Internet Draft                                            M. Stiemerling
Document: draft-ietf-midcom-semantics-08.txt                  J. Quittek
Expires: December 2004                                               NEC
                                                              Tom Taylor
                                                         Nortel Networks

                                                               June 2004



                       MIDCOM Protocol Semantics

                  <draft-ietf-midcom-semantics-08.txt>

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026.  Internet-Drafts are
   working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its
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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This memo specifies semantics for a Middlebox Communication (MIDCOM)
   protocol to be used by MIDCOM agents for interacting with
   middleboxes, such as firewalls and NATs.  The semantics discussion
   does not include any specification of a concrete syntax or a
   transport protocol.  However, a concrete protocol is expected to
   implement the specified semantics or - more probably - a superset of
   it.  The MIDCOM protocol semantics is derived from the MIDCOM
   requirements, from the MIDCOM framework, and from working group
   decisions.


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Table of Contents

   1 Introduction .................................................    4
   1.1 Terminology ................................................    5
   1.2 Transaction Definition Template ............................    7
   2 Semantics Specification ......................................    8
   2.1 General Protocol Design ....................................    8
   2.1.1 Protocol Transactions ....................................    8
   2.1.2 Message Types ............................................    9
   2.1.3 Session, Policy Rule, and Policy Rule Group ..............   10
   2.1.4 Atomicity ................................................   10
   2.1.5 Access Control ...........................................   11
   2.1.6 Middlebox Capabilities ...................................   11
   2.1.7 Agent and Middlebox Identifiers ..........................   12
   2.1.8 Conformance ..............................................   12
   2.2 Session Control Transactions ...............................   13
   2.2.1 Session Establishment (SE) ...............................   13
   2.2.2 Session Termination (ST) .................................   15
   2.2.3 Asynchronous Session Termination (AST) ...................   16
   2.2.4 Session Termination by Interruption of Connection ........   17
   2.2.5 Session State Machine ....................................   17
   2.3 Policy Rule Transactions ...................................   18
   2.3.1 Configuration Transactions ...............................   18
   2.3.2 Establishing Policy Rules ................................   18
   2.3.3 Maintaining Policy Rules and Policy Rule Groups ..........   19
   2.3.4 Policy Events and Asynchronous Notifications .............   20
   2.3.5 Address Tuples ...........................................   21
   2.3.6 Address Parameter Constraints ............................   22
   2.3.7 Interface specific Policy Rules ..........................   24
   2.3.8 Policy Reserve Rule (PRR) ................................   25
   2.3.9 Policy Enable Rule (PER) .................................   29
   2.3.10 Policy Rule Lifetime Change (RLC) .......................   34
   2.3.11 Policy Rule List (PRL) ..................................   36
   2.3.12 Policy Rule Status (PRS) ................................   37
   2.3.13 Asynchronous Policy Rule Event (ARE) ....................   39
   2.3.14 Policy Rule State Machine ...............................   40
   2.4 Policy Rule Group Transactions .............................   41
   2.4.1 Overview .................................................   41
   2.4.2 Group Lifetime Change (GLC) ..............................   42
   2.4.3 Group List (GL) ..........................................   44
   2.4.4 Group Status (GS) ........................................   45
   3 Conformance Statements .......................................   46
   3.1 General Implementation Conformance .........................   46
   3.2 Middlebox Conformance ......................................   47
   3.3 Agent Conformance ..........................................   47
   4 Transaction Usage Examples ...................................   48
   4.1 Exploring Policy Rules and Policy Rule Groups ..............   48
   4.2 Enabling a SIP-Signaled Call ...............................   51
   5 Compliance with MIDCOM Requirements ..........................   56
   5.1 Protocol Machinery Requirements ............................   56


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   5.1.1 Authorized Association ...................................   56
   5.1.2 Agent connects to Multiple Middleboxes ...................   57
   5.1.3 Multiple Agents connect to same Middlebox ................   57
   5.1.4 Deterministic Behavior ...................................   57
   5.1.5 Known and Stable State ...................................   57
   5.1.6 Status Report ............................................   58
   5.1.7 Unsolicited Messages (Asynchronous Notifications) ........   58
   5.1.8 Mutual Authentication ....................................   58
   5.1.9 Session Termination by any Party .........................   58
   5.1.10 Request Result ..........................................   59
   5.1.11 Version Interworking ....................................   59
   5.1.12 Deterministic Handling of Overlapping Rules .............   59
   5.2 Protocol Semantics Requirements ............................   59
   5.2.1 Extensible Syntax and Semantics ..........................   59
   5.2.2 Policy Rules for Different Types of Middleboxes ..........   59
   5.2.3 Ruleset Groups ...........................................   60
   5.2.4 Policy Rule Lifetime Extension ...........................   60
   5.2.5 Robust Failure Modes .....................................   60
   5.2.6 Failure Reasons ..........................................   60
   5.2.7 Multiple Agents Manipulating Same Policy Rule ............   60
   5.2.8 Carrying Filtering Rules .................................   60
   5.2.9 Parity of Port Numbers ...................................   61
   5.2.10 Consecutive Range of Port Numbers .......................   61
   5.2.11 Contradicting Overlapping Policy Rules ..................   61
   5.3 Security Requirements ......................................   61
   5.3.1 Authentication, Confidentiality, Integrity ...............   61
   5.3.2 Optional Confidentiality of Control Messages .............   61
   5.3.3 Operation across Un-trusted Domains ......................   61
   5.3.4 Mitigate Replay Attacks ..................................   61
   6 Security Considerations ......................................   62
   7 IAB Considerations on UNSAF ..................................   63
   8 Acknowledgments ..............................................   63
   9 References ...................................................   63
   9.1 Normative References .......................................   63
   9.2 Informative References .....................................   64
   10 Authors' Addresses ..........................................   64
   11 Full Copyright Statement ....................................   65















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1.  Introduction

   The MIDCOM working group has defined a framework [MDC-FRM] for the
   middlebox communication and a list of requirements [MDC-REQ].  The
   next step towards a MIDCOM protocol is the specification of protocol
   semantics that are constrained, but not completely implied by the
   documents mentioned above.

   This memo suggests a semantics for the MIDCOM protocol.  It is fully
   compliant with the requirements listed in [MDC-REQ] and with the
   working group's consensus on semantic issues.

   In conformance with the working group charter, the semantics
   description is targeted at packet filters and network address
   translators (NATs) and it supports applications that require dynamic
   configuration of these middleboxes.

   The semantics are defined in terms of transactions.  Two basic types
   of transactions are used: request-reply transactions and asynchronous
   transactions. For each transaction the semantics is specified by
   describing (1) the parameters of the transaction, (2) the processing
   of request messages at the middlebox, and (3) the state transitions
   at the middlebox caused by the request transactions or indicated by
   the asynchronous transactions, respectively, and the (4) reply and
   notification messages sent from the middlebox to the agent in order
   to inform the agent about the state change.

   The semantics can be implemented by any protocol that supports these
   two transaction types and that is sufficiently flexible concerning
   transaction parameters.  Different implementations for different
   protocols might need to extend the semantics described below by
   adding further transactions and/or adding further parameters to
   transactions and/or splitting single transactions into a set of
   transactions.  Regardless of such extensions, the semantics below
   provide a minimum necessary subset of what must be implemented.

   The remainder of this document is structured as follows. Section 2
   describes the protocol semantics. It is structured in four
   subsections:

      - General Protocol Issues (Section 2.1)
      - Session Control (Section 2.2)
      - Policy Rules (Section 2.3)
      - Policy Rule Groups (Section 2.4)

   Section 3 contains conformance statements for MIDCOM protocol
   definitions and MIDCOM protocol implementations with respect to the
   semantics defined in Section 2.  Section 4 gives two elaborated usage
   examples.  Finally, Section 5 explains how the semantics meets the
   MIDCOM requirements.


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1.1.  Terminology

   The terminology in this memo follows the definitions given in the
   framework [MDC-FRM] and requirements [MDC-REQ] document.

   In addition the following terms are used:

   request transaction        A request transaction consists of a
                              request message transfer from the agent to
                              the middlebox, processing of the message
                              at the middlebox, a reply message transfer
                              from the middlebox to the agent, and the
                              optional transfer of notification messages
                              from the middlebox to other agents than
                              the one requesting the transaction.  A
                              request transaction might cause a state
                              transition at the middlebox.

   configuration transaction  A configuration transaction is a request
                              transaction containing a request for state
                              change in the middlebox.  If accepted, it
                              causes a state change at the middlebox.

   monitoring transaction     A monitoring transaction is a request
                              transaction containing a request for state
                              information from the middlebox.  It does
                              not cause a state transition at the
                              middlebox.

   asynchronous transaction   An asynchronous transaction is not
                              triggered by an agent. It may occur
                              without any agent participating in a
                              session with the middlebox.  Potentially,
                              an asynchronous transaction includes the
                              transfer of notification messages from the
                              middlebox to agents that participate in an
                              open session.  A notification message is
                              sent to each agent that need to be
                              notified about the asynchronous event.
                              The message indicates the state transition
                              at the middlebox.

   agent-unique               An agent-unique value is unique in the
                              context of the agent.  This context
                              includes all MIDCOM sessions the agent
                              participates in.  An agent-unique value is
                              assigned by the agent.

   middlebox-unique           A middlebox-unique value is unique in the
                              context of the middlebox.  This context


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                              includes all MIDCOM sessions the middlebox
                              participates in.  A middlebox-unique value
                              is assigned by the middlebox.

   policy rule                In general, a policy rule is "a basic
                              building block of a policy-based system.
                              It is the binding of a set of actions to a
                              set of conditions - where the conditions
                              are evaluated to determine whether the
                              actions are performed."  [RFC3198].  In
                              the MIDCOM context the condition is a
                              specification of a set of packets to which
                              rules are applied.  The set of actions
                              always contains just a single element per
                              rule, either action "reserve" or action
                              "enable".

   policy reserve rule        A policy rule containing a reserve action.
                              The policy condition of this rule is
                              always true.  The action is the
                              reservation of just an IP address or a
                              combination of an IP address and a range
                              of port numbers on neither, one, or both
                              sides of the middlebox, depending on the
                              middlebox configuration.

   policy enable rule         A policy rule containing an enable action.
                              The policy condition consists of a
                              descriptor of one or more unidirectional
                              or bidirectional packet flows, and the
                              policy action enables packets belonging to
                              this flow to traverse the middlebox.  The
                              descriptor identifies the protocol, the
                              flow direction, the source and destination
                              addresses, optionally with a range of port
                              numbers.

   NAT binding                The term NAT binding used in this document
                              is not necessarily referring to a NAT bind
                              as defined in [NAT-TERM].  A NAT binding
                              in the MIDCOM semantics refers to an
                              abstraction that enables communication
                              between two end points through the NAT-
                              type middlebox.  An enable action may
                              result in a NAT bind or a NAT session,
                              depending on the request and its
                              parameters.





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1.2.  Transaction Definition Template

   In the following sections, semantics of the MIDCOM protocol is
   specified per transaction.  A transaction specification contains the
   following entries. Parameter entries, failure reason and notification
   message type are only specified if applicable.

   transaction-name
      A description name for this type of transaction.

   transaction-type
      The transaction type is either 'configuration', 'monitoring', or
       'asynchronous'.  See Section 1.1. for a description of
      transaction types.

   transaction-compliance
      This entry contains either 'mandatory' or 'optional'.  For details
      see Section 2.1.8.

   request-parameters
      This entry lists all parameters that are necessary for this
      request.  A description for each parameter is given.

   reply-parameters (success)
      This entry lists all parameters that are sent back from the
      middlebox to the agent as positive response to the prior request.
      A description for each parameter is given.

   failure reason
      All negative replies do have two parameters, a request identifier
      identifying the request on which the reply is sent and a parameter
      indicating the failure reason.  Since these parameters are
      compulsory, they are not listed in the template.  But the template
      contains a list of potential failure reasons that may be indicated
      by the second parameter.  The list is not exhaustive.  A concrete
      protocol specification may extend the list.

   notification message type
      The type of the notification message type that may be used by this
      transaction.

   semantics
      This entry describes the actual semantics of the transaction.
      Particularly, it describes the processing of the request message
      by the middlebox, and middlebox state transitions caused by or
      causing the transaction, respectively.






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2.  Semantics Specification

2.1.  General Protocol Design

   The semantics specification aims at a balance between proper support
   of applications that require dynamic configuration of middleboxes and
   simplicity of specification and implementation of the protocol.

   Protocol interactions are structured into transactions.  State of
   middleboxes is described by state machines.  The state machines are
   defined by states and state transitions.  A single transaction may
   cause or be caused by state transitions in more than one state
   machine, but per state machine there is no more than one transition
   per transaction.

2.1.1.  Protocol Transactions

   State transitions are either initiated by a request message from the
   agent to the middlebox, or they are initiated by some other event at
   the middlebox.  In the first case, the middlebox informs the agent by
   sending a reply message on the actual state transition, in the latter
   case the middlebox sends an unsolicited asynchronous notification
   message to each agent that is affected by the transaction (if it
   participates in an open session with the middlebox).

   Request and reply messages contain an agent-unique request identifier
   that allows the agent to determine to which sent request a received
   reply corresponds.

   An analysis of the requirements showed that four kinds of
   transactions are required:

     - configuration transactions allowing the agent to request state
       transitions at the middlebox

     - asynchronous transactions allowing the middlebox to change state
       without a request by an agent.

     - monitoring transaction allowing the agent to request state
       information from the middlebox

     - convenience transactions combining a set of configuration
       transactions

   Configuration transactions and asynchronous transactions provide the
   basic MIDCOM protocol functionality.  They are related to middlebox
   state transitions and they concern establishment and termination of
   MIDCOM sessions and of policy rules.

   Monitoring transactions are not related to middlebox state


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   transitions.  They are used by agents for exploring number, status
   and properties of policy rules established at the middlebox.

