Network Working Group X. Xu
Internet-Draft Huawei Technologies
Intended status: Informational N. Sheth
Expires: April 27, 2015 Juniper Networks
L. Yong
Huawei USA
C. Pignataro
Cisco Systems
Y. Fan
China Telecom
R. Callon
Juniper Networks
D. Black
EMC Corporation
October 24, 2014
Encapsulating MPLS in UDP
draft-ietf-mpls-in-udp-06
Abstract
This document specifies an IP-based encapsulation for MPLS, called
MPLS-in-UDP (User Datagram Protocol). The MPLS-in-UDP encapsulation
technology MUST only be deployed within a service provider network or
networks of an adjacent set of co-operating service providers where
congestion control is not a concern.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 27, 2015.
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Existing Encapsulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Motivations for MPLS-in-UDP Encapsulation . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Application Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Encapsulation in UDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. UDP Checksum Usage with IPv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Middlebox Considerations for IPv6 UDP Zero Checksums . . 9
4. Processing Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. Congestion Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1. Introduction
This document specifies an IP-based encapsulation for MPLS, i.e.
MPLS-in-UDP (User Datagram Protocol), which is applicable in some
circumstances where IP-based encapsulation for MPLS is required and
further fine-grained load balancing of MPLS packets over IP networks
over Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) and/or Link Aggregation Groups
(LAG) is required as well. There are already IP-based encapsulations
for MPLS that allow for fine-grained load balancing by using some
special field in the encapsulation header as an entropy field.
However, MPLS-in-UDP can be advantageous since some networks have
used the UDP port number fields as a basis for load-balancing
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
solutions for some time. This is similar to why LISP [RFC6830] uses
UDP encapsulation.
Like other IP-based encapsulation methods for MPLS, this
encapsulation allows for two Label Switching Routers (LSR) to be
adjacent on a Label Switched Path (LSP), while separated by an IP
network. In order to support this encapsulation, each LSR needs to
know the capability to decapsulate MPLS-in-UDP by the remote LSRs.
This specification defines only the data plane encapsulation and does
not concern itself with how the knowledge to use this encapsulation
is conveyed. Specifically, this capability can be either manually
configured on each LSR or be dynamically advertised in manners that
are outside the scope of this document.
Similarly, the MPLS-in-UDP encapsulation format defined in this
document by itself cannot ensure the integrity and privacy of data
packets being transported through the MPLS-in-UDP tunnels and cannot
enable the tunnel decapsulators to authenticate the tunnel
encapsulator. Therefore, in the case where any of the above security
issues is concerned, the MPLS-in-UDP SHOULD be secured with IPsec
[RFC4301] or DTLS [RFC6347]. For more details, please see Section 6
of Security Considerations.
1.1. Existing Encapsulations
Currently, there are several IP-based encapsulations for MPLS such as
MPLS-in-IP, MPLS-in-GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation) [RFC4023],
and MPLS-in-L2TPv3 (Layer Two Tunneling Protocol - Version 3)
[RFC4817]. In all these methods, the IP addresses can be varied to
achieve load-balancing.
All these IP-based encapsulations for MPLS are specified for both
IPv4 and IPv6. In the case of IPv6-based encapsulations, the IPv6
Flow Label can be used for ECMP and LAGs [RFC6438]. However, there
is no such entropy field in the IPv4 header.
For MPLS-in-GRE as well as MPLS-in-L2TPv3, protocol fields (the GRE
Key and the L2TPv3 Session ID respectively) can be used as the load-
balancing key as described in [RFC5640]. For this, intermediate
routers need to understand these fields in the context of being used
as load-balancing keys.
1.2. Motivations for MPLS-in-UDP Encapsulation
Most existing routers in IP networks are already capable of
distributing IP traffic "microflows" [RFC2474] over ECMPs and/or LAG
based on the hash of the five-tuple of User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
[RFC0768] and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) packets (i.e.,
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
source IP address, destination IP address, source port, destination
port, and protocol). By encapsulating the MPLS packets into an UDP
tunnel and using the source port of the UDP header as an entropy
field, the existing load-balancing capability as mentioned above can
be leveraged to provide fine-grained load-balancing of MPLS traffic
over IP networks.
