Homenet Working Group M. Stenberg
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Standards Track S. Barth
Expires: December 5, 2015
June 3, 2015
Distributed Node Consensus Protocol
draft-ietf-homenet-dncp-05
Abstract
This document describes the Distributed Node Consensus Protocol
(DNCP), a generic state synchronization protocol which uses Trickle
and Merkle trees. DNCP is transport agnostic and leaves some of the
details to be specified in profiles, which define actual
implementable DNCP based protocols.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 5, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.1. Trickle-Driven Status Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2. Processing of Received TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.3. Adding and Removing Peers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.4. Purging Unreachable Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Optional Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1. Keep-Alives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1.1. Data Model Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1.2. Per-Endpoint Periodic Keep-Alives . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1.3. Per-Peer Periodic Keep-Alives . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1.4. Received TLV Processing Additions . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1.5. Neighbor Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2. Support For Dense Broadcast Links . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3. Node Data Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Type-Length-Value Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.1. Request TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.1.1. Request Network State TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.1.2. Request Node State TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.2. Data TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.2.1. Node Endpoint TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.2.2. Network State TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.2.3. Node State TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.2.4. Custom TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7.3. Data TLVs within Node State TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7.3.1. Fragment Count TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7.3.2. Neighbor TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
7.3.3. Keep-Alive Interval TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
8. Security and Trust Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
8.1. Pre-Shared Key Based Trust Method . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
8.2. PKI Based Trust Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
8.3. Certificate Based Trust Consensus Method . . . . . . . . 19
8.3.1. Trust Verdicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8.3.2. Trust Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8.3.3. Announcement of Verdicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8.3.4. Bootstrap Ceremonies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
9. DNCP Profile-Specific Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
11. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
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12.1. Normative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
12.2. Informative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Appendix A. Some Questions and Answers [RFC Editor: please
remove] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Appendix B. Changelog [RFC Editor: please remove] . . . . . . . 26
Appendix C. Draft Source [RFC Editor: please remove] . . . . . . 28
Appendix D. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1. Introduction
DNCP is designed to provide a way for nodes to publish data
consisting of an ordered set of TLV (Type-Length-Value) tuples and to
receive the data published by all other reachable DNCP nodes.
DNCP validates the set of data within it by ensuring that it is
reachable via nodes that are currently accounted for; therefore,
unlike Time-To-Live (TTL) based solutions, it does not require
periodic re-publishing of the data by the nodes. On the other hand,
it does require the topology to be visible to every node that wants
to be able to identify unreachable nodes and therefore remove old,
stale data. Another notable feature is the use of Trickle to send
status updates as it makes the DNCP network very thrifty when there
are no updates. DNCP is most suitable for data that changes only
gradually to gain the maximum benefit from using Trickle, and if more
rapid state exchanges are needed, something point-to-point is
recommended and just e.g. publishing of addresses of the services
within DNCP.
DNCP has relatively few requirements for the underlying transport; it
requires some way of transmitting either unicast datagram or stream
data to a peer and, if used in multicast mode, a way of sending
multicast datagrams. If security is desired and one of the built-in
security methods is to be used, support for some TLS-derived
transport scheme - such as TLS [RFC5246] on top of TCP or DTLS
[RFC6347] on top of UDP - is also required.
2. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
3. Terminology
DNCP profile a definition of the set of rules and values listed
in Section 9 specifying the behavior of a DNCP
based protocol, such as the used transport method.
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For readability, any DNCP profile specific
parameters with a profile-specific fixed value are
prefixed with DNCP_.
DNCP node a single node which runs a protocol based on a DNCP
profile.
DNCP network a set of DNCP nodes running the same DNCP profile
that can reach each other, either via discovered
connectivity in the underlying network, or using
each other's addresses learned via other means. As
DNCP exchanges are bidirectional, DNCP nodes
connected via only unidirectional links are not
considered connected.
DNCP message an abstract concept - when using a reliable stream
transport, the whole stream of TLVs can be
considered a single message, with new TLVs becoming
one by one available once they have been fully
received. On a datagram transport, each individual
datagram is considered a separate message.
Node identifier an opaque fixed-length identifier consisting of
DNCP_NODE_IDENTIFIER_LENGTH bytes which uniquely
identifies a DNCP node within a DNCP network.
Link a link-layer media over which directly connected
nodes can communicate.
Interface a port of a node that is connected to a particular
link.
Endpoint a locally configured use of DNCP on a DNCP node. It
is attached either to an interface, a specific
remote unicast address to be contacted, or a range
of remote unicast addresses that are allowed to
contact.
Endpoint a 32-bit opaque value, which identifies a
identifier particular endpoint of that particular DNCP node.
The value 0 is reserved for DNCP and sub-protocol
purposes and MUST NOT be used to identify an actual
endpoint. This definition is in sync with the
interface index definition in [RFC3493], as the
non-zero small positive integers should comfortably
fit within 32 bits.
Peer another DNCP node with which a DNCP node
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communicates directly using a particular local and
remote endpoint pair.
