerer; codecs,
transport addresses, protocols to transfer media, etc.
When the answerer receives an offer, it elaborates an answer and
sends it back to the offerer. The answer contains the media
parameters that the answerer is willing to use for that particular
session. Offer and answer are written using a session description
protocol. The most widespread session description protocol at present
is SDP [6] and 3GPP IMS uses SDP, thus we will focus on it. Session
descriptions are transmitted end-to-end and are not modified by
proxies. In this document we sometimes use SIP INVITEs and 200 (OK)
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Responses for simplicity to identify the offer and response model,
but it should be noted that support for other SIP messages carrying
the SDP offer/answer is implied.
Vanilla SDP only allows an end-point to provide a single IP address
per media stream. However, using the ALT extension [7] it is possible
to include several IP addresses in the description of a media stream.
Using ALT, an offerer can provide, for instance, an IPv4 and an IPv6
address for a particular media stream. The answerer will choose the
address of the type it supports or prefers.
An end-point can use several mechanisms to obtain the different
addresses to be placed in its ALT group in its session description.
It can be a dual-stack host that configures IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
or it can use protocols like TURN [8], RSIP [9], STUN [10] or TEREDO
[11] to discover extra IP addresses which it is reachable at.
ICE [12] describes how to couple address discovery procedures with
the offer/answer model. ICE is useful when the user agents are in
different private addresses spaces, where more than one offer/answer
exchange is needed to discover a reachable address for the peer.
4. IPv4/v6 Transition Solution for IMS
As mentioned previously, one important requirement for 3GPP networks
is that 3GPP hosts running SIP-based IMS applications over IPv6 must
be able to communicate with IPv4 SIP hosts on the Internet. This
requires the following to be performed at the borders of the 3GPP
network:
1. Ensure that the IP addresses in SDP offers/answers are of the
appropriate type for a communication to proceed.
2. Enable media communication by performing IP address and port
mapping of the media traffic (e.g. RTP/UDP) exchanged between the
IPv6 IMS user agent and the non-3GPP IPv4 user agent.
3. Ensure that IP version 4 is used for transport of SIP messages
between the IMS domain and external IPv4 domains.
IMS user agents need a means to obtain a public IPv4 address plus a
port number to place in their session descriptions in order to
receive media and an IPv6 address plus port number to send media to.
For incoming (to IMS) media packets, the public destination IPv4
address plus port number will be mapped to the 3GPP user agentÆs own
IPv6 address plus port number at the edge of the 3GPP network. For
outgoing (from IMS) media packets, the destination IPv6 address plus
port number will be mapped to the public IPv4 address plus port
number of the non-3GPP IPv4 user agent.
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A solution to these problems is given in the following sections.
4.1 Reference Architecture for the solution
We introduce two network elements: the SIP Edge Proxy and the IP
Address and Port Mapper (IPAPM). The reference architecture is shown
in Figure 1.
------- ------
| IMS | | SIP |
IPv6 | SIP | | Edge | --------
---| proxy | | Proxy| IPv4| |
------ ------ / | (CSCF)|--| |-----| |
| | | | / ------- ------ | |
| 3GPP | | GGSN |/ IPv6 | | |
| IPv6 |=============| |\ | | IPv4 |
| host | IPv6-only | | \ ------- | Net |
| | PDP Context | | \ IPv6 | | IPv4 | |
------ ------ -----------| IPAPM |-------| |
| | | |
------- --------
Figure 1 - SIP Edge Proxy and IP Address/Port Mapper (IPAPM) in the
3GPP Network
We will refer to ôIncomingö SIP messages as IPv4 messages going from
an IPv4 host towards the SIP Edge Proxy, while ôOutgoingö messages
are from the SIP Edge Proxy towards the IPv4 host.
Note that a user agent on the IPv4 network (Internet) may support
receiving and transmitting media over both IPv4 and IPv6 (dual-stack)
or only over IPv4. This is independent of whether the user agent is
using dual-stack or IPv4-only SIP proxies and registrars. Therefore
an intermediate node cannot deduce the media IP-type capability of a
user agent from these characteristics.
4.1.1 SIP Edge Proxy
The SIP Edge Proxy will naturally be a dual-stack node with both IPv6
and public IPv4 addresses configured on its interfaces. It will
perform Record-Routing, as described in Section 3.1 and will be in
the path of all the requests coming from and going to the IPv4
network.