1.3. Application Statements
The MPLS-in-UDP encapsulation technology MUST only be deployed within
a Service Provider (SP) network or networks of an adjacent set of co-
operating SPs where congestion control is not a concern, rather than
over the Internet where congestion control is required. Furthermore,
packet filters SHOULD be added to prevent MPLS-in-UDP packets from
escaping from the service provider networks due to misconfiguation or
packet errors.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]..
3. Encapsulation in UDP
MPLS-in-UDP encapsulation format is shown 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
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Port = Entropy | Dest Port = MPLS |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| UDP Length | UDP Checksum |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
~ MPLS Label Stack ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | |
~ Message Body ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Source Port of UDP
This field contains a 16-bit entropy value that is generated by
the encapsulator to uniquely identify a flow. What constitutes
a flow is locally determined by the encapsulator and therefore
is outside the scope of this document. What algorithm is
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
actually used by the encapsulator to generate an entropy value
is outside the scope of this document.
In case the tunnel does not need entropy, this field of all
packets belonging to a given flow SHOULD be set to a randomly
selected constant value so as to avoid packet reordering.
To ensure that the source port number is always in the range
49152 to 65535 (Note that those ports less than 49152 are
reserved by IANA to identify specific applications/protocols)
which may be required in some cases, instead of calculating a
16-bit hash, the encapsulator SHOULD calculate a 14-bit hash
and use those 14 bits as the least significant bits of the
source port field while the most significant two bits SHOULD be
set to binary 11. That still conveys 14 bits of entropy
information which would be enough as well in practice.
Destination Port of UDP
This field is set to a value (TBD1) allocated by IANA to
indicate that the UDP tunnel payload is an MPLS packet.
UDP Length
The usage of this field is in accordance with the current UDP
specification [RFC0768].
UDP Checksum
For IPv4 UDP encapsulation, this field is RECOMMENDED to be set
to zero because the IPv4 header includes a checksum and use of
the UDP checksum is optional with IPv4, unless checksum
protection of VPN labels is important (See Section 6). For
IPv6 UDP encapsulation, the IPv6 header does not include a
checksum, so this field MUST contain a UDP checksum that MUST
be used as specified in [RFC0768] and [RFC2460] unless one of
the exceptions that allows use of UDP zero-checksum mode (as
specified in [RFC6935]) applies. See Section 3.1 for
specification of these exceptions and additional requirements
that apply when UDP zero-checksum mode is used for MPLS-in-UDP
traffic over IPv6.
MPLS Label Stack
This field contains an MPLS Label Stack as defined in
[RFC3032].
Message Body
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
This field contains one MPLS message body.
3.1. UDP Checksum Usage with IPv6
When UDP is used over IPv6, the UDP checksum is relied upon to
protect the IPv6 header from corruption, and MUST be used unless the
requirements in [RFC6935] and [RFC6936] for use of UDP zero-checksum
mode with a tunnel protocol are satisfied. MPLS-in-UDP is a tunnel
protocol, and there is significant successful deployment of MPLS-in-
IPv6 without UDP (i.e., without a checksum that covers the IPv6
header or the MPLS label stack), as described in Section 3.1 of
[RFC6936]:
"There is extensive experience with deployments using tunnel
protocols in well-managed networks (e.g., corporate networks and
service provider core networks). This has shown the robustness of
methods such as Pseudowire Emulation Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) and MPLS
that do not employ a transport protocol checksum and that have not
specified mechanisms to protect from corruption of the unprotected
headers(such as the VPN Identifier in MPLS)".
This draft focuses on service provider core networks. The
requirements in Section 5 for use of MPLS-in-UDP to carry traffic
that is not necessarily congestion controlled involve significant
service provider traffic management and engineering - this is a
hallmark of the well-managed networks that the above [RFC6936] text
refers to. Therefore, the UDP checksum MUST be implemented and MUST
be used in accordance with [RFC0768] and [RFC2460] for MPLS-in-UDP
traffic over IPv6 unless one of the following exceptions applies and
the additional requirements stated below are complied with. There
are two exceptions that allow use of UDP zero-checksum mode for IPv6
with MPLS-in-UDP, subject to the additional requirements stated below
in this section. The two exceptions are:
a. Use of MPLS-in-UDP within a single service provider that utilizes
careful provisioning (e.g., rate limiting at the entries of the
network while over-provisioning network capacity) to ensure
against congestion and that actively monitors MPLS traffic for
errors; or
b. Use of MPLS-in-UDP within a limited number of service providers
who closely cooperate in order to jointly provide this same
careful provisioning and monitoring.
