Network Working Group M. Christensen
Internet Draft Thrane & Thrane
Expiration Date: September 2003 K. Kimball
Category: Informational Hewlett-Packard
F. Solensky
Bluejavelin
March 2003
Considerations for IGMP and MLD Snooping Switches
<draft-ietf-magma-snoop-06.txt>
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [RFC2026].
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This memo describes the requirements for IGMP- and MLD-snooping
switches. These are based on best current practices for IGMPv2,
with further considerations for IGMPv3- and MLDv2-snooping.
Additional areas of relevance, such as link layer topology changes
and Ethernet-specific encapsulation issues, are also considered.
Interoperability issues that arise between different versions of
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IGMP are not the focus of this document. Interested readers are
directed to [IGMPv3] for a thorough description of problem areas.
1. Introduction
When processing a packet whose destination MAC address has the
multicast bit (bit 7) set, the switch will forward a copy of the
packet into each of the remaining network interfaces that are the
forwarding state in accordance with [BRIDGE]. The spanning tree
algorithm ensures that the application of this rule at every switch
in the network will make the packet accessible to all nodes
connected to the network.
This approach works well for broadcast packets that are intended to
be seen or processed by all connected nodes. In the case of
multicast packets, however, this approach could lead to less
efficient use of network bandwidth, particularly when the packet is
intended for only a small number of nodes. Packets will be flooded
into network segments where no node has any interest in receiving
the packet. While nodes will rarely incur any processing overhead
to filter packets addressed to unrequested group addresses, they
are unable to transmit new packets onto the shared media for the
period of time that the multicast packet is flooded. In general,
significant bandwidth can be wasted by flooding.
In recent years, a number of commercial vendors have introduced
products described as "IGMP snooping switches" to the market.
These devices do not adhere to the conceptual model that provides
the strict separation of functionality between different
communications layers in the ISO model, and instead utilize
information in the upper level protocol headers as factors to be
considered in the processing at the lower levels. This is
analogous to the manner in which a router can act as a firewall by
looking into the transport protocol's header before allowing a
packet to be forwarded to its destination address.
In the case of multicast traffic, an IGMP snooping switch provides
the benefit of conserving bandwidth on those segments of the
network where no node has expressed interest in receiving packets
addressed to the group address. This is in contrast to normal
switch behavior where multicast traffic is typically forwarded on
all interfaces.
Many switch datasheets state support for IGMP snooping, but no
requirements for this exist today. It is the authors' hope that
the information presented in this draft will supply this
foundation.
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The requirements presented here are based on the following
information sources: The IGMP specifications [RFC1112], [RFC2236]
and [IGMPv3], vendor-supplied technical documents [CISCO], bug
reports [MSOFT], discussions with people involved in the design of
IGMP snooping switches, MAGMA mailing list discussions, and on
replies by switch vendors to an implementation questionnaire.
The suggestions in this document are based on IGMP, which applies
only to IPv4. For IPv6, Multicast Listener Discovery [MLD] must be
used instead. Because MLD is based on IGMP, we do not repeat the
entire description and requirements for MLD snooping switches.
Instead, we point out the few cases where there are differences
from IGMP.
Note that the IGMP snooping function should apply only to IPv4
multicasts. Other multicast packets, such as IPv6, might be
suppressed by IGMP snooping if additional care is not taken in the
implementation. It is desired not to restrict the flow of non-IPv4
multicasts other than to the degree which would happen as a result
of regular bridging functions. Likewise, MLD snooping switches are
discouraged from using topological information learned from IPv6
traffic to alter the forwarding of IPv4 multicast packets.
2. IGMP Snooping Requirements
The following sections list the requirements for an IGMP snooping
switch. The requirement is stated and is supplemented by a
description of a possible implementation approach. All
implementation discussions are examples only and there may well be
other ways to achieve the same functionality.
2.1. Forwarding rules
The IGMP snooping functionality is here separated into a control
section (IGMP forwarding) and a data section (Data forwarding).
2.1.1. IGMP Forwarding Rules
1) A snooping switch should forward IGMP Membership Reports only
to those ports where multicast routers are attached.