The SIP Edge Proxy must store and manage a local pool of IPv6 and
public IPv4 addresses which have been previously configured on the
interfaces of an IPAPM node. The SIP Edge Proxy may have multiple
IPv6/v4 address pools each belonging to different physical IPAPM
nodes. This would enable the SIP Edge Proxy to perform load sharing
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or utilise IPAPMs which are best placed for the communication (e.g.
by comparing IP addresses).
Note that the SIP Edge Proxy is a logical entity which may be
implemented as a part of other SIP proxies. The IPv4 DNS records for
the domain will point to the SIP Edge Proxy and all the outgoing
requests with an IPv4 address as the SIP next-hop will be routed to
it. Since in the 3GPP model it is the S-CSCF proxy which receives all
incoming SIP messages to the IMS domain, the SIP Edge Proxy could be
integrated in that node.
4.1.2 IP Address and Port Mapper (IPAPM)
The IPAPM (IP Address and Port Mapper) is needed because the 3GPP
IPv6-only host and the IPv4-only host cannot send media traffic to
each other due to IP layer incompatibility. The IPAPM will simply
perform the IP address mapping for the appropriate IP address, port,
protocol tuples on both incoming and outgoing media packets. The SIP
Edge Proxy will install and delete this bidirectional state in the
IPAPM (see 4.4). It should be noted that the IPAPM operation is
similar to that of a bidirectional NA(P)T-PT [16] after having
installed state for a particular connection. That is, the translation
algorithm (SIIT) is the same, the main difference is the method used
to install state in the translator. Hence, if needed, an IPAPM may
also operate as a normal NA(P)T-PT for other (non-IMS) traffic for
which it does not have an address/port binding.
4.2 IMS Generated INVITE
When a 3GPP user agent sends an SDP offer (e.g. INVITE) to an
Internet user agent with only IPv6 addresses in the SDP, the Internet
user may be dual-stack (in which case there should be no address
incompatibility problem) or it may be IPv4-only. If it is IPv4-only,
the 3GPP user agent will get a final error response back. This final
error response will typically be a 488 (Not acceptable here) response
with a warning header with warn code 300 (Incompatible network
protocol) .
This response will traverse the SIP Edge Proxy, which will locally
assign a public IPv4 address and port number to the IPv6 3GPP user
agent for this session (Call-id, To tag, From tag) from a local pool
of addresses/ports. The unique address/port combination should stay
allocated to the same 3GPP IPv6 user agent for the duration of the
SIP session. The SIP Edge Proxy must install this mapping state
information in the IPAPM when it also obtains the 3GPP userÆs IPv6
address (in the successive SDP offer, see below).
The SIP Edge Proxy should add the assigned IPv4 media address and
port assigned to the 3GPP user agent to the 488 (Not Acceptable Here)
response. Note that the SIP Edge Proxy should not modify the contents
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of SDP, but append the IPv4 media address to the message. This is in
line with what is described in [13], which recommends against SDP
editing and puts requirements to achieve the same goal using a better
solution. Therefore this work in the SIPPING WG addresses our problem
and its completion should be encouraged. The SIP Edge Proxy utilises
such a mechanism to append the assigned IPv4 media address and port
to the response. The IPv4 address must be public. The 3GPP user agent
will, upon reception of this response, generate a new SDP offer that
contains both the IPv4 and the original IPv6 addresses and uses ALT
[7]. This SDP offer will traverse the SIP Edge Proxy. Therefore we
are effectively adding a requirement to [13] that the solution should
allow proxies to request the use of certain IP addresses and ports in
SDP offers and answers. The SIP Edge Proxy can now install a
bidirectional mapping in the IPAPM between the 3GPP userÆs IPv6 media
address/port and the assigned public IPv4 address/port for the
session.
When the IPv4-only user agent sends back a SDP answer containing at
least a public IPv4 address/port pair, the SIP Edge Proxy locally
assigns an IPv6 address and port to the IPv4 user agent from a local
pool of addresses/ports. The unique address/port combination should
stay allocated to the same IPv4 user agent for the duration of the
SIP session. The SIP Edge Proxy must install this bidirectional
mapping state information in the IPAPM. Then the SIP Edge Proxy
appends this IPv6 address plus port number to the SDP answer. As
mentioned previously, SDP editing should be avoided and a solution
satisfying the requirements in [13] should be used. This IPv6 address
and port will be used by the 3GPP IPv6-only user agent to send media
to the IPv4 user agent. The IPAPM will map this IPv6 address/port
pair to the IPv4 address contained in the SDP answer. Media can now
flow in both directions through the IPAPM. In this paragraph we have
effectively added a requirement to [13] that the solution should
allow proxies to request the use of certain IP addresses and ports as
destination of the media flows.
