IETF Mobile IP Working Group David B. Johnson
INTERNET-DRAFT Carnegie Mellon University
Charles Perkins
Sun Microsystems
13 March 1998
Mobility Support in IPv6
<draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-05.txt>
Status of This Memo
This document is a submission by the Mobile IP Working Group of the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Comments should be submitted
to the Working Group mailing list at "mobile-ip@SmallWorks.COM".
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
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Abstract
This document specifies the operation of mobile computers using IPv6.
Each mobile node is always identified by its home address, regardless
of its current point of attachment to the Internet. While situated
away from its home, a mobile node is also associated with a care-of
address, which provides information about the mobile node's current
location. IPv6 packets addressed to a mobile node's home address are
transparently routed to its care-of address. The protocol enables
IPv6 nodes to cache the binding of a mobile node's home address with
its care-of address, and to then send any packets destined for the
mobile node directly to it at this care-of address.
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Contents
Status of This Memo i
Abstract i
1. Introduction 1
2. Comparison with Mobile IP for IPv4 3
3. Terminology 4
3.1. General Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Mobile IPv6 Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Specification Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Overview of Mobile IPv6 7
4.1. Basic Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. New IPv6 Destination Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3. Conceptual Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4. Binding Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5. New IPv6 Destination Options 16
5.1. Binding Update Option Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2. Binding Acknowledgement Option Format . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.3. Binding Request Option Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.4. Home Address Option Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Modifications to IPv6 Neighbor Discovery 27
6.1. Router Advertisement Message Format . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.2. Advertisement Interval Option Format . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.3. Changes to MinRtrAdvInterval Limits . . . . . . . . . . . 29
7. Requirements for IPv6 Nodes 30
7.1. Requirements for All IPv6 Hosts and Routers . . . . . . . 30
7.2. Requirements for IPv6 Home Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7.3. Requirements for IPv6 Mobile Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . 31
8. Correspondent Node Operation 32
8.1. Receiving Packets from a Mobile Node . . . . . . . . . . 32
8.2. Receiving Binding Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
8.3. Requests to Cache a Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
8.4. Requests to Delete a Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.5. Sending Binding Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.6. Sending Binding Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.7. Cache Replacement Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
8.8. Receiving ICMP Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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8.9. Sending Packets to a Mobile Node . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9. Home Agent Operation 39
9.1. Receiving Router Advertisement Messages . . . . . . . . . 39
9.2. Dynamic Home Agent Address Discovery . . . . . . . . . . 39
9.3. Primary Care-of Address Registration . . . . . . . . . . 40
9.4. Primary Care-of Address De-registration . . . . . . . . . 43
9.5. Tunneling Intercepted Packets to a Mobile Node . . . . . 44
9.6. Renumbering the Home Subnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
10. Mobile Node Operation 46
10.1. Sending Packets While Away from Home . . . . . . . . . . 46
10.2. Movement Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
10.3. Forming New Care-of Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
10.4. Sending Binding Updates to the Home Agent . . . . . . . . 51
10.5. Sending Binding Updates to Correspondent Nodes . . . . . 53
10.6. Sending Binding Updates to the Previous Default Router . 55
10.7. Retransmitting Binding Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
10.8. Rate Limiting for Sending Binding Updates . . . . . . . . 56
10.9. Receiving ICMP Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
10.10. Receiving Binding Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . 57
10.11. Receiving Binding Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
10.12. Using Multiple Care-of Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
10.13. Routing Multicast Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
10.14. Returning Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
11. Constants 61
12. IANA Considerations 62
13. Security Considerations 63
13.1. Binding Updates, Acknowledgements, and Requests . . . . . 63
13.2. Home Address Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
13.3. General Mobile Computing Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Changes from Previous Draft 66
Acknowledgements 68
References 69
Chair's Address 71
Authors' Addresses 72
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1. Introduction
This document specifies the operation of mobile computers using
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) [5]. Without specific support
for mobility in IPv6, packets destined to a mobile node (host or
router) would not be able to reach it while the mobile node is away
from its home link (the link on which its home IPv6 subnet prefix is
in use), since routing is based on the subnet prefix in a packet's
destination IP address. In order to continue communication in spite
of its movement, a mobile node could change its IP address each time
it moves to a new link, but the mobile node would then not be able
to maintain transport and higher-layer connections when it changes
location. Mobility support in IPv6 is particularly important, as
mobile computers are likely to account for a majority or at least a
substantial fraction of the population of the Internet during the
lifetime of IPv6.
The protocol operation defined here, known as Mobile IPv6, allows a
mobile node to move from one link to another without changing the
mobile node's IP address. A mobile node is always addressable by
its "home address", an IP address assigned to the mobile node within
its home subnet prefix on its home link. Packets may be routed to
the mobile node using this address regardless of the mobile node's
current point of attachment to the Internet, and the mobile node may
continue to communicate with other nodes (stationary or mobile) after
moving to a new link. The movement of a mobile node away from its
home link is thus transparent to transport and higher-layer protocols
and applications.
The Mobile IPv6 protocol is just as suitable for mobility across
homogeneous media as for mobility across heterogeneous media. For
example, Mobile IPv6 facilitates node movement from one Ethernet
segment to another as well as it facilitates node movement from an
Ethernet segment to a wireless LAN cell, with the mobile node's IP
address remaining unchanged in spite of such movement.
One can think of the Mobile IPv6 protocol as solving the "macro"
mobility management problem. More "micro" mobility management
applications -- for example, handoff among wireless transceivers,
each of which covers only a very small geographic area -- are
possibly more suited to other solutions. For example, in many
current wireless LAN products, link-layer mobility mechanisms allow a
"handoff" of a mobile node from one cell to another, reestablishing
link-layer connectivity to the node in each new location. As long
as such handoff occurs only within cells of the mobile node's home
link, such link-layer mobility mechanisms are likely to offer faster
convergence and lower overhead than Mobile IPv6. Extensions to the
Mobile IPv6 protocol are also possible to support a more local,
hierarchical form of mobility management, but such extensions are
beyond the scope of this document.
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The protocol specified in this document solves the problem of
transparently routing packets to and from mobile nodes while away
from home. However, it does not attempt to solve all general
problems related to the use of mobile computers or wireless networks.
In particular, this protocol does not attempt to solve:
- Handling links with partial reachability, such as typical
wireless networks. Some aspects of this problem are addressed
by the movement detection procedure described in Section 10.2,
but no attempt has been made to fully solve this problem in its
general form. Most aspects of this problem can be solved by the
workaround of restricting such networks to only one router per
link, although there are still possible hidden terminal problems
when two nodes on the same link (on opposite sides of the router)
attempt to communicate directly.
- Access control on a link being visited by a mobile node. This
is a general problem any time an untrusted node is allowed
to connect to any link layer. It is independent whether the
connecting node uses Mobile IP, DHCP [2], or just "borrows" an IP
address on the link.
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2. Comparison with Mobile IP for IPv4
[This section will include a comparison between the Mobile IPv6
protocol and the Mobile IPv4 protocol [13, 12, 14]. However, this
comparison has not yet been written. It will be filled in with the
next revision to this draft.]
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3. Terminology
3.1. General Terms
IP
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6).
node
A device that implements IP.
router
A node that forwards IP packets not explicitly addressed to
itself.
host
Any node that is not a router.
link
A communication facility or medium over which nodes can
communicate at the link layer, such as an Ethernet (simple or
bridged). A link is the layer immediately below IP.
interface
A node's attachment to a link.
subnet prefix
A bit string that consists of some number of initial bits of an
IP address.
interface identifier
A number used to identify a node's interface on a link. The
interface identifier is the remaining low-order bits in the
node's IP address after the subnet prefix.
link-layer address
A link-layer identifier for an interface, such as IEEE 802
addresses on Ethernet links.
packet
An IP header plus payload.
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3.2. Mobile IPv6 Terms
home address
An IP address assigned to a mobile node within its home link.
home subnet prefix
The IP subnet prefix corresponding to a mobile node's home
address.
home link
The link on which a mobile node's home subnet prefix is
defined. Standard IP routing mechanisms will deliver packets
destined for a mobile node's home address to its home link.
mobile node
A node that can change its point of attachment from one link to
another, while still being reachable via its home address.
movement
A change in a mobile node's point of attachment to the Internet
such that it is no longer connected to the same link as it was
previously. If a mobile node is not currently attached to its
home link, the mobile node is said to be "away from home".
correspondent node
A peer node with which a mobile node is communicating. The
correspondent node may be either mobile or stationary.
foreign subnet prefix
Any IP subnet prefix other than the mobile node's home subnet
prefix.
foreign link
Any link other than the mobile node's home link.
home agent
A router on a mobile node's home link with which the mobile
node has registered its current care-of address. While the
mobile node is away from home, the home agent intercepts
packets on the home link destined to the mobile node's home
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address, encapsulates them, and tunnels them to the mobile
node's registered care-of address.
care-of address
An IP address associated with a mobile node while visiting a
foreign link; the subnet prefix of this IP address is a foreign
subnet prefix. Among the multiple care-of addresses that a
mobile node may have at a time (e.g., with different subnet
prefixes), the one registered with the mobile node's home agent
is called its "primary" care-of address.
binding
The association of the home address of a mobile node with a
care-of address for that mobile node, along with the remaining
lifetime of that association.
3.3. Specification Language
The keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [3].
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4. Overview of Mobile IPv6
4.1. Basic Operation
A mobile node is always addressable by its home address, whether it
is currently attached to its home link or is away from home. While
a mobile node is at home, packets addressed to its home address are
routed to it using conventional Internet routing mechanisms in the
same way as if the node were never mobile. Since the subnet prefix
of a mobile node's home address is the subnet prefix (or one of the
subnet prefixes) on the mobile node's home link (it is the mobile
node's home subnet prefix), packets addressed to it will be routed to
its home link.
While a mobile node is attached to some foreign link away from
home, it is also addressable by one or more care-of addresses, in
addition to its home address. A care-of address is an IP address
associated with a mobile node while visiting a particular foreign
link. The subnet prefix of a mobile node's care-of address is the
subnet prefix (or one of the subnet prefixes) on the foreign link
being visited by the mobile node; if the mobile node is connected
to this foreign link while using that care-of address, packets
addressed to this care-of address will be routed to the mobile node
in its location away from home. The association between a mobile
node's home address and care-of address is known as a "binding"
for the mobile node. A mobile node typically acquires its care-of
address through stateless [18] or stateful (e.g., DHCPv6 [2])
address autoconfiguration, according to the methods of IPv6 Neighbor
Discovery [11]. Other methods of acquiring a care-of address
are also possible, but such methods are beyond the scope of this
document.
While away from home, the mobile node registers one of its bindings
with a router on its home link, requesting this router to function
as the "home agent" for the mobile node. This binding registration
is done by the mobile node sending a packet with a "Binding Update"
destination option to the home agent; the home agent then replies by
returning a packet containing a "Binding Acknowledgement" destination
option to the mobile node. The care-of address in this binding
registered with its home agent is known as the mobile node's "primary
care-of address". The mobile node's home agent thereafter uses proxy
Neighbor Discovery to intercept any IPv6 packets addressed to the
mobile node's home address (or home addresses) on the home link,
and tunnels each intercepted packet to the mobile node's primary
care-of address. To tunnel each intercepted packet, the home agent
encapsulates the packet using IPv6 encapsulation [4], with the outer
IPv6 header addressed to the mobile node's primary care-of address.
Section 10.12 discusses the reasons why it may be desirable for
a mobile node to use more than one care-of address at the same
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time. However, a mobile node's primary care-of address is distinct
among these in that the home agent maintains only a single care-of
address registered for each mobile node, and always tunnels a mobile
node's packets intercepted from its home link to this mobile node's
registered primary care-of address. The home agent thus need not
implement any policy to determine which of possibly many care-of
addresses to which to tunnel each intercepted packet, leaving the
mobile node entirely in control of this policy by which of its
care-of addresses it registers with its home agent.
It is possible that while a mobile node is away from home, some nodes
on its home link may be reconfigured, such that the router that was
operating as the mobile node's home agent is replaced by a different
router serving this role. In this case, the mobile node may not
know the IP address of its own home agent. Mobile IPv6 provides a
mechanism, known as "dynamic home agent address discovery", that
allows a mobile node to dynamically discover the IP address of a home
agent on its home link with which it may register its care-of address
while away from home. The mobile node sends a Binding Update to the
"Home-Agents anycast address" for its home subnet prefix and thus
reaches one of the (possibly many) routers on its home link currently
operating as a home agent. This home agent rejects the mobile
node's Binding Update, but returns in the Binding Acknowledgement
in response a list of all home agents on the home link. This list
of home agents is maintained by each home agent on the home link
through use of the Home Agent (H) bit in each home agent's periodic
unsolicited multicast Router Advertisements.
The Binding Update and Binding Acknowledgement destination options,
together with a "Binding Request" destination option, are also used
to allow IPv6 nodes communicating with a mobile node, to dynamically
learn and cache the mobile node's binding. When sending a packet
to any IPv6 destination, a node checks its cached bindings for an
entry for the packet's destination address. If a cached binding for
this destination address is found, the node uses an IPv6 Routing
header [5] (instead of IPv6 encapsulation) to route the packet to
the mobile node by way of the care-of address indicated in this
binding. If, instead, the sending node has no cached binding for
this destination address, the node sends the packet normally (with
no Routing header), and the packet is subsequently intercepted and
tunneled by the mobile node's home agent as described above. A node
communicating with a mobile node is referred to in this document as a
"correspondent node" of the mobile node.
Since a Binding Update, Binding Acknowledgement, and Binding Request
are each represented in a packet as an IPv6 destination option [5],
they may be included in any IPv6 packet. Any of these options can be
sent in either of two ways:
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- A Binding Update, Binding Acknowledgement, or Binding Request can
be included within any IPv6 packet carrying any payload such as
TCP [16] or UDP [15].
- A Binding Update, Binding Acknowledgement, or Binding Request can
be sent as a separate IPv6 packet containing no payload. In this
case, the Next Header field in the last extension header in the
packet is set to the value 59, to indicate "No Next Header" [5].
Mobile IPv6 also defines one additional IPv6 destination option.
