6MAN S. Amante
Internet-Draft Level 3
Obsoletes: 3697 (if approved) B. Carpenter
Updates: 2205, 2460 (if approved) Univ. of Auckland
Intended status: Standards Track S. Jiang
Expires: September 14, 2011 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
J. Rajahalme
Nokia-Siemens Networks
March 13, 2011
IPv6 Flow Label Specification
draft-ietf-6man-flow-3697bis-02
Abstract
This document specifies the IPv6 Flow Label field and the minimum
requirements for IPv6 nodes labeling flows, IPv6 nodes forwarding
labeled packets, and flow state establishment methods. Even when
mentioned as examples of possible uses of the flow labeling, more
detailed requirements for specific use cases are out of scope for
this document.
The usage of the Flow Label field enables efficient IPv6 flow
classification based only on IPv6 main header fields in fixed
positions.
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 http://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 September 14, 2011.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. IPv6 Flow Label Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Stateless Flow Labeling Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Flow State Establishment Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Essential correction to RFC 2205 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.1. Theft and Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.2. IPsec and Tunneling Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.3. Security Filtering Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9. Change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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1. Introduction
A flow is a sequence of packets sent from a particular source to a
particular unicast, anycast, or multicast destination that a node
desires to label as a flow. A flow could consist of all packets in a
specific transport connection or a media stream. However, a flow is
not necessarily 1:1 mapped to a transport connection.
Traditionally, flow classifiers have been based on the 5-tuple of the
source and destination addresses, ports, and the transport protocol
type. However, some of these fields may be unavailable due to either
fragmentation or encryption, or locating them past a chain of IPv6
extension headers may be inefficient. Additionally, if classifiers
depend only on IP layer headers, later introduction of alternative
transport layer protocols will be easier.
The usage of the 3-tuple of the Flow Label and the Source and
Destination Address fields enables efficient IPv6 flow
classification, where only IPv6 main header fields in fixed positions
are used.
The flow label could be used in both stateless and stateful
scenarios. A stateless scenario is one where a node that sets the
flow label value for all packets of a given flow does not need to
store any information about the flow, and any node that processes the
flow label in any way also does not need to store any information
after a packet has been processed. A stateful scenario is one where
a node that sets or processes the flow label value needs to store
information about the flow, including the flow label value. A
stateful scenario might also require a signaling mechanism to
establish flow state in the network.
The flow label can be used most simply in stateless scenarios. This
specification concentrates on the stateless model and how it can be
used as a default mechanism. Details of stateful models, signaling,
specific flow state establishment methods and their related service
models are out of scope for this specification. The basic
requirement for stateful models is set forth in Section 4.
The minimum level of IPv6 flow support consists of labeling the
flows. A specific goal is to enable and encourage the use of the
flow label for various forms of stateless load distribution,
especially across Equal Cost Multi-Path (EMCP) and/or Link
Aggregation Group (LAG) paths. ECMP and LAG are methods to bond
together multiple physical links used to procure the required
capacity necessary to carry an offered load greater than the
bandwidth of an individual physical link. IPv6 source nodes SHOULD
be able to label known flows (e.g., TCP connections, application
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streams), even if the node itself does not require any flow-specific
treatment. Node requirements for stateless flow labeling are given
in Section 3.
This document replaces [RFC3697] and Appendix A of [RFC2460]. A
rationale for the changes made is documented in
[I-D.ietf-6man-flow-update]. The present document also includes a
correction to [RFC2205] concerning the flow label.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
2. IPv6 Flow Label Specification
The 20-bit Flow Label field in the IPv6 header [RFC2460] is used by a
node to label packets of a flow. A Flow Label of zero is used to
indicate packets not part of any flow. Packet classifiers can use
the triplet of Flow Label, Source Address, and Destination Address
fields to identify which flow a particular packet belongs to.
Packets are processed in a flow-specific manner by nodes that are
able to do so in a stateless manner, or that have been set up with
flow-specific state. The nature of the specific treatment and the
methods for flow state establishment are out of scope for this
specification. However, any node that sets flow label values
according to a stateful scheme MUST ensure that packets conform to
Section 3 of the present specification if they are sent outside the
network domain using the stateful scheme.
As specified below in Section 3, the normal expectation is that flow
label values are uniformly distributed. In this specification, it is
recommended below that a pseudo-random method should be used to
achieve such a uniform distribution. Intentionally, there are no
precise mathematical requirements placed on the distribution or the
pseudo-random method.