Even when one of the above exceptions applies, use of UDP checksums
may be appropriate when VPN services are provided over MPLS-in-UDP,
see Section 6. As such, for IPv6, the UDP checksum for MPLS-in-UDP
MUST be used as specified in [RFC0768] and [RFC2460] over the general
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
Internet, and over non-cooperating SPs, even if each non-cooperating
SP independently satisfies the first exception for UDP zero-checksum
mode usage with MPLS-in-UDP over IPv6 within the SP's own network.
Measures SHOULD be taken to prevent UDP zero checksum mode MPLS-in-
UDP over IPv6 traffic from "escaping" to the general Internet; see
Section 5 for examples of such measures.
The following additional requirements apply to implementation and use
of UDP zero-checksum mode for MPLS-in-UDP over IPv6:
a. Use of the UDP checksum with IPv6 MUST be the default
configuration of all MPLS-in-UDP implementations.
b. An MPLS-in-UDP implementation MUST comply with all requirements
specified in Section 4 of [RFC6936] and with requirement 1
specified in Section 5 of [RFC6936].
c. An MPLS-in-UDP receiver MUST check that the source and
destination IPv6 addresses are valid for the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel
and discard any packet for which this check fails.
d. An MPLS-in-UDP sender SHOULD use different IPv6 addresses for
each MPLS-in-UDP tunnel that uses UDP zero-checksum mode in order
to strengthen the receiver's check of the IPv6 source address.
When this is not possible, it is RECOMMENDED to use each source
IPv6 address for as few UDP zero-checksum mode MPLS-in-UDP
tunnels as is feasible.
e. An MPLS-in-UDP receiver MUST check that the top label of the MPLS
label stack is valid for the tunnel. This check will often be
part of the MPLS LSR forwarding logic, but MUST be scoped to the
specific tunnel.
f. An MPLS-in-UDP receiver node SHOULD only enable the use of UDP
zero-checksum mode on a single UDP port and SHOULD NOT support
any other use UDP zero-checksum mode on any other UDP port.
g. Any middlebox support for MPLS-in-UDP with UDP zero-checksum mode
for IPv6 MUST comply with requirements 1 and 8-10 in Section 5 of
[RFC6936].
The above requirements do not change the requirements specified in
[RFC2460] as modified by [RFC6935] and the requirements specified in
[RFC6936].
The requirements to check the source IPv6 address and top label of
the MPLS stack (in addition to the destination IPv6 address), plus
the strong recommendation against reuse of source IPv6 addresses
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
among MPLS-in-UDP tunnels collectively provide some offset for the
absence of UDP checksum coverage of the IPv6 header. The expected
result for IPv6 UDP zero-checksum mode for MPLS-in-UDP is that
corruption of the destination IPv6 address will usually cause packet
discard, as offsetting corruptions to the source IPv6 and/or MPLS top
label are unlikely. Additional assurance is provided by the
restrictions in the above exceptions that limit usage of IPv6 UDP
zero-checksum mode to specific types of well-managed networks for
which MPLS packet corruption has not been a problem in practice.
Hence MPLS-in-UDP is suitable for transmission over lower layers in
the well-managed networks that are allowed by the two exceptions
stated above and is not expected to increase the rate of corruption
of the inner IP packet on such networks by comparison to MPLS traffic
that is not encapsulated in UDP. For these reasons, MPLS-in-UDP does
not provide an additional integrity check when UDP zero-checksum mode
is used with IPv6, and this design is in accordance with requirements
2, 3 and 5 specified in Section 5 of [RFC6936].
MPLS does not accumulate incorrect state as a consequence of label
stack corruption. A corrupt MPLS label results in either packet
discard or forwarding (and forgetting) of the packet without
accumulation of MPLS protocol state. Active monitoring of MPLS-in-
UDP traffic for errors is REQUIRED as occurrence of errors will
result in some accumulation of error information outside the MPLS
protocol for operational and management purposes. This design is in
accordance with requirement 4 specified in Section 5 of [RFC6936].