When a mobile node sends a packet while away from home, it will
generally set the Source Address in the packet's IPv6 header to one
of its current care-of addresses, and will also include a "Home
Address" destination option in the packet, giving the mobile node's
home address. Many routers implement security policies such as
"ingress filtering" [6] that do not allow forwarding of packets
that appear to have a Source Address that is not topologically
correct. By using the care-of address as the IPv6 header Source
Address, the packet will be able to pass normally through such
routers, yet ingress filtering rules will still be able to locate
the true physical source of the packet in the same way as packets
from non-mobile nodes. By also including the Home Address option,
the sending mobile node can communicate its home address to the
correspondent node receiving this packet, allowing the use of the
care-of address to be transparent above the Mobile IPv6 support
level (e.g., at the transport layer). The inclusion of a Home
Address option in a packet affects only the correspondent node's
receipt of this single packet; no state is created or modified in the
correspondent node as a result of receiving a Home Address option in
a packet.
4.2. New IPv6 Destination Options
As discussed in general in Section 4.1, the following four new IPv6
destination options are defined for Mobile IPv6:
Binding Update
A Binding Update option is used by a mobile node to notify
a correspondent node or the mobile node's home agent of
its current binding. The Binding Update sent to the mobile
node's home agent to register its primary care-of address is
marked as a "home registration". Any packet that includes a
Binding Update option MUST also include either an AH [7] or
ESP [8] header providing sender authentication, data integrity
protection, and replay protection. The Binding Update option
is described in detail in Section 5.1.
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Binding Acknowledgement
A Binding Acknowledgement option is used to acknowledge receipt
of a Binding Update, if an acknowledgement was requested
in the Binding Update. Any packet that includes a Binding
Acknowledgement option MUST also include either an AH [7] or
ESP [8] header providing sender authentication, data integrity
protection, and replay protection. The Binding Acknowledgement
option is described in detail in Section 5.2.
Binding Request
A Binding Request option is used to request a mobile node
to send a Binding Update to the requesting node, containing
the mobile node's current binding. This option is typically
used by a correspondent node to refresh a cached binding for
a mobile node, when the cached binding is in active use but
the binding's lifetime is close to expiration. No special
authentication is required for the Binding Request option. The
Binding Request option is described in detail in Section 5.3.
Home Address
A Home Address option is used in a packet sent by a mobile
node to inform the recipient of that packet of the mobile
node's home address. For packets sent by a mobile node while
away from home, the mobile node generally uses one of its
care-of addresses as the Source Address in the packet's IPv6
header. By including a Home Address option in the packet, the
correspondent node receiving the packet is able to substitute
the mobile node's home address for this care-of address when
processing the packet, thus making the use of the care-of
address transparent to the correspondent node. If the IP
header of a packet carrying a Home Address option is covered
by authentication, then the Home Address option MUST also
be covered by this authentication, but no other special
authentication is required for the Home Address option. The
Home Address option is described in detail in Section 5.4.
Extensions to the format of these options MAY be included after the
fixed portion of the option data specified in this document. The
presence of such extensions will be indicated by the Option Length
field within the option. When the Option Length is greater than the
length required for the option specified here, the remaining octets
are interpreted as extensions. Currently, no extensions have been
defined.
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4.3. Conceptual Data Structures
This document describes the Mobile IPv6 protocol in terms of the
following three conceptual data structures used in the maintenance of
cached bindings:
Binding Cache
A cache, maintained by each IPv6 node, of bindings for
other nodes. The Binding Cache MAY be implemented in any
manner consistent with the external behavior described
in this document, for example by being combined with the
node's Destination Cache as maintained through Neighbor
Discovery [11]. When sending a packet, the Binding Cache
MUST be searched before the Neighbor Discovery conceptual
Destination Cache [11]. Each Binding Cache entry conceptually
contains the following fields:
- The home address of the mobile node for which this is the
Binding Cache entry. This field is used as the key for
searching the Binding Cache for the destination address of
a packet being routed. If the destination address of the
packet matches the home address in the Binding Cache entry,
this entry SHOULD be used in routing that packet.
- The care-of address for the mobile node indicated by
the home address field in this Binding Cache entry. If
the destination address of a packet being routed by a
node matches the home address in this entry, the packet
SHOULD be routed to this care-of address, as described in
Section 8.9, for packets originated by this node, or in
Section 9.5, if this node is the mobile node's home agent
and the packet was intercepted by it on the home link.
- A lifetime value, indicating the remaining lifetime
for this Binding Cache entry. The lifetime value is
initialized from the Lifetime field in the Binding Update
that created or last modified this Binding Cache entry.
Once the lifetime on this entry expires, the entry MUST be
deleted from the Binding Cache.
- A flag indicating whether or not this Binding Cache entry
is a "home registration" entry.
- The value of the Prefix Length field received in the
Binding Update that created or last modified this Binding
Cache entry.
- The maximum value of the Sequence Number field received in
previous Binding Updates for this mobile node home address.
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All comparisons between Sequence Number values MUST be
performed modulo 2**16.
- Recent usage information for this Binding Cache entry,
as needed for the cache replacement policy in use in the
Binding Cache and to assist in determining whether a
Binding Request should be sent when the lifetime on this
entry nears expiration.
- The time at which a Binding Request was last sent for this
entry, as needed to implement the rate limiting restriction
for sending Binding Requests.
An entry in a node's Binding Cache for which the node is
serving as a home agent is marked as a "home registration"
entry and SHOULD NOT be deleted by the home agent until the
expiration of its binding lifetime. Other Binding Cache
entries MAY be replaced at any time by any reasonable local
cache replacement policy but SHOULD NOT be unnecessarily
deleted. Any node's Binding Cache may contain at most one
entry for each mobile node home address. The contents of a
node's Binding Cache MUST NOT be changed in response to a Home
Address option in a received packet.
Binding Update List
A list, maintained by each mobile node, recording information
for each Binding Update sent by this mobile node, for which
the Lifetime sent in that Binding Update has not yet expired.
The Binding Update List includes all bindings sent by the
mobile node: those to correspondent nodes, to the mobile
node's home agent, and to a previous default router of the
mobile node. The Binding Update List MAY be implemented in any
manner consistent with the external behavior described in this
document. Each Binding Update List entry conceptually contains
the following fields:
- The IP address of the node to which a Binding Update was
sent. This node might still have a Binding Cache entry
derived from this Binding Update, if the Binding Update was
successfully received by that node (e.g., not lost by the
network) and if that node has not deleted the entry before
its expiration (e.g., to reclaim space in its Binding Cache
for other entries).
- The home address for which that Binding Update was sent.
This will be the mobile node's home address for most
Binding Updates (Sections 10.4 and 10.5), but will be
the mobile node's previous care-of address for Binding
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Updates sent to the mobile node's previous default router
(Section 10.6).
- The care-of address sent in that Binding Update. This
value is necessary for determining if the mobile node has
sent a Binding Update giving its new care-of address to
this destination after changing its care-of address.
- The remaining lifetime of that binding. This lifetime is
initialized from the Lifetime value sent in the Binding
Update and is decremented until it reaches zero, at which
time this entry MUST be deleted from the Binding Update
List.
- The maximum value of the Sequence Number field sent
in previous Binding Updates to this destination. All
comparisons between Sequence Number values MUST be
performed modulo 2**16.
- The state of any retransmissions needed for this Binding
Update, if the Acknowledge (A) bit was set in this Binding
Update. This state includes the time remaining until the
next retransmission attempt for the Binding Update, and
the current state of the exponential back-off process for
retransmissions.
- The time at which a Binding Update was last sent to this
destination, as needed to implement the rate limiting
restriction for sending Binding Updates.
- A flag that, when set, indicates that future Binding
Updates should not be sent to this destination. The
mobile node sets this flag in the Binding Update List
entry when it receives an ICMP Parameter Problem, Code 2,
error message in response to a Binding Update sent to that
destination, as described in Section 10.9.
Home Agents List
A list, maintained by each home agent, recording the IP address
of each other home agent on a link on which this node is
serving as a home agent; the home agent maintains a separate
Home Agents List for each such link on which it is serving.
This list is used in the dynamic home agent address discovery
mechanism. The information for the list is learned through
receipt of periodic unsolicited multicast Router Advertisements
from each other home agent on the link, in which the Home
Agent (H) bit is set, in a manner similar to the Default
Router List conceptual data structure maintained by each host
for Neighbor Discovery [11]. The Home Agents List MAY be
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implemented in any manner consistent with the external behavior
described in this document. Each Home Agents List entry
conceptually contains the following fields:
- The IP address of another router on the home link that this
node currently believes is operating as a home agent for
this link. A new entry is created or an existing entry is
updated in the Home Agents List in response to receipt of a
valid Router Advertisement in which the Home Agent (H) bit
is set.
- The remaining lifetime of this Home Agents List entry. The
lifetime is initialized from the Router Lifetime field in
the received Router Advertisement and is decremented until
it reaches zero, at which time this entry MUST be deleted
from the Home Agents List.
4.4. Binding Management
When a mobile node configures a new care-of address and decides to
use this new address as its primary care-of address, the mobile
node registers this new binding with its home agent by sending
the home agent a Binding Update. The mobile node indicates
that an acknowledgement is needed for this Binding Update and
continues to periodically retransmit it until acknowledged. The
home agent acknowledges the Binding Update by returning a Binding
Acknowledgement to the mobile node.
When a mobile node receives a packet tunneled to it from its
home agent, the mobile node assumes that the original sending
correspondent node has no Binding Cache entry for the mobile node,
since the correspondent node would otherwise have sent the packet
directly to the mobile node using a Routing header. The mobile node
thus returns a Binding Update to the correspondent node, allowing
it to cache the mobile node's binding for routing future packets.
Although the mobile node may request an acknowledgement for this
Binding Update, it need not, since subsequent packets from the
correspondent node will continue to be intercepted and tunneled by
the mobile node's home agent, effectively causing any needed Binding
Update retransmission.
A correspondent node with a Binding Cache entry for a mobile node
may refresh this binding, for example if the binding's lifetime
is near expiration, by sending a Binding Request to the mobile
node. Normally, a correspondent node will only refresh a Binding
Cache entry in this way if it is actively communicating with the
mobile node and has indications, such as an open TCP connection to
the mobile node, that it will continue this communication in the
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future. When a mobile node receives a Binding Request, it replies by
returning a Binding Update to the node sending the Binding Request.
A mobile node may use more than one care-of address at the same
time, although only one care-of address may be registered for it at
its home agent as its primary care-of address. The mobile node's
home agent will tunnel all intercepted packets for the mobile node
to its (single) registered primary care-of address, but the mobile
node will accept packets that it receives at any of its current
care-of addresses. Use of more than one care-of address by a mobile
node may be useful, for example, to improve smooth handoff when the
mobile node moves from one wireless link to another. If each of
these wireless links is connected to the Internet through a separate
base station, such that the wireless transmission range from the
two base stations overlap, the mobile node may be able to remain
connected to both links while in the area of overlap. In this case,
the mobile node could acquire a new care-of address on the new link
before moving out of transmission range and disconnecting from the
old link. The mobile node may thus still accept packets at its
old care-of address while it works to update its home agent and
correspondent nodes, notifying them of its new care-of address on the
new link.
Since correspondent nodes cache bindings, it is expected that
correspondent nodes usually will route packets directly to the mobile
node's care-of address, so that the home agent is rarely involved
with packet transmission to the mobile node. This is essential for
scalability and reliability, and for minimizing overall network load.
By caching the care-of address of a mobile node, optimal routing of
packets can be achieved from the correspondent node to the mobile
node. Routing packets directly to the mobile node's care-of address
also eliminates congestion at the mobile node's home agent and home
link. In addition, the impact of any possible failure of the home
agent, the home link, or intervening networks leading to or from the
home link is reduced, since these nodes and links are not involved in
the delivery of most packets to the mobile node.
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5. New IPv6 Destination Options
5.1. Binding Update Option Format
The Binding Update destination option is used by a mobile node to
notify other nodes of a new care-of address.
The Binding Update option is encoded in type-length-value (TLV)
format as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Option Type | Option Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|A|H|C| Reserved| Prefix Length | Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Lifetime |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ +
| |
+ Care-of Address +
| (only present if C bit set) |
+ +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Option Type
195 ???
Option Length
8-bit unsigned integer. Length of the option, in octets,
excluding the Option Type and Option Length fields. For the
current definition of the Binding Update option, the minimum
value for this field is 8; the length is 24 if the Care-of
Address Present (C) bit is set.
Acknowledge (A)
The Acknowledge (A) bit is set by the sending node to request a
Binding Acknowledgement (Section 5.2) be returned upon receipt
of the Binding Update option.
Home Registration (H)
The Home Registration (H) bit is set by the sending mobile node
to request the receiving node to act as this node's home agent.
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The Destination Address in the IP header of the packet carrying
this option MUST be that of a router sharing the same subnet
prefix as the home address of the mobile node in the binding
(given by the Home Address field in the Home Address option in
the packet).
Care-of Address Present (C)
The Care-of Address Present (C) bit indicates the presence of
the Care-of Address field in the Binding Update. The care-of
address for this binding is either the address in the Care-of
Address field in the Binding Update, if this bit is set, or the
Source Address in the packet's IPv6 header, if this bit is not
set.
Reserved
Sent as 0; ignored on reception.
Prefix Length
The Prefix Length field is valid only for a "home registration"
Binding Update. This field MUST be zero if the Home
Registration (H) bit is not set in the Binding Update. The
Prefix Length field is set by the sending mobile node to the
(nonzero) length of its subnet prefix in its home address
(given in the Home Address option in the packet) to request
its home agent to use the interface identifier in the mobile
node's home address (the remaining low-order bits after the
indicated subnet prefix) to form all other appropriate home
addresses for the mobile node. The home agent becomes the
home agent not only for the individual home address given in
this binding, but also for all other home addresses for this
mobile node formed from this interface identifier. That is,
for each on-link prefix on the home link, the home agent uses
the interface identifier to form other valid addresses for the
mobile node on the home link, and acts as a home agent also
for those addresses. In addition, the home agent forms the
link-local address and site-local address corresponding to
this interface identifier, and defends each for purposes of
Duplicate Address Detection. Details of this operation are
described in Section 9.3.
Sequence Number
Used by the receiving node to sequence Binding Updates and by
the sending node to match a returned Binding Acknowledgement
with this Binding Update. Each Binding Update sent by a mobile
node MUST use a Sequence Number greater than the Sequence
Number value sent in the previous Binding Update (if any) to
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the same destination address (modulo 2**16). There is no
requirement, however, that the Sequence Number value strictly
increase by 1 with each new Binding Update sent or received.