   Convenience transactions simplify MIDCOM sessions by combining a set
   of configuration transactions into a single one.  They are not
   necessary for MIDCOM protocol operation.

   As specified in detail in Section 3, configuration transactions and
   asynchronous transactions are mandatory.  They must be implemented by
   a compliant middlebox.  All convenience transactions are optional and
   some of the monitoring transactions are optional.

2.1.2.  Message Types

   The MIDCOM protocol supports three kinds of messages: request
   messages, reply messages and notification messages.  For each kind,
   there exist different message types.  In this semantics document,
   message types are only defined by the list of parameters.  The order
   of the parameters and their encoding is left to a concrete protocol
   definition.  A protocol definition may also add further parameters to
   a message type or combine several parameters into one, as long as the
   information contained in the parameters defined in the semantics is
   still contained.

   For request messages and positive reply messages there exists one
   message type per request transaction.  Each reply transaction defines
   the parameter list of the request message and of the positive
   (successful) reply message using the transaction definition template
   that is defined in Section 1.2.

   In case of a failed request transaction, a negative reply message is
   sent from the middlebox to the agent. This message has the same type
   for all request transactions. It contains the request identifier
   identifying the request on which the reply is sent and a parameter
   indicating the failure reason.

   For notification messages, there exist three message types: the
   Session Termination Notification (STN) message type, the Policy Rule
   Event Notification (REN) message type and the Group Event
   Notification (GEN) message type.  All of them contain a middlebox-
   unique notification identifier.

   STN   The Session Termination Notification message additionally
         contains a single parameter indicating the reason of session
         termination by the middlebox.

   REN   The Policy Rule Event Notification message contains the
         notification identifier, a policy rule identifier and the
         remaining policy lifetime.



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   GEN   The Group Event Notification message contains the notification
         identifier, a policy rule group identifier and the remaining
         policy rule group lifetime.

2.1.3.  Session, Policy Rule, and Policy Rule Group

   All transactions can further be grouped into transactions concerning
   sessions, transactions concerning policy rules, and transactions
   concerning policy rule groups.  Policy rule groups can be used to
   indicate relationships between policy rules and to simplify
   transactions on a set of policy rules by using a single transaction
   per group instead of one per policy rule.

   Sessions and policy rules at the middlebox are stateful.  Their
   states are independent of each other and their state machines (one
   per session and one per policy rule) can be separated.  Policy rule
   groups are also stateful, but the middlebox does not need to maintain
   state for policy rule groups, because the semantics were chosen such
   that the policy rule group state is implicitly defined by the state
   of all policy rules belonging to the group (see Section 2.4).

   The separation of session state and policy rule state simplifies the
   specification of the semantics as well as a protocol implementation.
   Therefore, the semantics specification is structured accordingly and
   we use two separated state machines to illustrate the semantics.
   Please note, that state machines of concrete protocol designs and
   implementations will most probably be more complex than the state
   machines presented here.  However, the protocol state machines are
   expected to be a superset of the semantics state machines in this
   document.

2.1.4.  Atomicity

   All request transactions are atomic with respect to each other.  This
   means that processing of a request at the middlebox is never
   interrupted by another arriving or already queued request.  This
   particularly applies when the middlebox concurrently receives
   requests originating in different sessions.  However, asynchronous
   transactions may interrupt and/or terminate processing of a request
   at any time.

   All request transactions are atomic from the point of view of the
   agent.  Processing of a request does not start before the complete
   request arrives at the middlebox.  No intermediate state is stable at
   the middlebox and no intermediate state is reported to any agent.

   The number of transactions specified in this document is rather
   small.  Again for simplicity we reduced it close to a minimal set
   that still meets the requirements.  For a real implementation of the
   protocol, it might be required to split some of the transactions


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   specified below into two or more transactions of the respective
   protocol.  Reasons for this might be constraints of the particular
   protocol or the desire for more flexibility.  In general this should
   not be a problem. However, it should be considered that this might
   change atomicity of the affected transactions.

2.1.5.  Access Control

   Access to policy rules and policy rule groups is based on ownership.
   When a policy rule is created, a middlebox-unique identifier is
   generated for identifying it in further transactions.  Beyond the
   identifier, each policy rule has an owner.  The owner is the
   authenticated agent that established the policy rule.  The middlebox
   uses the owner attribute of a policy rule for controlling access to
   it:  each time an authenticated agent requests to modify an existing
   policy rule, the middlebox determines the owner of the policy rule
   and checks if the requesting agent is authorized to perform
   transactions on the owning agent's policy rules.

   All policy rules belonging to the same policy rule group must have
   the same owner.  Therefore, authenticated agents either have access
   to all members of a policy rule group, or to none of them.

   The middlebox may be configured to allow specific authenticated
   agents to access and modify policy rules with certain specific
   owners.  Certainly, a reasonable default configuration would be that
   each agent can access its own policy rules.  Also, it might be a good
   idea, to have an agent identity configured to act as administrator
   being allowed to modify all policy rules owned by any agent.  Anyway,
   the configuration of authorization at the middlebox is out of scope
   of the MIDCOM semantics and protocol.

2.1.6.  Middlebox Capabilities

   For several reasons it is useful that the agent learns at session
   establishment about particular capabilities of the middlebox.
   Therefore, the session establishment procedure described in Section
   2.2.1 includes a transfer of capability information from the
   middlebox to the agent.  The list of covered middlebox capabilities
   includes
          - support of firewall function
          - list of supported NAT functions
            The list of supported NAT functions may include
                - address translation
                - port translation
                - protocol translation
                - twice-NAT
          - internal IP address wildcard support
          - external IP address wildcard support
          - port wildcard support


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          - supported IP version(s) for internal network:
            IPv4, IPv6, or both
          - supported IP version(s) for external network:
            IPv4, IPv6, or both
          - list of supported optional MIDCOM protocol transactions
          - optional interface specific policy rule support: not
            supported or supported.
          - policy rule persistency: persistent or non-persistent
            A rule is persistent when the middlebox can save the rule to
            a non-volatile memory, e.g. a hard disk or flash memory.
          - maximum remaining lifetime of a policy rule or policy rule
            group
          - idle-timeout of policy rules in the middlebox
            Reserved and enabled policy rules that are not used by any
            data traffic for the time of this idle-timeout are deleted
            automatically by the middlebox.  For the deletion of policy
            rules by middleboxes see Section 2.3.13 about Asynchronous
            Policy Rule Event (ARE).
          - maximum number of simultaneous MIDCOM sessions

   The list of middlebox capabilities may be extended by a concrete
   protocol specification by further information that is useful for the
   agent.

2.1.7.  Agent and Middlebox Identifiers

   In order to allow both agents and middleboxes to maintain multiple
   sessions each request message contains a parameter identifying the
   requesting agent, and each reply message and each notification
   message contains a parameter identifying the middlebox.  These
   parameters are not explicitly listed in the description of the
   individual transactions, because they are common to all of them and
   not further referred to in the individual semantics descriptions.
   Also, they are not necessarily passed explicitly as parameters of the
   MIDCOM protocol, but they might be provided by the used underlying
   (secure) transport protocol.  Agent identifiers at the middlebox are
   middlebox-unique and middlebox identifiers at the agent are agent-
   unique respectively.

2.1.8.  Conformance

   The MIDCOM requirements in [MDC-REQ] demand certain capabilities of
   the MIDCOM protocol, which are met by the set of transactions
   specified below.  However, an actual implementation of a middlebox
   may support only a subset of these transactions.  The set of
   announced supported transactions may be different for different
   authenticated agents.  At session establishment, the middlebox
   informs the authenticated agent by capability exchange, which
   transactions the agent is authorized to perform.  Some transactions
   need to be offered to every authenticated agent.


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   Each transaction definition below has a conformance entry which
   contains either 'mandatory' or 'optional'.  A mandatory transaction
   needs to be implemented by every middlebox offering MIDCOM service
   and must be must be offered to each of the authenticated agents.  An
   optional transaction does not necessarily need to be implemented by a
   middlebox.  If an optional transaction is implemented in the
   middlebox, the middlebox may offer these optional transactions only
   to certain authenticated agents.  The middlebox may offer one,
   several, all, or no optional transactions to the agents.  Whether or
   not an agent is allowed to use an optional request transaction is
   determined by the middlebox's authorization procedure which is not
   further specified by this document.

2.2.  Session Control Transactions

   Before any transaction on policy rules or policy rule groups is
   possible, a valid MIDCOM session must be established.  A MIDCOM
   session is an authenticated and authorized association between agent
   and middlebox.  Sessions are initiated by agents and can be
   terminated by either the agent or the middlebox.  Both agent and
   middlebox may participate in several sessions (with different
   entities) at the same time.  For distinguishing different sessions
   each party uses local session identifiers.

   All transactions are transmitted within this MIDCOM session.

   Session control is supported by three transactions:

      - Session Establishment (SE)
      - Session Termination (ST)
      - Asynchronous Session Termination (AST)

   The first two are configuration transactions initiated by the agent,
   the last one is an asynchronous transaction initiated by the
   middlebox.

2.2.1.  Session Establishment (SE)

   transaction-name: session establishment

   transaction-type: configuration

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.




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     - version: the version of the MIDCOM protocol

     - middlebox authentication challenge (mc): an authentication
       challenge token for authentication of the middlebox.  As seen
       below, this is present only in the first iteration of the
       request.

     - agent authentication (aa): an authentication token to
       authenticate the agent to the middlebox.  As seen below, this is
       updated in the second iteration of the request with material
       responding to the middlebox challenge.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier
       request.

     - middlebox authentication (ma): an authentication token to
       authenticate the middlebox to the agent.

     - agent challenge token (ac): an authentication challenge token for
       the agent authentication.

     - middlebox capabilities: a list describing the middlebox's
       capabilities. See Section 2.1.6. for the list of middlebox
       capabilities.

   failure reason:
     - authentication failed
     - no authorization
     - protocol version of agent and middlebox do not match
     - lack of resources

   semantics:

      This session establishment transaction is used to establish a
      MIDCOM session.  For mutual authentication of both parties two
      subsequent session establishment transactions are required as
      shown in Figure 1.













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               agent                                       middlebox
                 | session establishment request               |
                 |  (with middlebox challenge mc)              | CLOSED
                 |-------------------------------------------->|
                 |                                             |
                 | successful reply (with middlebox            |
                 |  authentication ma and agent challenge ac)  |
                 |<--------------------------------------------|
                 |                                             | NOAUTH
                 | session establishment request               |
                 |  (with agent authentication aa)             |
                 |-------------------------------------------->|
                 |                                             |
                 | successful reply                            |
                 |<--------------------------------------------|
                 |                                             | OPEN
                 |                                             |

              Figure 1: Mutual authentication of agent and middlebox

      Session establishment may be simplified by using only a single
      transaction.  In this case server challenge and agent challenge
      are omitted by the sender or ignored by the receiver, and
      authentication must be provided by other means, for example by TLS
      [RFC2246] or IPsec [RFC2402][RFC2406].

      The middlebox checks with its policy decision point if the
      requesting agent is authorized to open a MIDCOM session.  If not a
      negative reply with 'no authorization' as failure reason is
      generated by the middlebox.  If authentication and authorization
      are successful, the session is established and the agent may start
      with requesting transactions on policy rules and policy rule
      groups.

      Part of the successful reply is an indication of the middlebox's
      capabilities.

2.2.2.  Session Termination (ST)

   transaction-name: session termination

   transaction-type: configuration

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.



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   reply-parameters (success only):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

   semantics:

      This transaction is used to close the MIDCOM session on behalf of
      the agent.  After session termination the middlebox keeps all
      established policy rules until their lifetime expires or until an
      event occurs which causes the middlebox to terminate them.

      The middlebox always generates a successful reply.  After sending
      the reply, the middlebox will not send any further messages to the
      agent within the current session.  It also will not process any
      further request within this session, which it has received while
      it was processing the session termination request, or which it
      receives later.

2.2.3.  Asynchronous Session Termination (AST)

   transaction-name: asynchronous session termination

   transaction-type: asynchronous

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   notification message type: Session Termination Notification (STN)

   reply-parameters (success only):

     - termination reason: the reason why the session is terminated.

   semantics:

      The middlebox may decide at any point in time to terminate a
      MIDCOM session.  Before terminating the actual session the
      middlebox generates a STN message and sends it to the agent. After
      sending the notification, the middlebox will not process any
      further request by the agent, even if it is already queued at the
      middlebox.

      After session termination the middlebox keeps all established
      policy rules until their lifetime expires or until an event occurs
      on which the middlebox terminates them.

      Different to other asynchronous transactions, no more than one
      notification is sent, because there is only one agent affected by
      the transaction.



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2.2.4.  Session Termination by Interruption of Connection

   If a MIDCOM session is based on an underlying network connection,
   then the session can also be terminated by an interruption of this
   connection.  If the middlebox detects this, it immediately terminates
   the session.  The effect on established policy rules is the same as
   for the Asynchronous Session Termination.

2.2.5.  Session State Machine

   A state machine illustrating the semantics of the session
   transactions is shown in Figure 2.  The used transaction
   abbreviations can be found in the headings of the particular
   transaction section.

   All sessions start in state CLOSED.  A successful SE transaction can
   cause a state transition to state OPEN, if mutual authentication is
   already provided by other means.  Otherwise, it causes a transition
   to state NOAUTH.  From this state a failed second SE transaction
   returns to state CLOSED.  A successful SE transaction causes a
   transition to state OPEN.  At any time an AST transaction or a
   connection failure may occur causing a transition to state CLOSED.  A
   successful ST transaction from either NOAUTH or OPEN also causes a
   return to CLOSED.  The parameters of the transactions are explained
   in Figure 2, the value mc=0 represents an empty middlebox challenge.