Node data a set of TLVs published by a node in the DNCP
network. The whole node data is owned by the node
that publishes it, and it MUST be passed along as-
is, including TLVs unknown to the forwarder.
Node state a set of metadata attributes for node data. It
includes a sequence number for versioning, a hash
value for comparing and a timestamp indicating the
time passed since its last publication. The hash
function and the number of bits used are defined in
the DNCP profile.
Network state a hash value which represents the current state of
hash the network. The hash function and the number of
bits used are defined in the DNCP profile.
Whenever a node is added, removed or updates its
published node data this hash value changes as
well. It is calculated over each reachable nodes'
update number concatenated with the hash value of
its node data. For calculation these tuples are
sorted in ascending order of the respective node's
node identifier.
Trust verdict a statement about the trustworthiness of a
certificate announced by a node participating in
the certificate based trust consensus mechanism.
Effective trust the trust verdict with the highest priority within
verdict the set of trust verdicts announced for the
certificate in the DNCP network.
Neighbor graph the undirected graph of DNCP nodes produced by
retaining only bidirectional peer relationships
between nodes.
4. Data Model
A DNCP node has:
o A timestamp indicating the most recent neighbor graph traversal
described in Section 5.4.
o A data structure containing data about the most recently sent
Request Network State TLVs (Section 7.1.1). The simplest option
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is keeping a timestamp of the most recent request (see
Section 5.2).
A DNCP node has for every DNCP node in the DNCP network:
o Node identifier: the unique identifier of the node.
o Node data: the ordered set of TLV tuples published by that
particular node. This set of TLVs MUST be strictly ordered based
on ascending binary content (including TLV type and length). This
facilitates linear time state delta processing.
o Latest update sequence number: the 32-bit sequence number that is
incremented any time the TLV set is published. For comparison
purposes, a looping comparison should be used to avoid problems in
case of overflow. An example would be: a < b <=> (a - b) % 2^32 &
2^31 != 0.
o Relative time delta: the time (in milliseconds) since the current
TLV data set with the current update sequence number was
published. It is also a 32 bit number on the wire. If this
number is close to overflow (greater than 2^32-2^16), a node MUST
re-publish its TLVs even if there is no change. In other words,
absent any other changes, the TLV set MUST be re-published roughly
every 49 days.
o Timestamp: the time it was last reachable based on neighbor graph
traversal described in Section 5.4.
Additionally, a DNCP node has a set of endpoints for which DNCP is
configured to be used. For each such endpoint, a node has:
o Endpoint identifier: the 32-bit opaque value uniquely identifying
it.
o Trickle [RFC6206] instance: the endpoint's individual trickle
instance with parameters I, T, and c.
and one (or more) of the following:
o Interface: the assigned local network interface.
o Unicast address: the DNCP node it should connect with.
o Range of addresses: the DNCP nodes that are allowed to connect.
For each remote (peer, endpoint) pair detected on a local endpoint, a
DNCP node has:
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o Node identifier: the unique identifier of the peer.
o Endpoint identifier: the unique endpoint identifier used by the
peer.
o Peer address: the most recently used address of the peer
(authenticated and authorized, if security is enabled).
5. Operation
The DNCP protocol consists of Trickle [RFC6206] driven unicast or
multicast status payloads which indicate the current status of shared
TLV data and additional unicast exchanges which ensure peer
reachability and synchronize the data when necessary.
If DNCP is to be used on a multicast-capable interface, as opposed to
only point-to-point using unicast, a datagram-based transport which
supports multicast SHOULD be defined in the DNCP profile to be used
for the TLVs to be sent to the whole link. As this is used only to
identify potential new DNCP nodes and to notify that a unicast
exchange should be triggered, the multicast transport does not have
to be particularly secure.
To form bidirectional peer relationships DNCP requires identification
of the endpoints used for communication. A DNCP node therefore MUST
include an Endpoint TLV (Section 7.2.1) in each message intended to
maintain a DNCP peer relationship.
5.1. Trickle-Driven Status Updates
When employing unreliable transport, each node MUST send a Network
State TLV (Section 7.2.2) every time the endpoint-specific Trickle
algorithm [RFC6206] instance indicates that an update should be sent.
Multicast MUST be employed on a multicast-capable interface;
otherwise, unicast can be used as well. If possible, most recent,
recently changed, or best of all, all known Node State TLVs
(Section 7.2.3) SHOULD be also included, unless it is defined as
undesirable for some reason by the DNCP profile. Avoiding sending
some or all Node State TLVs may make sense to avoid fragmenting
packets to multicast destinations, or for security reasons. If the
DNCP profile supports dense broadcast link optimization
(Section 6.2), and if a node does not have the highest node
identifier on a link, the endpoint may be in a unicast mode in which
multicast traffic is only listened to. In that mode, multicast
updates MUST NOT be sent.
A Trickle state MUST be maintained separately for each endpoint which
employs unreliable transport. The Trickle state for all endpoints is
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considered inconsistent and reset if and only if the locally
calculated network state hash changes. This occurs either due to a
change in the local node's own node data, or due to receipt of more
recent data from another node.