4.3 Internet Generated INVITE
In order to limit the impact on IPv4 user agents on Internet, the SIP
Edge Proxy will perform a different procedure in the case of SDP
offers (e.g. INVITE) sent by IPv4 user agents with at least a public
IPv4 address in their session descriptions.
Upon receiving this offer, the SIP Edge Proxy will parse the SDP and
establish that the IPv4 user agent does not currently have IPv6
addresses but has at least one public IPv4 address. The SIP Edge
Proxy should then locally assign an IPv6 address plus port to the
IPv4 user agent for this session. At this point the SIP Edge Proxy
has enough information to install a bidirectional mapping in the
IPAPM between the IPv4 user agentÆs public IPv4 media address/port
and the IPv6 address/port assigned to it for the session. It will
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also allocate an IPv4 public address/port to the 3GPP IPv6 user
agent, even though it cannot establish the binding until it obtains
the 3GPP IPv6 user agentÆs media address in the SDP answer. The SIP
Edge Proxy should then append the IPv6 media address and port,
assigned to the IPv4 user agent, and the IPv4 media address and port,
assigned to the 3GPP IPv6 user agent, to the SDP offer (e.g. INVITE).
To achieve this it will not do SIP editing but will use the mechanism
already described in 4.2 in relation to [13].
The 3GPP IPv6-only user agent will receive the SDP offer (e.g.
INVITE) and process the appended IPv6 and IPv4 address/port pairs.
The 3GPP user agent will use the appended IPv6 address/port to send
media to the IPv4 user agent. It will then send the SDP answer (e.g.
200 OK). The SDP answer will contain both its newly assigned IPv4
address/port (appended to the offer) and its IPv6 address/port and
uses ALT [7].
The SDP answer will traverse the SIP Edge Proxy. At this point the
SIP Edge Proxy can install the bidirectional mapping state in the
IPAPM between the 3GPP user agentÆs IPv6 address and the public IPv4
address/port it was locally assigned earlier (which is also contained
in the SDP answer itself). The IPv4 user agent will use the public
IPv4 address and port in the SDP answer to send media to the 3GPP
IPv6 user agent. Media can now flow in both directions through the
IPAPM.
4.4 IPAPM Operation and State Installation
The installation of state in the IPAPM is intimately coupled with the
generation of session descriptions (offers and answers) by the user
agent.
For incoming media packets (arriving at the IPAPMÆs IPv4 interface),
the IPAPM should modify source and destination address and port pairs
as follows. The IPAPM should make an address/port mapping for packets
having the public IPv4 source address plus port number that the IPv4
user agent placed in its session descriptions. The IPAPM should map
the source address/port of these IPv4 packets to the IPv6 source
address plus port number assigned by the SIP Edge Proxy to the IPv4
user agent for this session. The IPAPM must also look for packets
having the public IPv4 destination/port address corresponding to that
assigned to the IPv6 user agent by the SIP Edge Proxy. These must be
mapped to the IPv6 address/port pair contained in the session
description sent by the IPv6 user agent.
For outgoing media packets (arriving at the IPAPMÆs IPv6 interface),
the IPAPM should modify source and destination address and port pairs
as follows. Packets having the IPv6 source address plus port number
that the 3GPP user agent placed in its session descriptions, must be
mapped to the IPv4 source address and port assigned by the SIP Edge
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Proxy to the 3GPP user agent for this session. The IPAPM must also
look for packets having the IPv6 destination/port address
corresponding to that assigned to the IPv4 user agent by the SIP Edge
Proxy. These must be mapped to the IPv4 address/port pair contained
in the session description sent by the IPv4 user agent
Note that the protocol used for communicating the address/port
mapping information from SIP Edge Proxy to the IPAPM is beyond the
scope of this document. Two alternatives are MEGACO [14] and the
MIDCOM protocol being developed [15].
4.5 Private Addressing in IPv4 User Agent
The procedures described above work fine when the IPv4 user agent has
a public IPv4 address and provides it in its session description.
However, many IPv4 user agents are behind NATs. Therefore it is
necessary for them to discover the public IPv4 address/port which
they get assigned by the NAT, to be able to use it in end-to-end SDP
messages.