Lifetime
32-bit unsigned integer. The number of seconds remaining
before the binding must be considered expired. A value of all
one bits (0xffffffff) indicates infinity. A value of zero
indicates that the Binding Cache entry for the mobile node
should be deleted.
Care-of Address
This field in the Binding Update is optional and is only
present when the Care-of Address Present (C) bit is set. If
present, it gives the care-of address of the mobile node for
this binding. For most Binding Updates sent, it is expected
that this field will not be present, and instead that the
care-of address for the binding will be given by the Source
Address field in the packet's IPv6 header.
Any packet including a Binding Update option MUST also include a Home
Address option. The home address of the mobile node in the binding
given in the Binding Update option is indicated by the Home Address
field in the Home Address option in the packet.
Any packet that includes a Binding Update option MUST also include
either an AH [7] or ESP [8] header providing sender authentication,
data integrity protection, and replay protection.
If the care-of address in the binding (either the Care-of Address
field in the Binding Update option or the Source Address field in
the packet's IPv6 header) is equal to the home address of the mobile
node, the Binding Update option indicates that any existing binding
for the mobile node should be deleted. Likewise, if the Lifetime
field in the Binding Update option is equal to 0, the Binding Update
option indicates that any existing binding for the mobile node should
be deleted. In each of these cases, no Binding Cache entry for the
mobile node should be created in response to receiving the Binding
Update.
The last Sequence Number value sent to a destination is stored by the
mobile node in the Binding Update List entry for that destination;
the last Sequence Number value received from a mobile node is stored
by a correspondent node in the Binding Cache entry for that mobile
node. Thus, the mobile node's and the correspondent node's knowledge
of the last sequence number expire at the same time. If the sending
mobile node has no Binding Update List entry, the Sequence Number
may start at any value; if the receiving correspondent node has no
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Binding Cache entry, it should accept a Binding Update with any
Sequence Number value.
The three highest-order bits of the Option Type are encoded to
indicate specific processing of the option [5]. For the Binding
Update option, these three bits are set to 110, indicating that any
IPv6 node processing this option that does not recognize the Option
Type must discard the packet and, only if the packet's Destination
Address was not a multicast address, return an ICMP Parameter
Problem, Code 2, message to the packet's Source Address; and that the
data within the option cannot change en-route to the packet's final
destination.
Extensions to the Binding Update option format may be included after
the fixed portion of the Binding Update option specified above.
The presence of such extensions will be indicated by the Option
Length field. When the Option Length is greater than the length
defined above, the remaining octets are interpreted as extensions.
Currently, no extensions have been defined.
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5.2. Binding Acknowledgement Option Format
The Binding Acknowledgement destination option is used to acknowledge
receipt of a Binding Update option (Section 5.1). When a node
receives a packet containing a Binding Update option, with this node
being the destination node of the packet (only the destination node
processes the option since it is a destination option), this node
MUST return a Binding Acknowledgement to the source of the packet, if
the Acknowledge (A) bit is set in the Binding Update.
The Binding Acknowledgement option is encoded in type-length-value
(TLV) format as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Option Type |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Option Length | Status | Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Lifetime |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Refresh |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ +
. .
. Other Home Agents .
. .
+ +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Option Type
2 ???
Option Length
8-bit unsigned integer. Length of the option, in octets,
excluding the Option Type and Option Length fields. This field
MUST be set to 11 + 16 * (the number of IP addresses included
in the Other Home Agents field). The number of addresses
included in the Other Home Agents field MUST be zero (Option
Length then MUST be set to 11), unless the Status field is set
to 135 (dynamic home agent address discovery response).
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Status
8-bit unsigned integer indicating the disposition of the
Binding Update. Values of the Status field less than 128
indicate that the Binding Update was accepted by the receiving
node. The following such Status values are currently defined:
0 Binding Update accepted
Values of the Status field greater than or equal to 128
indicate that the Binding Update was rejected by the receiving
node. The following such Status values are currently defined:
128 Reason unspecified
129 Poorly formed Binding Update
130 Administratively prohibited
131 Insufficient resources
132 Home registration not supported
133 Not home subnet
134 Sequence Number field value too small
135 Dynamic home agent address discovery response
136 Incorrect interface identifier length
Up-to-date values of the Status field are to be specified in
the most recent "Assigned Numbers" [17].
Sequence Number
The Sequence Number in the Binding Acknowledgement is copied
from the Sequence Number field in the Binding Update option,
for use by the mobile node in matching this Acknowledgement
with an outstanding Binding Update.
Lifetime
The granted lifetime for which this node will attempt to retain
the entry for this mobile node in its Binding Cache. If the
node sending the Binding Acknowledgement is serving as the
mobile node's home agent, the Lifetime period also indicates
the period for which this node will continue this service; if
the mobile node requires home agent service from this node
beyond this period, the mobile node MUST send a new Binding
Update to it before the expiration of this period, in order
to extend the lifetime. The value of this field is undefined
if the Status field indicates that the Binding Update was
rejected.
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Refresh
The recommended period at which the mobile node SHOULD send
a new Binding Update to this node in order to "refresh" the
mobile node's binding in this node's Binding Cache. This
refreshing of the binding is useful in case the node fails and
loses its cache state. The Refresh period is determined by
the node sending the Binding Acknowledgement (the node caching
the binding). If this node is serving as the mobile node's
home agent, the Refresh value may be set, for example, based on
whether the node stores the mobile node's binding in volatile
storage or in nonvolatile storage. If the node sending the
Binding Acknowledgement is not serving as the mobile node's
home agent, the Refresh period SHOULD be set equal to the
Lifetime period in the Binding Acknowledgement; even if this
node loses this cache entry due to a failure of the node,
packets from it can still reach the mobile node through the
mobile node's home agent, causing a new Binding Update to this
node to allow it to recreate this cache entry. The value of
this field is undefined if the Status field indicates that the
Binding Update was rejected.
Other Home Agents
A list of other home agents on the home link for the mobile
node to which this Binding Acknowledgement is sent. This field
MUST NOT be present (zero addresses listed) unless the Binding
Acknowledgement is sent in response to an anycast Binding
Update sent by this mobile node attempting dynamic home agent
address discovery. In this case, the Status field MUST be
set to 135 (dynamic home agent address discovery response).
The list of home agents in the Other Home Agents field MUST
NOT include this home agent's own unicast IP address, which
is returned instead to the mobile node in the Source Address
field in the IPv6 header of the packet in which this Binding
Acknowledgement is sent.
Any packet that includes a Binding Acknowledgement option MUST
also include either an AH [7] or ESP [8] header providing sender
authentication, data integrity protection, and replay protection.
If the node returning the Binding Acknowledgement accepted the
Binding Update for which the Acknowledgement is being returned (the
value of the Status field in the Acknowledgement is less than 128),
this node will have an entry for the mobile node in its Binding Cache
and MUST use this entry (which includes the care-of address received
in the Binding Update) in sending the packet containing the Binding
Acknowledgement to the mobile node. The details of sending this
packet to the mobile node are the same as for sending any packet to a
mobile node using a binding, and are described in Section 8.9. The
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packet is sent using a Routing header, routing the packet to the
mobile node by way of its care-of address recorded in the Binding
Cache entry.
If the node returning the Binding Acknowledgement instead
rejected the Binding Update (the value of the Status field in the
Acknowledgement is greater than or equal to 128), this node MUST
similarly use a Routing header in sending the packet containing the
Binding Acknowledgement, as described in Section 8.9, but MUST NOT
use its Binding Cache in forming the IP header or Routing header
in this packet. Rather, the care-of address used by this node in
sending the packet containing the Binding Acknowledgement MUST be
copied from the care-of address received in the rejected Binding
Update; this node MUST NOT modify its Binding Cache in response
to receiving this rejected Binding Update and MUST ignore its
Binding Cache in sending the packet in which it returns this Binding
Acknowledgement. The packet is sent using a Routing header, routing
the packet to the home address of the rejected Binding Update by
way of the care-of address indicated in the packet containing the
Binding Update. When sending a Binding Acknowledgement to reject a
Binding Update, the Binding Acknowledgement MUST be sent in an IPv6
packet containing no payload (with the Next Header field in the last
extension header in the packet set to indicate "No Next Header" [5]).
The three highest-order bits of the Option Type are encoded to
indicate specific processing of the option [5]. For the Binding
Acknowledgement option, these three bits are set to 000, indicating
that any IPv6 node processing this option that does not recognize the
Option Type must skip over this option and continue processing the
header, and that the data within the option cannot change en-route to
the packet's final destination.
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5.3. Binding Request Option Format
The Binding Request destination option is used to request a mobile
node's binding from the mobile node. When a mobile node receives
a packet containing a Binding Request option, it SHOULD return a
Binding Update (Section 5.1) to the source of the Binding Request.
The Binding Request option is encoded in type-length-value (TLV)
format as follows:
0 1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Option Type | Option Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Option Type
3 ???
Option Length
8-bit unsigned integer. Length of the option, in octets,
excluding the Option Type and Option Length fields. For the
current definition of the Binding Request option, this field
MUST be set to 0.
The three highest-order bits of the Option Type are encoded to
indicate specific processing of the option [5]. For the Binding
Request option, these three bits are set to 000, indicating that any
IPv6 node processing this option that does not recognize the Option
Type must skip over this option and continue processing the header,
and that the data within the option cannot change en-route to the
packet's final destination.
Extensions to the Binding Request option format may be included after
the fixed portion of the Binding Request option specified above.
The presence of such extensions will be indicated by the Option
Length field. When the Option Length is greater than 0 octets,
the remaining octets are interpreted as extensions. Currently, no
extensions have been defined.
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5.4. Home Address Option Format
The Home Address destination option is used in a packet sent by a
mobile node to inform the recipient of that packet of the mobile
node's home address. For packets sent by a mobile node while
away from home, the mobile node generally uses one of its care-of
addresses as the Source Address in the packet's IPv6 header. By
including a Home Address option in the packet, the correspondent
node receiving the packet is able to substitute the mobile node's
home address for this care-of address when processing the packet,
thus making the use of the care-of address transparent to the
correspondent node.
The Home Address option is encoded in type-length-value (TLV) format
as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Option Type | Option Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ +
| |
+ Home Address +
| |
+ +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Option Type
196 ???
Option Length
8-bit unsigned integer. Length of the option, in octets,
excluding the Option Type and Option Length fields. For the
current definition of the Home Address option, this field MUST
be set to 16.
Home Address
The home address of the mobile node sending the packet.
The inclusion of a Home Address option in a packet affects only
the correspondent node's receipt of this single packet; no state
is created or modified in the correspondent node as a result of
receiving a Home Address option in a packet. In particular, the
receipt of a packet containing a Home Address option MUST NOT alter
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the contents of the receiver's Binding Cache due to the presence of
the Home Address option, and the mapping between the home address
and care-of address indicated by the Home Address option MUST NOT be
used as a basis for routing subsequent packets sent by this receiving
node.
No special authentication of the Home Address option is required,
except that if the IPv6 header of a packet is covered by
authentication, then that authentication MUST also cover the Home
Address option; this coverage is achieved automatically by the
definition of the Option Type code for the Home Address option,
since it indicates that the option is included in the authentication
computation. If the packet carries no IP authentication, then the
contents of the Home Address option, as well as the Source Address
field or any other field in the IPv6 header, may have been forged or
altered during transit. Upon receipt of a packet containing a Home
Address option, the receiving node replaces the Source Address in
the IPv6 header with the Home Address in the Home Address option.
By requiring that any authentication of the IPv6 header also cover
the Home Address option, the security of the Source Address field in
the IPv6 header is not compromised by the presence of a Home Address
option. Security issues related to the Home Address option are
discussed further in Section 13.
The three highest-order bits of the Option Type are encoded to
indicate specific processing of the option [5]. For the Home Address
option, these three bits are set to 110, indicating that any IPv6
node processing this option that does not recognize the Option Type
must discard the packet and, only if the packet's Destination Address
was not a multicast address, return an ICMP Parameter Problem,
Code 2, message to the packet's Source Address; and that the data
within the option cannot change en-route to the packet's final
destination.
Extensions to the Home Address option format may be included after
the fixed portion of the Home Address option specified above.
The presence of such extensions will be indicated by the Option
Length field. When the Option Length is greater than 8 octets,
the remaining octets are interpreted as extensions. Currently, no
extensions have been defined.
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6. Modifications to IPv6 Neighbor Discovery
6.1. Router Advertisement Message Format
Mobile IPv6 requires the addition of a single flag bit to the format
of a Router Advertisement message [11], for use in the dynamic home
agent address discovery mechanism (Sections 9.2 and 10.4). The
Router Advertisement message format is thus modified as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type | Code | Checksum |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Cur Hop Limit |M|O|H| Reserved| Router Lifetime |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reachable Time |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Retrans Timer |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Options ...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
This format represents the following changes over that specified for
Neighbor Discovery [11]:
Home Agent (H)
The Home Agent (H) bit is set in a Router Advertisement to
indicate that the router sending this Router Advertisement is
also functioning as a Mobile IP home agent.
Reserved
Reduced from a 6-bit field to a 5-bit field to account for the
addition of the Home Agent (H) bit.
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6.2. Advertisement Interval Option Format
The Advertisement Interval option is used in Router Advertisement
messages to advertise the interval at which this router sends
unsolicited multicast Router Advertisements. Routers operating
as Mobile IP home agents MAY include this option in their Router
Advertisements. A mobile node receiving a Router Advertisement
containing this option SHOULD utilize the specified Advertisement
Interval for that home agent in its movement detection algorithm, as
described in Section 10.2.
This option MUST be silently ignored for other Neighbor Discovery
messages.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type | Length | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Advertisement Interval |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Type
6 ???
Length
1
Reserved
This field is unused. It MUST be initialized to zero by the
sender and MUST be ignored by the receiver.
Advertisement Interval
32-bit unsigned integer. The maximum time, in milliseconds,
between successive unsolicited router Router Advertisement
messages sent by this router on this network interface. Using
the conceptual router configuration variables defined by
Neighbor Discovery [11], this field MUST be equal to the value
MaxRtrAdvInterval, expressed in milliseconds.
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6.3. Changes to MinRtrAdvInterval Limits
The Neighbor Discovery protocol specification [11] limits routers to
a minimum interval of 3 seconds between sending unsolicited multicast
Router Advertisement messages from any given network interface
(MinRtrAdvInterval), stating that:
"Routers generate Router Advertisements frequently enough
that hosts will learn of their presence within a few
minutes, but not frequently enough to rely on an absence
of advertisements to detect router failure; a separate
Neighbor Unreachability Detection algorithm provides failure
detection."