                                     mc = middlebox challenge
                  SE/failure         ma = middlebox authentication
                  +-------+          ac = agent challenge
                  |       v          aa = agent authentication
                 +----------+
                 |  CLOSED  |----------------+
                 +----------+                | SE(mc!=0)/
                    |   ^  ^                 |  success(ma,ac)
           SE(mc=0, |   |  | AST             |
            aa=OK)/ |   |  | SE/failure      v
            success |   |  | ST/success +----------+
                    |   |  +------------|  NOAUTH  |
                    |   |               +----------+
                    |   | AST                | SE(mc=0,
                    v   | ST/success         |  aa=OK)/
                 +----------+                |  success
                 |   OPEN   |<---------------+
                 +----------+

                 Figure 2: Session State Machine






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2.3.  Policy Rule Transactions

   This section describes the semantics for transactions on policy
   rules.  The following transactions are specified:

      - Policy Reserve Rule (PRR)
      - Policy Enable Rule (PER)
      - Policy Rule Lifetime Change (RLC)
      - Policy Rule List (PRL)
      - Policy Rule Status (PRS)
      - Asynchronous Policy Rule Event (ARE)

   The first three transactions (PRR, PER, RLC) are configuration
   transactions initiated by the agent.  The fourth and fifth (PRL, PRS)
   are a monitoring transactions.  And the last one (ARE) is an
   asynchronous transaction.  The PRL and PRS and transactions do not
   have any effect on the policy rule state machine.

   Before any transaction can start, a valid MIDCOM session must be
   established.

2.3.1.  Configuration Transactions

   Policy Rule transactions PER and RLC constitute the core of the
   MIDCOM protocol.  Both are mandatory and they serve for

      - configuring NAT bindings (PER)
      - configuring firewall pinholes (PER)
      - extending the lifetime of established policy rules (RLC)
      - deleting policy rules (RLC)

   In some cases it is required to know in advance which IP address (and
   port number) would be chosen by NAT in a PER transaction.  This
   information is required before sufficient information for performing
   a complete PER transaction is available (see example in Section 4.2).
   For supporting such cases, the core transactions are extended by the
   Policy Reserve Rule (PRR) transaction serving for

      - reserving addresses and port numbers at NATs (PRR)

2.3.2.  Establishing Policy Rules

   Both PRR and PER establish a policy rule.  The action within the rule
   is 'reserve' if set by PRR and 'enable' if set by PER.

   The Policy Reserve Rule (PRR) transaction is used to establish an
   address reservation on neither, one, or both sides of the middlebox,
   depending on the middlebox configuration.  The transaction returns
   the reserved IP addresses and the optional ranges of port numbers to
   the agent.  No address binding or pinhole configuration is performed


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   at the middlebox.  Packet processing at the middlebox remains
   unchanged.

   On pure firewalls, the PRR transaction is successfully processed
   without any reservation, but the state transition of the MIDCOM
   protocol engine is exactly the same as on NATs.

   On a traditional NAT (see [NAT-TRAD]), only an external address is
   reserved; on a twice-NAT, an internal and an external address is
   reserved.  The reservation at a NAT is the reservation of the
   required resources ,like IP addresses and port numbers, for future
   use.  How the reservation is exactly done depends on the
   implementation of the NAT.  In both cases the reservation concerns
   either an IP address only or a combination of an IP address with a
   range of port numbers.

   The Policy Enable Rule (PER) transaction is used to establish a
   policy rule that has an effect on packet processing at the middlebox.
   Depending on its input parameters, it may make use of the reservation
   established by a PRR transaction, or create a new rule from scratch.

   On a NAT, the enable action is interpreted as bind action
   establishing bindings between internal and external addresses.  At a
   firewall, the enable action is interpreted as one or more allow
   actions configuring pinholes. The number of allow actions depends on
   the parameters of the request and the implementation of the firewall.

   On a combined NAT/firewall, the enable action is interpreted as a
   combination of bind and allow actions.

   The PRR transaction and the PER transaction are described in more
   detail in Sections 2.3.8. and 2.3.9. below.

2.3.3.  Maintaining Policy Rules and Policy Rule Groups

   Each policy rule has a middlebox-unique identifier.

   Each policy rule has an owner.  Access control to the policy rule is
   based on ownership (see section 2.1.5).  Ownership of a policy rule
   does not change during lifetime of the policy rule.

   Each policy rule has its individual lifetime.  If the policy rule
   lifetime expires, the policy rule will be terminated at the
   middlebox.  Typically, the middlebox indicates termination of a
   policy rule by an ARE transaction.  A policy rule lifetime change
   (RLC) transaction may extend the lifetime of the policy rule up to
   the limit specified by the middlebox at session setup. Also a RLC
   transaction may be used for shortening a policy rule's lifetime or
   deleting a policy rule by requesting a lifetime of zero.  (Please
   note that policy rule lifetimes may also be modified by the group


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   lifetime change (GLC) transaction).

   Each policy rule is member of exactly one policy rule group. Group
   membership does not change during the lifetime of a policy rule.
   Selecting the group is part of the transaction establishing the
   policy rule.  This transaction implicitly creates a new group if the
   agent does not specify one.  The new group identifier is chosen by
   the middlebox.  New members are added to a group, if the agent's
   request designates an already existing group.  A group only exists as
   long as it has member policy rules.  As soon as all policies
   belonging to the group reach the end of their lifetimes, the group
   does not exist anymore.

   Agents can explore the properties and status of all policy rules they
   are allowed to access by using the Policy Rule Status (PRS)
   transaction.

2.3.4.  Policy Events and Asynchronous Notifications

   If a policy rule changes its state or if a policy rule's remaining
   lifetime is changed in another way than being decreased by time, then
   all agents that can access this policy rule and that participate in
   an open session with the middlebox are notified by the middlebox.  If
   the state or lifetime change was requested explicitly by a request
   message, then the middlebox notifies the agent by returning the
   corresponding reply.  All other agents that can access the policy are
   notified by an Policy Rule Event Notification (REN) message.

   Please note that a middlebox can serve multiple agents at the same
   time in different parallel sessions.  Between these agents, the sets
   of policy rules that can be accessed by them may overlap.  For
   example, there might be an agent that authenticates as administrator
   and can access all policies of all agents.  Or there is a backup
   agent running a session in parallel to a main agent and
   authenticating itself as the same entity as the main agent.

   In case of a PER, PRR, or RLC transaction, the requesting agent
   receives a PER, PRR, or RLC reply, respectively.  To all other agents
   that can access the created, modified, or terminated policy rule (and
   that participate in an open session with the middlebox) the middlebox
   sends a REN message carrying the policy rule identifier (PID) and the
   remaining lifetime of the policy rule.

   In case of a rule termination by lifetime extension or other events
   not triggered by an agent, then the middlebox sends a REN message to
   each agents that can access the particular policy rule and that
   participates in an open session with the middlebox.  This ensures
   that an agent always knows the most recent state of all policy rules
   it can access.



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2.3.5.  Address Tuples

   Request and reply messages of the PRR, PER, and PRS transactions
   contain address specifications for IP and transport addresses.  These
   parameters include

      - IP version
      - IP address
      - IP address prefix length
      - transport protocol
      - port number
      - port parity
      - port range

   Additionally the request message of PER and reply message of PRS
   contains a direction of flow parameter.  This direction of flow
   parameter indicates for UDP and IP the direction of packets
   traversing the middlebox.  For 'inbound' the UDP packets are
   traversing from outside to inside, for 'outbound' the UDP packets are
   traversing from inside to the outside.  In both cases of 'inbound'
   and 'outbound' the packets can traverse the middelbox only uni-
   directional. A bi-directional flow is enabled through 'bi-
   directional' as direction of flow parameter.  In the case of TCP the
   packet flow is always bi-directional, but the direction of flow
   parameter is defined as:

     - inbound: bi-directional TCP packet flow. First packet, with TCP
       SYN flag set and ACK flag not set, must arrive at the middlebox
       at the outside interface.

     - outbound: bi-directional TCP packet flow. First packet, with TCP
       SYN flag set and ACK flag not set, must arrive at the middlebox
       at the inside interface.

     - bi-directional: bi-directional TCP packet flow. First packet,
       with TCP SYN flag set and ACK flag not set, may arrive at inside
       or outside interface.

   We refer to the set of these parameters as an address tuple.  An
   address tuple specifies either a communication endpoint at an
   internal or external device or allocated addresses at the middlebox.
   In this document, we distinguish four kinds of address tuples as
   shown in Figure 3.









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       +----------+                                 +----------+
       | internal | A0    A1 +-----------+ A2    A3 | external |
       | endpoint +----------+ middlebox +----------+ endpoint |
       +----------+          +-----------+          +----------+

                       Figure 3: Address tuples A0 - A3


     - A0 - internal endpoint: address tuple A0 specifies a
       communication endpoint of a device within the - with respect to
       the middlebox - internal network.

     - A1 - middlebox inside address: address tuple A1 specifies a
       virtual communication endpoint at the middlebox within the
       internal network.  A1 is the destination address for packets
       passing from the internal endpoint to the middlebox, and is the
       source for packets passing from the middlebox to the internal
       endpoint.

     - A2 - middlebox outside address: address tuple A2 specifies a
       virtual communication endpoint at the middlebox within the
       external network.  A2 is the destination address for packets
       passing from the external endpoint to the middlebox, and is the
       source for packets passing from the middlebox to the external
       endpoint.

     - A3 - external endpoint: address tuple A3 specifies a
       communication endpoint of a devices within the - with respect to
       the middlebox - external network.

   For a firewall, the inside and outside endpoints are identical to the
   corresponding external or internal endpoints, respectively. In this
   case the installed policy rule sets the same value in A2 as in A0
   (A0=A2), and sets the same value in A1 as in A3 (A1=A3).

   For a traditional NAT, A2 is given a value different from that of A0,
   but the NAT binds them. As for the firewall, so at a traditional NAT:
   A1 has the same value as A3.

   For a twice-NAT there are two bindings of address tuples: A1 and A2
   are both assigned values by the NAT.  The middlebox outside address
   A2 is bound to the internal endpoint A0 and the middlebox inside
   address A1 is bound to the external endpoint A3.

2.3.6.  Address Parameter Constraints

   For transaction parameters belonging to an address tuple some
   constraints exist which are common for all messages using them.
   Therefore, these constraints are summarized in the following and not
   repeated again when describing the parameters in the transaction


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   descriptions.

   The MIDCOM semantics defined in this document specifies the handling
   of IPv4 and IPv6 as network protocols, and of TCP and UDP (over IPv4
   and IPv6) as transport protocols.  The handling of any other
   transport protocol, e.g. SCTP, is not defined within the semantics
   but may be supported by concrete protocol specifications.

   The IP version parameter has either the value 'IPv4' or 'IPv6'.  In a
   policy rule, the value of the IP version parameter must be the same
   for address tuples A0 and A1, and it must be the same for A2 and A3.

   The value of the IP address parameter must conform with the specified
   IP version.

   The IP address of an address tuple may be wildcarded.  Whether IP
   address wildcarding is allowed or in which range it is allowed
   depends on the local policy of the middlebox, see also section 6
   "Security Considerations".  Wildcarding is specified by the IP
   address prefix length parameter of an address tuple.  In line with
   the common use of a prefix length, this parameter indicates the
   number of high significant bits of the IP address that are fixed,
   while the remaining low significant bits of the IP address are
   wildcarded.

   The value of the transport protocol parameter can be either 'TCP',
   'UDP', or 'ANY'.  If the transport protocol parameter has the value
   'ANY', only IP headers are considered for packet handling in the
   middlebox, i.e. the transport header is not considered.  The values
   of the parameters port number, port range and port parity are
   irrelevant if the protocol parameter is 'ANY'.  In a policy rule the
   value of the transport protocol parameter must be the same for all
   address tuples A0, A1, A2, and A3.

   The value of the port number parameter is either zero or a positive
   integer.  A positive integer specifies a concrete UDP or TCP port
   number.  The value zero specifies port wildcarding for the protocol
   specified by the transport protocol parameter.  If the port number
   parameter has the value zero, then the value of the port range
   parameter is irrelevant.  Depending on the value of the transport
   protocol parameter, this parameter may truly refer to ports, or may
   refer to an equivalent concept.

   The port parity parameter is differently used in the context of
   policy reserve rules (PRR) and policy enable rules (PER).  In the
   context of a PRR, the value of the parameter may be 'odd', 'even', or
   'any'.  It specifies the parity of the first (lowest) reserved port
   number.

   In the context of a PER, the port parity parameter indicates to the


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   middlebox, whether or not port numbers allocated at the middlebox
   should have the same parity as the corresponding internal or external
   port numbers, respectively.  In this context, the parameter has
   either the value 'same' or 'any'.  If it has the value 'same', then
   the parity of the port number of A0 must be the same as the parity of
   the port number of A2, and the parity of the port number of A1 must
   be the same as the parity of the port number of A3.  If the port
   parity parameter has the value 'any', then there are no constraints
   on the parity of any port number.

   The port range parameter specifies a number of consecutive port
   numbers.  Its value is a positive integer.  Together with the port
   number parameter this parameter defines a set of consecutive port
   numbers starting with the port number specified by the port number
   parameter as the lowest port number and having as many elements as
   specified by the port range parameter.  A value of one specifies just
   a single port number.  The port range parameter must have the same
   value for each address tuple A0, A1, A2, and A3.

   A single policy rule P containing a port range value greater than one
   is equivalent to a set of policy rules containing a number n of
   policies P_1, P_2, ..., P_n that equals the value of the port range
   parameter.  All policy rules P_1, P_2, ..., P_n have a port range
   parameter value of one.  Policy rule P_1 contains a set of address
   tuples A0_1, A1_1, A2_1, and A3_1, that each contain the first port
   number of the respective address tuples in P; policy rule P_2
   contains a set of address tuples A0_2, A1_2, A2_2, and A3_2, that
   each contain the second port number of the respective address tuples
   in P; and so on.