The remaining requirements specified in Section 5 of [RFC6936] are
inapplicable to MPLS-in-UDP. Requirements 6 and 7 do not apply
because MPLS does not have an MPLS-generic control feedback
mechanism. Requirements 8-10 are middlebox requirements that do not
apply to MPLS-in-UDP tunnel endpoints, but see Section 3.2 for
further middlebox discussion.
In summary, UDP zero-checksum mode for IPv6 is allowed to be used
with MPLS-in-UDP when one of the two exceptions specified above
applies, provided that the five additional requirements (six for
middlebox implementations) stated above are complied with. Otherwise
the UDP checksum MUST be used for IPv6 as specified in [RFC0768] and
[RFC2460].
This entire section and its requirements apply only to use of UDP
zero-checksum mode for IPv6; they can be avoided by using the UDP
checksum as specified in [RFC0768] and [RFC2460].
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
3.2. Middlebox Considerations for IPv6 UDP Zero Checksums
IPv6 datagrams with a zero UDP checksum will not be passed by any
middlebox that validates the checksum based on [RFC2460] or that
updates the UDP checksum field, such as NATs or firewalls. Changing
this behavior would require such middleboxes to be updated to
correctly handle datagrams with zero UDP checksums. The MPLS-in-UDP
encapsulation does not provide a mechanism to safely fall back to
using a checksum when a path change occurs redirecting a tunnel over
a path that includes a middlebox that discards IPv6 datagrams with a
zero UDP checksum. In this case the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel will be
black-holed by that middlebox. Recommended changes to allow
firewalls, NATs and other middleboxes to support use of an IPv6 zero
UDP checksum are described in Section 5 of [RFC6936].
4. Processing Procedures
This MPLS-in-UDP encapsulation causes MPLS packets to be forwarded
through "UDP tunnels". When performing MPLS-in-UDP encapsulation by
the encapsulator, the entropy value would be generated by the
encapsulator and then be filled in the Source Port field of the UDP
header. The Destination Port field is set to a value (TBD1)
allocated by IANA to indicate that the UDP tunnel payload is an MPLS
packet. As for whether the top label in the MPLS label stack is
downstream-assigned or upstream-assigned, it SHOULD be determined
based on the tunnel destination IP address. That is to say, if the
destination IP address is a multicast address, the top label SHOULD
be upstream-assigned, otherwise if the destination IP address is a
unicast address, it SHOULD be downstream-assigned. Intermediate
routers, upon receiving these UDP encapsulated packets, could balance
these packets based on the hash of the five-tuple of UDP packets.
Upon receiving these UDP encapsulated packets, the decapsulator would
decapsulate them by removing the UDP headers and then process them
accordingly. For other common processing procedures associated with
tunneling encapsulation technologies including but not limited to
Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) and preventing fragmentation and
reassembly, Time to Live (TTL) and differentiated services, the
corresponding "Common Procedures" defined in [RFC4023] which are
applicable for MPLS-in-IP and MPLS-in-GRE encapsulation formats
SHOULD be followed.
5. Congestion Considerations
Section 3.1.3 of [RFC5405] discussed the congestion implications of
UDP tunnels. As discussed in [RFC5405], because other flows can
share the path with one or more UDP tunnels, congestion control
[RFC2914] needs to be considered.
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
A major motivation for encapsulating MPLS in UDP is to improve the
use of multipath (such as ECMP) in cases where traffic is to traverse
routers which are able to hash on UDP Port and IP address. As such,
in many cases this may reduce the occurrence of congestion and
improve usage of available network capacity. However, it is also
necessary to ensure that the network, including applications that use
the network, responds appropriately in more difficult cases, such as
when link or equipment failures have reduced the available capacity.
The impact of congestion must be considered both in terms of the
effect on the rest of the network of a UDP tunnel that is consuming
excessive capacity, and in terms of the effect on the flows using the
UDP tunnels. The potential impact of congestion from a UDP tunnel
depends upon what sort of traffic is carried over the tunnel, as well
as the path of the tunnel.
