IDR Working Group P. Marques
Internet-Draft N. Sheth
Intended status: Standards Track R. Raszuk
Expires: August 2, 2009 B. Greene
Juniper Networks
J. Mauch
NTT/Verio
D. McPherson
Arbor Networks
January 29, 2009
Dissemination of flow specification rules
draft-ietf-idr-flow-spec-05
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
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."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on August 2, 2009.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
to this document.
Abstract
This document defines a new BGP NLRI encoding format that can be used
to distribute traffic flow specifications. This allows the routing
system to propagate information regarding more-specific components of
the traffic aggregate defined by an IP destination prefix.
Additionally it defines two applications of that encoding format.
One that can be used to automate inter-domain coordination of traffic
filtering, such as what is required in order to mitigate
(distributed) denial of service attacks. And a second application to
traffic filtering in the context of a BGP/MPLS VPN service.
The information is carried via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP),
thereby reusing protocol algorithms, operational experience and
administrative processes such as inter-provider peering agreements.
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Table of Contents
1. Definitions of Terms Used in this Memo . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Flow specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Dissemination of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Traffic filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1. Order of traffic filtering rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6. Validation procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Traffic Filtering Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. Traffic filtering in RFC2547bis networks . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
10. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
11. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
12. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
13. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
1. Definitions of Terms Used in this Memo
NLRI - Network Layer Reachability Information
RIB - Routing Information Base
Loc-RIB - Local RIB
AS - Autonomous System Number
VRF - Virtual Routing and Forwarding instance
PE - Provider Edge router
2. Introduction
Modern IP routers contain both the capability to forward traffic
according to aggregate IP prefixes as well as to classify, shape,
limit filter or redirect packets based on administratively defined
policies.
While forwarding information is, typically, dynamically signaled
across the network via routing protocols, there is no agreed upon
mechanism to dynamically signal flows across autonomous-systems.
For several applications, it may be necessary to exchange control
information pertaining to aggregated traffic flow definitions which
cannot be expressed using destination address prefixes only.
An aggregated traffic flow is considered to be an n-tuple consisting
of several matching criteria such as source and destination address
prefixes, IP protocol and transport protocol port numbers.
The intention of this document is to define a general procedure to
encode such flow specification rules as a BGP [RFC4271] NLRI which
can be reused for several different control applications.
Additionally, we define the required mechanisms to utilize this
definition to the problem of immediate concern to the authors: intra
and inter provider distribution of traffic filtering rules to filter
(Distributed) Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
By expanding routing information with flow specifications, the
routing system can take advantage of the ACL/firewall capabilities in
the router's forwarding path. Flow specifications can be seen as
more specific routing entries to an unicast prefix and are expected
to depend upon the existing unicast data information.
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
A flow specification received from a external autonomous-system will
need to be validated against unicast routing before being accepted.
If the aggregate traffic flow defined by the unicast destination
prefix is forwarded to a given BGP peer, then the local system can
safely install more specific flow rules which result in different
forwarding behavior, as requested by this system.
The choice of BGP as the carrier of this control information is also
justifiable by the fact that the key issues in terms of complexity
are problems which are common to unicast route distribution and have
already been solved in the current environment.
From an algorithmic perspective, the main problem that presents
itself is the loop-free distribution of <key, attribute> pairs from
one originator to N ingresses. The key, in this particular instance,
being a flow specification.
From an operational perspective, the utilization of BGP as the
carrier for this information, allows a network service provider to
reuse both internal route distribution infrastructure (e.g.: route
reflector or confederation design) and existing external
relationships (e.g.: inter-domain BGP sessions to a customer
network).
While it is certainly possible to address this problem using other
mechanisms, the authors believe that this solution offers the
substantial advantage of being an incremental addition to deployed
mechanisms.
At the current deployments the information distributed by the flow-
spec extension is originated both manually as well as automatically
by systems which are able to detect malicious flows. When automated
systems are used care should be taken to their correctness and rate
of advertisement of flow routes.
This specification defines required protocol extensions to address
most common applications of IPv4 unicast and VPNv4 unicast filtering.
The same mechanism can be reused and new match criteria added to
address similar filtering needs for other BGP address families (for
example IPv6 unicast). Authors believe that those would be best to
be addressed in a separate document.
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].