2.3.7.  Interface specific Policy Rules

   Usually agents do request policy rules with the knowledge of A0 and
   A3 only, i.e. the address tuples (see Section 2.3.5).  But in very
   special cases, agents may need to select the interfaces to which the
   requested policy rule is bound.  In the general case the middlebox
   takes care about choosing the right interfaces when reserving or
   enabling a policy rule, since it has the overall knowledge about its
   configuration.  For agents that want to select the interfaces,
   optional parameters are include in the Policy Reserve Rule (PRR) and
   Policy Enable Rule (PER) transactions.  These parameter are called

     - inside interface - the selected interface at the inside of the
       middlebox, i.e. in the private or protected address realm.

     - outside interface - the selected interface at the outside of the
       middlebox, i.e. in the public address realm.

   The Policy Rule Status (PRS) transactions include these optional
   parameters in its replies when they are supported.


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   Agents can learn at session startup whether interface specific policy
   rules are supported by the middlebox or not, by checking the
   middlebox capabilities (see Section 2.1.6).

2.3.8.  Policy Reserve Rule (PRR)

   transaction-name: policy reserve rule

   transaction-type: configuration

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group of which the policy
       reserve rule should be a member.  As indicated in Section 2.3.3.,
       if this value is not supplied, the middlebox assigns a new group
       for this policy reserve rule.

     - service: the requested NAT service of the middlebox. Allowed
       values are 'traditional' or 'twice'.

     - internal IP version: requested IP version at the inside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.5.

     - internal IP address: the IP address of the internal communication
       endpoint (A0 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - internal port number: the port number of the internal
       communication endpoint (A0 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - inside interface (optional): interface at the inside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.7.

     - external IP version: requested IP version at the outside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.5.

     - outside interface (optional): interface at the outside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.7.

     - transport protocol: see section 2.3.5.

     - port range: the number of consecutive port numbers to be
       reserved, see Section 2.3.5.

     - port parity: the requested parity of the first (lowest) port
       number to be reserved, Allowed values of this parameter are


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       'odd', 'even', and 'any'.  See also Section 2.3.5.

     - policy rule lifetime: a lifetime proposal to the middlebox for
       the requested policy rule.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

     - policy rule identifier: a middlebox-unique policy rule
       identifier.  It is assigned by the middlebox and used as policy
       rule handle in further policy rule transactions, particularly to
       refer to the policy reserve rule in a subsequent PER transaction.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group of which the policy
       reserve rule is a member.

     - reserved inside IP address: The reserved IPv4 or IPv6 address on
       the internal side of the middlebox.  For an outbound flow, this
       will be the destination to which the internal endpoint sends its
       packets (A1 in Figure 3).  For an inbound flow, this will be the
       apparent source address of the packets as forwarded to the
       internal endpoint (A0 in Figure 3).  The middlebox reserves and
       reports an internal address only in the case where twice-NAT is
       in effect.  Otherwise, an empty value for the addresses indicates
       that no internal reservation was made.  See also Section 2.3.5.

     - reserved inside port number: see section 2.3.5.

     - reserved outside IP address: The reserved IPv4 or IPv6 address on
       the external side of the middlebox.  For an inbound flow, this
       will be the destination to which the external endpoint sends its
       packets (A2 in Figure 4).  For an outbound flow, this will be the
       apparent source address of the packets as forwarded to the
       external endpoint (A3 in Figure 3).  If the middlebox is
       configured as a pure firewall, an empty value for the addresses
       indicates that no external reservation was made.  See also
       Section 2.3.5.

     - reserved outside port number: see section 2.3.5.

     - policy rule lifetime: the policy rule lifetime granted by the
       middlebox, after which the reservation will be revoked if it has
       not been replaced already by a policy enable rule in a PER
       transaction.

   failure reason:
     - agent not authorized for this transaction
     - agent not authorized for adding members to this group


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     - lack of IP addresses
     - lack of port numbers
     - lack of resources
     - specified inside/outside interface does not exist
     - specified inside/outside interface not available for specified
       service

   notification message type: Policy Rule Event Notification (REN)

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to reserve an IP address
      or a combination of IP address, transport type, port number and
      port range at neither, one, or both sides of the middlebox as
      required to support the enabling of a flow.  Typically the PRR
      will be used in scenarios where it is required to perform such a
      reservation before sufficient parameters for a complete policy
      enable rule transaction are available.  See section 4.2 for an
      example.

      When receiving the request, the middlebox determines how many
      address (and port) reservations are required based on its
      configuration.  If it provides only packet filter services, it
      does not perform any reservation and just returns empty values for
      the reserved inside and outside IP addresses and port numbers. If
      it is configured for twice-NAT, it reserves both inside and
      outside IP addresses (and an optional range of port numbers) and
      returns them. Otherwise, it reserves and returns an outside IP
      address (and an optional range of port numbers) and returns empty
      values for the reserved inside address and port range.  The A0
      parameter (inside IP address version, inside IP address, and
      inside port number) can be used by the middlebox to determine the
      correct NAT mapping and thus A2 if necessary.

      Once a PRR transaction has reserved an outside address (A2) for an
      internal end point (A0) at the middlebox, the middlebox must
      ensure that this reserved A2 is available in any subsequent PER
      and PRR transaction.

      For middleboxes supporting interface specific policy rules, as
      defined in Section 2.3.7., the optional inside and outside
      interface parameters must be included both in the request or none
      of them.  In the presence of these parameters the middlebox uses
      the outside interface parameter to select the interface at which
      the outside address tuple (outside IP address and port number) is
      reserved, and the inside interface parameter to select the
      interface at which the inside address tuple (inside IP address and
      port number) is reserved.  Without the presence of these
      parameters, the middlebox selects the particular interfaces based
      on its internal configuration.


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      If there is a lack of resources, such as available IP addresses,
      port numbers, or storage for further policy rules, then the
      reservation fails and an appropriate failure reply is generated.

      If a non-existing policy rule group was specified, or if an
      existing policy rule group was specified that is not owned by the
      requesting agent, then no new policy rule is established and an
      appropriate failure reply is generated.

      In case of success, this transaction creates a new policy reserve
      rule.  If an already existing policy rule group is specified, then
      the new policy rule becomes a member of it. If no policy group is
      specified a new group is created with the new policy rule as its
      only member.  The middlebox generates a middlebox-unique
      identifier for the new policy rule.  The owner of the new policy
      rule is the authenticated agent that sent the request.  The
      middlebox chooses a lifetime value that is greater than zero and
      less than or equal to the minimum of the requested value and the
      maximum lifetime specified by the middlebox at session startup,
      i.e.:

              0 <= lt_granted <= MINIMUM(lt_requested, lt_maximum)

      whereas:
          - lt_granted is the actually granted lifetime by the middlebox
          - lt_requested is the requested lifetime of the agent
          - lt_maximum is the maximum lifetime specified at session
          setup

      The middlebox always reserves a middlebox external address tuple
      (A2) due to a PRR request. In a special case of a combined twice-
      NAT/NAT middlebox the agent can request only NAT service or twice-
      NAT service by choosing the service parameter 'traditional' or
      'twice' respectively.  An agent that does not have any preference
      chooses 'twice'.  The 'traditional' value should only be used in
      order to select traditional NAT service at middleboxes offering
      both traditional NAT and twice NAT.  In the 'twice' case the
      combined twice-NAT/NAT middlebox reserves A2 and A1, the
      'traditional' case results in a reservation of A2 only. An agent
      must always use the PRR transaction for choosing NAT only or
      twice-NAT service in the special case of a combined twice-NAT/NAT
      middlebox.  A firewall middlebox ignores this parameter.

      If the protocol identifier is 'ANY', then the middlebox reserves
      available inside and/or outside IP address(es) only.  The reserved
      address(es) are returned to the agent.  In this case the request-
      parameters port range and port parity as well as reply-parameters
      inside port number and outside port number are irrelevant.

      If the protocol identifier is 'UDP' or 'TCP', then a combination


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      of an IP address and a consecutive sequence of port numbers,
      starting with the specified parity, is reserved, on neither, one,
      or both sides of the middlebox as appropriate.  The IP address(es)
      and the first (lowest) reserved port number(s) of the consecutive
      sequence are returned to the agent. (This also applies to other
      protocols supporting ports or the equivalent.)

      After a new policy reserve rule was successfully established and
      the reply message has been sent to the requesting agent, the
      middlebox checks if there are other authenticated agents
      participating in open sessions, which can access the new policy
      rule.  If the middlebox finds one or more of these agents, then it
      sends a REN message reporting the new policy rule to each of them.


   MIDCOM agents use the policy enable rule (PER) transaction to enable
   policy reserve rules that have been established beforehand by a
   policy reserve rule (PRR) transaction.  See also Section 2.3.2.

2.3.9.  Policy Enable Rule (PER)

   transaction-name: policy enable rule

   transaction-type: configuration

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

     - policy reserve rule identifier: a reference to an already
       existing policy reserve rule created by a PRR transaction.  The
       reference may be empty, in which case the middlebox must assign
       any necessary addresses and port numbers within this PER
       transaction.  If it is not empty, then the following request
       parameters are irrelevant: group identifier, transport protocol,
       port range, port parity, internal IP version, external IP
       version.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group of which the policy
       enable rule should be a member.  As indicated in Section 2.3.3.,
       if this value is not supplied, the middlebox assigns a new group
       for this policy reserve rule.

     - transport protocol: see section 2.3.5.

     - port range: the number of consecutive port numbers to be
       reserved, see Section 2.3.5.


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     - port parity: the requested parity of the port number(s) to be
       mapped.  Allowed values of this parameter are 'same' and 'any'.
       See also Section 2.3.5.

     - direction of flow: this parameter specifies the direction of
       enabled communication, either 'inbound', 'outbound', or 'bi-
       directional'.

     - internal IP version: requested IP version at the inside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.5.

     - internal IP address: the IP address of the internal communication
       endpoint (A0 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - internal port number: the port number of the internal
       communication endpoint (A0 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - inside interface (optional): interface at the inside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.7.

     - external IP version: requested IP version at the outside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.5.

     - external IP address: the IP address of the external communication
       endpoint (A3 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - external port number: the port number of the external
       communication endpoint (A3 in Fig. 4), see Section 2.3.5.

     - outside interface (optional): interface at the outside of the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.7.

     - policy rule lifetime: a lifetime proposal to the middlebox for
       the requested policy rule.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

     - policy rule identifier: a middlebox-unique policy rule
       identifier.  It is assigned by the middlebox and used as policy
       rule handle in further policy rule transactions.  If a policy
       reserve rule identifier was provided in the request, then the
       returned policy rule identifier has the same value.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group of which the policy
       enable rule is a member.  If a policy reserve rule identifier was
       provided in the request, then this parameter identifies the
       group, of which the policy reserve rule was a member.


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     - inside IP address: the IP address provided at the inside of the
       middlebox (A1 in Fig. 3).  In case of a twice-NAT, this parameter
       will be an internal IP address reserved at the inside of the
       middlebox.  In all other cases, this reply-parameter will be
       identical with the external IP address passed with the request.
       If the policy reserve rule identifier parameter was supplied in
       the request and if the respective PRR transaction reserved an
       inside IP address, then the inside IP address provided in the PER
       response will be the identical value to that returned by the
       response to the PRR request.  See also Section 2.3.5.

     - inside port number: the internal port number provided at the
       inside of the middlebox (A1 in Fig. 3),  see also Section 2.3.5.

     - outside IP address: the external IP address provided at the
       outside of the middlebox (A2 in Fig. 4).  In case of a pure
       firewall, this parameter will be identical with the internal IP
       address passed with the request.  In all other cases, this reply-
       parameter will be an external IP address reserved at the outside
       of the middlebox. See also Section 2.3.5.

     - outside port number: the external port number provided at the
       outside of the NAT (A2 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5..

     - policy rule lifetime: the policy rule lifetime granted by the
       middlebox.

   failure reason:
     - agent not authorized for this transaction
     - agent not authorized for adding members to this group
     - no such policy reserve rule
     - agent not authorized for replacing this policy reserve rule
     - conflict with already existing policy rule (e.g. the same
            internal address-port is being mapped to different outside
            address-port pairs)
     - lack of IP addresses
     - lack of port numbers
     - lack of resources
     - no internal IP wildcarding allowed
     - no external IP wildcarding allowed
     - specified inside/outside interface does not exist
     - specified inside/outside interface not available for specified
       service
     - reserved A0 to requested A0 mismatch

   notification message type: Policy Rule Event Notification (REN)

   semantics:

      This transaction can be used by an agent for enabling


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      communication between an internal endpoint and an external
      endpoint independently of the type of middlebox (NAT, NAPT,
      firewall, NAT-PT, combined devices, ... ), for unidirectional or
      bi-directional traffic.

      The agent sends an enable request specifying the endpoints
      (optionally including wildcards) and the direction of
      communication (inbound, outbound, bi-directional).  The
      communication endpoints are displayed in Figure 3.  The basic
      operation of the PER transaction can be described by

         1. the agent sending A0 and A3 to the middlebox,

         2. the middlebox reserving A1 and A2 or using A1 and A2 from a
            previous PRR transaction

         3. the middlebox enabling packet transfer between A0 and A3 by
            binding A0-A2 and A1-A3 and/or by opening the corresponding
            pinholes, both according to the specified direction,

         4. the middlebox returning A1 and A2 to the agent.

      In case of a pure packet filtering firewall, the returned address
      tuples are the same as the ones in the request: A2=A0 and A1=A3.
      Each partner uses the other one's real address.  In case of a
      traditional NAT the internal endpoint may use the real address of
      the external endpoint (A1=A3), but the external endpoint uses an
      address tuple provided by the NAT (A2!=A0).  In case of a twice-
      NAT device, both endpoints use address tuples provided by the NAT
      for addressing their communication partner (A3!=A1 and A2!=A0).