Once set to a non-zero value, the Flow Label MUST be delivered
unchanged to the destination node(s). A forwarding node MUST NOT
change the flow label value in an arriving packet if it is non-zero.
However, there are two qualifications to this rule:
1. Implementers are advised that forwarding nodes, especially those
acting as domain border devices, might nevertheless be configured
to change the flow label value in packets. This is undetectable,
unless some future version of IPsec authentication [RFC4302]
protects the flow label value.
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2. To enable stateless load distribution at any point in the
Internet, a network domain should never export packets
originating within the domain whose flow label values do not
conform to Section 3. However, neither domain border egress
routers nor intermediate routers/devices (using a flow-label, for
example, as a part of an input-key for a load-distribution hash)
can determine by inspection that a value is not part of a uniform
distribution. Therefore, if nodes within a domain ignore the
recommendations of Section 3, and such packets are forwarded
outside the domain, this might result in undesirable operational
implications (e.g., congestion, reordering) for not only the
inappropriately flow-labelled packets, but also well-behaved
flow-labelled packets, during forwarding at various intermediate
devices. Thus, a domain must protect its peers by never
exporting inappropriately labelled packets originating within the
domain. This is why nodes using a stateful scheme must not set
the flow label to a non-zero and non-uniformly distributed value
if the packet will leave their domain. If it is known to a
border router that flow labels originated within the domain are
not uniformly distributed, it will need to set outgoing flow
labels in the same manner as described for forwarding nodes in
Section 3.
There is no way to verify whether a flow label has been modified en
route or whether it belongs to a uniform distribution. Therefore, no
Internet-wide mechanism can depend mathematically on immutable and
uniformly distributed flow labels; they have a "best effort" quality.
This leads to the following formal rules:
o Implementers should be aware that the flow label is an unprotected
field that could have been accidentally or intentionally changed
en route. Implementations MUST take appropriate steps to protect
themselves from being vulnerable to denial of service and other
types of attack that could result (see Section 6.1).
o Forwarding nodes such as routers and load balancers MUST NOT
depend only on Flow Label values being uniformly distributed. In
any usage such as a hash key for load distribution, the Flow Label
bits MUST be combined at least with bits from other sources within
the packet, so as to produce a constant hash value for each flow
and a suitable distribution of hash values across flows.
Although uniformly distributed flow label values are recommended
below, and will always be helpful for load balancing, it is unsafe to
assume their presence in the general case, and the use case needs to
work even if the flow label value is zero.
The use of the Flow Label field does not necessarily signal any
requirement on packet reordering. Especially, the zero label does
not imply that significant reordering is acceptable.
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An IPv6 node that does not set the flow label to a non-zero value, or
make use of it in any way, MUST ignore it when receiving or
forwarding a packet.
3. Stateless Flow Labeling Requirements
This section defines the minimum requirements for stateless methods
of setting the flow label value.
To enable Flow Label based classification, source nodes SHOULD assign
each unrelated transport connection and application data stream to a
new flow. A typical definition of a flow for this purpose is any set
of packets carrying the same 5-tuple {dest addr, source addr,
protocol, dest port, source port}.
It is desirable that flow label values should be uniformly
distributed to assist load distribution. It is therefore RECOMMENDED
that source hosts support the flow label by setting the flow label
field for all packets of a given flow to the same uniformly
distributed pseudo-random value. Both stateful and stateless methods
of assigning a pseudo-random value could be used, but it is outside
the scope of this specification to mandate an algorithm. In a
stateless mechanism, the algorithm SHOULD ensure that the resulting
flow label values are unique with high probability.
An OPTIONAL algorithm for generating such a pseudo-random value is
described in [I-D.gont-6man-flowlabel-security].
[[ NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: The preceding sentence should be deleted, and
the reference should be changed to Informative, if the cited draft is
not on the standards track at the time of publication. ]]
A source node which does not otherwise set the flow label MUST set
its value to zero.
A node that forwards a flow whose flow label value in arriving
packets is zero MAY set the flow label value. In that case, it is
RECOMMENDED that the forwarding node sets the flow label field for a
flow to a uniformly distributed pseudo-random value.
o The same considerations apply as to source hosts setting the flow
label; in particular, the normal case is that a flow is defined by
the 5-tuple.
o This option, if implemented, would presumably be used by first-hop
or ingress routers. It might place a considerable per-packet
processing load on them, even if they adopted a stateless method
of flow identification and label assignment. This is why the
principal recommendation is that the source host should set the
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label.