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
3. Flow specifications
A flow specification is an n-tuple consisting on several matching
criteria that can be applied to IP traffic. A given IP packet is
said to match the defined flow if it matches all the specified
criteria.
A given flow may be associated with a set of attributes, depending on
the particular application, such attributes may or may not include
reachability information (i.e. NEXT_HOP). Well-known or AS-specific
community attributes can be used to encode a set of predetermined
actions.
A particular application is identified by a specific (AFI, SAFI) pair
[RFC4760] and corresponds to a distinct set of RIBs. Those RIBs
should be treated independently from each other in order to assure
non-interference between distinct applications.
BGP itself treats the NLRI as an opaque key to an entry in its
databases. Entries that are placed in the Loc-RIB are then
associated with a given set of semantics which is application
dependent. This is consistent with existing BGP applications. For
instance IP unicast routing (AFI=1, SAFI=1) and IP multicast reverse-
path information (AFI=1, SAFI=2) are handled by BGP without any
particular semantics being associated with them until installed in
the Loc-RIB.
Standard BGP policy mechanisms, such as UPDATE filtering by NLRI
prefix and community matching, SHOULD apply to the newly defined
NLRI-type. Network operators can also control propagation of such
routing updates by enabling or disabling the exchange of a particular
(AFI, SAFI) pair on a given BGP peering session.
4. Dissemination of Information
We define a "Flow Specification" NLRI type that may include several
components such as destination prefix, source prefix, protocol,
ports, etc. This NLRI is treated as an opaque bit string prefix by
BGP. Each bit string identifies a key to a database entry which a
set of attributes can be associated with.
This NLRI information is encoded using MP_REACH_NLRI and
MP_UNREACH_NLRI attributes as defined in RFC4760 [RFC4760]. Whenever
the corresponding application does not require Next Hop information,
this shall be encoded as a 0 octet length Next Hop in the
MP_REACH_NLRI attribute and ignored on receipt.
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
The NLRI field of the MP_REACH_NLRI and MP_UNREACH_NLRI is encoded as
a 1 or 2 octet NLRI length field followed by a variable length NLRI
value. The NLRI length is expressed in octets.
+------------------------------+
| length (0xnn or 0xfn nn) |
+------------------------------+
| NLRI value (variable) |
+------------------------------+
flow-spec NLRI
If the NLRI length value is smaller than 240 (0xf0 hex), the length
field can be encoded as a single octet. Otherwise, it is encoded as
a extended length 2 octet value in which the most significant nibble
of the first byte is all ones.
The Flow Specification NLRI-type consists of several optional
subcomponents. A specific packet is considered to match the flow
specification when it matches the intersection (AND) of all the
components present in the specification.
The following component types are defined:
Type 1 - Destination Prefix
Encoding: <type (1 octet), prefix length (1 octet), prefix>
Defines the destination prefix to match. Prefixes are encoded
as in BGP UPDATE messages, a length in bits is followed by
enough octets to contain the prefix information.
Type 2 - Source Prefix
Encoding: <type (1 octet), prefix-length (1 octet), prefix>
Defines the source prefix to match.
Type 3 - IP Protocol
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Contains a set of {operator, value} pairs that are used to
match IP protocol value byte in IP packets.
The operator byte is encoded as:
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| e | a | len | 0 |lt |gt |eq |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
Numeric operator
* End of List bit. Set in the last {op, value} pair in the list.
* And bit. If unset the previous term is logically ORed with the
current one. If set the operation is a logical AND. It should
be unset in the first operator byte of a sequence. The AND
operator has higher priority than OR for the purposes of
evaluating logical expressions.
* The length of value field for this operand is given as (1 <<
len).
* Lt - less than comparison between data and value.
* gt - greater than comparison between data and value.
* eq - equality between data and value.
* The bits lt, gt, and eq can be combined to produce "less or
equal", "greater or equal" and inequality values.
Type 4 - Port
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Defines a list of {operation, value} pairs that matches source
OR destination TCP/UDP ports. This list is encoded using the
numeric operand format defined above. Values are encoded as 1
or 2 byte quantities.
Type 5 - Destination port
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Defines a list of {operation, value} pairs used to match the
destination port of a TCP or UDP packet. Values are encoded as
1 or 2 byte quantities.
Type 6 - Source port
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Defines a list of {operation, value} pairs used to match the
source port of a TCP or UDP packet. Values are encoded as 1 or
2 byte quantities.