Alternatively stated: a snooping switch should not forward IGMP
Membership Reports to ports on which only hosts are attached.
An administrative control may be provided to override this
restriction, allowing the report messages to be flooded to
other ports.
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This is the main IGMP snooping functionality. Sending
membership reports (as described in IGMP versions 1 and 2) to
other hosts can result in unintentionally preventing a host
from joining a specific multicast group. This is not a problem
in an IGMPv3-only network because there is no message
suppression of IGMP Membership reports.
The administrative control allows IGMP Membership Report
messages to be processed by network monitoring equipment such
as packet analyzers or port replicators.
The switch supporting IGMP snooping must maintain a list of
multicast routers and the ports on which they are attached.
This list can be constructed in any combination of the
following ways:
a) This list should be built by the snooping switch sending
Multicast Router Solicitation messages as described in IGMP
Multicast Router Discovery [MRDISC]. It may also snoop
Multicast Router Advertisement messages sent by and to
other nodes.
b) The arrival port for IGMP Queries (sent by multicast
routers) where the source address is not 0.0.0.0.
c) Ports explicitly configured by management to be IGMP-
forwarding ports, in addition to or instead of any of the
above methods to detect router ports.
2) IGMP snooping switches may also implement "proxy-reporting" in
which reports received from downstream hosts are summarized and
used to build internal membership states as described in
[PROXY]. The IGMP proxy-reporting switch would then report its
own state in response to upstream queriers. If the switch does
not already have an IP address assigned to it, the source
address for these reports should be set to all-zeros.
An IGMP proxy-reporting switch may act as Querier for the
downstream hosts while proxy reporting to the 'real' upstream
queriers.
It should be noted that there may be multiple IGMP proxy-
reporting switches in the network all using the 0.0.0.0 source
IP address. In this case the switches can be uniquely
identified through their link layer source MAC address.
IGMP membership reports must not be rejected by an IGMP
snooping switch because of a source IP address of 0.0.0.0.
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3) The switch that supports IGMP snooping must flood all
unrecognized IGMP messages to all other ports and must not
attempt to make use of any information beyond the end of the
network layer header.
In addition, earlier versions of IGMP should interpret IGMP
fields as defined for their versions and must not alter these
fields when forwarding the message. When generating new
messages, a given IGMP version should set fields to the
appropriate values for its own version. If any fields are
reserved or otherwise undefined for a given IGMP version, the
fields should be ignored when parsing the message and must be
set to zeroes when new messages are generated by
implementations of that IGMP version.
4) An IGMP snooping switch should be aware of link layer topology
changes. Following a topology change the switch should
initiate the transmission of a General Query over the receiving
ports in order to reduce network convergence time.
a) When a port other than the router port goes down, a Query
Request should be directed out the switch's remaining non-
router ports for those group addresses which had included
the lost port as a destination for flooded packets. The
Query may be one of the Group-Specific forms if there are
a relatively small number of groups affected and should be
a General Query otherwise. The router port should be
excluded from receiving these Query Requests since it will
usually be the source rather than the receipient of
flooded multicast packets and is less likely to be
affected by the loss of one of the receiver ports.
b) When the router port goes down, Multicast Router Discovery
should be used to determine which of the remaining ports
is the new router port. An IGMPv3 General Query message
should be sent out the remaining ports to refresh the
forwarding tables for other groups.
c) When a new port comes up, a General Query message should
be sent out the new port to determine which groups, if
any, have receipients that have become reachable. The new
port is designated as a router port in MRD messages are
processed.
If the switch is not the Querier, it should use the 'all-zeros'
IP Source Address in these proxy queries. When such proxy
queries are received, they must not be included in the Querier
election process.
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5) An IGMP snooping switch must not make use of information in
IGMP packets where the IP or IGMP headers have checksum or
integrity errors. The switch should not flood such packets but
if it does, it should also take some note of the event (i.e.,
increment a counter). These errors and their processing are
further discussed in [IGMPv3], [MLD] and [MLDv2].
6) The snooping switch must not rely exclusively on the appearance
of IGMP Group Leave announcements to determine when entries
should be removed from the forwarding table. It should instead
implement the router side functionality of the IGMP/MLD
protocol as described in [PROXY] on all its non-router ports.