      If a firewall is combined with a NAT or a twice-NAT, the replied
      address tuples will be the same as for pure traditional NAT or
      twice-NAT, respectively, but the middlebox will configure its
      packet filter in addition to the performed NAT bindings.  In case
      of a firewall combined with a traditional NAT, the policy rule may
      imply more than one enable action for the firewall configuration,
      because incoming and outgoing packets may use different source-
      destination pairs.

      For middleboxes supporting interface specific policy rules, as
      defined in Section 2.3.7., the optional inside and outside
      interface parameters must be included both in the request or none
      of them.  In the presence of these parameters the middlebox uses
      the outside interface parameter to select the interface at which
      the outside address tuple (outside IP address and port number) is
      bound, and the inside interface parameter to select the interface
      at which the inside address tuple (inside IP address and port
      number) is bound.  Without the presence of these parameters, the
      middlebox selects the particular interfaces based on its internal


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      configuration.

      Checking the policy reservation rule identifier

         If the parameter specifying the policy reservation rule
         identifier is not empty, then the middlebox checks whether or
         not the referenced policy rule exists, whether or not the agent
         is authorized to replace this policy rule, and whether or not
         this policy rule is a policy reserve rule.

         In case of success, this transaction creates a new policy
         enable rule.  If a policy reserve rule was referenced, then the
         policy reserve rule is terminated without an explicit
         notification sent to the agent (besides the successful PER
         reply).

         The PRR transaction sets the internal endpoint A0 during the
         reservation process.  In the process of creating a new policy
         enable rule, the middlebox may check whether the requested A0
         is equal to the reserved A0.  The middlebox may reject a PER
         request with a requested A0 not equal to the reserved A0 and
         must sent an appropriate failure message.  The middlebox may
         change A0 due to the PER request.

         The middlebox generates a middlebox-unique identifier for the
         new policy rule.  If a policy reserve rule was referenced, then
         the identifier of the policy reserve rule is re-used.

         The owner of the new policy rule is the authenticated agent
         that sent the request.

      Checking the policy rule group identifier

         If no policy reserve rule was specified, then the policy rule
         group parameter is checked. If a non-existing policy rule group
         is specified, or if an existing policy rule group is specified
         that is not owned by the requesting agent, then no new policy
         rule is established and an appropriate failure reply is
         generated.

         If an already existing policy rule group is specified, then the
         new policy rule becomes a member of it.  If no policy group is
         specified, then a new group is created with the new policy rule
         as its only member.

      If the transport protocol parameter value is 'any', then the
      middlebox enables communication between the specified external IP
      address and the specified internal IP address.  The addresses to
      be used by the communication partners in order to address each
      other are returned to the agent as inside IP address and outside


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      IP address.  If the reservation identifier is not empty and if the
      reservation used the same transport protocol type, then the
      reserved IP addresses are used.

      For the transport protocol parameter values 'UDP' and 'TCP' the
      middlebox acts analogously to 'ANY' but additionally maps ranges
      of port numbers, keeping the port parity if requested.

      The configuration of the middlebox may fail because of lack of
      resources, such as available IP addresses, port numbers, or
      storage for further policy rules.  Also it may fail because of a
      conflict with an already established policy rule.  In case of a
      conflict,  the first come first serve mechanism is applied.
      Already existing policy rules remain unchanged and arriving new
      ones are rejected.  However, in case of a non-conflicting overlap
      of policy rules (including identical policy rules), all policy
      rules are accepted.

      The middlebox chooses a lifetime value that is greater than zero
      and less than or equal to the minimum of the requested value and
      the maximum lifetime specified by the middlebox at session
      startup, i.e.:

              0 <= lt_granted <= MINIMUM(lt_requested, lt_maximum)

      whereas:
          - lt_granted is the actually granted lifetime by the middlebox
          - lt_requested is the requested lifetime of the agent
          - lt_maximum is the maximum lifetime specified at session
          setup

      In each case of failure, an appropriate failure reply is
      generated.  The policy reserve rule that is referenced in the PER
      transaction is not affected in case of a failure within the PER
      transaction, i.e.  the policy reserve rule remains.

      After a new policy enable rule was successfully established and
      the reply message has been sent to the requesting agent, the
      middlebox checks if there are other authenticated agents
      participating in open sessions, which can access the new policy
      rule.  If the middlebox finds one or more of these agents, then it
      sends a REN message reporting the new policy rule to each of them.

2.3.10.  Policy Rule Lifetime Change (RLC)

   transaction-name: policy rule lifetime change

   transaction-type: configuration

   transaction-compliance: mandatory


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   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

     - policy rule identifier: identifying the policy rule for which the
       lifetime is requested to be changed.  This may identify either a
       policy reserve rule or a policy enable rule.

     - policy rule lifetime: the new lifetime proposal for the policy
       rule.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

     - policy rule lifetime: The remaining policy rule lifetime granted
       by the middlebox.

   failure reason:
     - agent not authorized for this transaction
     - agent not authorized for changing lifetime of this policy
            rule
     - no such policy rule
     - lifetime cannot be extended

   notification message type: Policy Rule Event Notification (REN)

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to request the extension
      of an already established policy rule's lifetime, to request
      shortening of the life time, or to request policy rule
      termination.  Policy rule termination is requested by suggesting a
      new policy rule lifetime of zero.

      The middlebox first checks whether or not the specified policy
      rule exists and whether or not the agent is authorized to access
      this policy rule.  If one of the checks fails, an appropriate
      failure reply is generated.  If the requested lifetime is longer
      than the current one, the middlebox also checks, whether or not
      the lifetime of the policy rule may be extended and generates an
      appropriate failure message if not.

      A failure reply implies that the new lifetime was not accepted,
      and the policy rule remains unchanged.  A success reply is
      generated by the middlebox, if the lifetime of the policy rule was
      changed in any way.



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      The success reply contains the new lifetime of the policy rule.
      The middlebox chooses a lifetime value that is greater than zero
      and less than or equal to the minimum of the requested value and
      the maximum lifetime specified by the middlebox at session
      startup, i.e.:

              0 <= lt_granted <= MINIMUM(lt_requested, lt_maximum)

      whereas:
          - lt_granted is the actually granted lifetime by the middlebox
          - lt_requested is the requested lifetime of the agent
          - lt_maximum is the maximum lifetime specified at session
          setup

      After sending a success reply with a lifetime of zero, the
      middlebox will consider the policy rule to be non-existent.  Any
      further transaction on this policy rule results in a negative
      reply, indicating that this policy rule does not exist anymore.

      Please note, that policy rule lifetime may also be changed by the
      Group Lifetime Change (GLC) transaction if applied to the group of
      which the policy rule is a member.

      After the remaining policy rule lifetime was successfully changed
      and the reply message has been sent to the requesting agent, the
      middlebox checks if there are other authenticated agents
      participating in open sessions, which can access the policy rule.
      If the middlebox finds one or more of these agents, then it sends
      a REN message reporting the new remaining policy rule lifetime to
      each of them.

2.3.11.  Policy Rule List (PRL)

   transaction-name: policy rule list

   transaction-type: monitoring

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.




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     - policy list: list of policy rule identifiers of all policy rules
       that the agent can access.

   failure reason:
     - transaction not supported
     - agent not authorized for this transaction

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to list all policies which
      it can access.  Usually, the agent has this information already,
      but in special cases (for example after an agent fail-over) or for
      special agents (for example an administrating agent that can
      access all policies) this transaction can be helpful.

      The middlebox first checks whether or not the agent is authorized
      to request this transaction.  If the check fails, an appropriate
      failure reply is generated.  Otherwise a list of all policies the
      agent can access is returned indicating the identifier and the
      owner of each policy.

      This transaction does not have any effect on the policy rule
      state.

2.3.12.  Policy Rule Status (PRS)

   transaction-name: policy rule status

   transaction-type: monitoring

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

     - policy rule identifier: the middlebox-unique policy rule
       identifier.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

     - policy rule owner: an identifier of the agent owning this policy
       rule.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group of which the policy
       rule is a member.


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     - policy rule action: this parameter has either the value 'reserve'
       or the value 'enable'.

     - transport protocol: identifies the protocol for which a
       reservation is requested, see Section 2.3.5.

     - port range: the number of consecutive port numbers, see Section
       2.3.5.

     - direction: the direction of the communication enabled by the
       middlebox.  Applicable only to policy enable rules.

     - internal IP address version: the version of the internal IP
       address (IP version of A0 in Fig. 3)

     - external IP address version: the version of the external IP
       address (IP version of A3 in Fig. 3)

     - internal IP address: the IP address of the internal communication
       endpoint (A0 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - internal port number: the port number of the internal
       communication endpoint (A0 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - external IP address: the IP address of the external communication
       endpoint (A3 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - external port number: the port number of the external
       communication endpoint (A3 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - inside interface (optional): the inside interface at the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.7.

     - inside IP address: the internal IP address provided at the inside
       of the NAT (A1 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - inside port number: the internal port number provided at the
       inside of the NAT (A1 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - outside interface (optional): the outside interface at the
       middlebox, see Section 2.3.7.

     - outside IP address: the external IP address provided at the
       outside of the NAT (A2 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - outside port number: the external port number provided at the
       outside of the NAT (A2 in Fig. 3), see Section 2.3.5.

     - port parity: The parity of the allocated ports.



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     - service: The selected service in the case of mixed traditional
       and twice-NAT middlebox(see section 2.3.8.)

     - policy rule lifetime: the remaining lifetime of the policy rule.

   failure reason:
     - transaction not supported
     - agent not authorized for this transaction
     - no such policy rule
     - agent not authorized for accessing this policy rule

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to list all properties of
      a policy rule.  Usually, the agent has this information already,
      but in special cases (for example after an agent fail-over) or for
      special agents (for example an administrating agent that can
      access all policy rules) this transaction can be helpful.

      The middlebox first checks whether or not the specified policy
      rule exists and whether or not the agent is authorized to access
      this group.  If one of the checks fails, an appropriate failure
      reply is generated.  Otherwise all properties of the policy rule
      are returned to the agent.  Some of the returned parameters may be
      irrelevant, depending on the policy rule action ('reserve' or
      'enable') and depending on other parameters, for example the
      protocol identifier.

      This transaction does not have any effect on the policy rule
      state.

2.3.13.  Asynchronous Policy Rule Event (ARE)

   transaction-name: asynchronous policy rule event

   transaction-type: notification

   transaction-compliance: mandatory

   notification message type: Policy Rule Event Notification (REN)

   semantics:

      The middlebox may decide at any point in time to terminate a
      policy rule.  Particularly, this transaction is triggered by
      lifetime expiration of the policy rule.  Among other events that
      may cause this transaction are changes in the policy rule decision
      point.

      The middlebox sends a REN message to all agents that participate


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      in an open session with the middlebox and that are authorized to
      access the policy rule.  The notification is sent to the agents
      before the middlebox changes the policy rule's lifetime.  The
      change of lifetime may be triggered by any other authorized agent
      and results in shortening (lt_new < lt_existing), extending
      (lt_new > lt_existing), or in terminating the policy rule (lt_new
      = 0).


   The ARE transaction corresponds to the REN message handling described
   in Section 2.3.4. for multiple agents.

2.3.14.  Policy Rule State Machine

   The state machine for the policy rule transactions is shown in Figure
   4 with all possible state transitions.  You'll find the used
   transaction abbreviations in the headings of the particular
   transaction section.

                        PRR/success   +---------------+
                    +-----------------+  PRID UNUSED  |<-+
          +----+    |                 +---------------+  |
          |    |    |                   ^   |            |
          |    v    v                   |   |            |
          |  +-------------+    ARE     |   | PER/       | ARE
          |  |   RESERVED  +------------+   | success    | RLC(lt=0)/
          |  +-+----+------+  RLC(lt=0)/    |            |  success
          |    |    |          success      |            |
          +----+    |                       v            |
        RLC(lt>0)/  | PER/success     +---------------+  |
         success    +---------------->|    ENABLED    +--+
                                      +-+-------------+
                                        |           ^
            lt = lifetime               +-----------+
                                      RLC(lt>0)/success

                  Figure 4: Policy Rule State Machine

   This state machine exists per policy rule identifier (PRID).
   Initially, all policy rules are in state PRID UNUSED, which means
   that the policy rule does not exist or is not active.  After
   returning to state PRID UNUSED, the policy rule identifier is no
   longer bound to an existing policy rule and may be re-used by the
   middlebox.

   A successful PRR transaction causes a transition from the initial
   state PRID UNUSED to state RESERVED, where an address reservation is
   established.  From there, state ENABLED can be entered by a PER
   transaction.  This transaction can also be used for entering state
   ENABLED directly from state PRID UNUSED without a reservation.  In


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   state ENABLED the requested communication between the internal and
   the external endpoint is enabled.

   The states RESERVED and ENABLED can be maintained by a successful RLC
   transactions with a requested lifetime greater than 0.  Transitions
   from both of these states back to state PRID UNUSED can be caused by
   an ARE transaction or by a successful RLC transaction with a lifetime
   parameter of 0.

   A failed request transactions does not change state at the middlebox.

   Please note, transitions initiated by RLC transactions may also be
   initiated by GLC transactions.

2.4.  Policy Rule Group Transactions

   This section describes the semantics for transactions on groups of
   policy rules.  These transactions are specified:

      - Group Lifetime Change (GLC)
      - Group List (GL)
      - Group Status (GS)

   All are request transactions initiated by the agent.  GLC is a
   convenience transaction.  GL and GS are monitoring transactions that
   do not have any effect on the group state machine.

2.4.1.  Overview

   A policy rule group has only one attribute: the list of its members.
   All member policies of a single group must be owned by the same
   authenticated agent.  Therefore, an implicit property of a group is
   its owner, which is the owner of the member policy rules.

   A group is created implicitly, when its first member policy rule is
   established. A group is terminated implicitly, when the last
   remaining member policy rule is terminated.  Consequently, the
   lifetime of a group is the maximum of the lifetimes of all member
   policy rules.