Type 7 - ICMP type
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Defines a list of {operation, value} pairs used to match the
type field of an icmp packet. Values are encoded using a
single byte.
Type 8 - ICMP code
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Defines a list of {operation, value} pairs used to match the
code field of an icmp packet. Values are encoded using a
single byte.
Type 9 - TCP flags
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, bitmask]+>
Bitmask values are encoded using a single byte, using the bit
definitions specified in the TCP header format [RFC0793].
This type uses the bitmask operand format, which differs from
the numeric operator format in the lower nibble.
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| e | a | len | 0 | 0 |not| m |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
* Top nibble: (End of List bit, And bit and Length field), as
defined for in the numeric operator format.
* Not bit. If set, logical negation of operation.
* Match bit. If set this is a bitwise match operation defined as
"(data & value) == value"; if unset (data & value) evaluates to
true if any of the bits in the value mask are set in the data.
Type 10 - Packet length
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Match on the total IP packet length (excluding L2 but including
IP header). Values are encoded using as 1 or 2 byte
quantities.
Type 11 - DSCP
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, value]+>
Defines a list of {operation, value} pairs used to match the IP
TOS octet.
Type 12 - Fragment
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [op, bitmask]+>
Uses bitmask operand format defined above.
Bitmask values:
+ Bit 0 - Dont fragment
+ Bit 1 - Is a fragment
+ Bit 2 - First fragment
+ Bit 3 - Last fragment
Flow specification components must follow strict type ordering. A
given component type may or may not be present in the specification,
but if present it MUST precede any component of higher numeric type
value.
If a given component type within a prefix in unknown, the prefix in
question cannot be used for traffic filtering purposes by the
receiver. Since a Flow Specification has the semantics of a logical
AND of all components, if a component is FALSE by definition it
cannot be applied. However for the purposes of BGP route propagation
this prefix should still be transmitted since BGP route distribution
is independent on NLRI semantics.
Flow specification components are to be interpreted as a bit match at
a given packet offset. When more than one component in a flow
specification tests the same packet offset the behavior is
undetermined.
The <type, value> encoding is chosen in order to account for future
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
extensibility.
An example of a Flow Specification encoding for: "all packets to
10.0.1/24 and TCP port 25".
+------------------+----------+----------+
| destination | proto | port |
+------------------+----------+----------+
| 0x01 18 0a 00 01 | 03 81 06 | 04 81 19 |
+------------------+----------+----------+
Decode for protocol:
+-------+----------+------------------------------+
| Value | | |
+-------+----------+------------------------------+
| 0x03 | type | |
| 0x81 | operator | end-of-list, value size=1, = |
| 0x06 | value | |
+-------+----------+------------------------------+
An example of a Flow Specification encoding for: "all packets to
10.0.1/24 from 192/8 and port {range [137, 139] or 8080}".
+------------------+----------+-------------------------+
| destination | source | port |
+------------------+----------+-------------------------+
| 0x01 18 0a 01 01 | 02 08 c0 | 04 03 89 45 8b 91 1f 90 |
+------------------+----------+-------------------------+
Decode for port:
+--------+----------+------------------------------+
| Value | | |
+--------+----------+------------------------------+
| 0x04 | type | |
| 0x03 | operator | size=1, >= |
| 0x89 | value | 137 |
| 0x45 | operator | &, value size=1, <= |
| 0x8b | value | 139 |
| 0x91 | operator | end-of-list, value-size=2, = |
| 0x1f90 | value | 8080 |
+--------+----------+------------------------------+
This constitutes a NLRI with an NLRI length of 16 octets.
Implementations wishing to exchange flow specification rules MUST use
BGP's Capability Advertisement facility to exchange the Multiprotocol
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Extension Capability Code (Code 1) as defined in RFC4760 [RFC4760].
The (AFI, SAFI) pair carried in the Multiprotocol Extension
capability MUST be the same as the one used to identify a particular
application that uses this NLRI-type.
5. Traffic filtering
Traffic filtering policies have been traditionally considered to be
relatively static.
The popularity of traffic-based denial of service (DoS) attacks,
which often requires the network operator to be able to use traffic
filters for detection and mitigation, brings with it requirements
that are not fully satisfied by existing tools.