This limitation, however, is not suitable to providing timely
movement detection for mobile nodes. Mobile nodes detect their
own movement by learning the presence of new routers as the mobile
node moves into wireless transmission range of them (or physically
connects to a new wired network), and by learning that previous
routers are no longer reachable. Mobile nodes MUST be able to
quickly detect when they move to a link served by a new router, so
that they can acquire a new care-of address and send Binding Updates
to register this care-of address with their home agent and to notify
correspondent nodes as needed.
Thus, routers serving as Mobile IP home agents MAY send unsolicited
multicast Router Advertisements more frequently than this limit. In
particular, on network interfaces where the home agent is expecting
to provide service to visiting mobile nodes (e.g., wireless network
interfaces), the home agent SHOULD be configured with a smaller
MinRtrAdvInterval value to allow sending of unsolicited multicast
Router Advertisements more often. A recommended maximum rate is
once per second, although specific knowledge of the type of network
interface in use SHOULD be taken into account in configuring this
limit for each network interface.
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7. Requirements for IPv6 Nodes
Mobile IPv6 places some special requirements on the functions
provided by different IPv6 nodes. This section summarizes those
requirements, identifying the functionality each requirement is
intended to support. Further details on this functionality is
provided in the following sections.
7.1. Requirements for All IPv6 Hosts and Routers
Since any IPv6 node may at any time be a correspondent node of a
mobile node, either sending a packet to a mobile node or receiving a
packet from a mobile node, the following requirements pertain to ALL
IPv6 nodes (whether host or router, whether mobile or stationary):
- Every IPv6 node MUST be able to process a Home Address option
received in a packet.
- Every IPv6 node SHOULD be able to process a Binding Update option
received in a packet, and to return a Binding Acknowledgement
option if requested.
- Every IPv6 node SHOULD be able to maintain a Binding Cache of the
bindings received in accepted Binding Updates.
7.2. Requirements for IPv6 Home Agents
In order for a mobile node to operate correctly while away from
home, at least one IPv6 router in the mobile node's home link must
function as a home agent for the mobile node. The following special
requirements pertain to all IPv6 routers capable of serving as a home
agent:
- Every home agent MUST be able to maintain an entry in its Binding
Cache for each mobile node for which it is serving as the home
agent. Each such Binding Cache entry records the mobile node's
binding with its primary care-of address and is marked as a "home
registration".
- Every home agent MUST be able to intercept packets (using proxy
Neighbor Discovery) on the local subnet addressed to a mobile
node for which it is currently serving as the home agent while
that mobile node is away from home.
- Every home agent MUST be able to encapsulate such intercepted
packets in order to tunnel them to the primary care-of address
for the mobile node indicated in its binding.
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- Every home agent MUST be able to return a Binding Acknowledgement
in response to a Binding Update received with the Acknowledge (A)
bit set.
- Every home agent MUST be able to accept packets addressed to the
Home-Agents anycast address for the subnet on which it is serving
as a home agent, and MUST be able to participate in dynamic home
agent address discovery (Section 9.2).
7.3. Requirements for IPv6 Mobile Nodes
Finally, the following requirements pertain all IPv6 nodes capable of
functioning as mobile nodes:
- Every IPv6 mobile node MUST be able to perform IPv6
decapsulation [4].
- Every IPv6 mobile node MUST support sending Binding Updates, as
specified in Sections 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6; and MUST be able to
receive and process Binding Acknowledgements, as specified in
Section 10.10.
- Every IPv6 mobile node MUST maintain a Binding Update List in
which it records the IP address of each other node to which it
has sent a Binding Update, for which the Lifetime sent in that
binding has not yet expired.
- Every IPv6 mobile node MUST support receiving a Binding Request
by responding with a Binding Update.
- Every IPv6 mobile node MUST support sending packets containing a
Home Address option; this option MUST be included in all packets
sent while away from home, if the packet would otherwise have
been sent with the mobile node's home address as the IP Source
Address.
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8. Correspondent Node Operation
A correspondent node is any node communicating with a mobile node.
The correspondent node, itself, may be stationary or mobile, and may
possibly also be functioning as a home agent for Mobile IPv6. The
procedures in this section thus apply to all IPv6 nodes.
8.1. Receiving Packets from a Mobile Node
Packets sent by a mobile node while away from home generally include
a Home Address option. When any node receives a packet containing
a Home Address option, it MUST process the option in a manner
consistent with copying the Home Address field from the Home Address
option into the IPv6 header, replacing the original value of the
Source Address field there. Further processing of the packet (e.g.,
at the transport layer) thus need not know that the original Source
Address was a care-of address, or that the Home Address option was
used in the packet. Since the sending mobile node uses its home
address at the transport layer when sending such a packet, the use of
the care-of address and Home Address option is thus transparent to
both the mobile node and the correspondent node above the level of
the Home Address option generation and processing.
8.2. Receiving Binding Updates
Upon receiving a Binding Update option in some packet, the receiving
node MUST validate the Binding Update according to the following
tests:
- The packet MUST contain a valid Home Address option. The home
address for the binding is specified by the Home Address field of
the Home Address option.
- The Option Length field in the Binding Update option is greater
than or equal to the length specified in Section 5.1.
- The packet contains a valid AH [7] or ESP [8] header that
provides sender authentication, integrity protection, and replay
protection.
- The Sequence Number field in the Binding Update option is greater
than the Sequence Number received in the previous Binding Update
for this home address, if any. The Sequence Number comparison is
performed modulo 2**16.
Any Binding Update not satisfying all of these tests MUST be
silently ignored, and the packet carrying the Binding Update MUST be
discarded.
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If the Binding Update is valid according to the tests above, then the
Binding Update is processed further as follows:
- If the Destination Address in the packet's IPv6 header is the
Home-Agents anycast address for a local subnet and this address
is assigned to one of this node's network interfaces, then the
mobile node sending this Binding Update is attempting dynamic
home agent address discovery. Processing for this type of
received Binding Update is described in Section 9.2. (If the
Destination Address is not assigned to one of this node's network
interfaces, then the packet would have been forwarded as a normal
packet and the Binding Update, as a destination option, would not
be processed in any way by this node.)
- If the Lifetime specified in the Binding Update is nonzero and
the specified Care-of Address is not equal to the home address
for the binding (as given in the Home Address option in the
packet), then this is a request to cache a binding for the mobile
node. Processing for this type of received Binding Update is
described in Section 8.3.
- If the Lifetime specified in the Binding Update is zero or the
specified Care-of Address matches the home address for the
binding, then this is a request to delete the mobile node's
cached binding. Processing for this type of received Binding
Update is described in Section 8.4.
8.3. Requests to Cache a Binding
If a node receives a valid Binding Update requesting it to cache a
binding for a mobile node, as specified in Section 8.2, then the node
MUST examine the Home Registration (H) bit in the Binding Update
to determine how to further process the Binding Update. If the
Home Registration (H) bit is set, the Binding Update is processed
according to the procedure specified in Section 9.3.
If the Home Registration (H) bit is not set, then the receiving
node SHOULD create a new entry in its Binding Cache for this mobile
node (or update its existing Binding Cache entry for this mobile
node, if such an entry already exists). The home address of the
mobile node is taken from the Home Address field in the packet's Home
Address option. The new Binding Cache entry records the association
between this home address and the care-of address for the binding, as
specified in either the Care-of Address field of the Binding Update
or in the Source Address field in the packet's IPv6 header. Any
Binding Cache entry created or updated in response to processing this
Binding Update MUST be deleted after the expiration of the Lifetime
period specified in the Binding Update.
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8.4. Requests to Delete a Binding
If a node receives a valid Binding Update requesting it to delete a
cached binding for a mobile node, as specified in Section 8.2, then
the node MUST examine the Home Registration (H) bit in the Binding
Update to determine how to further process the Binding Update. If
the Home Registration (H) bit is set, the Binding Update is processed
according to the procedure specified in Section 9.4.
If the Home Registration (H) bit is not set, then the receiving node
MUST delete any existing entry in its Binding Cache for this mobile
node. The home address of the mobile node is taken from the Home
Address field in the packet's Home Address option.
8.5. Sending Binding Acknowledgements
When any node receives a packet containing a Binding Update option
in which the Acknowledge (A) bit is set, it SHOULD return a Binding
Acknowledgement option acknowledging receipt of the Binding Update.
If the node accepts the Binding Update and creates or updates an
entry in its Binding Cache for this binding, the Status field in
the Binding Acknowledgement MUST be set to a value less than 128;
if the node rejects the Binding Update and does not create or
update an entry for this binding, the Status field in the Binding
Acknowledgement MUST be set to a value greater than or equal to 128.
Specific values for the Status field are described in Section 5.2 and
in the most recent "Assigned Numbers" [17].
As described in Section 5.2, the packet in which the Binding
Acknowledgement is returned MUST include either an AH [7] or ESP [8]
header providing sender authentication, data integrity protection,
and replay protection; and the packet MUST be sent using a Routing
header in the same way as any other packet sent to a mobile node
using a care-of address (even if the binding was rejected), as
described in Section 8.9. The packet is routed first to the care-of
address contained in the Binding Update being acknowledged, and
then to the mobile node's home address. This use of the Routing
header ensures that the Binding Acknowledgement will be routed to the
current location of the node sending the Binding Update, whether the
Binding Update was accepted or rejected.
8.6. Sending Binding Requests
Entries in a node's Binding Cache MUST be deleted when their lifetime
expires. If such an entry is still in active use in sending packets
to a mobile node, the next packet sent to the mobile node will be
routed normally, to the mobile node's home link, where it will be
intercepted and tunneled to the mobile node. The mobile node will
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then return a Binding Update to the sender, allowing it to create
a new Binding Cache entry for sending future packets to the mobile
node. Communication with the mobile node continues uninterrupted,
but the forwarding of this packet through the mobile node's home
agent creates additional overhead and latency in delivering packets
to the mobile node.
If the sender knows that the Binding Cache entry is still in active
use, it MAY send a Binding Request to the mobile node in an attempt
to avoid this overhead and latency due to deleting and recreating
the Binding Cache entry. Since a Binding Request is a destination
option, it may, for example, be included in any packet already being
sent to the mobile node, such as a packet that is part of ongoing TCP
communication with the mobile node. When the mobile node receives a
packet from some sender containing a Binding Request, it returns a
Binding Update to that sender, giving its current binding and a new
lifetime.
8.7. Cache Replacement Policy
Any entry in a node's Binding Cache MUST be deleted after the
expiration of the Lifetime specified in the Binding Update from which
the entry was created or was last updated. Conceptually, a node
maintains a separate timer for each entry in its Binding Cache. When
creating or updating a Binding Cache entry in response to a received
and accepted Binding Update, the node sets the timer for this entry
to the specified Lifetime period. When a Binding Cache entry's timer
expires, the node deletes the entry.
Each node's Binding Cache will, by necessity, have a finite size.
A node MAY use any reasonable local policy for managing the space
within its Binding Cache, except that any entry marked as a "home
registration" (Section 9.3) MUST NOT be deleted from the cache until
the expiration of its lifetime period. When attempting to add a
new "home registration" entry in response to a Binding Update with
the Home Registration (H) bit set, if insufficient space exists (or
can be reclaimed) in the node's Binding Cache, the node MUST reject
the Binding Update and SHOULD return a Binding Acknowledgement to
the sending mobile node, in which the Status field is set to 131
(insufficient resources). When otherwise attempting to add a new
entry to its Binding Cache, a node MAY, if needed, choose to drop any
entry already in its Binding Cache, other than a "home registration"
entry, in order to make space for the new entry. For example, a
"least-recently used" (LRU) strategy for cache entry replacement
among entries not marked as a "home registration" is likely to work
well.
Any binding dropped from a node's Binding Cache due to lack of cache
space will be rediscovered and a new cache entry created, if the
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binding is still in active use by the node for sending packets. If
the node sends a packet to a destination for which it has dropped the
entry from its Binding Cache, the packet will be routed normally,
leading to the mobile node's home link. There, the packet will be
intercepted by the mobile node's home agent and tunneled to the
mobile node's current primary care-of address. As when a Binding
Cache entry is initially created, this indirect routing to the mobile
node through its home agent will result in the mobile node sending
a Binding Update to this sending node when it receives the tunneled
packet, allowing it to add an entry again for this destination to its
Binding Cache.
8.8. Receiving ICMP Error Messages
When a correspondent node sends a packet to a mobile node, if the
correspondent node has a Binding Cache entry for the destination
address of the packet, then the correspondent node uses a Routing
header to deliver the packet to the mobile node through the care-of
address in the binding recorded in the Binding Cache entry. Any ICMP
error message caused by the packet on its way to the mobile node will
be returned normally to the correspondent node.
On the other hand, if the correspondent node has no Binding Cache
entry for the mobile node, the packet will be routed to the mobile
node's home link, where it will be intercepted by the mobile node's
home agent, encapsulated, and tunneled to the mobile node's primary
care-of address. Any ICMP error message caused by the packet on
its way to the mobile node while in the tunnel, will be returned to
the mobile node's home agent (the source of the tunnel). By the
definition of IPv6 encapsulation [4], this encapsulating node MUST
relay certain ICMP error messages back to the original sender of the
packet, which in this case is the correspondent node.
Likewise, if a packet for a mobile node arrives at the mobile node's
previous default router (e.g., the mobile node moved after the packet
was sent), the router will encapsulate and tunnel the packet to the
mobile node's new care-of address (if it has a Binding Cache entry
for the mobile node). As above, any ICMP error message caused by the
packet while in this tunnel will be returned to the previous default
router (the source of the tunnel), which MUST relay certain ICMP
error messages back to the correspondent node [4].
Thus, in all cases, any meaningful ICMP error messages caused
by packets from a correspondent node to a mobile node will be
returned to the correspondent node. If the correspondent node
receives persistent ICMP Destination Unreachable messages after
sending packets to a mobile node based on an entry in its Binding
Cache, the correspondent node SHOULD delete this Binding Cache
entry. If the correspondent node subsequently transmits another
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packet to the mobile node, the packet will be routed to the mobile
node's home link, intercepted by the mobile node's home agent, and
tunneled to the mobile node's primary care-of address using IPv6
encapsulation. The mobile node will then return a Binding Update to
the correspondent node, allowing it to recreate a (correct) Binding
Cache entry for the mobile node.