2.1.2. Data Forwarding Rules
1) Packets with a destination IP (DIP) address in the 224.0.0.X
range which are not IGMP must be forwarded on all ports.
This requirement is based on fact that many hosts systems do
not send Join IP multicast addresses in this range before
sending or listening to IP multicast packets. Furthermore
since the 224.0.0.X address range is defined as link local (not
to be routed) it seems unnecessary to keep state for each
address in this range. Additionally, some routers operate in
the 224.0.0.X address range without issuing IGMP Joins, and
these applications would break if the switch were to prune them
due to not their not having seen a Join Group message from the
router.
2) Packets with a destination IP address outside 224.0.0.X which
are not IGMP should be forwarded according to group-based port
membership tables and must also be forwarded on router ports.
This is the core IGMP snooping requirement for the data path.
One approach that an implementation could take would be to
maintain separate membership and multicast router tables in
software and then "merge" these tables into a forwarding cache.
3) If a switch receives a non-IGMP IPv4 multicast packet without
having first processed Membership Reports for the group
address, it may forward the packet on all ports but it must
forward the packet on router ports. A switch may forward an
unregistered packet only on router ports, but the switch must
have a configuration option that suppresses this restrictive
operation and forces flooding of unregistered packets on all
ports.
In an environment where IGMPv3 hosts are mixed with snooping
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switches that do not yet support IGMPv3, the switch's failure
to flood unregistered streams could prevent v3 hosts from
receiving their traffic. Alternatively, in environments where
the snooping switch supports all of the IGMP versions that are
present, flooding unregistered streams may cause IGMP hosts to
be overwhelmed by multicast traffic, even to the point of not
receiving Queries and failing to issue new membership reports
for their own groups.
4) All non-IPv4 multicast packets should continue to be flooded
out all remaining ports in the forwarding state as per normal
IEEE bridging operations.
This requirement is a result of the fact that groups made up of
IPv4 hosts and IPv6 hosts are completely separate and distinct
groups. As a result, information gleaned from the topology
between members of an IPv4 group would not be applicable when
forming the topology between members of an IPv6 group.
5) IGMP snooping switches may maintain forwarding tables based on
either MAC addresses or IP addresses. If a switch supports
both types of forwarding tables then the default behavior
should be to use IP addresses. If the forwarding table is
keyed on the MAC address, the switch should use the destination
IP address to break hashing table collisions.
6) Switches which rely on information in the IP header should
verify that the IP header checksum is correct. If the checksum
fails, the information in the packet must not be incorporated
into the forwarding table. Further, the packet should be
discarded.
7) When IGMPv3 "include source" and "exclude source" membership
reports are received on shared segments, the switch needs to
forward the superset of all received membership reports onto
the shared segment. Forwarding of traffic from a particular
source S to a group G must happen if at least one host on the
shared segment reports an IGMPv3 membership of the type
INCLUDE(G, Slist1) or EXCLUDE(G, Slist2) where S is an element
of Slist1 and not an element of Slist2.
2.2. IGMP snooping related problems
A special problem arises in networks consisting of IGMPv3 routers
as well as IGMPv2 and IGMPv3 hosts interconnected by an IGMPv2
snooping switch. The router will continue to maintain IGMPv3 even
in the presence of IGMPv2 hosts, and thus the network will not
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likely converge on IGMPv2. But it is likely that the IGMPv2
snooping switch will not recognize or process the IGMPv3 membership
reports. Groups for these unrecognized reports will then either be
flooded (with all of the problems that may create for hosts in a
network with a heavy multicast load) or pruned by the snooping
switch.
Therefore it is recommended that in such a network, the multicast
router be configured to use IGMPv2.
3. IPv6 Considerations
In order to avoid confusion, the previous discussions have been
based on the IGMP protocol which only applies to IPv4 multicast.
In the case of IPv6 most of the above discussions are still valid
with a few exceptions which we will describe here.