The Trickle algorithm has 3 parameters: Imin, Imax and k. Imin and
Imax represent the minimum and maximum values for I, which is the
time interval during which at least k Trickle updates must be seen on
an endpoint to prevent local state transmission. The actual
suggested Trickle algorithm parameters are DNCP profile specific, as
described in Section 9.
5.2. Processing of Received TLVs
This section describes how received TLVs are processed. The DNCP
profile may specify criteria based on which particular TLVs are
ignored. Any 'reply' mentioned in the steps below denotes sending of
the specified TLV(s) via unicast to the originator of the TLV being
processed. If the TLV being replied to was received via multicast
and it was sent to a link with shared bandwidth, the reply SHOULD be
delayed by a random timespan in [0, Imin/2]. Sending of replies
SHOULD be rate-limited by the implementation, and in case of excess
load (or some other reason), a reply MAY be omitted altogether.
A DNCP node MUST reply to a request from any valid address, as
specified by a given DNCP profile, whether this address is known to
be the address of a neighbour or not. (This provision satisfies the
needs of monitoring or other host software that needs to discover the
DNCP topology without adding to the state in the network.)
Upon receipt of:
o Request Network State TLV (Section 7.1.1): The receiver MUST reply
with a Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2) and a Node State TLV
(Section 7.2.3) for each node data used to calculate the network
state hash. The Node State TLVs SHOULD NOT contain the optional
node data part.
o Request Node State TLV (Section 7.1.2): If the receiver has node
data for the corresponding node, it MUST reply with a Node State
TLV (Section 7.2.3) for the corresponding node. The optional node
data part MUST be included in the TLV.
o Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2): If the network state hash
differs from the locally calculated network state hash, and the
receiver is unaware of any particular node state differences with
the sender, the receiver MUST reply with a Request Network State
TLV (Section 7.1.1). These replies MUST be rate limited to only
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at most one reply per link per unique network state hash within
Imin. The simplest way to ensure this rate limit is a timestamp
indicating requests, and sending at most one Request Network State
TLV (Section 7.1.1) per Imin. To facilitate faster state
synchronization, if a Request Network State TLV is sent in a
reply, a local, current Network State TLV SHOULD be also sent.
o Node State TLV (Section 7.2.3):
* If the node identifier matches the local node identifier and
the TLV has a higher update sequence number than its current
local value, or the same update sequence number and a different
hash, the node SHOULD re-publish its own node data with an
update sequence number 1000 higher than the received one. This
may occur normally once due to the local node restarting and
not storing the most recently used update sequence number. If
this occurs more than once, the DNCP profile should provide
guidance on how to handle these situations as it indicates the
existence of another active node with the same node identifier.
* If the node identifier does not match the local node
identifier, and the local information is outdated for the
corresponding node (local update sequence number is lower than
that within the TLV), potentially incorrect (local update
sequence number matches but the node data hash differs), or the
data is altogether missing:
+ If the TLV does not contain node data, and the hash of the
node data differs, the receiver MUST reply with a Request
Node State TLV (Section 7.1.2) for the corresponding node.
+ Otherwise the receiver MUST update its locally stored state
for that node (node data if present, update sequence number,
relative time) to match the received TLV.
o Any other TLV: TLVs not recognized by the receiver MUST be
silently ignored.
If secure unicast transport is configured for an endpoint, any Node
State TLVs received via insecure multicast MUST be silently ignored.
5.3. Adding and Removing Peers
When receiving a Node Endpoint TLV (Section 7.2.1) on an endpoint
from an unknown peer:
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o If it comes via unicast, the remote node MUST be added as a peer
on the endpoint and a Neighbor TLV (Section 7.3.2) MUST be created
for it.
o If it comes via multicast, the node SHOULD be sent a (possibly
rate-limited) unicast Request Network State TLV (Section 7.1.1).
If keep-alives specified in Section 6.1 are NOT sent by the peer
(either the DNCP profile does not specify the use of keep-alives or
the particular peer chooses not to send keep-alives), some other
means MUST be employed to ensure its presence. When the peer is no
longer present, the Neighbor TLV and the local DNCP peer state MUST
be removed.
If the DNCP profile supports dense broadcast link optimization
(Section 6.2), and if a node does not have the highest node
identifier on a link, the endpoint may be in a unicast mode in which
multicast traffic is only listened to. In that mode, all peers
except the one with the highest node identifier MUST NOT have
Neighbor TLV (Section 7.3.2) published nor any local state.
5.4. Purging Unreachable Nodes
DNCP validates the set of data within it by ensuring that it is
reachable via nodes that are currently accounted for; therefore,
unlike Time-To-Live (TTL) based solutions, it does not require
periodic re-publishing of the data by the nodes. On the other hand,
it does require the topology to be visible to every node that wants
to be able to identify unreachable nodes and therefore remove old,
stale data.
When a Neighbor TLV or a whole node is added or removed, the neighbor
graph SHOULD be traversed, starting from the local node. The edges
to be traversed are identified by looking for Neighbor TLVs on both
nodes, that have the other node's identifier in the neighbor node
identifier, and local and neighbor endpoint identifiers swapped.