To resolve this situation the 3GPP IMS user agent may choose to use
ICE when communicating with user agents from different domains than
its own. The 3GPP user agent would add ôa=stunö lines to its media
lines grouped by ALT, as described in [7] and would run STUN servers
on those transport addresses. The IPv4 user agent would be able to
discover public addresses for itself by communicating with these STUN
servers. Using ICE and STUN this way allows user agents to discover
new addresses which allow connectivity to the SIP peer, as described
in [12]. This mechanism does not require introduction of new servers
in IMS, but requires support in the 3GPP user agent and in the IPv4
user agent as described in the sections below.
It is possible to mandate ICE implementation in 3GPP user agents, but
support of ICE/STUN in IPv4 user agents is necessary to make this
communication work. Since at the current time it is uncertain whether
IPv4 user agents on the Internet will support ICE/STUN, it is not
possible to guarantee that this procedure will work. Should this
procedure fail then the user agents will know that communication is
not possible.
We assume that the IPv4 user agent utilizes a SIP Proxy which has one
or more public IPv4 addresses. Therefore this proxy can communicate
with the SIP Edge Proxy at the edge of the IMS domain which also has
at least one public IPv4 address.
4.5.1 IMS Generated INVITE
As described previously, this solution is based on the ICE mechanism
[12]. In this case the 3GPP user agent sends an INVITE to the IPv4
user agent. The IPv4 user agent happens to have only IPv4 private
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addresses. As described previously (see 4.2), this results in an
Error response from the IPv4 user agent. The SIP Edge Proxy then
locally assigns an IPv4 address/port to the 3GPP user agent, gets
ready to install state in the IPAPM and appends this address/port to
the Error Response. The 3GPP user agent then generates a new INVITE
and uses the procedure described in ICE [12]. In particular it should
start STUN servers on the IPv6 addresses it will use in its offer.
The 3GPP user agent then sends the offer containing ôa=stunö lines to
its media lines grouped by ALT [7]. One of the media addresses must
be the public IPv4 address which the SIP Edge Proxy appended to the
previous Error Response. The SIP Edge Proxy now has all the
information to install bidirectional state in the IPAPM for the 3GPP
user agent.
The IPv4 user agent (assuming it supports ICE) runs the ICE procedure
upon receiving the offer (INVITE) from the 3GPP user agent. In this
way it discovers at least one public IPv4 address/port pair for
itself and uses this in its SDP answer. The procedure then follows as
described in 4.2. Note that it is not strictly necessary that the
3GPP user agent runs STUN after receiving the response since it does
not need to discover new addresses for the communication.
If ICE is not supported by the IPv4 user agent then the communication
will ultimately fail. The IPv4 user agent will return only private
IPv4 addresses in its SDP answer. The response will traverse the SIP
Edge Proxy which will not be able to allocate IPv6 address/port pairs
mapped to private IPv4 addresses. The 3GPP user agent will receive
the response, will return an ACK and will immediately send a BYE
message to terminate the call since it cannot accept the private IPv4
address in the SDP response.
4.5.2 Internet (private IPv4) Generated INVITE
As described previously, this solution is based on the ICE mechanism
[12]. The IPv4 user agent (which only has private IPv4 addresses)
sends an SDP offer (e.g. INVITE) to the 3GPP IPv6-only user agent
utilising private addresses. It would add ôa=stunö lines to its media
lines and would run STUN servers on those transport addresses. The
SDP offer will then traverse the SIP Edge Proxy. The SIP Edge Proxy
is unable to make the local assignment of an IPv6 address/port pair
to the IPv4 user agent (see 4.3) because of the private IPv4
addressing in the SDP offer. However it is able to make a local
assignment of an IPv4 public address/port to the 3GPP IPv6 user agent
for this session, and will append this address/port to the SDP offer.
The mechanism to append this information to the SDP offer is
described in 4.2.
When the 3GPP user agent receives the SDP offer it will send back an
SDP answer (e.g. 200 OK) to allow the STUN procedure to proceed (i.e.
it can see that the offerer is using STUN). The SDP answer will
contain the newly assigned public IPv4 address/port (previously
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appended to the SDP offer by the SIP Edge Proxy) and its IPv6 media
address/ports. The 3GPP user should add ôa=stunö lines to its media
lines and run STUN servers on those media addresses (i.e. excluding
the IPv4 address since it is an IPv6-only host).