MPLS is widely used to carry a wide range of traffic. In many cases
MPLS is used to carry IP traffic. IP traffic is generally assumed to
be congestion controlled, and thus a tunnel carrying general IP
traffic (as might be expected to be carried across the Internet)
generally does not need additional congestion control mechanisms. As
specified in [RFC5405]:
"IP-based traffic is generally assumed to be congestion-
controlled, i.e., it is assumed that the transport protocols
generating IP-based traffic at the sender already employ
mechanisms that are sufficient to address congestion on the path.
Consequently, a tunnel carrying IP-based traffic should already
interact appropriately with other traffic sharing the path, and
specific congestion control mechanisms for the tunnel are not
necessary".
For this reason, where MPLS-in-UDP tunneling is used to carry IP
traffic that is known to be congestion controlled, the UDP tunnels
MAY be used across any combination of a single service provider,
multiple cooperating service providers, or across the general
Internet. Internet IP traffic is generally assumed to be congestion-
controlled. Similarly, in general Layer 3 VPNs are carrying IP
traffic that is similarly assumed to be congestion controlled.
Whether or not Layer 2 VPN traffic is congestion controlled may
depend upon the specific services being offered and what use is being
made of the layer 2 services.
However, MPLS is also used in many cases to carry traffic that is not
necessarily congestion controlled. For example, MPLS may be used to
carry pseudowire or VPN traffic where specific bandwidth guarantees
are provided to each pseudowire, or to each VPN.
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
In such cases service providers may avoid congestion by careful
provisioning of their networks, by rate limiting of user data
traffic, and/or by using MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE) to assign
specific bandwidth guarantees to each LSP. Where MPLS is carried
over UDP over IP, the identity of each individual MPLS flow is in
general lost and MPLS-TE cannot be used to guarantee bandwidth to
specific flows (since many LSPs may be multiplexed over a single UDP
tunnel, and many UDP tunnels may be mixed in an IP network).
For this reason, where the MPLS traffic is not congestion controlled,
MPLS-in-UDP tunnels MUST only be used within a single service
provider that utilizes careful provisioning (e.g., rate limiting at
the entries of the network while over-provisioning network capacity)
to ensure against congestion, or within a limited number of service
providers who closely cooperate in order to jointly provide this same
careful provisioning.
As such, MPLS-in-UDP MUST NOT be used over the general Internet, or
over non-cooperating SPs, to carry traffic that is not congestion-
controlled.
Measures SHOULD be taken to prevent non-congestion-controlled MPLS-
in-UDP traffic from "escaping" to the general Internet, e.g.:
a. Physical or logical isolation of the links carrying MPLS-over-UDP
from the general Internet.
b. Deployment of packet filters that block the UDP ports assigned
for MPLS-over-UDP.
c. Imposition of restrictions on MPLS-in-UDP traffic by software
tools used to set up MPLS-in-UDP tunnels between specific end
systems (as might be used within a single data center).
d. Use of a "Managed Circuit Breaker" for the MPLS traffic as
described in [I-D.fairhurst-tsvwg-circuit-breaker].
6. Security Considerations
The security problems faced with the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel are exactly
the same as those faced with MPLS-in-IP and MPLS-in-GRE tunnels
[RFC4023] . In other words, the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel as defined in this
document by itself cannot ensure the integrity and privacy of data
packets being transported through the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel and cannot
enable the tunnel decapsulator to authenticate the tunnel
encapsulator. In the case where any of the above security issues is
concerned, the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel SHOULD be secured with IPsec or
DTLS. IPsec was designed as a network security mechanism and
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
therefore it resides at the network layer. As such, if the tunnel is
secured with IPsec, the UDP header would not be visible to
intermediate routers anymore in either IPsec tunnel or transport
mode. As a result, the meaning of adopting the MPLS-in-UDP tunnel as
an alternative to the MPLS-in-GRE or MPLS-in-IP tunnel is lost. By
comparison, DTLS is better suited for application security and can
better preserve network and transport layer protocol information.
Specifically, if DTLS is used, the destination port of the UDP header
will be filled with a value (TBD2) indicating MPLS with DTLS and the
source port can still be used as an entropy field for load-sharing
purposes.