The control and data forwarding rules in the IGMP section can, with
a few considerations, also be applied to MLD. This means that the
basic functionality of intercepting MLD packets, and building
membership lists and multicast router lists, is the same as for
IGMP.
In IPv6, the data forwarding rules are more straight forward
because MLD is mandated for addresses with scope 2 (link-scope) or
greater. The only exception is the address FF02::1 which is the
all hosts link-scope address for which MLD messages are never sent.
Packets with the all hosts link-scope address should be forwarded
on all ports.
MLD messages are also not sent to packets in the address range
FF00::/15 (which encompasses both the reserved FF00::/16 and node-
local FF01::/16 IPv6 address spaces). These addresses should never
appear in packets on the link.
The three major differences between IPv4 and IPv6 in relation to
multicast are:
- The IPv6 protocol for multicast group maintenance is called
Multicast Listener Discovery [MLDv2]. MLDv2 uses ICMPv6 message
types instead of IGMP message types.
- The RFCs [IPV6-ETHER] and [IPV6-FDDI] describe how 24 of the 128
bit DIP address are used to form the 48 bit DMAC addresses for
multicast groups, while [IPV6-TOKEN] describes the mapping for
token ring DMAC addresses by using three low-order bits. The
specification [IPV6-1394] makes use of a 6 bit channel number.
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- Multicast router discovery is accomplished using Neighbor
Discovery Protocol [NDP] for IPv6. NDP uses ICMPv6 message
types.
The IPv6 packet header does not include a checksum field.
Nevertheless, the switch should detect other packet integrity
issues. When the snooping switch detects such an error, it must
not include information from the corresponding packet in the MLD
forwarding table. The forwarding code should instead drop the
packet and take further reasonable actions as advocated above.
The fact that MLDv2 is using ICMPv6 adds new requirements to a
snooping switch because ICMPv6 has multiple uses aside from MLD.
This means that it is no longer sufficient to detect that the next-
header field of the IP header is ICMPv6 in order to identify
packets relevant for MLD snooping. A software-based implemention
which treats all ICMPv6 packets as candidates for MLD snooping
could easily fill its receive queue and bog down the CPU with
irrelevant packets. This would prevent the snooping functionality
from performing its intended purpose and the non-MLD packets
destined for other hosts could be lost.
A solution is either to require that the snooping switch looks
further into the packets, or to be able to detect a multicast DMAC
address in conjunction with ICMPv6. The first solution is
desirable when a configuration option allows the administrator to
specify which ICMPv6 message types should trigger a CPU redirect
and which should not. The reason is that a hardcoding of message
types is inflexible for the introduction of new message types. The
second solution introduces the risk that new protocols which use
ICMPv6 and multicast DMAC addresses could be incorrectly identified
as MLD. It is suggested that solution one is preferred when the
administrative switch is provided. If this is not the case, then
the implementator should seriously consider making this switch
available since Neighbor Discovery messages would be among those
that fall into this false positive case and are vital for the
operational integrity of IPv6 networks.
The mapping from IP multicast addresses to multicast DMAC addresses
introduces a potentially enormous overlap. The structure of an
IPv6 multicast address is shown in the figure below. As a result,
there are 2 ** (112 - (32 - 8)), or more than 7.9e28 unique DIP
addresses which map into a single DMAC address in Ethernet and
FDDI. This should be compared to 2**5 in the case of IPv4.
Initial allocation of IPv6 multicast addresses as described in
[RFC2735], however, cover only the lower 24 bits of group ID.
While this reduces the problem of address ambiguity to group IDs
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with different flag and scope values for now, it should be noted
that the allocation policy may change in the future. Because of
the potential overlap it is recommended that IPv6 address based
forwarding is preferred to MAC address based forwarding.
| 8 | 4 | 4 | 112 bits |
+--------+----+----+---------------------------------------+
|11111111|flgs|scop| group ID |
+--------+----+----+---------------------------------------+
4. IGMP Questionnaire
As part of this work the following questions were asked both on the
MAGMA discussion list and sent to known switch vendors implementing
IGMP snooping. The individual contributions have been anonymized
upon request and do not necessarily apply to all of the vendors'
products.