Increasingly, DoS mitigation, requires coordination among several
Service Providers, in order to be able to identify traffic source(s)
and because the volumes of traffic may be such that they will
otherwise significantly affect the performance of the network.
Several techniques are currently used to control traffic filtering of
DoS attacks. Among those, one of the most common is to inject
unicast route advertisements corresponding to a destination prefix
being attacked. One variant of this technique marks such route
advertisements with a community that gets translated into a discard
next-hop by the receiving router. Other variants, attract traffic to
a particular node that serves as a deterministic drop point.
Using unicast routing advertisements to distribute traffic filtering
information has the advantage of using the existing infrastructure
and inter-as communication channels. This can allow, for instance,
for a service provider to accept filtering requests from customers
for address space they own.
There are several drawbacks, however. An issue that is immediately
apparent is the granularity of filtering control: only destination
prefixes may be specified. Another area of concern is the fact that
filtering information is intermingled with routing information.
The mechanism defined in this document is designed to address these
limitations. We use the flow specification NLRI defined above to
convey information about traffic filtering rules for traffic that
should be discarded.
This mechanism is designed to, primarily, allow an upstream
autonomous system to perform inbound filtering, in their ingress
routers of traffic that a given downstream AS wishes to drop.
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
In order to achieve that goal, we define an application specific NLRI
identifier (AFI=1, SAFI=133) along with specific semantic rules.
BGP routing updates containing this identifier use the flow
specification NLRI encoding to convey particular aggregated flows
that require special treatment.
Flow routing information received via this (afi, safi) pair is
subject to the validation procedure detailed below.
5.1. Order of traffic filtering rules
With traffic filtering rules, more than one rule may match a
particular traffic flow. Thus it is necessary to define the order at
which rules get matched and applied to a particular traffic flow.
This ordering function must be such that it must not depend on the
arrival order of the flow specifications rules and must be constant
in the network.
We choose to order traffic filtering rules such that the order of two
flow specifications is given by the comparison of NLRI key byte
strings as defined by the memcmp() function is the ISO C standard.
Given the way that flow specifications are encoded this results in a
flow with a less-specific destination IP prefix being considered
less-than (and thus match before) a flow specification with a more-
specific destination IP prefix.
This matches an application model where the user may want to define a
restriction that affects an aggregate of traffic and a subsequent
rule that applies only to a subset of that.
A flow-specification without a destination IP prefix is considered to
match after all flow-specifications that contain an IP destination
prefix.
6. Validation procedure
Flow specifications received from a BGP peer and which are accepted
in the respective Adj-RIB-In are used as input to the route selection
process. Although the forwarding attributes of two routes for the
same Flow Specification prefix may be the same, BGP is still required
to perform its path selection algorithm in order to select the
correct set of attributes to advertise.
The first step of the BGP Route Selection procedure (section 9.1.2 of
[RFC4271]) is to exclude from the selection procedure routes that are
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
considered non-feasible. In the context of IP routing information
this step is used to validate that the NEXT_HOP attribute of a given
route is resolvable.
The concept can be extended, in the case of Flow Specification NLRI,
to allow other validation procedures.
A flow specification NLRI must be validated such that it is
considered feasible if and only if:
a) The originator of the flow specification matches the originator of
the best-match unicast route for the destination prefix embedded
in the flow specification.
b) There are no more-specific unicast routes, when compared with the
flow destination prefix, that have been received from a different
neighboring AS than the best-match unicast route, which has been
determined in step a).
By originator of a BGP route, we mean either the BGP originator path
attribute, as used by route reflection, or the transport address of
the BGP peer, if this path attribute is not present.
The underlying concept is that the neighboring AS that advertises the
best unicast route for a destination is allowed to advertise flow-
spec information that conveys a more or equally specific destination
prefix. Thus, as long as there are no more-specific unicast routes,
received from a different neighbor AS, which would be affected by
that filtering rule.
The neighboring AS is the immediate destination of the traffic
described by the Flow Specification. If it requests these flows to
be dropped that request can be honored without concern that it
represents a denial of service in itself. Supposedly, the traffic is
being dropped by the downstream autonomous-system and there is no
added value in carrying the traffic to it.
BGP implementations MUST also enforce that the AS_PATH attribute of a
route received via eBGP contains the neighboring AS in the left-most
position of the AS_PATH attribute. While this rule is optional in
the BGP specification, it becomes necessary to enforce it for
security reasons.