The SDP answer will traverse the SIP Edge Proxy. The SIP Edge Proxy
will now be able to install the bidirectional mapping in the IPAPM
between the 3GPP user agentÆs IPv6 media address in the SDP answer
and the public IPv4 address which it locally assigned previously
(this IPv4 address is also contained in the SDP answer).
When the IPv4 user agent receives the SDP answer, it will run STUN
towards the public IPv4 address supplied by the 3GPP user agent in
SDP as described in [12]. This will allow it to check connectivity to
the IPv4 address in the answer and learn about public IPv4 addresses
which it is reachable at.
At this point the IPAPM will not have a binding which allows it to
map the IPv4 user agentÆs incoming STUN requests from IPv4 to IPv6.
Therefore the IPAPM must be STUN-aware to allow this procedure to
succeed. The IPAPM must locally maintain a separate pool of IPv6
addresses configured on its interface which are not handled by any
SIP Edge Proxy. Upon receiving an incoming STUN request it must
create a local bidirectional binding which maps the source address of
the IPv4 user agentÆs STUN request to an IPv6 address allocated from
its local pool. The STUN Request will therefore reach the 3GPP user
agent having the IPAPM-allocated IPv6 address as its source address.
The IPAPM mapping established previously will allow the subsequent
STUN response to traverse the IPAPM and reach the IPv4 user agent.
Once it has found new public IPv4 addresses which allow connectivity
to the 3GPP user agent, the IPv4 user agent should issue a new offer
(e.g. re-INVITE or UPDATE) to pass the newly discovered public IPv4
address to the callee. Now that the IPv4 user agent has at least a
public address/port pair it can complete the procedure successfully
as described in 4.3.
If the IPv4 user agent does not support ICE, the communication would
fail. One alternative could be to deploy servers (e.g. STUN) on the
edge of the 3GPP network which IPv4 user agents could utilise to
discover public IPv4 address/ports which they can use in SDP offers.
4.6 Examples
TO BE DONE
5. Application proxies and NAT-PT for non-IMS services
As mentioned previously, a 3GPP host should be able to access IMS-
applications over a single IPv6 PDP Context. In addition to this it
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would be preferable if the same IPv6 PDP context could be used for
other applications than IMS specific (e.g. web, email etc.).
The alternative to using a translator is to activate a new IPv4 PDP
context. This new session over the new IPv4 PDP Context will, in most
cases, be using private addresses since most 3GPP operators don't
have and cannot get enough IPv4 addresses. This will mean that the
choice is between an IPv4 session with NAT or an IPv6 session with a
protocol translator. Using a protocol translator might have some
drawbacks in comparison to using IPv4 and NAT since NATs are more
mature and widely deployed.
However, looking from a 3GPP perspective, using protocol translation
might be more advantageous than NAT as it will eliminate the need for
creation of additional IPv4 PDP Contexts, which is a big advantage.
This makes protocol translators a viable alternative in 3GPP
networks.
Using a protocol translator is not the only alternative to get rid of
the extra PDP contexts when communicating with an IPv4 host. Instead,
tunneling of IPv4 over IPv6 can be used. This approach has the same
benefits as the translator (i.e. no additional PDP contexts need be
created) but it has another drawback, which is extra overhead. Since
the 3GPP network is a wireless network with limited bandwidth,
increased overhead is quite an issue and has to be avoided in the
largest extent possible. Note that this would not be an issue if IPv4
in IPv6 header compression is used. Another drawback is that it would
require the 3GPP host to obtain an IPv4 address through some means
and it is not certain that all 3GPP networks will have the
appropriate infrastructure (e.g. DHCPv6 server since only stateless
address configuration is mandated in 3GPP). Normally this IPv4
address would be a private address, therefore the traffic would have
to be both tunneled and passed through a (IPv4) NAT. The alternative
would be to hand out public IPv4 addresses. Even if an operator had
enough IPv4 public addresses to share between its subscribers, it is
not clear how this can be done efficiently. Normally the UE would be
assigned an IPv4 address when it established a PDP context and this
address is not changed for the lifetime of the PDP context (which can
be many hours). Hence, to share addresses efficiently, UEs will need
to know that their IPv4 address is no longer needed and terminate the
PDP context if appropriate. When the address is needed again the UE
will need to re-establish the PDP context. Clearly this process will
add significant delays and will be inefficient over the radio
interface.