The questions were:
Q1 Does your switches perform IGMP Join aggregation? In other
words, are IGMP joins intercepted, absorbed by the
hardware/software so that only one Join is forwarded to the
querier?
Q2 Is multicast forwarding based on MAC addresses? Would
datagrams addressed to multicast IP addresses 224.1.2.3 and
239.129.2.3 be forwarded on the same ports-groups?
Q3 Is it possible to forward multicast datagrams based on IP
addresses (not routed)? In other words, could 224.1.2.3 and
239.129.2.3 be forwarded on different port-groups with
unaltered TTL?
Q4 Are multicast datagrams within the range 224.0.0.1 to
224.0.0.255 forwarded on all ports whether or not IGMP Joins
have been sent?
Q5 Are multicast frames within the MAC address range
01:00:5E:00:00:01 to 01:00:5E:00:00:FF forwarded on all ports
whether or not IGMP joins have been sent?
Q6 Does your switch support forwarding to ports on which IP
multicast routers are attached in addition to the ports where
IGMP Joins have been received?
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Q7 Is your IGMP snooping functionality fully implemented in
hardware?
Q8 Is your IGMP snooping functionality partly software
implemented?
Q9 Can topology changes (for example spanning tree configuration
changes) be detected by the IGMP snooping functionality so that
for example new queries can be sent or tables can be updated to
ensure robustness?
The answers were:
---------------------------+-----------------------+
| Switch Vendor |
---------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
---------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+
Q1 Join aggregation | x | x | x | | x | x |
Q2 Layer-2 forwarding | x | x | x | x |(1)| |
Q3 Layer-3 forwarding |(1)| |(1)| |(1)| x |
Q4 224.0.0.X aware |(1)| x |(1)|(2)| x | x |
Q5 01:00:5e:00:00:XX aware | x | x | x |(2)| x | x |
Q6 Mcast router list | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Q7 Hardware implemented | | | | | | |
Q8 Software assisted | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Q9 Topology change aware | x | x | x | x | |(2)|
---------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+
x Means that the answer was Yes.
(1) In some products (typically high-end) Yes; in others No.
(2) Not at the time that the questionnaire was received
but expected in the near future.
Revision History
This section, while incomplete, is provided as a convenience to the
working group members. It will be removed when the document is
released in its final form.
draft-ietf-magma-snoop-06.txt: March 2003
Changes in response to comments made during WG last call and
assessment by the WG chairs:
Substantial comments
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Clarification in IGMP forwarding seciton on the
acceptance of membership reports with source IP address
0.0.0.0 as being a switch requirement.
Section 2.1.1.(4): Allow the router port to be excluded
from the General Query messages
Section 2.1.1.(6): Replace description of timing out
older entries with a reference to IGMP/MLD Proxying.
Section 2.1.2.(3): Replaced description of timeout
mechanism with a reference to IGMP/MLD.
Section 2.1.2.(4) Expanded rationale to discourage
leaking info between IPv4 and IPv6 groups.
Section 3: more strongly encourage the use of a
configuration option for selection of ICMPv6 message
types.
Editorial comments.
Hyphenation problem resolved for groff by setting then ms
HY register to zero, disabling all forms for the entire
document
(".hy 0" and ".nr" worked only as far as the following
ms macro).
Sections moved around - again - to comply with
rfc2223bis-03 draft. Added copyright notice after memo
status. Removed table of contents as the draft is fairly
short. Corrected a reference typo.
Section 2.1.2.(3): Requirement and rationale broken into
separate paragraphs.
Added references to other IPv6 encapsulation documents,
Corrected estimates for MAC address collisions for
Ethernet and FDDI: both specification take the low-order
four (not six) bytes from the IPv6 group addresses.
draft-ietf-magma-snoop-05.txt: January 2003
Changes in wording of IGMP forwarding rule 6) and Data
forwarding rule 7). Corrections in the references section.
Apart from above, no substantial changes has occured in the
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document. Several editorial changes, however, have been made
to comply with the rfc editors requirements:
References splitted in normative and informative sections,
other related references added.
Abstract shortened.
Changed all occurances of MUST, MAY etc. to lowercase to
reflect that this is not a standards track document.