7. Traffic Filtering Actions
This specification defines a minimum set of filtering actions that it
standardizes as BGP extended community values [RFC4360]. This is not
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
meant to be an inclusive list of all the possible actions but only a
subset that can be interpreted consistently across the network.
Implementations should provide mechanisms that map an arbitrary BGP
community value (normal or extended) to filtering actions that
require different mappings in different systems in the network. For
instance, providing packets with a worse than best-effort per-hop
behavior is a functionality that is likely to be implemented
differently in different systems and for which no standard behavior
is currently known. Rather than attempting to define it here, this
can be accomplished by mapping a user defined community value to
platform / network specific behavior via user configuration.
The default action for a traffic filtering flow specification is to
accept IP traffic that matches that particular rule.
The following extended community values can be used to specify
particular actions.
+--------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| type | extended community | encoding |
+--------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| 0x8006 | traffic-rate | 2-byte as#, 4-byte float |
| 0x8007 | traffic-action | bitmask |
| 0x8008 | redirect | 6-byte Route Target |
+--------+--------------------+--------------------------+
Traffic-rate The traffic-rate extended community is a non-transitive
extended community across the Autonomous system boundary and uses
following extended community encoding:
The first two octets carry the 2 octet id which can be assigned
from a 2 byte AS number. When 4 byte AS number is locally
present 2 least significant bytes of such AS number can be
used.
The remaining 4 octets carry the rate information in IEEE
floating point format, units being bytes per second. A
traffic-rate of 0 should result on all traffic for the
particular flow to be discarded.
Traffic-action The traffic-action extended community consists of 6
bytes of which only the 2 least significant bits of the 6th byte
(from left to right) are currently defined.
* Terminal action (bit 0). When this bit is set the traffic
filtering engine will apply any subsequent filtering rules (as
defined by the ordering procedure). If not set the evaluation
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
of the traffic filter stops when this rule is applied.
* Sample (bit 1). Enables traffic sampling and logging for this
flow specification.
Redirect The redirect extended community allows the traffic to be
redirected to a VRF routing instance that list the specified
route-target in its import policy. If several local instances
match this criteria, the choice between them is a local matter
(for example, the instance with the lowest Route Distinguisher
value can be elected). The traffic marking extended community
instruct a system to modify the DSCP bits of a transiting IP
packet to the corresponding value. This extended community is
encoded as a sequence of 5 zero bytes followed by the DSCP value.
8. Traffic filtering in RFC2547bis networks
Provider-based layer 3 VPN networks, such as the ones using an BGP/
MPLS IP VPN [RFC4364] control plane, have different traffic filtering
requirements than internet service providers.
In these environments, the VPN customer network often has traffic
filtering capabilities towards their external network connections
(e.g. firewall facing public network connection). Less common is the
presence of traffic filtering capabilities between different VPN
attachment sites. In an any-to-any connectivity model, which is the
default, this means that site to site traffic is unfiltered.
In circumstances where a security threat does get propagated inside
the VPN customer network, there may not be readily available
mechanisms to provide mitigation via traffic filter.
This document proposes an additional BGP NLRI type (afi=1, safi=134)
value, which can be used to propagate traffic filtering information
in a BGP/MPLS VPN environment.
The NLRI format for this address family consists of a fixed length
Route Distinguisher field (8 bytes) followed by a flow specification,
following the encoded defined in this document. The NLRI length
field shall includes the both 8 bytes of the Route Distinguisher as
well as the subsequent flow specification.
Propagation of this NLRI is controlled by matching Route Target
extended communities associated with the BGP path advertisement with
the VRF import policy, using the same mechanism as described in "BGP/
MPLS IP VPNs" [RFC4364] .
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Flow specification rules received via this NLRI apply only to traffic
that belongs to the VRF(s) in which it is imported. By default,
traffic received from a remote PE is switched via an mpls forwarding
decision and is not subject to filtering.
Contrary to the behavior specified for the non-VPN NLRI, flow rules
are accepted by default, when received from remote PE routers.
9. Monitoring
Traffic filtering applications require monitoring and traffic
statistics facilities. While this is an implementation specific
choice, implementations SHOULD provide:
o A mechanism to log the packet header of filtered traffic,
o A mechanism to count the number of matches for a given Flow
Specification rule.