   A group has a middlebox-unique identifier.

   Group transactions are declared as 'optional' by their respective
   compliance entry in Section 3.  However, they provide some
   functionality, like convenience for the agent in sending only one
   request instead of several, that is not available if only mandatory
   transactions are available.

   The Group Lifetime Change (GLC) transaction is equivalent to
   simultaneously performed Policy Rule Lifetime Change (RLC)


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   transactions on all members of the group.  The result of a successful
   GLC transaction is that all member policy rules have the same
   lifetime.  Analogously to the RLC transaction, the GLC transaction
   can be use for deleting all member policy rules by requesting a
   lifetime of zero.

   The monitoring transactions Group List (GL) and Group Status (GS) can
   be used by the agent for exploring the state of the middlebox and for
   exploring its access rights.  The GL transaction lists all groups
   that the agent may access, including groups owned by other agents.
   The GS transaction reports the status on an individual group and it
   lists all policy rules of this group by their policy rule
   identifiers.  The agent can explore the state of the individual
   policy rules by using the policy rule identifiers in a policy rule
   status (PRS) transaction (see Section 2.3.12).

   The GL and GS transactions are particularly helpful in case of an
   agent fail-over.  The agent taking over the role of a failed one can
   use these transactions for retrieving which policies has been
   established by the failed agent.

   Notifications on group events are generated analogously to policy
   rule events.  For notifying agents about group events, the Policy
   Rule Group Event Notification (GEN) message type is used.  GEN
   messages contain an agent-unique notification identifier, the policy
   rule group identifier and the remaining lifetime of the group.

2.4.2.  Group Lifetime Change (GLC)

   transaction-name: group lifetime change

   transaction-type: convenience

   transaction-compliance: optional

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group for which the lifetime
       is requested to be changed.

     - group lifetime: the new lifetime proposal for the group.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.



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     - group lifetime: The group lifetime granted by the middlebox.

   failure reason:
     - transaction not supported
     - agent not authorized for this transaction
     - agent not authorized for changing lifetime of this group
     - no such group
     - lifetime cannot be extended

   notification message type: Policy Rule Group Event Notification (GEN)

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to request an extension of
      the lifetime of all members of a policy rule group, to request
      shortening the lifetime of all members, or to request termination
      of all member policies (which implies termination of the group).
      Termination is requested by suggesting a new group lifetime of
      zero.

      The middlebox first checks whether or not the specified group
      exists and whether or not the agent is authorized to access this
      group.  If one of the checks fails, an appropriate failure reply
      is generated.  If the requested lifetime is longer than the
      current one, the middlebox also checks whether or not the lifetime
      of the group may be extended and generates an appropriate failure
      message if not.

      A failure reply implies that the lifetime of the group remains
      unchanged.  A success reply is generated by the middlebox if the
      lifetime of the group was changed in any way.

      The success reply contains the new common lifetime of all member
      policy rules of the group.  The middlebox chooses the new lifetime
      less than or equal to the minimum of the requested lifetime and
      the maximum lifetime that the middlebox specified at session setup
      together with its other capabilities, i.e.:

              0 <= lt_granted <= MINIMUM(lt_requested, lt_maximum)

      whereas:
          - lt_granted is the actually granted lifetime by the middlebox
          - lt_requested is the requested lifetime of the agent
          - lt_maximum is the maximum lifetime specified at session
          setup

      After sending a success reply with a lifetime of zero, the member
      policy rules will be terminated without any further notification
      to the agent, and the middlebox will consider the group and all of
      its members to be non-existent.  Any further transaction on this


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      policy rule group or on any of its members results in a negative
      reply, indicating that this group or policy rule, respectively,
      does not exist anymore.

      After the remaining policy rule group lifetime was successfully
      changed and the reply message has been sent to the requesting
      agent, the middlebox checks if there are other authenticated
      agents participating in open sessions, which can access the policy
      rule group.  If the middlebox finds one or more of these agents,
      then it sends a GEN message reporting the new remaining policy
      rule group lifetime to each of them.

2.4.3.  Group List (GL)

   transaction-name: group list

   transaction-type: monitoring

   transaction-compliance: optional

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

     - group list: list of all groups that the agent can access. For
       each listed group the identifier and the owner are indicated.

   failure reason:
     - transaction not supported
     - agent not authorized for this transaction

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to list all groups which
      it can access.  Usually, the agent has this information already,
      but in special cases (for example after an agent fail-over) or for
      special agents (for example an administrating agent that can
      access all groups) this transaction can be helpful.

      The middlebox first checks whether or not the agent is authorized
      to request this transaction.  If the check fails, an appropriate
      failure reply is generated.  Otherwise a list of all groups the
      agent can access is returned indicating the identifier and the
      owner of each group.


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      This transaction does not have any effect on the group state.

2.4.4.  Group Status (GS)

   transaction-name: group status

   transaction-type: monitoring

   transaction-compliance: optional

   request-parameters:

     - request identifier: an agent-unique identifier for matching
       corresponding request and reply at the agent.

     - group identifier: a reference to the group for which status
       information is requested.

   reply-parameters (success):

     - request identifier: an identifier matching the identifier of the
       request.

     - group owner: an identifier of the agent owning this policy rule
       group.

     - group lifetime: the remaining lifetime of the group.  This is the
       maximum of the remaining lifetime of all members policy rules.

     - member list: list of all policy rules that are members of the
       group.  The policy rules are specified by their middlebox-unique
       policy rule identifier.

   failure reason:
     - transaction not supported
     - agent not authorized for this transaction
     - no such group
     - agent not authorized for listing members of this group

   semantics:

      The agent can use this transaction type to list all member policy
      rules of a group.  Usually, the agent has this information
      already, but in special cases (for example after an agent fail-
      over) or for special agents (for example an administrating agent
      that can access all groups) this transaction can be helpful.

      The middlebox first checks whether or not the specified group
      exists and whether or not the agent is authorized to access this
      group.  If one of the checks fails, an appropriate failure reply


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      is generated.  Otherwise a list of all group members is returned
      indicating the identifier of each group.

      This transaction does not have any effect on the group state.


3.  Conformance Statements

   A protocol definition complies with the semantics defined in Section
   2 if the protocol specification includes all specified transactions
   with all their mandatory parameters.  However, concrete
   implementations of the protocol may support only some of the optional
   transactions, but not all of them.  Which transactions are required
   for compliancy is different for agent and middlebox.

   This section contains conformance statements for MIDCOM protocol
   implementations related to the semantics.  Conformance is specified
   differently for agents and middleboxes.  Most probably these
   conformance statements will be extended by a concrete protocol
   specification.  However, such an extension is expected to extend the
   statements below in a way that all of them still hold.

   The following list shows the transaction-compliance property of all
   transactions as specified in the previous section:

     - Session Control Transactions
         - Session Establishment (SE)                 mandatory
         - Session Termination (ST)                   mandatory
         - Asynchronous Session Termination (AST)     mandatory

     - Policy Rule Transactions
         - Policy Reserve Rule (PRR)                  mandatory
         - Policy Enable Rule (PER)                   mandatory
         - Policy Rule Lifetime Change (RLC)          mandatory
         - Policy Rule List  (PRL)                    mandatory
         - Policy Rule Status (PRS)                   mandatory
         - Asynchronous Policy Rule Event (ARE)       mandatory

     - Policy Rule Group Transactions
         - Group Lifetime Change (GLC)                optional
         - Group List (GL)                            optional
         - Group Status (GS)                          optional

3.1.  General Implementation Conformance

   A compliant implementation of a MIDCOM protocol must support all
   mandatory transactions.

   A compliant implementation of a MIDCOM protocol may support none,
   one, or more of the following transactions: GLC, GL, GS.


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   A compliant implementation may extend the protocol semantics by
   further transactions.

   A compliant implementation of a MIDCOM protocol must support all
   mandatory parameters of each transaction concerning the information
   contained.  The set of parameters can be redefined per transaction as
   long as the contained information is maintained.

   A compliant implementation of a MIDCOM protocol may support the use
   of interface specific policy rules.  The optional inside and outside
   interface parameters in PRR, PER, and PRS must be included both or
   none of them when interface specific policy rules are supported.

   A compliant implementation may extend the list of parameters of
   transactions.

   A compliant implementation may replace a single transaction by a set
   of more fine-grained transactions.  In such a case, it must be
   ensured, that requirement 2.1.4 (deterministic behavior) and
   requirement 2.1.5 (known and stable state) of [MDC-REQ] are still
   met.  When a single transaction is replaced by a set of multiple
   fine-grained transactions, this set must be equivalent to a single
   transaction.  This multiple fine-grained transactions must further
   meet the atomicity requirement stated in section 2.1.3.

3.2.  Middlebox Conformance

   A middlebox implementation of a MIDCOM protocol supports a request
   transaction if it is able to receive and process all possible correct
   message instances of the particular request transaction and if it
   generates a correct reply for any correct request it receives.

   A middlebox implementation of a MIDCOM protocol supports an
   asynchronous transaction if it is able to generate the corresponding
   notification message properly.

   A compliant middlebox implementation of a MIDCOM protocol must inform
   the agent about the list of supported transactions within the SE
   transaction.

3.3.  Agent Conformance

   An agent implementation of a MIDCOM protocol supports a request
   transaction if it is able to generate the corresponding request
   message properly and if it is able to receive and process all
   possible correct replies to the particular request.

   An agent implementation of a MIDCOM protocol supports an asynchronous
   transaction if it is able to receive and process all possible correct
   message instances of the particular transaction.


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   A compliant agent implementation of a MIDCOM protocol must not use
   any optional transaction that is not supported by the middlebox.  The
   middlebox informs the agent about the list of supported transactions
   within the SE transaction.


4.  Transaction Usage Examples

   This section gives two usage examples of the transactions specified
   in Section 2.  First it is shown, how an agent can explore all policy
   rules and policy rule groups, which it may access at a middlebox.
   the second example shows the configuration of a middlebox in
   combination with the setup of a voice over IP session with the
   Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [RFC3261].

4.1.  Exploring Policy Rules and Policy Rule Groups

   This example assumes an already established session.  It shows how an
   agent can find out

      - which groups it may access and who owns these groups
      - the status and member list of all accessible groups
      - the status and properties of all accessible policy rules

   If there is just a single session, there is no need for any of these
   actions, because the middlebox informs the agent about each state
   transition of any policy rule or policy rule group.  However, after
   the disruption of a session or after an intentional session
   termination, the agent might want to re-establish the session and
   explore, which of the groups and policy rules it established are
   still in place.

   Also an agent system may fail and another one takes over.  Then the
   other one need to find out what has already been configured by the
   failing system and what still needs to be done.

   A third situation where exploring policy rules and groups is useful
   is the case of an agent with 'administrator' authorization.  This
   agent may access any policy rule or group created by any other agent
   and modify them.

   All of them probably will start their exploration with the Group List
   (GL) transaction, as shown in Figure 5.  On this request, the
   middlebox returns a list of pairs each containing an agent identifier
   and a group identifier (GID).  The agent gets informed which own
   group and which of other agents' groups it may access.






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            agent                                     middlebox
             |                      GL                       |
             |**********************************************>|
             |<**********************************************|
             |   (agent1,GID1) (agent1,GID2) (agent2,GID3)   |
             |                                               |
             |                   GS GID2                     |
             |**********************************************>|
             |<**********************************************|
             |    agent1  lifetime  PID1  PID2  PID3  PID4   |
             |                                               |

               Figure 5: Using the GL and the GS transaction

   In Figure 5 three groups are accessible to the agent, and the agent
   retrieves information about the second group by using the Group
   Status (GS) transaction.  It receives the owner of the group, the
   remaining lifetime, and the list of member policy rules, in this case
   containing four policy rule identifiers (PIDs).

   In the following, the agent explores these four policy rules.  The
   example assumes the middlebox to be a traditional NAPT.  Figure 6
   shows the exploration of the first policy rule.  As reply to a Policy
   Rule Status (PRS) transaction, the middlebox always returns the
   following list of parameters:

      - policy rule owner
      - group identifier
      - policy rule action (reserve or enable)
      - protocol type
      - port range
      - direction
      - internal IP address
      - internal port number
      - external address
      - external port number
      - middlebox inside IP address
      - middlebox inside port number
      - middlebox outside IP address
      - middlebox outside port number
      - IP address versions (not printed)
      - middlebox service (not printed)
      - inside and outside interface (optional, not printed)









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               agent                                     middlebox
                |                   PRS PID1                    |
                |**********************************************>|
                |<**********************************************|
                |    agent1    GID2    RESERVE    UDP    1      |
                | ANY         ANY         ANY         ANY       |
                | ANY         ANY         IPADR_OUT   PORT_OUT1 |
                |                                               |

                Figure 6: Status report for an outside reservation

   The `ANY' parameter printed in Figure 6 is used as a placeholder in
   policy rules status replies for policy reserve rules.  The policy
   rule with PID1 is a policy reserve rule for UDP traffic at the
   outside of the middlebox.  Since there is no internal or external
   address involved yet, these four fields are wildcarded in the reply.
   The same holds for the inside middlebox address and port number.  The
   only address information given by the reply is the reserved outside
   IP address of the middlebox (IPADDR_OUT) and the corresponding port
   number (PORT_OUT1).  Note, that IPADR_OUT and PORT_OUT1 may not be
   wildcarded, because the reserve action does not support this.