Sections moved around so they appear in the required order.
draft-ietf-magma-snoop-04.txt: November 2002 Editorial changes
only.
draft-ietf-magma-snoop-03.txt: October 2002
IGMP Forwarding rules:
Add references to and become consistant with the current IGMP
proxy draft,
Unrecognized IGMP packets should not be ignored because "mbz"
fields are not zero since packets from future versions are
expected to maintain consistency.
Corrections related to IGMP Querier election process.
Add clarification to how lists of router ports may be
assembled.
Data Forwarding rules:
Added discussion of the problems for different IGMP
environments in choosing whether to flood or to prune
unregistered multicasts.
Added refinements for how to handle NON-IPv4 multicasts, to
keep IGMP-snooping functionality from interfering with IPv6
and other multicast traffic. Any filtering for non-IPv4
multicasts should be based on bridge behavior and not IGMP
snooping behavior.
IGMP snooping related problems:
Fixed description of interoperability issues in environments
with v3 routers and hosts, and v2 snooping switches.
Added discussion of the IGMPv3 "include source" and "exclude
source" options, and the inability to support them on shared
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segments.
IPv6 Considerations:
Clarifications regarding address ranges FF00::, FF01:: and all
hosts FF02::1 in relation to data forwarding.
draft-ietf-magma-snoop-02.txt: June 2002
Status section removes document history; moved into this
section instead.
Introduction restores text from the -00 revision that
describes snooping and its goals
IGMP flooding rules eased, allowing management option to
broaden beyond "routers only".
Removed a should/MAY inconsistancy between IPv4 Forwarding and
IPv6 processing of checksums.
IGMP Forwarding Rules: clarify text describing processing of
non-zero reserved fields.
Data Forwarding Rules, item 3 is changed from "MUST forward to
all ports" to "MAY"; item 4 default changes from "MUST" to
"should use network addresses".
Added two sets of additional responses to the questionnaire
and text indicating that responses don't cover all products.
Removed (commented out) description of IPR issues: IESG is
aware of them.
draft-ietf-magma-snoop-01.txt: January 2002
Extensive restructuring of the original text.
draft-ietf-idmr-snoop-01.txt: 2001
Added several descriptions of cases where IGMP snooping
implementations face problems. Also added several network
topology figures.
draft-ietf-idmr-snoop-00.txt: 2001
Initial snooping draft. An overview of IGMP snooping and the
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problems to be solved.
5. References
5.1. Normative References
[BRIDGE] IEEE 802.1D, "Media Access Control (MAC) Bridges"
[IGMPv3] Cain, B., "Internet Group Management Protocol,
Version 3", RFC3376, October 2002.
[IPV6-1394] Fujisawa, K. and Onoe, A., "Transmission of IPv6
Packets over IEEE 1394 Networks", RFC3146,
October 2001.
[IPV6-ETHER] Crawford, M., "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over
Ethernet Networks", RFC2464, December 1998.
[IPV6-FDDI] Crawford, M., "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over
FDDI Networks", RFC2467, December 1998.
[IPV6-TOKEN] Crawford, M., Narten, T. and Thomas, S.,
"Transmission of IPv6 Packets over Token Ring
Networks", RFC2470, December 1998.
[MLD] Deering, S., Fenner, B. and Haberman, B.
"Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) for IPv6",
RFC2710, October 1999.
[MLDv2] Vida, R. and Costa, L., "Multicast Listener
Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2) for IPv6", draft-
vida-mld-v2-06.txt, November 2002.
[MRDISC] Biswas, S., Cain, B. and Haberman, B., "Multicast
Router Discovery", draft-ietf-idmr-igmp-
mrdisc-10.txt, January 2003.
[NDP] Narten, T., Nordmark, E. and Simpson, W.,
"Neighbor Discovery for IP Version 6 {IPv6)",
RFC2461, December 1998.
[PROXY] Fenner, B. et al, "IGMP/MLD-based Multicast
Forwarding (IGMP/MLD Proxying)", draft-ietf-
magma-igmp-proxy-01.txt, November 2002.