10. Security considerations
Inter-provider routing is based on a web of trust. Neighboring
autonomous-systems are trusted to advertise valid reachability
information. If this trust model is violated, a neighboring
autonomous system may cause a denial of service attack by advertising
reachability information for a given prefix for which it does not
provide service.
As long as traffic filtering rules are restricted to match the
corresponding unicast routing paths for the relevant prefixes, the
security characteristics of this proposal are equivalent to the
existing security properties of BGP unicast routing.
Where it not the case, this would open the door to further denial of
service attacks.
Enabling firewall like capabilities in routers without centralized
management could make certain failures harder to diagnose. For
example, with the extensions it is possible to allow TCP packets to
pass between a pair of addresses but not ICMP packets. It would also
be possible to permit packets smaller than 900 or greater than 1000
bytes to pass between a pair of addresses, but not packets whose
length is in the range 900-1000. The Internet has become
sufficiently aware of firewalls that such behavior is less likely to
be confusing than it was a few years ago and there are no new
capabilities introduced by these extensions, just an increased
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
likelihood that such capabilities will be used.
11. IANA Considerations
A flow specification consists of a sequence of flow components, which
are identified by a an 8-bit component type. Types must be assigned
and interpreted uniquely. The current specification defines types 1
though 12, with the value 0 being reserved.
For the purpose of this work IANA has allocated values for two SAFIs:
SAFI 133 for IPv4 and SAFI 134 for VPNv4 dissemination of flow
specification rules.
The following traffic filtering flow specification rules are to be
allocated by IANA from BGP Extended Communities Type - Experimental
Use registry. Authors recommend the following type values:
0x8006 - Flow spec traffic-rate
0x8007 - Flow spec traffic-action
0x8008 - Flow spec redirect
Authors would like to ask IANA to create and maintain a new registry
entitled: "Flow Spec Component Type". Authors recommend to allocate
the following component types:
Type 1 - Destination Prefix
Type 2 - Source Prefix
Type 3 - IP Protocol
Type 4 - Port
Type 5 - Destination port
Type 6 - Source port
Type 7 - ICMP type
Type 8 - ICMP code
Type 9 - TCP flags
Type 10 - Packet length
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Type 11 - DSCP
Type 12 - Fragment
In order to manage the limited number space and accommodate several
usages the following policies defined by RFC 5226 [RFC5226] are used:
+--------------+-------------------------------+
| Range | Policy |
+--------------+-------------------------------+
| 0 | Invalid value |
| [1 .. 12] | Defined by this specification |
| [13 .. 127] | Specification Required |
| [128 .. 255] | Private Use |
+--------------+-------------------------------+
The specification of a particular "flow component type" must clearly
identify what is the criteria used to match packets forwarded by the
router. This criteria should be meaningful across router hops and
not depend on values that change hop-by-hop such as ttl or layer-2
encapsulation.
The "Traffic-action" extended community defined in this document has
6 unused bits which can be used to convey additional meaning.
Authors would like to ask IANA to create and maintain a new registry
entitled: "Traffic Action Fields". These values should be assigned
via IETF Review rules only. Authors recommend to allocate the
following traffic action fields:
0 Terminal Action
1 Sample
2-47 Unassigned
12. Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Yakov Rekhter, Dennis Ferguson, Chris
Morrow, Charlie Kaufman and David Smith for their comments.
Chaitanya Kodeboyina helped design the flow validation procedure.
Steven Lin and Jim Washburn ironed out all the details necessary to
produce a working implementation.
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
13. Normative References
[RFC0793] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, September 1981.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.
[RFC4360] Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, February 2006.
[RFC4364] Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private
Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, February 2006.
[RFC4760] Bates, T., Chandra, R., Katz, D., and Y. Rekhter,
"Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4", RFC 4760,
January 2007.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
Authors' Addresses
Pedro Marques
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US
Email: roque@juniper.net
Nischal Sheth
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US
Email: nsheth@juniper.net
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft flow-spec January 2009
Robert Raszuk
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US
Email: raszuk@juniper.net
Barry Greene
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
US
Email: bgreene@juniper.net
Jared Mauch
NTT/Verio
8285 Reese Lane
Ann Arbor, MI 48103-9753
US
Email: jared@puck.nether.net
Danny McPherson
Arbor Networks
Email: danny@arbor.net
Marques, et al. Expires August 2, 2009 [Page 21]