Each node reached should be marked currently reachable.
DNCP nodes MUST be either purged immediately when not marked
reachable in a particular graph traversal, or eventually after they
have not been marked reachable within DNCP_GRACE_INTERVAL. During
the grace period, the nodes that were not marked reachable in the
most recent graph traversal MUST NOT be used for calculation of the
network state hash, be provided to any applications that need to use
the whole TLV graph, or be provided to remote nodes.
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6. Optional Extensions
This section specifies extensions to the core protocol that a DNCP
profile may want to use.
6.1. Keep-Alives
Trickle-driven status updates (Section 5.1) provide a mechanism for
handling of new peer detection (if applicable) on an endpoint, as
well as state change notifications. Another mechanism may be needed
to get rid of old, no longer valid peers if the transport or lower
layers do not provide one.
If keep-alives are not specified in the DNCP profile, the rest of
this subsection MUST be ignored.
A DNCP profile MAY specify either per-endpoint or per-peer keep-alive
support.
For every endpoint that a keep-alive is specified for in the DNCP
profile, the endpoint-specific keep-alive interval MUST be
maintained. By default, it is DNCP_KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL. If there is
a local value that is preferred for that for any reason
(configuration, energy conservation, media type, ..), it should be
substituted instead. If a non-default keep-alive interval is used on
any endpoint, a DNCP node MUST publish appropriate Keep-Alive
Interval TLV(s) (Section 7.3.3) within its node data.
6.1.1. Data Model Additions
The following additions to the Data Model (Section 4) are needed to
support keep-alive:
Each node MUST have a timestamp which indicates the last time a
Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2) was sent for each endpoint, i.e. on
an interface or to the point-to-point peer(s).
Each node MUST have for each peer:
o Last contact timestamp: a timestamp which indicates the last time
a consistent Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2) was received from
the peer via multicast, or anything was received via unicast.
When adding a new peer, it should be initialized to the current
time.
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6.1.2. Per-Endpoint Periodic Keep-Alives
If per-endpoint keep-alives are enabled on an endpoint with a
multicast-enabled link, and if no traffic containing a Network State
TLV (Section 7.2.2) has been sent to a particular endpoint within the
endpoint-specific keep-alive interval, a Network State TLV
(Section 7.2.2) MUST be sent on that endpoint, and a new Trickle
transmission time 't' in [I/2, I] MUST be randomly chosen. The
actual sending time SHOULD be further delayed by a random timespan in
[0, Imin/2].
6.1.3. Per-Peer Periodic Keep-Alives
If per-peer keep-alives are enabled on a unicast-only endpoint, and
if no traffic containing a Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2) has been
sent to a particular peer within the endpoint-specific keep-alive
interval, a Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2) MUST be sent to the
peer and a new Trickle transmission time 't' in [I/2, I] MUST be
randomly chosen.
6.1.4. Received TLV Processing Additions
If a TLV is received via unicast from the peer, the Last contact
timestamp for the peer MUST be updated.
On receipt of a Network State TLV (Section 7.2.2) which is consistent
with the locally calculated network state hash, the Last contact
timestamp for the peer MUST be updated.
6.1.5. Neighbor Removal
For every peer on every endpoint, the endpoint-specific keep-alive
interval must be calculated by looking for Keep-Alive Interval TLVs
(Section 7.3.3) published by the node, and if none exist, using the
default value of DNCP_KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL. If the peer's last contact
state timestamp has not been updated for at least
DNCP_KEEPALIVE_MULTIPLIER times the peer's endpoint-specific keep-
alive interval, the Neighbor TLV for that peer and the local DNCP
peer state MUST be removed.
6.2. Support For Dense Broadcast Links
An upper bound for the number of neighbors that are allowed for a
(particular type of) link that an endpoint runs on SHOULD be provided
by a DNCP profile, user configuration, or some hardcoded default in
the implementation. If an implementation does not support this, the
rest of this subsection MUST be ignored.
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If the specified limit is exceeded, nodes without the highest Node
Identifier on the link SHOULD treat the endpoint as a unicast
endpoint connected to the node that has the highest Node Identifier
detected on the link. The nodes MUST also keep listening to
multicast traffic to both detect the presence of that node, and to
react to nodes with a higher Node Identifier appearing. If the
highest Node Identifier present on the link changes, the remote
unicast address of unicast endpoints MUST be changed. If the Node
Identifier of the local node is the highest one, the node MUST keep
the endpoint in multicast mode, and the node MUST allow others to
peer with it over the link via unicast as well.
6.3. Node Data Fragmentation
A DNCP profile may be required to support node data which would not
fit the maximum size of a single Node State TLV (Section 7.2.3)
(roughly 64KB of payload), or use a datagram-only transport with a
limited MTU and no reliable support for fragmentation. To handle
such cases, a DNCP profile MAY specify a fixed number of trailing
bytes in the Node Identifier to represent a fragment number
indicating a part of a node's node data. The profile MAY also
specify an upper bound for the size of a single fragment to
accommodate limitations of links in the network.