8.9. Sending Packets to a Mobile Node
Before sending any packet, the sending node SHOULD examine its
Binding Cache for an entry for the destination address to which the
packet is being sent. If the sending node has a Binding Cache entry
for this address, the sending node SHOULD use a Routing header to
route the packet to this mobile node (the destination node) by way
of the care-of address in the binding recorded in that Binding Cache
entry. For example, assuming use of a Type 0 Routing header [5], if
no other use of a Routing header is involved in the routing of this
packet, the mobile node sets the fields in the packet's IPv6 header
and Routing header as follows:
- The Destination Address in the packet's IPv6 header is set to
the mobile node's care-of address copied from the Binding Cache
entry.
- The Routing header is initialized to contain a single route
segment, with an Address of the mobile node's home address (the
original destination address to which the packet was being sent).
Following the definition of a Type 0 Routing header [5], this packet
will be routed to the mobile node's care-of address, where it will
be delivered to the mobile node (the mobile node has associated the
care-of address with its network interface). Normal processing of
the Routing header by the mobile node will then proceed as follows:
- The mobile node swaps the Destination Address in the packet's
IPv6 header and the Address specified in the Routing header.
This results in the packet's IP Destination Address being set to
the mobile node's home address.
- The mobile node then resubmits the packet to its IPv6 module for
further processing. Since the mobile node recognizes its own
home address as one if its current IP addresses, the packet is
processed further within the mobile node, in the same way then as
if the mobile node was at home.
If, instead, the sending node has no Binding Cache entry for the
destination address to which the packet is being sent, the sending
node simply sends the packet normally, with no Routing header. If
the destination node is not a mobile node (or is a mobile node that
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is currently at home), the packet will be delivered directly to this
node and processed normally by it. If, however, the destination node
is a mobile node that is currently away from home, the packet will
be intercepted by the mobile node's home agent and tunneled (using
IPv6 encapsulation [4]) to the mobile node's current primary care-of
address, as described in Section 9.5. The mobile node will then send
a Binding Update to the sending node, as described in Section 10.5,
allowing the sending node to create a Binding Cache entry for its use
in sending subsequent packets to this mobile node.
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9. Home Agent Operation
9.1. Receiving Router Advertisement Messages
For each link on which a router provides service as a home agent,
the router maintains a Home Agents List recording the IP address of
all other home agents that link. This list is used in the dynamic
home agent address discovery mechanism, described in Section 9.2.
The information for the list is learned through receipt of periodic
unsolicited multicast Router Advertisements from each other home
agent on the link, in which the Home Agent (H) bit is set, in a
manner similar to the Default Router List conceptual data structure
maintained by each host for Neighbor Discovery [11].
On receipt of a valid Router Advertisement, as defined in the
processing algorithm specified for Neighbor Discovery [11], the home
agent extracts the Source Address of the packet and performs the
following steps, in addition to any steps already required of it by
Neighbor Discovery:
- If the address is not already present in the home agent's Home
Agents List, and the advertisement's Router Lifetime is non-zero,
create a new entry in the list, and initialize its lifetime from
the advertisement's Router Lifetime field.
- If the address is already present in the home agent's Home Agents
List as a result of a previously-received advertisement, reset
its lifetime to the Router Lifetime value in the newly-received
advertisement.
- If the address is already present in the home agent's Home Agents
List and the received Router Lifetime value is zero, immediately
delete this entry in the Home Agents List
A home agent SHOULD maintain an entry in its Home Agents List for
each such valid home agent address until that entry's lifetime
expires, after which time the entry MUST be deleted.
9.2. Dynamic Home Agent Address Discovery
If a received Binding Update indicates that the mobile node sending
it is attempting dynamic home agent address discovery, as described
in Section 8.2, then the receiving node MUST process the Binding
Update as specified in this section.
A mobile node attempts dynamic home agent address discovery by
sending its "home registration" Binding Update to the Home-Agents
anycast address for its home IP subnet prefix (the packet MUST also
include a Home Address option, as described in Section 10.4). A home
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agent receiving such a Binding Update that is serving this subnet
(the home agent is configured with this anycast address on one of its
network interfaces) MUST reject the Binding Update and SHOULD return
a Binding Acknowledgement indicating this rejection, with the Source
Address of the packet carrying the Binding Acknowledgement set to
one of the unicast addresses of the home agent. The Status field in
the Binding Acknowledgement MUST be set to 135 (dynamic home agent
address discovery response).
In this Binding Acknowledgement rejecting the dynamic home agent
address discovery Binding Update, this home agent SHOULD include the
IP address of all other home agents currently listed in its Home
Agents List. To include this list in the Binding Acknowledgement,
the Option Length field MUST be set to 11 + 16 * (the number
of IP addresses included in the Other Home Agents field in the
Binding Acknowledgement). The mobile node, upon receiving this
Binding Acknowledgement, MAY then resend its Binding Update to
the unicast home agent address given as the IP Source Address of
the packet carrying the Binding Acknowledgement or to any of the
unicast IP addresses listed in the Other Home Agents field in
the Acknowledgement. For example, the mobile node may re-attempt
its home registration with each of these home agents in turn, by
sending each a Binding Update and waiting for the matching Binding
Acknowledgement, until its registration is accepted by one of these
home agents.
9.3. Primary Care-of Address Registration
General processing of a received Binding Update that requests a
binding to be cached, is described in Section 8.3. However, if
the Home Registration (H) bit is set in the Binding Update, then
after following the step outlined for all Binding Update options in
Section 8.2, the receiving node MUST process the Binding Update as
specified in this section rather than following the general procedure
for requests to cache a binding specified in Section 8.3.
To begin processing the Binding Update, the home agent MUST perform
the following sequence of tests:
- If the node is not a router that implements home agent
functionality, then the node MUST reject the Binding Update and
SHOULD return a Binding Acknowledgement to the mobile node, in
which the Status field is set to 132 (home registration not
supported).
- Else, if the home address for the binding (the Home Address field
in the packet's Home Address option) is not an on-link IPv6
address with respect to the home agent's current Prefix List,
then the home agent MUST reject the Binding Update and SHOULD
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return a Binding Acknowledgement to the mobile node, in which the
Status field is set to 133 (not home subnet).
- Else, if the Prefix Length field is nonzero in the Binding Update
and this length differs from the length of the home agent's own
knowledge of the corresponding subnet prefix on the home link,
then the home agent MUST reject the Binding Update and SHOULD
return a Binding Acknowledgement to the mobile node, in which the
Status field is set to 136 (incorrect subnet prefix length).
- Else, if the home agent chooses to reject the Binding Update for
any other reason (e.g., insufficient resources to serve another
mobile node as a home agent), then the home agent SHOULD return a
Binding Acknowledgement to the mobile node, in which the Status
field is set to an appropriate value to indicate the reason for
the rejection.
If the home agent does not reject the Binding Update as described
above, then it becomes the home agent for the mobile node. The new
home agent (the receiving node) MUST then create a new entry or
update the existing entry in its Binding Cache for this mobile node's
home address (given in the Home Address option in the packet), as
described in Section 8.3. In addition, the home agent MUST mark
this Binding Cache entry as a "home registration" to indicate that
the node is serving as a home agent for this binding. Binding
Cache entries marked as a "home registration" MUST be excluded from
the normal cache replacement policy used for the Binding Cache
(Section 8.7) and MUST NOT be removed from the Binding Cache until
the expiration of the Lifetime period.
If the home agent was not already serving as a home agent for this
mobile node (the home agent did not already have a Binding Cache
entry for this home address marked as a "home registration"), then
the home agent MUST multicast onto the home link a "gratuitous"
Neighbor Advertisement message [11] on behalf of the mobile node, in
order to begin intercepting packets addressed to it while it is away
from home. Specifically, the home agent follows the following steps:
- The home agent examines the value of the Prefix Length field in
the Binding Update. If this value is zero, the following step
is carried out only for the individual home address specified
(in the Home Address option in the packet) for this binding.
If, instead, this field is nonzero, then the following step is
carried out for each address for the mobile node formed from
the interface identifier in the mobile node's home address in
this Binding Update (the remaining low-order bits in the address
after the indicated subnet prefix), together with each one of
the subnet prefixes currently considered by the home agent to be
on-link (including both the link-local and site-local prefix).
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- For each specific IP address for the mobile node determined in
the first step above, the home agent multicast onto the home link
(to the all-nodes multicast address) a Neighbor Advertisement
message [11] on behalf of the mobile node, to advertise the
home agent's own link-layer address for this IP address. The
Target Address in the Neighbor Advertisement message MUST be set
to this IP address for the mobile node, and the Advertisement
MUST include a Target Link-layer Address option specifying the
home agent's link-layer address. The Solicited Flag (S) in the
Advertisement MUST NOT be set, since it was not solicited by any
Neighbor Solicitation message. The Override Flag (O) in the
Advertisement MUST be set, indicating that the Advertisement
SHOULD override any existing Neighbor Cache entry at any node
receiving it.
Any node on the home link receiving one of the Neighbor Advertisement
messages described above will thus update its Neighbor Cache to
associate the mobile node's address with the home agent's link
layer address, causing it to transmit any future packets for the
mobile node normally destined to this address instead to the mobile
node's home agent. Since multicasts on the local link (such as
Ethernet) are typically not guaranteed to be reliable, the home
agent MAY retransmit this Neighbor Advertisement message up to
MAX_ADVERT_REXMIT times to increase its reliability. It is still
possible that some nodes on the home link will not receive any of
these Neighbor Advertisements, but these nodes will eventually be
able to detect the link-layer address change for the mobile node's
home address, through use of Neighbor Unreachability Detection [11].
In addition, while this node is serving as a home agent for this
mobile node (it still has a "home registration" entry for this mobile
node in its Binding Cache), it MUST act as a proxy for this mobile
node to reply to any received Neighbor Solicitation messages for
it. When a home agent receives a Neighbor Solicitation message, it
MUST check if the Target Address specified in the message matches
the home address of any mobile node for which it has a Binding
Cache entry marked as a "home registration". This check MUST
include all possible home addresses for the mobile node, based on
the subnet prefixes currently considered to be on-link by the home
agent (including the corresponding link-local address and site-local
address), if the Prefix Length field was nonzero in the Binding
Update that created this "home registration" binding at the home
agent. If such an entry exists in the home agent's Binding Cache,
the home agent MUST reply to the Neighbor Solicitation message
with a Neighbor Advertisement message, giving the home agent's own
link-layer address as the link-layer address for the specified
Target Address. Acting as a proxy in this way allows other nodes on
the mobile node's home link to resolve the mobile node's IPv6 home
address, and allows the home agent to to defend these addresses on
the home link for Duplicate Address Detection [11].
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Any packet addressed to the mobile node's home address (including
addresses formed from other on-link prefixes, if the Prefix Length
field was nonzero in the Binding Update) will thus be received by the
mobile node's home agent while the mobile node is registered away
from home. For any such packet received by the home agent for the
mobile node, the home agent SHOULD tunnel the packet to the mobile
node at its primary care-of address, as described in Section 9.5.
However, packets addressed to the mobile node's link-local address
MUST NOT be tunneled to the mobile node. Instead, such a packet MUST
be discarded, and the home agent SHOULD return an ICMP Destination
Unreachable, Code 3, message to the packet's Source Address (unless
this Source Address is a multicast address).
Similarly, packets addressed to the mobile node's site-local address
MUST NOT be tunneled to the mobile node, unless the mobile node's
registered primary care-of address is within the same site as the
mobile node's home address. For any such packet not forwarded to the
mobile node for this reason, the packet MUST be discarded, and the
home agent SHOULD return an ICMP Destination Unreachable, Code 3,
message to the packet's Source Address (unless this Source Address is
a multicast address). Currently, however, the exact definition and
semantics of a "site" are undefined in IPv6, and the mechanism for
a home agent to determine if the care-of address is within the same
site as the home address is outside the scope of this document.
9.4. Primary Care-of Address De-registration
General processing of a received Binding Update that requests a
binding to be deleted, is described in Section 8.4. However, if
the Home Registration (H) bit is set in the Binding Update, then
after following the step outlined for all Binding Update options in
Section 8.2, the receiving node MUST process the Binding Update as
specified in this section rather than following the general procedure
for requests to delete a cache binding specified in Section 8.4.
To begin processing the Binding Update, the home agent MUST perform
the following sequence of tests:
- If the node is not a router that implements home agent
functionality, then the node MUST reject the Binding Update and
SHOULD return a Binding Acknowledgement to the mobile node, in
which the Status field is set to 132 (home registration not
supported).
- Else, if the home address for the binding (the Home Address
field in the packet's Home Address option) is not an on-link
IPv6 address with respect to the home agent's current Prefix
List, then it MUST reject the Binding Update and SHOULD return a
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Binding Acknowledgement to the mobile node, in which the Status
field is set to 133 (not home subnet).
If the home agent does not reject the Binding Update as described
above, then it MUST delete any existing entry in its Binding Cache
for this mobile node.
9.5. Tunneling Intercepted Packets to a Mobile Node
For any packet sent to a mobile node from the mobile node's home
agent (for which the home agent is the original sender of the
packet), the home agent is operating as a correspondent node of
the mobile node for this packet and the procedures described in
Section 8.9 apply. The home agent (as a correspondent node) uses a
Routing header to route the packet to the mobile node by way of the
care-of address in the home agent's Binding Cache (the mobile node's
primary care-of address, in this case).
In addition, while the mobile node is away from home and this node is
acting as the mobile node's home agent, the home agent intercepts any
packets on the home link addressed to the mobile node's home address,
as described in Section 9.3. The home agent cannot use a Routing
header to forward these intercepted packets to the mobile node,
since it cannot modify the packet in flight without invalidating any
existing IPv6 Authentication header present in the packet [7].
For forwarding each intercepted packet to the mobile node, the
home agent MUST tunnel the packet to the mobile node using IPv6
encapsulation [4]; the tunnel entry point node is the home agent,
and the tunnel exit point node is the mobile node itself (using its
primary care-of address as registered with the home agent). When a
home agent encapsulates an intercepted packet for forwarding to the
mobile node, the home agent sets the Source Address in the prepended
tunnel IP header to the home agent's own IP address, and sets the
Destination Address in the tunnel IP header to the mobile node's
primary care-of address. When received by the mobile node (using its
primary care-of address), normal processing of the tunnel header [4]
will result in decapsulation and processing of the original packet by
the mobile node.