To minimize the use of translation, application specific proxies can
be used. Currently deployed 3GPP networks already contain application
proxies therefore it should not be a complicated matter to make them
dual-stack so that they are able to allow IPv6 hosts to access IPv4
servers. However it is not possible to exclude that 3GPP IPv6 hosts
will use non-IMS applications for which there are no application
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INTERNET-DRAFT 3GPP IPv6-IPv4 Translator June 2003
proxies. This will not be a large amount of traffic, however such
communication must be supported. A protocol translator (NAT-PT [16])
can be used for this purpose.
6. Security Considerations
TBD
7. IANA Considerations
TBD
8. Contributors
Gabor Bajko (Nokia) has contributed to this work.
9. Acknowledgements
TBD
10. Author's Addresses
Karim El Malki
Ericsson AB
LM Ericssons Vag. 8
126 25 Stockholm
Sweden
Phone: +46 8 7195803
E-mail: Karim.El-Malki@ericsson.com
Gonzalo Camarillo
Ericsson
Advanced Signalling Research Lab.
FIN-02420 Jorvas
Finland
E-mail: Gonzalo.Camarillo@ericsson.com
Mikael Lind
TeliaSonera
Vitsandsgatan 9B
SE-12386 Farsta
Sweden
E-mail: mikael.lind@teliasonera.com
Jasminko Mulahusic
TeliaSonera
Vitsandsgatan 9B
SE-12386 Farsta
Sweden
E-mail: jasminko.mulahusic@teliasonera.com
El Malki et. al. [Page 14]
INTERNET-DRAFT 3GPP IPv6-IPv4 Translator June 2003
Hesham Soliman
Flarion
E-mail: H.Soliman@flarion.com
11. References
[1] Soininen, J. (Ed.), et al., "Transition Scenarios for 3GPP
Networks", draft-ietf-v6ops-3GPP-scenario-03 (work in
progress), March 2003.
[2] Wiljakka, J. (Ed.), et al., "Analysis on Ipv6 Transition in
3GPP Networks", draft-ietf-v6ops-analysis-04 (work in
progress), June 2003.
[3] Wasserman, M. (Ed.), et al., öRecommendations for IPv6 in Third
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Standardsö, RFC 3314,
September 2002.
[4] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., Schooler, E., "SIP:
Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.
[5] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., ôAn Offer/Answer Model with the
Session Description Protocol (SDP)ö, RFC 3264, June 2002.
[6] Handley, M. and V. Jacobson, "SDP: Session Description
Protocol", RFC 2327, April 1998.
[7] Camarillo, G. , Rosenberg, J., ôThe Alternative Semantics for
the Session Description Protocol Grouping Frameworkö, draft
camarillo-mmusic-alt-01 (work in progress), June 2003.
[8] Rosenberg, J., Weinberger, J., Mahy, R., Huitema, C.,
"Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN)", draft-rosenberg-midcom
turn-01 (work in progress), March 2003.
[9] Borella, M., Lo, J., Grabelsky, D. and G. Montenegro, "Realm
Specific IP: Framework", RFC 3102, October 2001.
[10] Rosenberg, J., Weinberger, J., Huitema, C., Mahy, R., "STUN -
Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Through
Network Address Translators (NATs)", RFC 3489, March 2003.
[11] Huitema, C., "Teredo: Tunneling IPv6 over UDP through NATs",
draft-huitema-v6ops-teredo-00 (work in progress), June 2003.
[12] Rosenberg, J., ôInteractive Connectivity Establishment (ICE): A
Methodology for Network Address Translator (NAT) Traversal for
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INTERNET-DRAFT 3GPP IPv6-IPv4 Translator June 2003
the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)ö, draft-rosenberg-
sipping-ice-00 (work in progress), February 2003.
[13] Rosenberg, J., ôRequirements for Session Policy for the Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP)ö, draft-ietf-sipping-session-policy-
req-00 (work in progress), June 2003.
[14] Groves, C., Pantaleo, M., Anderson, T., Taylor, T., ôGateway
Control Protocol Version 1ö, RFC 3525, June 2003.
[15] Srisuresh, P., Kuthan, J., Rosenberg, J., Molitor, A., Rayhan,
A., "Middlebox communication architecture and framework", RFC
3303, August 2002.
[16] Tsirtsis, G., Srisuresh, P., ôNetwork Address Translation -
Protocol Translationö, RFC 2766, February 2000.
12. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
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The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
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Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
El Malki et. al. [Page 16]