The data within Node State TLVs of fragments with non-zero fragment
number must be treated as opaque (as they may not contain even a
single full TLV). However, the concatenated node data for a
particular node MUST be produced by concatenating all node data for
each fragment, in ascending fragment number order. The concatenated
node data MUST follow the ordering described in Section 4.
Any Node Identifiers on the wire used to identify the own or any
other node MUST have the fragment number 0. For algorithm purposes,
the relative time since the most recent fragment change MUST be used,
regardless of fragment number. Therefore, even if just part of the
node data fragments change, they all are considered refreshed if one
of them is.
If using fragmentation, the unreachable node purging defined in
Section 5.4 is extended so that if a Fragment Count TLV
(Section 7.3.1) is present within the fragment number 0, all
fragments up to fragment number specified in the Count field are also
considered reachable if the fragment number 0 itself is reachable
based on graph traversal.
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7. Type-Length-Value Objects
Each TLV is encoded as a 2 byte type field, followed by a 2 byte
length field (of the value, excluding header; 0 means no value)
followed by the value itself (if any). Both type and length fields
in the header as well as all integer fields inside the value - unless
explicitly stated otherwise - are represented in network byte order.
Padding bytes with value zero MUST be added up to the next 4 byte
boundary if the length is not divisible by 4. These padding bytes
MUST NOT be included in the number stored in the length field.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type | Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Value |
| (variable # of bytes) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
For example, type=123 (0x7b) TLV with value 'x' (120 = 0x78) is
encoded as: 007B 0001 7800 0000.
In this section, the following special notation is used:
.. = octet string concatenation operation.
H(x) = non-cryptographic hash function specified by DNCP profile.
7.1. Request TLVs
7.1.1. Request Network State TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: REQ-NETWORK-STATE (1) | Length: 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV is used to request response with a Network State TLV
(Section 7.2.2) and all Node State TLVs (Section 7.2.3).
7.1.2. Request Node State TLV
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: REQ-NODE-STATE (2) | Length: >0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Node Identifier |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV is used to request a Node State TLV (Section 7.2.3)
(including node data) for the node matching the node identifier.
7.2. Data TLVs
7.2.1. Node Endpoint TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: NODE-ENDPOINT (3) | Length: > 4 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Node Identifier |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Endpoint Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV identifies both the local node's node identifier, as well as
the particular endpoint's endpoint identifier. It MUST be sent in
every message if bidirectional peer relationship is desired with
remote nodes on that endpoint. Bidirectional peer relationship is
not necessary for read-only access to the DNCP state, but it is
required to be able to publish data.
7.2.2. Network State TLV
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: NETWORK-STATE (4) | Length: > 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| H(H(update number of node 1) .. H(node data of node 1) .. |
| .. H(update number of node N) .. H(node data of node N)) |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV contains the current locally calculated network state hash.
It is calculated over each reachable nodes' update number
concatenated with the hash value of its node data in ascending order
of the respective node identifiers.
7.2.3. Node State TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: NODE-STATE (5) | Length: > 8 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Node Identifier |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Update Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Milliseconds since Origination |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| H(node data) |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|(optionally) Nested TLVs containing node information |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV represents the local node's knowledge about the published
state of a node in the DNCP network identified by the node identifier
field in the TLV.
The whole network should have roughly the same idea about the time
since origination of any particular published state. Therefore every
node, including the originating one, MUST increment the time whenever
it needs to send a Node State TLV for already published node data.
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The actual node data of the node may be included within the TLV as
well; see Section 5.2 for the cases where it MUST or MUST NOT be
included. In a DNCP profile which supports fragmentation, described
in Section 6.3, the TLV data may be only partial and not really
usable without other fragments.
7.2.4. Custom TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: CUSTOM-DATA (6) | Length: > 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| H(URI) |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Opaque Data |
This TLV can be used to contain anything; the URI used should be
under control of the author of that specification. The TLV may
appear within protocol exchanges, or within Node State TLV
(Section 7.2.3). For example:
V = H('http://example.com/author/json-for-dncp') .. '{"cool": "json
extension!"}'
or
V = H('mailto:author@example.com') .. '{"cool": "json extension!"}'
7.3. Data TLVs within Node State TLV
These TLVs are DNCP-specific parts of node-specific node data, and
are encoded within the Node State TLVs. If encountered outside Node
State TLV, they MUST be silently ignored.
7.3.1. Fragment Count TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: FRAGMENT-COUNT (7) | Length: > 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Count |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
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If the DNCP profile supports node data fragmentation as specified in
Section 6.3, this TLV indicates that the node data is encoded as a
sequence of Node State TLVs. Following Node State TLVs with Node
Identifiers up to Count higher than the current one MUST be
considered reachable and part of the same logical set of node data
that this TLV is within. The fragment portion of the Node Identifier
of the Node State TLV this TLV appears in MUST be zero.