9.6. Renumbering the Home Subnet
Neighbor Discovery [11] specifies a mechanism by which all nodes on a
subnet can gracefully autoconfigure new addresses, say by each node
combining a new subnet prefix with its existing link-layer address.
As currently specified, this mechanism works when the nodes are on
the same link as the router issuing the necessary multicast packets
to advertise the new subnet prefix(es) appropriate for the link.
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However, for mobile nodes away from home, special care must be taken
to allow the mobile nodes to renumber gracefully. The most direct
method of ensuring this is for the home agent to encapsulate and
tunnel the multicast packets to the primary care-of address of each
mobile node for which it is serving as the home agent. The rules for
this are as follows:
- A mobile node assumes that its subnet prefix has not changed
unless it receives an authenticated Router Advertisement message
from its home agent that the prefix has changed.
- When the mobile node is at home, the home agent does not tunnel
Router Advertisements to it.
- The mobile node's home agent serves as a proxy for the mobile
node's home address and link-local address, including defending
these addresses for Duplicate Address Detection, while the mobile
node is registered with the home agent away from home.
- When a home subnet prefix changes, the home agent tunnels Router
Advertisement packets to each mobile node registered with it that
is currently away from home and using a home address with the
affected subnet prefix. Such tunneled Router Advertisements MUST
be authenticated [7].
- When a mobile node receives a tunneled Router Advertisement
containing a new subnet prefix, it MUST perform the standard
autoconfiguration operation to create its new address.
- When a mobile node returns to its home link, it must again
perform Duplicate Address Detection at the earliest possible
moment after it has deleted its "home registration" binding with
its home agent.
- A mobile node MAY send a Router Solicitation to its home agent at
any time, within the constraints imposed by rate control defined
by Neighbor Discovery [11].
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10. Mobile Node Operation
10.1. Sending Packets While Away from Home
While a mobile node is away from home, it continues to use its home
address as well as also using one or more care-of addresses. When
sending a packet while away from home, a mobile node MAY choose among
these in selecting the address that it will use as the source of the
packet, as follows:
- From the point of view of protocol layers and applications
above Mobile IP (e.g., transport protocols), the mobile node
will generally use its home address as the source of the packet
for most packets, even while away from home, since Mobile IP
is designed to make mobility transparent to such software.
Doing so also makes the node's mobility and the fact that it is
currently away from home transparent to the correspondent nodes
with which it communicates. For packets sent that are part of
transport-level connections established while the mobile node
was at home, the mobile node MUST use its home address in this
way. Likewise, for packets sent that are part of transport-level
connections that the mobile node may still be using after moving
to a new location, the mobile node SHOULD use its home address
in this way. When sending such packets, Mobile IP will modify
the packet to move the home address into a Home Address option
and will set the IPv6 header's Source Address field to one of the
mobile node's care-of address; these modifications to the packet
are then reversed in the node receiving the packet, restoring
the mobile node's home address to be the packet's Source Address
before processing by higher protocols layers and applications.
- For short-term communication, particularly for communication that
may easily be retried if it fails, the mobile node MAY choose to
directly use one of its care-of addresses as the source of the
packet, thus not requiring the use of a Home Address option in
the packet. An example of this type of communication might be
DNS queries sent by the mobile node [9, 10]. Using the mobile
node's care-of address as the source for such queries will
generally have a lower overhead than using the mobile node's
home address, since no extra options need be used in either the
query or its reply, and all packets can be routed normally,
directly between their source and destination without relying
on Mobile IP. If the mobile node has no particular knowledge
that the communication being sent fits within this type of
communication, however, the mobile node SHOULD NOT use its
care-of address as the source of the packet in this way.
If the mobile node uses one of its care-of addresses as the source
of some packet while away from home, no special Mobile IP processing
is required for sending this packet. The packet is simply addressed
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and transmitted in the same way as any normal IPv6 packet, setting
the Source Address field in the packet's IPv6 header to this care-of
address.
On the other hand, if while away from home, the mobile node uses its
home address as the source of a packet from the point of view of
higher protocol layers or applications as described above, special
Mobile IP processing of this packet is required for the insertion of
the Home Address option. Specifically:
- Since Mobile IP is transparent to higher protocol layers (e.g.,
to TCP), the packet is initially constructed using the mobile
node's home address as the packet's Source Address, in the same
way as if the mobile node were at home.
- If the mobile node is at home, no special Mobile IP processing
for this packet is required. The packet is sent normally and the
following additional steps are not performed.
- Likewise, if the Source Address field in the packet's IPv6 header
is not the mobile node's home address, no special Mobile IP
processing for this packet is required. The packet is sent
normally and the following additional steps are not performed.
- Otherwise, insert a Home Address option into the packet, with the
Home Address field copied from the original value of the Source
Address field in the packet.
- Change the Source Address field in the packet's IPv6 header to
one of the mobile node's care-of addresses. This will typically
be the mobile node's current primary care-of address, but MUST
be a care-of address with a subnet prefix that is on-link on the
network interface on which the mobile node will transmit the
packet.
This addition of the Home Address option to a packet MUST be
performed before outgoing IPsec processing, such as the addition of
an AH [7] or ESP [8] header to the packet, is performed. Likewise,
IPsec processing for a received packet containing a Home Address
option MUST be performed before the packet is possibly modified as
part of processing the Home Address option. By using the care-of
address as the Source Address in the IPv6 header, with the mobile
node's home address instead in the Home Address option, the packet
will be able to safely pass through any router implementing ingress
filtering [6].
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10.2. Movement Detection
A mobile node MAY use any combination of mechanisms available to it
to detect when it has moved from one link to another. The primary
movement detection mechanism for Mobile IPv6 defined here uses the
facilities of IPv6 Neighbor Discovery, including Router Discovery and
Neighbor Unreachability Detection. The description here is based on
the conceptual model of the organization and data structures defined
by Neighbor Discovery [11].
Mobile nodes SHOULD use Router Discovery to discover new routers and
on-link subnet prefixes; a mobile node MAY send Router Solicitation
messages, or MAY wait for unsolicited (periodic) Router Advertisement
messages, as specified for Router Discovery [11]. Based on received
Router Advertisement messages, a mobile node (in the same way as any
other node) maintains an entry in its Default Router List for each
router, and an entry in its Prefix List for each subnet prefix, that
it currently considers to be on-link. Each entry in these lists has
an associated invalidation timer value (extracted from the Router
Advertisement) used to expire the entry when it becomes invalid.
While away from home, a mobile node SHOULD select one router from
its Default Router List to use as its default router, and one subnet
prefix advertised by that router from its Prefix List to use as
the subnet prefix in its primary care-of address. A mobile node
MAY also have associated additional care-of addresses, using other
subnet prefixes from its Prefix List. The method by which a mobile
node selects and forms a care-of address from the available subnet
prefixes is described in Section 10.3. The mobile node registers
its primary care-of address with its home agent, as described in
Section 10.4.
While a mobile node is away from home and using some router as its
default router, it is important for the mobile node to be able to
quickly detect when that router becomes unreachable, so that it can
switch to a new default router and to a new primary care-of address.
Since some links (notably wireless) do not necessarily work equally
well in both directions, it is likewise important for the mobile
node to detect when it becomes unreachable to packets sent from its
default router, so that the mobile node can take steps to ensure that
any correspondent nodes attempting to communicate with it can still
reach it through some other route.
To detect when its default router becomes unreachable, a mobile
node SHOULD use Neighbor Unreachability Detection. As specified in
Neighbor Discovery [11], while the mobile node is actively sending
packets to (or through) its default router, the mobile node can
detect that the router (as its neighbor) is still reachable either
through indications from upper layer protocols on the mobile node
that a connection is making "forward progress" (e.g., receipt of TCP
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acknowledgements for new data transmitted), or through receipt of a
Neighbor Advertisement message from its default router in response
to an explicit Neighbor Solicitation messages to it. Note that
although this mechanism only detects that the mobile node's default
router has become unreachable to the mobile node while the mobile
node is actively sending packets to it, this is the only time that
this direction of reachability confirmation is needed. Confirmation
that the mobile node is still reachable from the router is handled
separately, as described below.
For a mobile node to detect when it has become unreachable to its
default router, however, the mobile node cannot efficiently rely on
Neighbor Unreachability Detection alone, since the network overhead
would be prohibitively high in many cases for a mobile node to
continually probe its default router with Neighbor Solicitation
messages even when it is not otherwise actively sending packets to
it. Instead, a mobile node SHOULD consider receipt of any IPv6
packets from its current default router as an indication that it is
still reachable from the router. Both packets from the router's IP
address and (IPv6) packets from its link-layer address (e.g., those
forwarded but not originated by the router) SHOULD be considered.
Since the router SHOULD be sending periodic multicast Router
Advertisement messages, the mobile node will have frequent
opportunity to check if it is still reachable from its default
router, even in the absence of other packets to it from the router.
If Router Advertisements that the mobile node receives include
an Advertisement Interval option, the mobile node MAY use its
Advertisement Interval field as an indication of the frequency with
which it should expect to continue to receive future Advertisements
from that router. This field specifies the minimum rate (the maximum
amount of time between successive Advertisements) that the mobile
node should expect. If this amount of time elapses without the
mobile node receiving any Advertisement from this router, the mobile
node can be sure that at least one Advertisement sent by the router
has been lost. It is thus possible for the mobile node to implement
its own policy for determining the number of Advertisements from
its current default router it is willing to tolerate losing before
deciding to switch to a different router from which it may currently
be correctly receiving Advertisements.
On some types of network interfaces, the mobile node MAY also
supplement this monitoring of Router Advertisements, by setting its
network interface into "promiscuous" receive mode, so that it is able
to receive all packets on the link, including those not link-level
addressed to it. The mobile node will then be able to detect any
packets sent by the router, in order to to detect reachability from
the router. This use of promiscuous mode may be useful on very low
bandwidth (e.g., wireless) links, but its use MUST be configurable on
the mobile node.
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If the above means do not provide indication that the mobile node
is still reachable from its current default router (i.e., the
mobile node receives no packets from the router for a period of
time), then the mobile node SHOULD actively probe the router with
Neighbor Solicitation messages, even if it is not otherwise actively
sending packets to the router. If it receives a solicited Neighbor
Advertisement message in response from the router, then the mobile
node can deduce that it is still reachable. It is expected that the
mobile node will in most cases be able to determine its reachability
from the router by listening for packets from the router as described
above, and thus, such extra Neighbor Solicitation probes should
rarely be necessary.
With some types of networks, it is possible that additional
indications about link-layer mobility can be obtained from
lower-layer protocol or device driver software within the mobile
node. However, a mobile node MUST NOT assume that all link-layer
mobility indications from lower layers indicate a movement of the
mobile node to a new link, such that the mobile node would need to
switch to a new default router and primary care-of address. For
example, movement of a mobile node from one cell to another in many
wireless LANs can be made transparent to the IP level through use of
a link-layer "roaming" protocol, as long as the different wireless
LAN cells all operate as part of the same IP link with the same
subnet prefix. Upon lower-layer indication of link-layer mobility,
the mobile node MAY send Router Solicitation messages to determine if
new routers (and new on-link subnet prefixes) are present on its new
link.
Such lower-layer information might also be useful to a mobile node in
deciding to switch its primary care-of address to one of the other
care-of addresses it has formed from the on-link subnet prefixes
currently available through different routers from which the mobile
node is reachable. For example, a mobile node MAY use signal
strength or signal quality information (with suitable hysteresis) for
its link with the available routers to decide when to switch to a new
primary care-of address using that router rather than its current
default router (and current primary care-of address). Even though
the mobile node's current default router may still be reachable in
terms of Neighbor Unreachability Detection, the mobile node MAY use
such lower-layer information to determine that switching to a new
default router would provide a better connection.
10.3. Forming New Care-of Addresses
After detecting that it has moved from one link to another (i.e., its
current default router has become unreachable and it has discovered a
new default router), a mobile node SHOULD form a new primary care-of
address using one of the on-link subnet prefixes advertised by the
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new router. A mobile node MAY form a new primary care-of address
at any time, except that it MUST NOT do so too frequently (not more
often than once per MAX_UPDATE_RATE seconds).
In addition, after discovering a new on-link subnet prefix, a mobile
node MAY form a new (non-primary) care-of address using that subnet
prefix, even when it has not switched to a new default router. A
mobile node can have only one primary care-of address at a time
(which is registered with its home agent), but it MAY have an
additional care-of address for any or all of the subnet prefixes on
its current link. Furthermore, since a wireless network interface
may actually allow a mobile node to be reachable on more than one
link at a time (i.e., within wireless transmitter range of routers
on more than one separate link), a mobile node MAY have care-of
addresses on more than one link at a time. The use of more than one
care-of address at a time is described in Section 10.12.
As described in Section 4, in order to form a new care-of address,
a mobile node MAY use either stateless [18] or stateful (e.g.,
DHCPv6 [2]) address autoconfiguration. If a mobile node needs to
send packets as part of the method of address autoconfiguration,
it MUST use an IPv6 link-local address rather than its own IPv6
home address as the Source Address in the IPv6 header of each such
autoconfiguration packet.
In some cases, a mobile node may already know a (constant) IPv6
address that has been assigned to it for its use only while
visiting a specific foreign link. For example, a mobile node may be
statically configured with an IPv6 address assigned by the system
administrator of some foreign link, for its use while visiting that
link. If so, rather than using address autoconfiguration to form a
new care-of address using this subnet prefix, the mobile node MAY use
its own pre-assigned address as its care-of address on this link.
10.4. Sending Binding Updates to the Home Agent
After deciding to change its primary care-of address as described
in Sections 10.2 and 10.3, a mobile node MUST register this care-of
address with its home agent in order to make this its primary care-of
address. To do so, the mobile node sends a packet to its home agent
containing a Binding Update option, with the packet constructed as
follows:
- The Home Registration (H) bit MUST be set in the Binding Update.
- The Acknowledge (A) bit MUST be set in the Binding Update.
- The packet MUST contain a Home Address option, giving the mobile
node's home address for the binding.
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- The care-of address for the binding MUST be used as the Source
Address in the packet's IPv6 header, or the Care-of Address
Present (C) bit MUST be set in the Binding Update and the care-of
address for the binding MUST be specified in the Care-of Address
field in the Binding Update.
- The Prefix Length field SHOULD be set to the length of the mobile
node's subnet prefix in its home address, to request the mobile
node's home agent to serve as a home agent for all home addresses
for the mobile node based on all on-link subnet prefixes on the
home link. Otherwise, this field MUST be set to zero.