The preceding rules taken together allow a given network domain to
include routers that set flow labels on behalf of hosts that do not
do so. They also recommend that flow labels exported to the Internet
are always either zero or uniformly distributed.
4. Flow State Establishment Requirements
A node that sets the flow label MAY also take part in a flow state
establishment method that results in assigning specific treatments to
specific flows, possibly including signaling. Any such method MUST
NOT disturb nodes taking part in the stateless model just described.
Further details are not discussed in this document.
5. Essential correction to RFC 2205
[RFC2460] reduced the size of the flow label field from 24 to 20
bits. The references to a 24 bit flow label field on pages 87 and 88
of [RFC2205] are updated accordingly.
6. Security Considerations
This section considers security issues raised by the use of the Flow
Label, primarily the potential for denial-of-service attacks, and the
related potential for theft of service by unauthorized traffic
(Section 6.1). Section 6.2 addresses the use of the Flow Label in
the presence of IPsec including its interaction with IPsec tunnel
mode and other tunneling protocols. We also note that inspection of
unencrypted Flow Labels may allow some forms of traffic analysis by
revealing some structure of the underlying communications. Even if
the flow label were encrypted, its presence as a constant value in a
fixed position might assist traffic analysis and cryptoanalysis.
The flow label is not protected in any way and can be forged by an
on-path attacker. On the other hand, a uniformly distributed pseudo-
random flow label cannot be readily guessed by an off-path attacker;
see [I-D.gont-6man-flowlabel-security] for further discussion.
6.1. Theft and Denial of Service
Since the mapping of network traffic to flow-specific treatment is
triggered by the IP addresses and Flow Label value of the IPv6
header, an adversary may be able to obtain unintended service by
modifying the IPv6 header or by injecting packets with false
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addresses and/or labels. Theft of service is not further discussed
in this document, since it can only be analysed for specific stateful
methods of using the flow label. However, a denial of service attack
becomes possible in the stateless model when the modified or injected
traffic depletes the resources available to forward it and other
traffic streams. If a DoS attack were undertaken against a given
Flow Label (or set of Flow Labels), then traffic containing an
affected Flow Label might well experience worse-than-best-effort
network performance.
Note that since the treatment of IP headers by nodes is typically
unverified, there is no guarantee that flow labels sent by a node are
set according to the recommendations in this document. A man-in-the-
middle or injected-traffic denial of service attack specifically
directed at flow label handling would involve setting unusual flow
labels. For example, an attacker could set all flow labels reaching
a given router to the same arbitrary non-zero value, or could perform
rapid cycling of flow label values such that the packets of a given
flow will each have a different value. Either of these attacks would
cause a stateless load distribution algorithm to perform badly and
would cause a stateful mechanism to behave incorrectly. For this
reason, stateless mechanisms should not use the flow label alone to
control load distribution, and stateful mechanisms should include
explicit methods to detect and ignore suspect flow label values.
Since flows are identified by the 3-tuple of the Flow Label and the
Source and Destination Address, the risk of denial of service
introduced by the Flow Label is closely related to the risk of denial
of service by address spoofing. An adversary who is in a position to
forge an address is also likely to be able to forge a label, and vice
versa.
There are two issues with different properties: Spoofing of the Flow
Label only, and spoofing of the whole 3-tuple, including Source and
Destination Address.
The former can be done inside a node which is using or transmitting
the correct source address. The ability to spoof a Flow Label
typically implies being in a position to also forge an address, but
in many cases, spoofing an address may not be interesting to the
spoofer, especially if the spoofer's goal is theft of service, rather
than denial of service.
The latter can be done by a host which is not subject to ingress
filtering [RFC2827] or by an intermediate router. Due to its
properties, this is typically useful only for denial of service. In
the absence of ingress filtering, almost any third party could
instigate such an attack.
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In the presence of ingress filtering, forging a non-zero Flow Label
on packets that originated with a zero label, or modifying or
clearing a label, could only occur if an intermediate system such as
a router was compromised, or through some other form of man-in-the-
middle attack.
6.2. IPsec and Tunneling Interactions
The IPsec protocol, as defined in [RFC4301], [RFC4302], [RFC4303]
does not include the IPv6 header's Flow Label in any of its
cryptographic calculations (in the case of tunnel mode, it is the
outer IPv6 header's Flow Label that is not included). Hence
modification of the Flow Label by a network node has no effect on
IPsec end-to-end security, because it cannot cause any IPsec
integrity check to fail. As a consequence, IPsec does not provide
any defense against an adversary's modification of the Flow Label
(i.e., a man-in-the-middle attack).