7.3.2. Neighbor TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: NEIGHBOR (8) | Length: > 8 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Neighbor Node Identifier |
| (length fixed in DNCP profile) |
...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Neighbor Endpoint Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Local Endpoint Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV indicates that the node in question vouches that the
specified neighbor is reachable by it on the specified local
endpoint. The presence of this TLV at least guarantees that the node
publishing it has received traffic from the neighbor recently. For
guaranteed up-to-date bidirectional reachability, the existence of
both nodes' matching Neighbor TLVs should be checked.
7.3.3. Keep-Alive Interval TLV
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: KEEP-ALIVE-INTERVAL (9) | Length: 8 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Endpoint Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Interval |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This TLV indicates a non-default interval being used to send keep-
alives specified in Section 6.1.
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Endpoint identifier is used to identify the particular endpoint for
which the interval applies. If 0, it applies for ALL endpoints for
which no specific TLV exists.
Interval specifies the interval in milliseconds at which the node
sends keep-alives. A value of zero means no keep-alives are sent at
all; in that case, some lower layer mechanism that ensures presence
of nodes MUST be available and used.
8. Security and Trust Management
If specified in the DNCP profile, either DTLS [RFC6347] or TLS
[RFC5246] may be used to authenticate and encrypt either some (if
specified optional in the profile), or all unicast traffic. The
following methods for establishing trust are defined, but it is up to
the DNCP profile to specify which ones may, should or must be
supported.
8.1. Pre-Shared Key Based Trust Method
A PSK-based trust model is a simple security management mechanism
that allows an administrator to deploy devices to an existing network
by configuring them with a pre-defined key, similar to the
configuration of an administrator password or WPA-key. Although
limited in nature it is useful to provide a user-friendly security
mechanism for smaller networks.
8.2. PKI Based Trust Method
A PKI-based trust-model enables more advanced management capabilities
at the cost of increased complexity and bootstrapping effort. It
however allows trust to be managed in a centralized manner and is
therefore useful for larger networks with a need for an authoritative
trust management.
8.3. Certificate Based Trust Consensus Method
The certificate-based consensus model is designed to be a compromise
between trust management effort and flexibility. It is based on
X.509-certificates and allows each DNCP node to provide a trust
verdict on any other certificate and a consensus is found to
determine whether a node using this certificate or any certificate
signed by it is to be trusted.
The current effective trust verdict for any certificate is defined as
the one with the highest priority from all trust verdicts announced
for said certificate at the time.
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8.3.1. Trust Verdicts
Trust verdicts are statements of DNCP nodes about the trustworthiness
of X.509-certificates. There are 5 possible trust verdicts in order
of ascending priority:
0 (Neutral): no trust verdict exists but the DNCP network should
determine one.
1 (Cached Trust): the last known effective trust verdict was
Configured or Cached Trust.
2 (Cached Distrust): the last known effective trust verdict was
Configured or Cached Distrust.
3 (Configured Trust): trustworthy based upon an external ceremony
or configuration.
4 (Configured Distrust): not trustworthy based upon an external
ceremony or configuration.
Trust verdicts are differentiated in 3 groups:
o Configured verdicts are used to announce explicit trust verdicts a
node has based on any external trust bootstrap or predefined
relation a node has formed with a given certificate.
o Cached verdicts are used to retain the last known trust state in
case all nodes with configured verdicts about a given certificate
have been disconnected or turned off.
o The Neutral verdict is used to announce a new node intending to
join the network so a final verdict for it can be found.
The current effective trust verdict for any certificate is defined as
the one with the highest priority within the set of trust verdicts
announced for the certificate in the DNCP network. A node MUST be
trusted for participating in the DNCP network if and only if the
current effective trust verdict for its own certificate or any one in
its certificate hierarchy is (Cached or Configured) Trust and none of
the certificates in its hierarchy have an effective trust verdict of
(Cached or Configured) Distrust. In case a node has a configured
verdict, which is different from the current effective trust verdict
for a certificate, the current effective trust verdict takes
precedence in deciding trustworthiness. Despite that, the node still
retains and announces its configured verdict.
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8.3.2. Trust Cache
Each node SHOULD maintain a trust cache containing the current
effective trust verdicts for all certificates currently announced in
the DNCP network. This cache is used as a backup of the last known
state in case there is no node announcing a configured verdict for a
known certificate. It SHOULD be saved to a non-volatile memory at
reasonable time intervals to survive a reboot or power outage.
Every time a node (re)joins the network or detects the change of an
effective trust verdict for any certificate, it will synchronize its
cache, i.e. store new effective trust verdicts overwriting any
previously cached verdicts. Configured verdicts are stored in the
cache as their respective cached counterparts. Neutral verdicts are
never stored and do not override existing cached verdicts.
8.3.3. Announcement of Verdicts
A node SHOULD always announce any configured trust verdicts it has
established by itself, and it MUST do so if announcing the configured
trust verdict leads to a change in the current effective trust
verdict for the respective certificate. In absence of configured
verdicts, it MUST announce cached trust verdicts it has stored in its
trust cache, if one of the following conditions applies:
o The stored trust verdict is Cached Trust and the current effective
trust verdict for the certificate is Neutral or does not exist.
o The stored trust verdict is Cached Distrust and the current
effective trust verdict for the certificate is Cached Trust.