The Acknowledge (A) bit in the Binding Update requests the home
agent to return a Binding Acknowledgement in response to this
Binding Update. As described in Section 5.2, the mobile node SHOULD
retransmit this Binding Update to its home agent until it receives
a matching Binding Acknowledgement. Once reaching a retransmission
timeout period of MAX_BINDACK_TIMEOUT, the mobile node SHOULD
continue to periodically retransmit the Binding Update at this rate
until acknowledged (or until it begins attempting to register a
different primary care-of address).
The Prefix Length field in the Binding Update allows the mobile node
to request its home agent to serve all home addresses for the mobile
node, as indicated by the interface identifier in the mobile node's
home address (the remaining low-order bits after the indicated subnet
prefix), together with each on-link subnet prefix on the home link.
If the mobile node has additional home addresses using a different
interface identifier, then the mobile node SHOULD send an additional
Binding Update to its home agent to register the care-of address for
each such other home address (or set of home addresses sharing an
interface identifier).
It is possible that when the mobile node needs to send such a Binding
Update to its home agent, that the mobile node does not know the
address of any router on its home link that can serve as a home agent
for it. In this case, the mobile node SHOULD use the dynamic home
agent address discovery procedure to find the address of a suitable
home agent on its home link. To do so, the mobile node sends the
packet, as described above, with the Destination Address in the
packet's IPv6 header set to the Home-Agents anycast address for its
home subnet prefix. As described in Section 9.2, the home agent
on its home link that receives this Binding Update will reject the
Update, returning to the mobile node the home agent's own unicast
IP address along with a list of the unicast IP addresses of each
other home agent operating on the home link. The mobile node SHOULD
then retransmit its Binding Update to one of these homes agent
using the provided unicast address; the mobile node MAY re-attempt
this home registration with each of these home agents in turn, by
sending each a Binding Update and waiting for the matching Binding
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Acknowledgement, until its registration is accepted by one of these
home agents.
If the mobile node has a current registration with some home agent
on its home link (the Lifetime for that registration has not yet
expired), then the mobile node MUST attempt any new registration
first with that home agent. If that registration attempt fails
(e.g., times out or is rejected), the mobile node SHOULD then
reattempt this registration with another home agent on its home link.
If the mobile node knows of no other suitable home agent, then it MAY
attempt the dynamic home agent address discovery procedure described
above.
10.5. Sending Binding Updates to Correspondent Nodes
A mobile node MAY send a Binding Update to any correspondent node at
any time to allow it to cache its current care-of address (subject to
the rate limiting defined in Section 10.8). In any Binding Update
sent by a mobile node, the care-of address (either the Source Address
in the packet's IPv6 header or the Care-of Address field in the
Binding Update) MUST be set to one of the care-of addresses currently
in use by the mobile node or to the mobile node's home address.
If set to one of the mobile node's current care-of addresses (the
care-of address given MAY differ from the mobile node's primary
care-of address), the Binding Update requests the correspondent node
to create or update an entry for the mobile node in the correspondent
node's Binding Cache to record this care-of address for use in
sending future packets to the mobile node. If, instead, the care-of
address is set to the mobile node's home address, the Binding Update
requests the correspondent node to delete any existing Binding Cache
entry that it has for the mobile node. A mobile node MAY set the
care-of address differently for sending Binding Updates to different
correspondent nodes.
When sending any Binding Update, the mobile node MUST record in its
Binding Update List the following fields from the Binding Update:
- The IP address of the node to which the Binding Update was sent.
- The home address for which the Binding Update was sent,
- The remaining lifetime of the binding, initialized from the
Lifetime field sent in the Binding Update.
The mobile node MUST retain in its Binding Update List information
about all Binding Updates sent, for which the lifetime of the
binding has not yet expired. When sending a Binding Update, if an
entry already exists in the mobile node's Binding Update List for
an earlier Binding Update sent to that same destination node, the
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existing Binding Update List entry is updated to reflect the new
Binding Update rather than creating a new Binding Update List entry.
In general, when a mobile node sends a Binding Update to its home
agent to register a new primary care-of address (as described in
Section 10.4), the mobile node will also send a Binding Update to
each correspondent node for which an entry exists in the mobile
node's Binding Update List. Thus, correspondent nodes are generally
kept updated about the mobile node's binding and can send packets
directly to the mobile node using the mobile node's current care-of
address.
The mobile node, however, need not send these Binding Updates
immediately after configuring a new care-of address. For example,
since the Binding Update is a destination option and can be included
in any packet sent by a mobile node, the mobile node MAY delay
sending a new Binding Update to any correspondent node for a
short period of time, in hopes that the needed Binding Update
can be included in some packet that the mobile node sends to that
correspondent node for some other reason (for example, as part of
some TCP connection in use). In this case, when sending a packet
to some correspondent node, the mobile node SHOULD check in its
Binding Update List to determine if a new Binding Update to this
correspondent node is needed, and SHOULD include the new Binding
Update in this packet as necessary.
In addition, when a mobile node receives a packet for which the
mobile node can deduce that the original sender of the packet has no
Binding Cache entry for the mobile node, or for which the mobile node
can deduce that the original sender of the packet has an out-of-date
care-of address for the mobile node in its Binding Cache, the mobile
node SHOULD return a Binding Update to the sender giving its current
care-of address. In particular, the mobile node SHOULD return a
Binding Update in response to receiving a packet that meets all of
the following tests:
- The packet was tunneled using IPv6 encapsulation.
- The Destination Address in the tunnel (outer) IPv6 header is
equal to any of the mobile node's care-of addresses.
- The Destination Address in the original (inner) IPv6 header is
equal to the mobile node's home address. If the original packet
contains a Routing header, the final Address indicated in the
Routing header should be used in this comparison rather than the
Destination Address in the original IPv6 header.
- The Source Address in the tunnel (outer) IPv6 header differs from
the Source Address in the original (inner) IPv6 header.
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The destination address to which the Binding Update should be sent in
response to receiving a packet meeting all of the tests above, is the
Source Address in the original (inner) IPv6 header of the packet.
Binding Updates sent to correspondent nodes are not generally
required to be acknowledged. However, if the mobile node wants to be
sure that its new care-of address has been added to a correspondent
node's Binding Cache, the mobile node MAY request an acknowledgement
by setting the Acknowledge (A) bit in the Binding Update. In this
case, however, the mobile node SHOULD NOT continue to retransmit the
Binding Update once the retransmission timeout period has reached
MAX_BINDACK_TIMEOUT.
A mobile node MAY choose to keep its location private from certain
correspondent nodes, and thus need not send new Binding Updates to
those correspondents. A mobile node MAY also send a Binding Update
to such a correspondent node to instruct it to delete any existing
binding for the mobile node from its Binding Cache, as described in
Section 5.1. No other IPv6 nodes are authorized to send Binding
Updates on behalf of a mobile node.
10.6. Sending Binding Updates to the Previous Default Router
After switching to a new default router (and thus also changing its
primary care-of address), a mobile node MAY send a Binding Update
to its previous default router, giving its new care-of address.
If the mobile node sends such a Binding Update, the home address
for the binding, specified in the Home Address option included in
the packet carrying this Binding Update, MUST be set the mobile
node's old primary care-of address (that it used while using this
default router), and the care-of address for the binding (either the
Source Address in the packet's IPv6 header or the Care-of Address
field in the Binding Update) MUST be set to the mobile node's new
primary care-of address. In addition, the Home Registration (H)
bit MUST also be set in this Binding Update, to request the mobile
node's previous default router to temporarily act as a home agent
for the mobile node's old primary care-of address. The previous
default router will thus tunnel packets for the mobile node to its
new care-of address. All of the procedures defined for home agent
operation must be followed by this previous default router for this
registration. Note that the previous router does not necessarily
know the mobile node's (permanent) home address as part of this
registration.
10.7. Retransmitting Binding Updates
If, after sending a Binding Update in which the Acknowledge (A) bit
is set, a mobile node fails to receive a Binding Acknowledgement
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within INITIAL_BINDACK_TIMEOUT seconds, the mobile node SHOULD
retransmit the Binding Update until a Binding Acknowledgement
is received. Such a retransmitted Binding Update MUST use he
same Sequence Number value as the original transmission. The
retransmissions by the mobile node MUST use an exponential
back-off process, in which the timeout period is doubled
upon each retransmission until either the node receives a
Binding Acknowledgement or the timeout period reaches the value
MAX_BINDACK_TIMEOUT.
10.8. Rate Limiting for Sending Binding Updates
A mobile node MUST NOT send Binding Updates more often than once per
MAX_UPDATE_RATE seconds to any node. After sending MAX_FAST_UPDATES
consecutive Binding Updates to a particular node with the same
care-of address, the mobile node SHOULD reduce its rate of sending
Binding Updates to that node, to the rate of SLOW_UPDATE_RATE per
second. The mobile node MAY continue to send Binding Updates at the
slower rate indefinitely, in hopes that the node will eventually
be able to process a Binding Update and begin to route its packets
directly to the mobile node at its new care-of address.
10.9. Receiving ICMP Error Messages
The Option Type value for a Binding Update option specifies that
any node receiving this option that does not recognize the Option
Type SHOULD return an ICMP Parameter Problem, Code 2, message to
the sender of the packet containing the Binding Update option. If
a node sending a Binding Update receives such an ICMP error message
in response, it should record in its Binding Update List that future
Binding Updates should not be sent to this destination.
Likewise, although ALL IPv6 nodes (whether host or router, whether
mobile or stationary) MUST implement the ability to receive packets
containing a Home Address option, all Option Type values in IPv6
include a specification of the behavior that a node receiving a
packet containing this option performs if it does not implement
receipt of that type of option. For the Home Address option, the
Option Type value specifies that any node receiving this option that
does not recognize the Option Type SHOULD return an ICMP Parameter
Problem, Code 2, message to the sender of the packet containing the
Home Address option. If a mobile node receives such an ICMP error
message from some node indicating that it does not recognize the
mobile node's Home Address option, the mobile node SHOULD log the
error and then discard the ICMP message; this error message indicates
that the node to which the original packet was addressed (the node
returning the ICMP error message) does not correctly implement this
required part of the IPv6 protocol.
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10.10. Receiving Binding Acknowledgements
Upon receiving a packet carrying a Binding Acknowledgement, a mobile
node MUST validate the packet according to the following tests:
- The packet contains either an AH [7] or ESP [8] header providing
sender authentication, data integrity protection, and replay
protection.
- The Option Length field in the option is greater than or equal to
11 octets.
- The Sequence Number field matches the Sequence Number sent by the
mobile node to this destination address in an outstanding Binding
Update.
Any Binding Acknowledgement not satisfying all of these tests MUST be
silently ignored, although the remainder of the packet (i.e., other
options, extension headers, or payload) SHOULD be processed normally
according to any procedure defined for that part of the packet.
When a mobile node receives a packet carrying a valid Binding
Acknowledgement, the mobile node MUST examine the Status field as
follows:
- If the Status field indicates that the Binding Update was
accepted (the Status field is less than 128), then the mobile
node MUST update the corresponding entry in its Binding Update
List to indicate that the Binding Update has been acknowledged.
The mobile node MUST thus stop retransmitting the Binding Update.
- If the Status field indicates that the Binding Update was
rejected (the Status field is greater than or equal to 128), then
the mobile node MUST delete the corresponding Binding Update List
entry (and MUST also stop retransmitting the Binding Update).
Optionally, the mobile node MAY then take steps to correct the
cause of the error and retransmit the Binding Update (with a new
Sequence Number value), subject to the rate limiting restriction
specified in Section 10.8. In particular, if the Status field
is equal to 135 (dynamic home agent address discovery response),
then the mobile node MAY reattempt its home registration with any
of the home agent IP addresses listed in the Other Home Agents
field in the Binding Acknowledgement or with the home agent
address given in the Source Address field of the packet carrying
the Binding Acknowledgement. If any of these addresses is not
unicast a address or does not have a subnet prefix equal to the
mobile node's own subnet prefix, then that particular address
MUST be ignored and the mobile node MUST NOT reattempt its home
registration with that home agent.
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10.11. Receiving Binding Requests
When a mobile node receives a packet containing a Binding Request,
it SHOULD return to the sender a packet containing a Binding Update.
The Lifetime field in this Binding Update SHOULD be set to a new
lifetime, extending any current lifetime remaining from a previous
Binding Update sent to this node (as indicated in any existing
Binding Update List entry for this node). When sending this Binding
Update, the mobile node MUST update its Binding Update List in the
same way as for any other Binding Update sent by the mobile node.
Note, however, that the mobile node MAY choose to keep its current
binding private from the sender of the Binding Request. In this
case, the mobile node instead SHOULD returns a Binding Update to the
sender, in which the Lifetime field is set to zero.
10.12. Using Multiple Care-of Addresses
As described in Section 10.3, a mobile node MAY use more than one
care-of address at a time. Particularly in the case of many wireless
networks, a mobile node effectively might be reachable through
multiple links at the same time (e.g., with overlapping wireless
cells), on which different on-link subnet prefixes may exist. A
mobile node SHOULD select a primary care-of address from among those
care-of addresses it has formed using any of these subnet prefixes,
based on the movement detection mechanism in use, as described in
Section 10.2. When the mobile node selects a new primary care-of
address, it MUST register it with its home agent through a Binding
Update with the Home Registration (H) and Acknowledge (A) bits set,
as described in Section 10.4.
To assist with smooth handoffs, a mobile node SHOULD retain
its previous primary care-of address as a (non-primary) care-of
address, and SHOULD still accept packets at this address, even after
registering its new primary care-of address with its home agent.
This is reasonable, since the mobile node could only receive packets
at its previous primary care-of address if it were indeed still
connected to that link. If the previous primary care-of address was
allocated using stateful address autoconfiguration [2], the mobile
node may not wish to release the address immediately upon switching
to a new primary care-of address.
10.13. Routing Multicast Packets
A mobile node that is connected to its home link functions in the
same way as any other (stationary) node. Thus, when it is at home,
a mobile node functions identically to other multicast senders and
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receivers. This section therefore describes the behavior of a mobile
node that is not on its home link.
In order to receive packets sent to some multicast group, a mobile
node must join that multicast group. One method by which a mobile
node MAY join the group is via a (local) multicast router on the
foreign link being visited. The mobile node SHOULD use its care-of
address sharing a subnet prefix with the multicast router, as
the source IPv6 address of its multicast group membership control
messages.