Christensen, Kimball, Solensky [Page 15]
RFC DRAFT IGMP and MLD Snooping Switches March 2003
[RFC1112] Deering, S., "Host Extensions for IP
Multicasting", RFC1112, August 1989.
[RFC2026] Bradner, S. "The Internet Standards Process --
Revision 3", RFC2026, October 1996.
[RFC2236] Fenner, W., "Internet Group Management Protocol,
Version 2", RFC2236, November 1997.
[RFC2375] Hinden, R. "IPv6 Multicast Address Assignments",
RFC2375, July 1998.
5.2. Informative References
[IANA] Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, "Internet
Multicast Addresses", http://www.isi.edu/in-
notes/iana/assignments/multicast-addresses
[CISCO] Cisco Tech Notes, "Multicast In a Campus Network:
CGMP and IGMP snooping",
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/22.html
[MSOFT] Microsoft support article Q223136, "Some LAN
Switches with IGMP Snooping Stop Forwarding
Multicast Packets on RRAS Startup",
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/
Q223/1/36.ASP
6. Security Considerations
Security considerations for IGMPv3 are accounted for in
[IGMPv3]. The introduction of IGMP snooping switches adds the
following considerations with regard to IP multicast.
- The exclude source failure, which could cause traffic from
sources that are 'black listed' to reach hosts that have
requested otherwise. This can also occur in certain
network topologies without IGMP snooping.
- It is possible to generate packets which make the switch
wrongly believe that there is a multicast router on the
segment on which the source is attached. This will
potentially lead to excessive flooding on that segment.
The authentication methods discussed in [IGMPv3] will also
provide protection in this case.
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- IGMP snooping switches which rely on the IP header of a
packet for their operation and which do not validate the
header checksum potentially will forward packets on the
wrong ports. Even though the IP headers are protected by
the Ethernet checksum this is a potential vulnerability.
- In IGMP, there is no mechanism for denying recipients
access to groups (i.e. no "exclude receiver"
functionality). Hence, apart from IP-level security
configuration outside the scope of IGMP, any multicast
stream may be received by any host without restriction.
Generally, IGMP snooping must be considered insecure due to
the issues above. However, none of the these issues are any
worse for IGMP snooping than for IGMP implementations in
general.
7. Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Martin Bak, Les Bell, Yiqun Cai, Ben
Carter, Paul Congdon, Toerless Eckert, Bill Fenner, Brian
Haberman, Edward Hilquist, Hugh Holbrook, Kevin Humphries,
Pekka Savola, Suzuki Shinsuke, Jaff Thomas, and Rolland Vida
for comments and suggestions on this document.
Furthermore, the following companies are acknowledged for
their contributions: 3Com, Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Enterasys
Networks, Hewlett-Packard, Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation.
The ordering of these names do not necessarily correspond to
the column numbers in the response table.
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8. Authors' Addresses
Morten Jagd Christensen
Thrane & Thrane
Lundtoftegaardsvej 93 D
2800 Lyngby
email: mjc@tt.dk
Karen Kimball
Hewlett-Packard
8000 Foothills Blvd.
Roseville, CA 95747
email: karen.kimball@hp.com
Frank Solensky
Bluejavelin, Inc.
3 Dundee Park
Andover, MA 01810
email: fsolensky@bluejavelin.net
9. IETF IPR Statement
"The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of
any intellectual property or other rights that might be
claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the
technology described in this document or the extent to which
any license under such rights might or might not be available;
neither does it represent that it has made any effort to
identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's
procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and
standards-related documentation can be found in [RFC-2026].
Copies of claims of rights made available for publication and
any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result
of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission
for the use of such proprietary rights by implementors or
users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF
Secretariat."
10. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights
Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and
furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or
otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be
Christensen, Kimball, Solensky [Page 18]
RFC DRAFT IGMP and MLD Snooping Switches March 2003
prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in
part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above
copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such
copies and derivative works. However, this document itself
may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the
copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or
other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose
of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures
for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must
be followed, or as required to translate it into languages
other than English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will
not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or
assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided
on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE
USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR
ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement:
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by
the Internet Society.
Christensen, Kimball, Solensky [Page 19]