A node rechecks these conditions whenever it detects changes of
announced trust verdicts anywhere in the network.
Upon encountering a node with a hierarchy of certificates for which
there is no effective trust verdict, a node adds a Neutral Trust-
Verdict-TLV to its node data for all certificates found in the
hierarchy, and publishes it until an effective trust verdict
different from Neutral can be found for any of the certificates, or a
reasonable amount of time (10 minutes is suggested) with no reaction
and no further authentication attempts has passed. Such trust
verdicts SHOULD also be limited in rate and number to prevent denial-
of-service attacks.
Trust verdicts are announced using Trust-Verdict TLVs:
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type: Trust-Verdict (10) | Length: 37-100 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Verdict | (reserved) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| |
| |
| SHA-256 Fingerprint |
| |
| |
| |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Common Name |
Verdict represents the numerical index of the trust verdict.
(reserved) is reserved for future additions and MUST be set to 0
when creating TLVs and ignored when parsing them.
SHA-256 Fingerprint contains the SHA-256 [RFC6234] hash value of
the certificate in DER-format.
Common Name contains the variable-length (1-64 bytes) common name
of the certificate. Final byte MUST have value of 0.
8.3.4. Bootstrap Ceremonies
The following non-exhaustive list of methods describes possible ways
to establish trust relationships between DNCP nodes and node
certificates. Trust establishment is a two-way process in which the
existing network must trust the newly added node and the newly added
node must trust at least one of its neighboring nodes. It is
therefore necessary that both the newly added node and an already
trusted node perform such a ceremony to successfully introduce a node
into the DNCP network. In all cases an administrator MUST be
provided with external means to identify the node belonging to a
certificate based on its fingerprint and a meaningful common name.
8.3.4.1. Trust by Identification
A node implementing certificate-based trust MUST provide an interface
to retrieve the current set of effective trust verdicts, fingerprints
and names of all certificates currently known and set configured
trust verdicts to be announced. Alternatively it MAY provide a
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companion DNCP node or application with these capabilities with which
it has a pre-established trust relationship.
8.3.4.2. Preconfigured Trust
A node MAY be preconfigured to trust a certain set of node or CA
certificates. However such trust relationships MUST NOT result in
unwanted or unrelated trust for nodes not intended to be run inside
the same network (e.g. all other devices by the same manufacturer).
8.3.4.3. Trust on Button Press
A node MAY provide a physical or virtual interface to put one or more
of its internal network interfaces temporarily into a mode in which
it trusts the certificate of the first DNCP node it can successfully
establish a connection with.
8.3.4.4. Trust on First Use
A node which is not associated with any other DNCP node MAY trust the
certificate of the first DNCP node it can successfully establish a
connection with. This method MUST NOT be used when the node has
already associated with any other DNCP node.
9. DNCP Profile-Specific Definitions
Each DNCP profile MUST specify the following aspects:
o Unicast and optionally multicast transport protocol(s) to be used.
o How the chosen transport(s) are secured: Not at all, optionally or
always with the TLS scheme defined here using one or more of the
methods, or with something else. If the links with DNCP nodes can
be sufficiently secured or isolated, it is possible to run DNCP in
a secure manner without using any form of authentication or
encryption.
o Transport protocols' parameters such as port numbers to be used,
or multicast address to be used. Unicast, multicast, and secure
unicast may each require different parameters, if applicable.
o When receiving messages, what sort of messages are dropped, as
specified in Section 5.2.
o How to deal with node identifier collision as described in
Section 5.2. Main options are either for one or both nodes to
assign new node identifiers to themselves, or to notify someone
about a fatal error condition in the DNCP network.
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o Imin, Imax and k ranges to be suggested for implementations to be
used in the Trickle algorithm. The Trickle algorithm does not
require these to be the same across all implementations for it to
work, but similar orders of magnitude helps implementations of a
DNCP profile to behave more consistently and to facilitate
estimation of lower and upper bounds for convergence behavior of
the network.
o Hash function H(x) to be used, and how many bits of the input are
actually used. The chosen hash function is used to handle both
hashing of node specific data, and network state hash, which is a
hash of node specific data hashes. SHA-256 defined in [RFC6234]
is the recommended default choice.
o DNCP_NODE_IDENTIFIER_LENGTH: The fixed length of a node identifier
(in bytes).
o DNCP_GRACE_INTERVAL: How long node data for unreachable nodes is
kept.
o Whether to send keep-alives, and if so, on an interface, using
multicast, or directly using unicast to peers. Keep-alive has
also associated parameters:
* DNCP_KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL: How often keep-alives are to be sent
by default (if enabled).
* DNCP_KEEPALIVE_MULTIPLIER: How many times the
DNCP_KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL (or peer-supplied keep-alive interval
value) a node may not be heard from to be considered still
valid.
o Whether to support fragmentation, and if so, the number of bytes
reserved for fragment count in the node identifier.