Alternatively, a mobile node MAY join multicast groups via a
bi-directional tunnel to its home agent. The mobile node tunnels the
appropriate multicast group membership control packets to its home
agent, and the home agent forwards multicast packets down the tunnel
to the mobile node.
A mobile node that wishes to send packets to a multicast group
also has two options: (1) send directly on the foreign link being
visited; or (2) send via a tunnel to its home agent. Because
multicast routing in general depends upon the Source Address used in
the IPv6 header of the multicast packet, a mobile node that tunnels a
multicast packet to its home agent MUST use its home address as the
IPv6 Source Address of the inner multicast packet.
10.14. Returning Home
A mobile node detects that it has returned to its home link through
the movement detection algorithm in use (Section 10.2), when the
mobile node detects that its home subnet prefix is again on-link.
The mobile node SHOULD then send a Binding Update to its home agent,
to instruct its home agent to no longer intercept or tunnel packets
for it. In this Binding Update, the mobile node MUST set the care-of
address for the binding (the Source Address field in the packet's
IPv6 header) to the mobile node's own home address. As with other
Binding Updates sent to register with its home agent, the mobile
node MUST set the Acknowledge (A) and Home Registration (H) bits,
and SHOULD retransmit the Binding Update until a matching Binding
Acknowledgement is received.
In addition, the mobile node MUST multicast onto the home link
(to the all-nodes multicast address) a Neighbor Advertisement
message [11], to advertise the mobile node's own link-layer address
for its own home address. The Target Address in this Neighbor
Advertisement message MUST be set to the mobile node's home address,
and the Advertisement MUST include a Target Link-layer Address option
specifying the mobile node's link-layer address. The mobile node
MUST multicast such a Neighbor Advertisement message for each of its
home addresses, as defined by the current on-link prefixes, including
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its link-local address and site-local address. The Solicited
Flag (S) in these Advertisements MUST NOT be set, since they were
not solicited by any Neighbor Solicitation message. The Override
Flag (O) in these Advertisements MUST be set, indicating that the
Advertisements SHOULD override any existing Neighbor Cache entries at
any node receiving them.
Since multicasts on the local link (such as Ethernet) are typically
not guaranteed to be reliable, the mobile node MAY retransmit these
Neighbor Advertisement messages up to MAX_ADVERT_REXMIT times to
increase their reliability. It is still possible that some nodes on
the home link will not receive any of these Neighbor Advertisements,
but these nodes will eventually be able to recover through use of
Neighbor Unreachability Detection [11].
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11. Constants
INITIAL_BINDACK_TIMEOUT 1 second
MAX_BINDACK_TIMEOUT 256 seconds
MAX_UPDATE_RATE once per second
SLOW_UPDATE_RATE once per 10 seconds
MAX_FAST_UPDATES 5
MAX_ADVERT_REXMIT 3
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12. IANA Considerations
This document defines four new types of IPv6 destination options,
each of which must be assigned an Option Type value:
- The Binding Update option, described in Section 5.1
- The Binding Acknowledgement option, described in Section 5.2
- The binding Request option, described in Section 5.3
- The Home Address option, described in Section 5.4
In addition, this document defines a new Neighbor Discovery [11]
option, which must be assigned an Option Type value within the option
numbering space for Neighbor Discovery messages:
- The Advertisement Interval option, described in Section 6.2.
Finally, this document defines a new type of anycast address, which
must be assigned a reserved interface identifier value for use with
any subnet prefix to define this anycast address on each subnet:
- The Home-Agents anycast address, used in the dynamic home agent
address discovery procedure described in Sections 9.2 and 10.4.
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13. Security Considerations
13.1. Binding Updates, Acknowledgements, and Requests
The Binding Update option described in this document will result
in packets addressed to a mobile node being delivered instead to
its care-of address. This ability to change the routing of these
packets could be a significant vulnerability if any packet containing
a Binding Update option was not authenticated. Such use of "remote
redirection", for instance as performed by the Binding Update option,
is widely understood to be a security problem in the current Internet
if not authenticated [1].
The Binding Acknowledgement option also requires authentication,
since, for example, an attacker could otherwise trick a mobile node
into believing a different outcome from a registration attempt with
its home agent.
No authentication is required for the Binding Request option, since
the use of this option does not modify or create any state in either
the sender or the receiver. The Binding Request option does open
some issues with binding privacy, but those issues can be dealt with
either through existing IPsec encryption mechanisms or through use of
firewalls.
The existing IPsec replay protection mechanisms allow a "replay
protection window" to support receiving packets out of order.
Although appropriate for many forms of communication, Binding Updates
MUST be applied only in the order sent. The Binding Update option
thus includes a Sequence Number field to provide this necessary
sequencing. The use of this Sequence Number together with IPsec
replay protection is similar in many ways, for example, to the the
sequence number in TCP. IPsec provides strong replay protection but
no ordering, and the sequence number provides ordering but need not
worry about replay protection such as through the sequence number
wrapping around.
13.2. Home Address Options
No special authentication of the Home Address option is required,
except that if the IPv6 header of a packet is covered by
authentication, then that authentication MUST also cover the Home
Address option; this coverage is achieved automatically by the
definition of the Option Type code for the Home Address option
(Section 5.4), since it indicates that the option is included in the
authentication computation. Thus, even when authentication is used
in the IPv6 header, the security of the Source Address field in the
IPv6 header is not compromised by the presence of a Home Address
option. Without authentication of the packet, then any field in the
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IPv6 header, including the Source Address field, and any other parts
of the packet, including the Home Address option, can be forged or
modified in transit. In this case, the contents of the Home Address
option is no more suspect than any other part of the packet.
The use of the Home Address option allows packets sent by a
mobile node to pass normally through routers implementing ingress
filtering [6]. Since the care-of address used in the Source Address
field of the packet's IPv6 header is topologically correct for the
sending location of the mobile node, ingress filtering can trace the
location of the mobile node in the same way as can be done with any
sender when ingress filtering is in use.
However, if a node receiving a packet that includes a Home Address
option implements the processing of this option by physically
copying the Home Address field from the option into the IPv6 header,
replacing the Source Address field there, then the ability to
trace the true location of the sender is removed once this step
in the processing is performed. This diminishing of the power of
ingress filtering only occurs once the packet has been received at
its ultimate destination, and does not affect the capability of
ingress filtering while the packet is in transit. Furthermore, this
diminishing can be entirely eliminated by appropriate implementation
techniques in the receiving node. For example, the original contents
of the Source Address field (the sending care-of address) could be
saved elsewhere in memory with the packet, until all processing of
the packet is completed.
13.3. General Mobile Computing Issues
The mobile computing environment is potentially very different from
the ordinary computing environment. In many cases, mobile computers
will be connected to the network via wireless links. Such links
are particularly vulnerable to passive eavesdropping, active replay
attacks, and other active attacks. Furthermore, mobile computers
are more susceptible to loss or theft than stationary computers.
Any secrets such as authentication or encryption keys stored on the
mobile computer are thus subject to compromise in ways generally not
common in the non-mobile environment.
Users who have sensitive data that they do not wish others to have
access to should use additional mechanisms (such as encryption) to
provide privacy protection, but such mechanisms are beyond the scope
of this document. Users concerned about traffic analysis should
consider appropriate use of link encryption. If stronger location
privacy is desired, the mobile node can create a tunnel to its home
agent. Then, packets destined for correspondent nodes will appear
to emanate from the home subnet, and it may be more difficult to
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pinpoint the location of the mobile node. Such mechanisms are all
beyond the scope of this document.
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Changes from Previous Draft
This appendix briefly lists some of the major changes in this
draft relative to the previous version of this same draft,
draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-04.txt:
- Replaced the ID Length field in the Binding Update with the
Prefix Length field.
- Added a definition of "interface identifier" in Section 3.1.
- Added a description of dynamic home agent address discovery to
the basic operation overview in Section 4.1.
- Added a description of the new Home Agents List conceptual data
structure in Section 4.3. This list is used in the dynamic home
agent address discovery mechanism.
- Added the Other Home Agents field to the Binding Acknowledgement
option format, and modified the description of the setting
for the Option Length field in the Binding Acknowledgement to
accommodate the Other Home Agents field. This field is used in
the dynamic home agent address discovery mechanism.
- Added Section 9.1, describing the processing performed by a
home agent to maintain its Home Agents List when the home agent
receives a valid Router Advertisement message in which the Home
Agent (H) bit is set.
- Revised the description of dynamic home agent address discovery
in Section 9.2 to include use of the new Home Agents List and
the return of the IP addresses from this list in the Other Home
Agents field of the Binding Acknowledgement that rejects the
anycast Binding Update.
- Revised Section 10.10 to include a description of the Other Home
Agents field in the received Binding Acknowledgement.
- Added Section 6, listing modifications to IPv6 Neighbor
Discovery: The Router Advertisement message is changed to
include the Home Agent (H) bit, a new Advertisement Interval
option is defined for Router Advertisement messages, and the
value of MinRtrAdvInterval for home agents is allowed to be less
than the generic limit for routers of 3 seconds [11].
- Added a description in the IANA Considerations in Section 12, of
the need to assign an Option Type value for the new Advertisement
Interval option that can appear on Router Advertisement messages.
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- Changed the rule in Section 9.3 dealing with forwarding
site-local-addressed packets to a mobile node while the mobile
nodes is away from home. Such packets now MUST NOT be tunneled
to the mobile node, unless the mobile node's registered primary
care-of address is within the same site as the mobile node's home
address.
- Added a description in Section 10.9 of what a mobile node should
do if it receives an ICMP Parameter Problem error message in
response to the Home Address option in some packet that it
sent. Although ALL IPv6 nodes MUST implement receipt of packets
containing a Home Address option, the encoding of an Option Type
value in IPv6 always specifies some behavior for the case in
which the receiver does not recognize that type of option.
- In Section 10.2, changed SHOULD to MAY in specifying that upon
lower-layer indication of link-layer mobility, the mobile node
MAY send Router Solicitation messages to determine if new routers
are present on its new link.
- Also in Section 10.2, added a description of how the value
specified in the Advertisement Interval option in received
Router Advertisements MAY be used in the mobile node's movement
detection algorithm.
- Moved the section on routing multicast packets to and from a
mobile host while away from home, to now be Section 10.13,
a subsection of the description of mobile node operation
(Section 10), rather than being a separate section on its own.
This better integrates this operation into the document.
- Corrected the specification of the length of the Binding Update
option. The correct length is 24, not 16, if the Care-of Address
Present (C) bit is set.
- Corrected the specification of the length of the Binding
Acknowledgement option. The correct length is 11, not 12 (plus
16 times the number of addresses listed in the Other Home Agents
field in the Acknowledgement).
- Other minor clarifications and correction of typographical errors
throughout.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the members of the Mobile IP and IPng Working
Groups for their comments and suggestions on this work. We would
particularly like to thank Josh Broch, Thomas Narten, Erik Nordmark,
and Jim Solomon for their detailed reviews of earlier versions of
this draft. Their suggestions have helped to improve both the design
and presentation of the protocol.
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References
[1] S. M. Bellovin. Security problems in the TCP/IP protocol suite.
ACM Computer Communications Review, 19(2), March 1989.
[2] Jim Bound and Charles Perkins. Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6). Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-dhc-dhcpv6-10.txt, May 1997. Work in progress.
[3] Scott Bradner. Key words for use in RFCs to indicate
requirement levels. RFC 2119, March 1997.
[4] Alex Conta and Stephen Deering. Generic packet
tunneling in IPv6 specification. Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-ipngwg-ipv6-tunnel-07.txt, December 1996.
Work in progress.
[5] Stephen E. Deering and Robert M. Hinden. Internet
Protocol version 6 (IPv6) specification. Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-ipngwg-ipv6-spec-v2-00.txt, July 1997. Work in
progress.
[6] Paul Ferguson and Daniel Senie. Network ingress filtering:
Defeating denial of service attacks which employ IP source
address spoofing. RFC 2267, January 1998.
[7] Stephen Kent and Randall Atkinson. IP Authentication header.
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-ipsec-auth-header-02.txt, October
1997. Work in progress.
[8] Stephen Kent and Randall Atkinson. IP Encapsulating Security
Payload (ESP). Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-ipsec-esp-v2-01.txt,
October 1997. Work in progress.
[9] P. Mockapetris. Domain Names---concepts and facilities.
RFC 1034, November 1987.
[10] P. Mockapetris. Domain Names---implementation and
specification. RFC 1035, November 1987.
[11] Thomas Narten, Erik Nordmark, and William Allen Simpson.
Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6). Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-ipngwg-discovery-v2-00.txt, July 1997. Work in
progress.
[12] Charles Perkins. IP encapsulation within IP. RFC 2003, October
1996.
[13] Charles Perkins, editor. IP mobility support. RFC 2002,
October 1996.
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[14] Charles Perkins. Minimal encapsulation within IP. RFC 2004,
October 1996.
[15] J. B. Postel. User Datagram Protocol. RFC 768, August 1980.
[16] J. B. Postel, editor. Transmission Control Protocol. RFC 793,
September 1981.
[17] Joyce K. Reynolds and Jon Postel. Assigned numbers. RFC 1700,
October 1994.
[18] Susan Thomson and Thomas Narten. IPv6 stateless address
autoconfiguration. Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-ipngwg-addrconf-v2-00.txt, July 1997.
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Chair's Address
The Working Group can be contacted via its current chairs:
Jim Solomon
Motorola, Inc.
1301 E. Algonquin Rd.
Schaumburg, IL 60196
USA
Phone: +1 847 576-2753
E-mail: solomon@comm.mot.com
Erik Nordmark
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
2550 Garcia Avenue
Mt. View, CA 94041
USA
Phone: +1 415 786-5166
Fax: +1 415 786-5896
E-mail: nordmark@sun.com
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Authors' Addresses
Questions about this document can also be directed to the authors:
David B. Johnson
Carnegie Mellon University
Computer Science Department
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891
USA
Phone: +1 412 268-7399
Fax: +1 412 268-5576
E-mail: dbj@cs.cmu.edu
Charles Perkins
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Technology Development Group
Mail Stop MPK15-214
Room 2682
901 San Antonio Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
USA
Phone: +1 415 786-6464
Fax: +1 415 786-6445
E-mail: cperkins@eng.sun.com
Johnson and Perkins Expires 13 September 1998 [Page 72]