IPsec tunnel mode provides security for the encapsulated IP header's
Flow Label. A tunnel mode IPsec packet contains two IP headers: an
outer header supplied by the tunnel ingress node and an encapsulated
inner header supplied by the original source of the packet. When an
IPsec tunnel is passing through nodes performing flow classification,
the intermediate network nodes operate on the Flow Label in the outer
header. At the tunnel egress node, IPsec processing includes
removing the outer header and forwarding the packet (if required)
using the inner header. The IPsec protocol requires that the inner
header's Flow Label not be changed by this decapsulation processing
to ensure that modifications to label cannot be used to launch theft-
or denial-of-service attacks across an IPsec tunnel endpoint. This
document makes no change to that requirement; indeed it forbids
changes to the Flow Label.
When IPsec tunnel egress decapsulation processing includes a
sufficiently strong cryptographic integrity check of the encapsulated
packet (where sufficiency is determined by local security policy),
the tunnel egress node can safely assume that the Flow Label in the
inner header has the same value as it had at the tunnel ingress node.
This analysis and its implications apply to any tunneling protocol
that performs integrity checks. Of course, any Flow Label set in an
encapsulating IPv6 header is subject to the risks described in the
previous section.
6.3. Security Filtering Interactions
The Flow Label does nothing to eliminate the need for packet
filtering based on headers past the IP header, if such filtering is
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deemed necessary for security reasons on nodes such as firewalls or
filtering routers.
However, security devices that clear or rewrite non-zero flow label
values would be in violation of this specification.
7. IANA Considerations
This document requests no action by IANA.
8. Acknowledgements
Steve Deering and Alex Conta were co-authors of RFC 3697, on which
this document is based.
Valuable comments and contributions were made by Fred Baker, Steve
Blake, Remi Despres, Alan Ford, Fernando Gont, Brian Haberman, Tony
Hain, Joel Halpern, Qinwen Hu, Chris Morrow, Thomas Narten, Mark
Smith, Pascal Thubert, Iljitsch van Beijnum, and other participants
in the 6man working group.
Contributors to the development of RFC 3697 included Ran Atkinson,
Steve Blake, Jim Bound, Francis Dupont, Robert Elz, Tony Hain, Robert
Hancock, Bob Hinden, Christian Huitema, Frank Kastenholz, Thomas
Narten, Charles Perkins, Pekka Savola, Hesham Soliman, Michael
Thomas, Margaret Wasserman, and Alex Zinin.
This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool [RFC2629].
9. Change log
draft-ietf-6man-flow-3697bis-02: update to remove most text about
stateful methods, 2011-03-13
draft-ietf-6man-flow-3697bis-01: update after resolving 11 initial
issues, 2011-02-26
draft-ietf-6man-flow-3697bis-00: original version, built from RFC3697
and draft-ietf-6man-flow-update-01, 2011-01-31
10. References
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10.1. Normative References
[I-D.gont-6man-flowlabel-security]
Gont, F., "Security Assessment of the IPv6 Flow Label",
draft-gont-6man-flowlabel-security-01 (work in progress),
November 2010.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2205] Braden, B., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, S., and S.
Jamin, "Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) -- Version 1
Functional Specification", RFC 2205, September 1997.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-6man-flow-update]
Amante, S., Carpenter, B., and S. Jiang, "Rationale for
update to the IPv6 flow label specification",
draft-ietf-6man-flow-update-03 (work in progress),
February 2011.
[RFC2629] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
June 1999.
[RFC2827] Ferguson, P. and D. Senie, "Network Ingress Filtering:
Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source
Address Spoofing", BCP 38, RFC 2827, May 2000.
[RFC3697] Rajahalme, J., Conta, A., Carpenter, B., and S. Deering,
"IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 3697, March 2004.
[RFC4301] Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.
[RFC4302] Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302,
December 2005.
[RFC4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
RFC 4303, December 2005.
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Authors' Addresses
Shane Amante
Level 3 Communications, LLC
1025 Eldorado Blvd
Broomfield, CO 80021
USA
Email: shane@level3.net
Brian Carpenter
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
PB 92019
Auckland, 1142
New Zealand
Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com
Sheng Jiang
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
Huawei Building, No.3 Xinxi Rd.,
Shang-Di Information Industry Base, Hai-Dian District, Beijing
P.R. China
Email: shengjiang@huawei.com
Jarno Rajahalme
Nokia-Siemens Networks
TBD
TBD
Finland
Email: jarno.rajahalme@nsn.com
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