   Applying PRS to PID2 (Figure 7) shows that the second policy rule is
   an policy enable rule for inbound UDP packets.  The internal
   destination is fixed concerning IP address, protocol and port number,
   but for the external source, the port number is wildcarded.  The
   outside IP address and port number of the middlebox are the ones the
   external sender needs to use as destination in the original packet it
   sends.  At the middlebox, the destination address is replaced with
   the internal address of the final receiver.  During address
   translation, the source IP address and the source port numbers of the
   packets remain unchanged.  This is indicated by the inside address
   which is identical to the external address.

            agent                                     middlebox
             |                   PRS PID2                    |
             |**********************************************>|
             |<**********************************************|
             |       agent1  GID2  ENABLE  UDP  1  IN        |
             | IPADR_INT   PORT_INT1   IPADR_EXT   ANY       |
             | IPADR_EXT   ANY         IPADR_OUT   PORT_OUT2 |
             |                                               |

            Figure 7: Status report for enabled inbound packets

   For traditional NATs the identity of the inside IP address and port
   number with the external IP address and port number always holds
   (A1=A3 in Figure 3).  For a pure firewall, also the outside IP
   address and port number are always identical with the internal IP
   address and port number (A0=A2 in Figure 3).


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            agent                                     middlebox
             |                   PRS PID3                    |
             |**********************************************>|
             |<**********************************************|
             |       agent1  GID2  ENABLE  UDP  1  OUT       |
             | IPADR_INT   PORT_INT2   IPADR_EXT   PORT_EXT1 |
             | IPADR_EXT   PORT_EXT1   IPADR_OUT   PORT_OUT3 |
             |                                               |

            Figure 8: Status report for enabled outbound packets

   Figure 8 shows enabled outbound UDP communication between the same
   host.  Here all port numbers are known. Since again A1=A3, the
   internal sender uses the external IP address and port number as
   destination in the original packets.  At the firewall, the internal
   source IP address and port number are replaced by the shown outside
   IP address and port number of the middlebox.


            agent                                     middlebox
             |                   PRS PID4                    |
             |**********************************************>|
             |<**********************************************|
             |       agent1  GID2  ENABLE  TCP  1  BI        |
             |  IPADR_INT   PORT_INT3  IPADR_EXT   PORT_EXT2 |
             |  IPADR_EXT   PORT_EXT2  IPADR_OUT   PORT_OUT4 |
             |                                               |

          Figure 9: Status report for bi-directional TCP traffic

   Finally, Figure 9 shows the status report for enabled bi-directional
   TCP traffic. Please note that still A1=A3: For outbound packets, only
   the source IP address and port number are replaced at the middlebox,
   and for inbound packets, only the destination IP address and port
   number are replaced.

4.2.  Enabling a SIP-Signaled Call

   This elaborated transaction usage example shows the interaction
   between a SIP proxy and a middlebox.  The middlebox itself is a
   traditional Network Address and Port Translation (NAPT) and two SIP
   user agents communicate with each other via the SIP proxy and NAPT as
   shown in figure 10.  The MIDCOM agent is co-located with the SIP
   proxy and the MIDCOM server is at the middlebox.  Thus the MIDCOM
   protocol runs between the SIP proxy and middlebox







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                 +-------------+
                 | SIP Proxy   |
                 | for domain  ++++
                 | example.com |  +
                 +-------------+  +
                      ^   ^       +
          Private     |   |       +     Public Network
          Network     |   |       +
        +----------+  |   |  +----+------+         +----------------+
        | SIP User |<-+   +->| Middlebox |<------->| SIP User Agent |
        | Agent A  |<#######>|   NAPT    |<#######>| B@example.org  |
        +----------+         +-----------+         +----------------+


        <--> SIP Signaling
        <##> RTP Traffic
        ++++ MIDCOM protocol

                     Figure 10: Example SIP Scenario


   For the below sequence charts we make these assumptions:

     - The NAPT is statically configured to forward SIP signaling from
       the outside to the SIP proxy server, i.e. traffic to the NAPT's
       external IP address and port 5060 is forwarded to the internal
       SIP proxy.

     - The SIP user agent A, located inside the private network, is
       registered at the SIP proxy with its private IP address.

     - User A knows the general SIP URL of user B.  The URL is
       B@xample.org.  However, the concrete URL of the SIP User Agent B,
       which user B currently uses is not known.

     - Only the RTP paths are configured, but not the RTCP paths.

     - The middlebox and the SIP server share an already established
       MIDCOM session.

     - Some parameters are omitted, like the request identifier (RID)


   Furthermore these abbreviations are used:

      - IP_AI: Internal IP address of user agent A
      - P_AI: Internal port number of user agent A to receive RTP data
      - P_AE: External mapped port number of user agent A
      - IP_AE: External IP address of the middlebox
      - IP_B: IP address of user agent B


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      - P_B: Port number of user agent B to receive RTP data
      - GID: Group identifier
      - PID: Policy rule identifier

   The abbreviations of the MIDCOM transactions can be found in the
   particular section headings.

   In our example, user A tries to call user B.  Therefore, the user
   agent A sends an INVITE SIP message to the SIP proxy server (see
   Figure 10).  The SDP part of the particular SIP message that is
   relevant for the middlebox configuration is shown in the sequence
   chart as:

       SDP: m=..P_AI..
            c=IP_AI

   where the m tag is the media tag which contains the receiving UDP
   port number and the c tag contains the IP address of the terminal
   receiving the media stream.

   The INVITE message forwarded to user agent B must contain a public IP
   address and a port number to which user agent B can send its RTP
   media stream.  The SIP proxy requests a policy enable rule at the
   middlebox with a PER request with wildcarded IP address and port
   number of user agent B.  Since neither IP address nor port numbers of
   user agent B are known at this point of time, the address of user
   agent B must be wildcarded.  The wildcarded IP address and port
   number enables the 'early media' capability, but results in some
   insecurity, since any outside host can reach user agent A on the
   enabled port number through the middlebox.


   User Agent       SIP                        Middlebox   User Agent
    A              Proxy                          NAPT             B
    |                |                              |              |
    | INIVTE         |                              |              |
    | B@example.org  |                              |              |
    | SDP:m=..P_AI.. |                              |              |
    |     c=IP_AI    |                              |              |
    |--------------->|                              |              |
    |                |                              |              |
    |                |  PER PID1 UDP 1 EVEN IN      |              |
    |                |   IP_AI P_AI ANY ANY 300s    |              |
    |                |*****************************>|              |
    |                |<*****************************|              |
    |                |    PER OK GID1 PID1 ANY ANY  |              |
    |                |       IP_AE P_AE1 300s       |              |

             Figure 11: PER with wildcard address and port number



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   A successfully PER reply, as shown in Figure 11, results in a NAT
   binding at the middlebox. This binding enables UDP traffic from any
   host outside of user agent A's private network  to reach user agent
   A.  So user agent B could start sending traffic immediately after
   receiving the INVITE message, and so can do any other host. Even
   hosts that are not intended to be a participant, like any malicious
   host.

   In the case the middlebox does not support or does not permit IP
   address wildcarding for security reasons, the PER request will be
   rejected with an appropriate failure reason, like 'IP wildcarding not
   supported'.  Nevertheless, the SIP proxy server needs an outside IP
   address and port number at the middlebox (the NAPT) in order to
   forward the SIP INVITE message.

   The IP address of user agent B is still not known yet (it will be
   sent by user agent B in the SIP reply message) and IP address
   wildcarding is not permitted, the SIP proxy server uses the PRR
   transaction.

   By using the PRR request the SIP proxy requests an outside IP address
   and port number (see Figure 12) without already establishing a NAT
   binding or pin hole.  The PRR request contains the service parameter
   'tw', i.e. the MIDCOM agent chooses the default value.  In this
   configuration, NAPT and no twice NAT, only an outside address is
   reserved.  The SIP proxy server replaces in the SDP payload of the
   INVITE message the IP address and port number of user agent A by the
   reserved IP address and port from PRR reply (see Figure 12).  The SIP
   INVITE message is forwarded to user agent B with a modified SDP body
   containing the outside address and port number, to which user agent B
   will send its RTP media stream.


   User Agent       SIP                        Middlebox   User Agent
    A              Proxy                          NAPT             B
    |                |                              |              |
       ...PER in Figure 11 has failed, continuing with PRR ...
    |                |                              |              |
    |                |PRR tw v4 v4 A UDP 1 EVEN 300s|              |
    |                |*****************************>|              |
    |                |<*****************************|              |
    |                | PRR OK PID1 GID1 EMPTY       |              |
    |                |  IP_AE/P_AE 300s             |              |
    |                |                              |              |
    |                | INVITE B@example.org SDP:m=..P_AE.. c=IP_AE |
    |                |-------------------------------------------->|
    |                |<--------------------------------------------|
    |                |       200 OK  SDP:m=..P_B.. c=IP_B          |

           Figure 12: Address reservation with PRR transaction


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   This SIP `200 OK' reply contains the IP address and port number, at
   which user agent B will receive a media stream. The IP address is
   assumed to be equal to the IP address from which user agent B will
   send its media stream.

   Now, the SIP proxy server has sufficient information for establishing
   the complete NAT binding with a policy enable rule (PER) transaction,
   i.e.  the UDP/RTP data of the call can flow from user agent B to user
   agent A.  The PER transaction references the reservation by passing
   the PID of the PRR (PID1).

   For the opposite direction, UDP/RTP data from user agent A to B, has
   to be enabled also.  This is done by a second PER transaction with
   all the necessary parameters (see figure 13).  The request message
   contains the group identifier (GID1) the middlebox has assigned in
   the first PER transaction.  Therefore, both policy rules have become
   members of the same group.  After having enabled both UDP/RTP streams
   the SIP proxy can forward the `200 OK' SIP message to user agent A to
   indicate that the telephone call can start.


   User Agent       SIP                        Middlebox   User Agent
    A              Proxy                          NAPT             B
    |                |                              |              |
    |                |  PER PID1 UDP 1 SAME IN      |              |
    |                |   IP_AI P_AI IP_B ANY 300s   |              |
    |                |*****************************>|              |
    |                |<*****************************|              |
    |                |    PER OK GID1 PID1 IP_B ANY |              |
    |                |       IP_AE P_AE1 300s       |              |
    |                |                              |              |
            ...media stream from user agent B to A enabled...
    |                |                              |              |
    |                |  PER GID1 UDP 1 SAME OUT     |              |
    |                |    IP_AI ANY IP_B P_B 300s   |              |
    |                |*****************************>|              |
    |                |<*****************************|              |
    |                |   PER OK GID1 PID2 IP_B P_B  |              |
    |                |       IP_AE P_AE2 300s       |              |
    |                |                              |              |
             ...media streams from both directions enabled...
    |                |                              |              |
    |    200 OK      |                              |              |
    |<---------------|                              |              |
    | SDP:m=..P_B..  |                              |              |
    |     c=IP_B     |                              |              |

          Figure 13: Policy rule establishment for UDP flows




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   User agent B decides to terminate the call and sends its `BYE' SIP
   message to user agent A. The SIP proxy forwards all SIP messages and
   terminates the group afterwards using a group lifetime change (GLC)
   transaction with a requested remaining lifetime of 0 seconds (see
   Figure 14). Termination of the group includes terminating all member
   policy rules.


   User Agent       SIP                        Middlebox   User Agent
    A              Proxy                          NAPT             B
    |                |                              |              |
    |     BYE        |                     BYE                     |
    |<---------------|<--------------------------------------------|
    |                |                              |              |
    |    200 OK      |                   200 OK                    |
    |--------------->|-------------------------------------------->|
    |                |                              |              |
    |                |         GLC GID1 0s          |              |
    |                |*****************************>|              |
    |                |<*****************************|              |
    |                |         GLC OK 0s            |              |
    |                |                              |              |
       ...both NAT bindings for the media streams are removed...

               Figure 14: Termination of Policy Rule Groups


5.  Compliance with MIDCOM Requirements

   This section explains the compliance of the specified semantics with
   the MIDCOM requirements.  It is structured according to [MDC-REQ]:
      - Compliance with Protocol Machinery Requirements (Section 5.1)
      - Compliance with Protocol Semantics Requirements (Section 5.2)
      - Compliance with Security Requirements (Section 5.3)

   The requirements are referred to using the section number they are
   defined in: "requirement x.y.z" refers to the requirement specified
   in section x.y.z of [MDC-REQ].

5.1.  Protocol Machinery Requirements

5.1.1.  Authorized Association

   The specified semantics enable a MIDCOM agent to establish an
   authorized association between itself and the middlebox.  The agent
   identifies itself by the authentication mechanism of the Session
   Establishment transaction described in Section 2.2.1.  Based on this
   authentication the middlebox can make a determination as to whether
   or not the agent will be permitted to request a service.  Thus,
   requirement 2.1.1 is met.


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5.1.2.  Agent connects to Multiple Middleboxes

   As specified in Section 2.2, the MIDCOM protocol allows the agent to
   communicate with more than one middlebox simultaneously.  The
   selection of a mechanism for separating different sessions is left to
   the concrete protocol definition.  It must provide a clear mapping of
   protocol messages to open sessions.  Then requirement 2.1.2 is met.

5.1.3.  Multiple Agents connect to same Middlebox

   As specified in Section 2.2, the MIDCOM protocol allows the middlebox
   to communicate with more than one agent simultaneously.  The
   selection of a mechanism for separating different sessions is left to
   the concrete protocol definition.  It must provide a clear mapping of
   protocol messages to open sessions.  Then requirement 2.1.3 is met.

5.1.4.  Deterministic Behavior

   Section 2.1.2 states, that processing a request of an agent may not
   be interrupted by any request of the same or another agent.  This
   provides atomicity among request transactions.  This avoids race
   conditions resulting in an unpredictable behavior of the middlebox.

   Anyway, the behavior of the middlebox can only be predictable in the
   view of its administrators.  In the view of an agent, the middlebox
   behavior is unpredictable, because the administrator can, for example
   at any time modify the authorization of the agent without the agent
   being able to observe this change.  Consequently, the behavior of the
   middlebox is not necessarily deterministic from the point of view of
   any agent.

   Since predictability of the middlebox behavior is given for its
   administrator, requirement 2.1.4 is met.