10. Security Considerations
DNCP profiles may use multicast to indicate DNCP state changes and
for keep-alive purposes. However, no actual data TLVs will be sent
across that channel. Therefore an attacker may only learn hash
values of the state within DNCP and may be able to trigger unicast
synchronization attempts between nodes on a local link this way. A
DNCP node should therefore rate-limit its reactions to multicast
packets.
When using DNCP to bootstrap a network, PKI based solutions may have
issues when validating certificates due to potentially unavailable
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accurate time, or due to inability to use the network to either check
Certifcate Revocation Lists or perform on-line validation.
The Certificate-based trust consensus mechanism defined in this
document allows for a consenting revocation, however in case of a
compromised device the trust cache may be poisoned before the actual
revocation happens allowing the distrusted device to rejoin the
network using a different identity. Stopping such an attack might
require physical intervention and flushing of the trust caches.
11. IANA Considerations
IANA should set up a registry for DNCP TLV types, with the following
initial contents:
0: Reserved (should not happen on wire)
1: Request network state
2: Request node state
3: Node endpoint
4: Network state
5: Node state
6: Custom
7: Fragment count
8: Neighbor
9: Keep-alive interval
10: Trust-Verdict
32-191: Reserved for per-DNCP profile use
192-255: Reserved for per-implementation experimentation. The nodes
using TLV types in this range SHOULD use e.g. Custom TLV to identify
each other and therefore eliminate potential conflict caused by
potential different use of same TLV numbers.
For the rest of the values (11-31, 256-65535), policy of 'standards
action' should be used.
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12. References
12.1. Normative references
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC6206] Levis, P., Clausen, T., Hui, J., Gnawali, O., and J. Ko,
"The Trickle Algorithm", RFC 6206, March 2011.
[RFC6347] Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, January 2012.
[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.
12.2. Informative references
[RFC3493] Gilligan, R., Thomson, S., Bound, J., McCann, J., and W.
Stevens, "Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6", RFC
3493, February 2003.
[RFC6234] Eastlake, D. and T. Hansen, "US Secure Hash Algorithms
(SHA and SHA-based HMAC and HKDF)", RFC 6234, May 2011.
Appendix A. Some Questions and Answers [RFC Editor: please remove]
Q: 32-bit endpoint id?
A: Here, it would save 32 bits per neighbor if it was 16 bits (and
less is not realistic). However, TLVs defined elsewhere would not
seem to even gain that much on average. 32 bits is also used for
ifindex in various operating systems, making for simpler
implementation.
Q: Why have topology information at all?
A: It is an alternative to the more traditional seq#/TTL-based
flooding schemes. In steady state, there is no need to e.g. re-
publish every now and then.
Appendix B. Changelog [RFC Editor: please remove]
draft-ietf-homenet-dncp-04:
o Added mandatory rate limiting for network state requests, and
optional slightly faster convergence mechanism by including
current local network state in the remote network state requests.
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draft-ietf-homenet-dncp-03:
o Renamed connection -> endpoint.
o !!! Backwards incompatible change: Renumbered TLVs, and got rid of
node data TLV; instead, node data TLV's contents are optionally
within node state TLV.
draft-ietf-homenet-dncp-02:
o Changed DNCP "messages" into series of TLV streams, allowing
optimized round-trip saving synchronization.
o Added fragmentation support for bigger node data and for chunking
in absence of reliable L2 and L3 fragmentation.
draft-ietf-homenet-dncp-01:
o Fixed keep-alive semantics to consider unicast requests also
updates of most recently consistent, and added proactive unicast
request to ensure even inconsistent keep-alive messages eventually
triggering consistency timestamp update.
o Facilitated (simple) read-only clients by making Node Connection
TLV optional if just using DNCP for read-only purposes.
o Added text describing how to deal with "dense" networks, but left
actual numbers and mechanics up to DNCP profiles and (local)
configurations.
draft-ietf-homenet-dncp-00: Split from pre-version of draft-ietf-
homenet-hncp-03 generic parts. Changes that affect implementations:
o TLVs were renumbered.
o TLV length does not include header (=-4). This facilitates e.g.
use of DHCPv6 option parsing libraries (same encoding), and
reduces complexity (no need to handle error values of length less
than 4).
o Trickle is reset only when locally calculated network state hash
is changes, not as remote different network state hash is seen.
This prevents e.g. attacks by multicast with one multicast packet
to force Trickle reset on every interface of every node on a link.
o Instead of 'ping', use 'keep-alive' (optional) for dead peer
detection. Different message used!
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Appendix C. Draft Source [RFC Editor: please remove]
As usual, this draft is available at https://github.com/fingon/ietf-
drafts/ in source format (with nice Makefile too). Feel free to send
comments and/or pull requests if and when you have changes to it!
Appendix D. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ole Troan, Pierre Pfister, Mark Baugher, Mark Townsley,
Juliusz Chroboczek, Jiazi Yi, Mikael Abrahamsson and Brian Carpenter
for their contributions to the draft.
Authors' Addresses
Markus Stenberg
Helsinki 00930
Finland
Email: markus.stenberg@iki.fi
Steven Barth
Halle 06114
Germany
Email: cyrus@openwrt.org
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