5.1.5.  Known and Stable State

   Section 2.1 states that request transactions are atomic with respect
   to each other and from the point of view of an agent.  All
   transactions are defined clearly as state transitions that either
   leave the current stable and well defined state and enter a new
   stable and well defined one or that remain in the current stable and
   well defined state.  Section 2.1 clearly demands that intermediate
   states are not stable and not reported to any agent.

   Furthermore, for each state transition a message is sent to the
   corresponding agent, either a reply or a notification.  The agent can
   uniquely map each reply to one of the requests that it sent to the
   middlebox, because request agent-unique request identifiers are used
   for this purpose.  Notifications are self-explanatory by their
   definition.


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   Furthermore, the Group List transaction (Section 2.4.3), the Group
   Status transaction (Section 2.4.4), the Policy Rule List transaction
   (Section 2.3.11), and the Policy Rule Status transaction (Section
   2.3.12) allow the agent at any time during a session to retrieve
   information about
      - all policy rule groups it may access,
      - the status and member policy rules of all accessible groups,
      - all policy rules it may access,
      - and the status of all accessible policy rules.

   Therefore, the agent is precisely informed about the state of the
   middlebox (as far as the services requested by the agent are
   affected) and requirement 2.1.5 is met.

5.1.6.  Status Report

   As argued in the previous section, the middlebox unambiguously
   informs the agent about every state transition related to any of the
   services requested by the agent.  Also the agent can at any time
   retrieve full status information about all accessible policy rules
   and policy rule groups.  Thus, requirement 2.1.6 is met.

5.1.7.  Unsolicited Messages (Asynchronous Notifications)

   The semantics include asynchronous notifications messages from the
   middlebox to the agent, including the Session Termination
   Notification message, the Policy Rule Event Notification (REN)
   message and the Group Event Notification (GEN) message (see Section
   2.1.2).  These notifications report every change of state of policy
   rules or policy rule groups, that was not explicitly requested by the
   agent.  Thus, requirement 2.1.7 is met by the semantics specified
   above.

5.1.8.  Mutual Authentication

   As specified in Section 2.2.1, the semantics require mutual
   authentication of agent and middlebox, either by using two subsequent
   Session Establishment transactions or by using mutual authentication
   provided on a lower protocol layer.  Thus, requirement 2.1.8 is met.

5.1.9.  Session Termination by any Party

   The semantics specification states in Section 2.2.2 that the agent
   may request session termination by generating the Session Termination
   request and that the middlebox may not reject this request.  In turn,
   Section 2.2.3 states that the middlebox may send the Asynchronous
   Session Termination notification at any time and then terminate the
   session.  Thus, requirement 2.1.9 is met.




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5.1.10.  Request Result

   Section 2.1 states that each request of an agent is followed by a
   reply of the middlebox indicating either success of failure.  Thus,
   requirement 2.2.10 is met.

5.1.11.  Version Interworking

   Section 2.2.1 states that the agent need to specify the protocol
   version number which it is going to use during the session.  The
   middlebox may accept this and act according to this protocol version
   or reject the session if it does not support this version.  If the
   session setup gets rejected, the agent may try again with another
   version.  Thus, requirement 2.2.11 is met.

5.1.12.  Deterministic Handling of Overlapping Rules

   The only policy rule actions specified are 'reserve' and 'enable'.
   For firewalls, overlapping enable actions or reserve actions do not
   create any conflict, so a firewall will always accept overlapping
   rules as specified in Section 2.3.2 (assuming the required
   authorization is given).

   For NATs reserve and enable may conflict. If a conflicting request
   arrives, it is rejected, as stated in Section 2.3.2.  If an
   overlapping request arrives that does not conflict with the ones it
   overlaps, it is accepted (assuming the required authorization is
   given).

   Therefore, the behavior of the middlebox in the presence of
   overlapping rules can be predicted deterministically, and requirement
   2.1.12 is met.

5.2.  Protocol Semantics Requirements

5.2.1.  Extensible Syntax and Semantics

   Requirement 2.2.1 explicitly requests extensibility of protocol
   syntax.  This needs to be addressed by the concrete protocol
   definition.  The semantics specification is extensible anyway,
   because new transaction may be added.

5.2.2.  Policy Rules for Different Types of Middleboxes

   Section 2.3 explains that the semantics use identical transactions
   for all middlebox types and that the same policy rule can be applied
   to all of them.  Thus requirement 2.2.2 is met.





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5.2.3.  Ruleset Groups

   The semantics explicitly supports grouping of policy rules and
   transactions on policy rule groups, as described in Section 2.4.  The
   group transactions can be used for lifetime extension and termination
   of all policy rules being member of the particular group.  Thus,
   requirement 2.2.3 is met.

5.2.4.  Policy Rule Lifetime Extension

   The semantics include a transaction for explicit lifetime extension
   of policy rules, as described in Section 2.3.3.  Thus requirement
   2.2.4 is met.

5.2.5.  Robust Failure Modes

   The state transitions at the middlebox are clearly specified and
   communicated to the agent.  There is no intermediate state reached by
   a partial processing of a request.  All requests are always processed
   completely, either successful or unsuccessful.  All request
   transaction include a list of failure reasons.  These failure reasons
   cover indication of invalid parameters where applicable.  In case of
   failure one of the specified reasons is returned from the middlebox
   to the agent.  Thus requirement 2.2.5 is met.

5.2.6.  Failure Reasons

   The semantics include a failure reason parameter in each failure
   reply. Thus requirement 2.2.6 is met.

5.2.7.  Multiple Agents Manipulating Same Policy Rule

   As specified in Sections 2.3 and 2.4, each installed policy rule and
   policy rule group has an owner, which is the authenticated agent that
   created the policy rule or group, respectively.  The authenticated
   identity is input to authorization of access to policy rules and
   groups.

   If the middlebox is sufficiently configurable, its administrator can
   configure it such that one authenticated agent is authorized to
   access and modify policy rules and groups owned by another agent.
   Because specified semantics does not preclude this, it meets
   requirement 2.2.7.

5.2.8.  Carrying Filtering Rules

   The Policy Enable Rule transaction specified in Section 2.3.8 can
   carry 5-tuple filtering rules.  It meets requirement 2.2.8.




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5.2.9.  Parity of Port Numbers

   As specified in Section 2.3.6, the agent is able to request keeping
   the port parity when reserving port numbers with the PRR transaction
   (see Section 2.3.8) and when establishing address bindings with the
   PER transaction (see Section 2.3.9).  Thus requirement 2.2.9 is met.

5.2.10.  Consecutive Range of Port Numbers

   As specified in Section 2.3.6, the agent is able to request a
   consecutive range of port numbers when reserving port numbers with
   the PRR transaction (see Section 2.3.8) and when establishing address
   bindings or pinholes with the PER transaction (see Section 2.3.9).
   Thus requirement 2.2.10 is met.

5.2.11.  Contradicting Overlapping Policy Rules

   Requirement 2.2.11 is based on the assumption that contradicting
   policy rule actions, such as 'enable'/'allow' and
   'disable'/'disallow' are supported.  In conformance with decisions
   made by the working group after finalizing the requirements document,
   this requirement is not met by the semantics, because no
   'disable'/'disallow' action is supported.

5.3.  Security Requirements

5.3.1.  Authentication, Confidentiality, Integrity

   The semantics definition support mutual authentication of agent and
   middlebox in the Session Establishment transaction (Section 2.2.1).
   The use of an underlying protocol like TLS or IPsec is mandatory.
   Thus requirement 2.3.1 is met.

5.3.2.  Optional Confidentiality of Control Messages

   The use of IPsec or TLS allows agent and middlebox to use an
   encryption method (including no encryption).  Thus requirement 2.3.2
   is met.

5.3.3.  Operation across Un-trusted Domains

   Operation across untrusted domains is supported by mutual
   authentication and by the use of TLS or IPsec protection.  Thus
   requirement 2.3.3 is met.

5.3.4.  Mitigate Replay Attacks

   The specified semantics mitigates replay attacks and meets
   requirement 2.3.4 by requiring mutual authentication of agent and
   middlebox, and by mandating the use of TLS or IPsec protection.


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   Further mitigation can be provided as part of a concrete MIDCOM
   protocol definition, for example by requiring consecutively
   increasing numbers for request identifiers.


6.  Security Considerations

   The interaction between a middlebox and an agent is (see [MDC-FRM]) a
   very sensitive point with respect to security. The configuration of
   policy rules from a middlebox external entity appears to be
   contradicting the nature of a middlebox. Therefore, effective means
   have to be used to ensure:
      - mutual authentication between agent and middlebox
      - authorization
      - message integrity
      - message confidentiality

   The semantics define a mechanism to ensure mutual authentication
   between agent and middlebox (see section 2.2.1). In combination with
   the authentication, the middlebox is able to decide whether an agent
   is authorized to request an action at the middlebox or not.  The
   semantics rely on underlying protocols, like TLS or IPsec, to keep
   the message integrity and confidentiality of the transferred data
   between both entities.

   For the TLS and IPsec use, both sides must use securely-configured
   credentials for authentication and authorization.

   The configuration of policy rules with wildcarded IP addresses and
   port numbers results in certain risks, like opening too much
   wildcarded policy rules.  A too much wildcarded policy rule is A0 and
   A3 with IP address set to 'any' IP address for instance.  This type
   of pin-hole would render the middlebox, in the sense of security,
   useless, since any packet can traverse the middlebox without further
   checking. The local policy of the middlebox should reject such policy
   rule enable requests.

   A reasonable default configuration for wildcarding would be that only
   one port number may be wildcarded and all IP addresses must be set
   without wildcarding.  However, there are some cases where security
   needs to be balanced with functionality.

   The example described in Section 4.2 shows how SIP-signaled calls can
   be served in a secure way without wildcarding IP addresses.  But some
   SIP-signaled applications make use of early media (see Section 5.5 of
   [RFC3398]).  For receiving early media, the middleboxes need to be
   configured before the second participant in a session is known.
   Since it is not known, the IP address of the second participant needs
   to be wildcarded.



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   In such cases and in several similar cases, there is a security
   policy decision to be made by the middlebox operator.  The operator
   can configure the middlebox such that it supports more functionality,
   for example, by allowing wildcarded IP addresses, or the operator can
   configure the middlebox such that network operation is more secure,
   for example, by disallowing wildcarded IP addresses.


7.  IAB Considerations on UNSAF

   UNilateral Self-Address Fixing (UNSAF) is described in [RFC3424] as
   process at originating endpoints that attempt to determine or fix the
   address (and port) by which it is known to another endpoint.  UNSAF
   proposals, like STUN [RFC3489], are considered as a general class of
   workarounds for NAT traversal and as solutions for scenarios with no
   middlebox communication (MIDCOM).

   This document describes the protocol semantics for such a middlebox
   communication (MIDCOM) solution.  MIDCOM is not intended as short
   term workaround, but more as long term solution for middlebox
   communication.  In MIDCOM, endpoints are not involved in allocating,
   maintaining, and deleting addresses and ports at the middlebox.  The
   full control of addresses and ports at the middlebox is located at
   the MIDCOM server.

   Therefore, this document addresses the UNSAF considerations in
   [RFC3424] by proposing a longterm alternative solution.


8.  Acknowledgments

   We like to thank all the people contributing to the semantics
   discussion on the mailing list for a lot of valuable comments.


9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

[MDC-FRM]   Srisuresh, P., Kuthan, J., Rosenberg, J., Molitor, A.,
            Rayhan, A., "Middlebox Communication Architecture and
            Framework", RFC 3303, August 2002

[MDC-REQ]   Swale, R.P., Mart, P.A., Sijben, P., Brimm, S., Shore, M.,
            "Middlebox Control (MIDCOM) Protocol Architecture and
            Requirements", RFC 3304, August 2002

[NAT-TERM]  Srisuresh,P., and Holdrege, M., "IP Network Translator (NAT)
            Terminology and Considerations", RFC 2663, August 1999.



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[NAT-TRAD]  Srisuresh,P., and Egevang, K., "Traditional IP Network
            Address Translator (Traditional NAT)", RFC 3022, January
            2001

9.2.  Informative References

[RFC2246]   Dierks, T., Allen, C., "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC
            2246, January 1999.

[RFC2402]   Kent, S., and Atkinson, R., "IP Authentication Header", RFC
            2402, November 1998.

[RFC2406]   Kent, S., and Atkinson, R., "IP Encapsulating Security
            Payload (ESP)", RFC 2406, November 1998.

[RFC3198]   Westerinen, A. et al., "Terminology for Policy-Based
            Management", RFC 3198, November 2001.

[RFC3261]   Rosenberg, J. et al., "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol",
            RFC 3261, June 2002.

[RFC3398]   Camarillo, G. et al., "Integrated Services Digital Network
            (ISDN) User Part (ISUP) to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
            Mapping", RFC 3398, Decembe 2002.

[RFC3424]   Daigle, L., "IAB Considerations for UNilateral Self-Address
            Fixing (UNSAF) Across Network Address Translation", RFC
            3424, November 2002.

[RFC3489]   Rosenberg, J., et al., "STUN - Simple Traversal of User
            Datagram Protocol (UDP) Through Network Address Translators
            (NATs)", RFC 3489, March 2003.


10.  Authors' Addresses

     Martin Stiemerling
     NEC Europe Ltd.
     Network Laboratories
     Kurfuersten-Anlage 36
     69115 Heidelberg
     Germany

     Phone: +49 6221 90511-13
     Email: stiemerling@netlab.nec.de







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     Juergen Quittek
     NEC Europe Ltd.
     Network Laboratories
     Kurfuersten-Anlage 36
     69115 Heidelberg
     Germany

     Phone: +49 6221 90511-15
     EMail: quittek@netlab.nec.de


     Tom Taylor
     Nortel Networks
     1852 Lorraine Ave.
     Ottawa, Ontario
     Canada  K1H 6Z8

     Phone: +1 613 736 0961
     Email: taylor@nortelnetworks.com


11.  Full Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). 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 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
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   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
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   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
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   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
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