If the tunnel is not secured with IPsec or DTLS, some other method
should be used to ensure that packets are decapsulated and forwarded
by the tunnel tail only if those packets were encapsulated by the
tunnel head. If the tunnel lies entirely within a single
administrative domain, address filtering at the boundaries can be
used to ensure that no packet with the IP source address of a tunnel
endpoint or with the IP destination address of a tunnel endpoint can
enter the domain from outside. However, when the tunnel head and the
tunnel tail are not in the same administrative domain, this may
become difficult, and filtering based on the destination address can
even become impossible if the packets must traverse the public
Internet. Sometimes only source address filtering (but not
destination address filtering) is done at the boundaries of an
administrative domain. If this is the case, the filtering does not
provide effective protection at all unless the decapsulator of an
MPLS-in-UDP validates the IP source address of the packet.
This document does not require that the decapsulator validate the IP
source address of the tunneled packets (with the exception that the
IPv6 source address MUST be validated when UDP zero-checksum mode is
used with IPv6), but it should be understood that failure to do so
presupposes that there is effective destination-based (or a
combination of source-based and destination-based) filtering at the
boundaries. MPLS-based VPN services rely on a VPN label in the MPLS
label stack to identify the VPN. Corruption of that label could leak
traffic across VPN boundaries. Such leakage is highly undesirable
when inter-VPN isolation is used for privacy or security reasons.
When that is the case, UDP checksums SHOULD be used for MPLS-in-UDP
with both IPv4 and IPv6, and in particular, UDP zero-checksum mode
SHOULD NOT be used with IPv6. Each UDP checksum covers the VPN
label, thereby providing increased assurance of isolation among VPNs.
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
7. IANA Considerations
One UDP destination port number indicating MPLS needs to be allocated
by IANA.:
Service Name: MPLS-in-UDP
Transport Protocol(s): UDP
Assignee: IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
Contact: IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org>.
Description: Encapsulate MPLS packets in UDP tunnels.
Reference: This document -- draft-ietf-mpls-in-udp (MPLS WG
document).
Port Number: TBD1 -- To be assigned by IANA.
One UDP destination port number indicating MPLS with DTLS needs to be
allocated by IANA:
Service Name: MPLS-in-UDP-with-DTLS
Transport Protocol(s): UDP
Assignee: IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
Contact: IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org>.
Description: Encapsulate MPLS packets in UDP tunnels with DTLS.
Reference: This document -- draft-ietf-mpls-in-udp (MPLS WG
document).
Port Number: TBD2 -- To be assigned by IANA.
8. Contributors
Zhenbin Li
Huawei Technologies,
Beijing, China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
Curtis Villamizar
Outer Cape Cod Network Consulting, LLC
Email: curtis@occnc.com
9. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Shane Amante, Dino Farinacci, Keshava A K, Ivan Pepelnjak,
Eric Rosen, Andrew G. Malis, Kireeti Kompella, Marshall Eubanks,
George Swallow, Loa Andersson, Vivek Kumar, Stewart Bryant, Wen
Zhang, Joel M. Halpern, Noel Chiappa, Scott Brim, Alia Atlas,
Alexander Vainshtein, Joel Jaeggli, Edward Crabbe, Mark Tinka, Lars
Eggert, Joe Touch, Lloyd Wood, Weiguo Hao, Mark Szczesniak, Zhenxiao
Liu and Xing Tong for their valuable comments and suggestions on this
document.
Special thanks to Adrian Farrel for his conscientious AD review and
insightful suggestion of using DTLS for securing the MPLS-in-UDP
tunnels. Special thanks to Alia Atlas for her insightful suggestion
of adding an applicability statement.
Thanks to Daniel King, Gregory Mirsky and Eric Osborne for their
valuable MPLS-RT reviews on this document. Thanks to Charlie Kaufman
for his SecDir review of this document. Thanks to Nevil Brownlee for
the OPSDir review of this document. Thanks to Roni Even for the Gen-
ART review of this document. Thanks to Pearl Liang for the IANA
review of this documents.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC0768] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", STD 6, RFC 768,
August 1980.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
[RFC3032] Rosen, E., Tappan, D., Fedorkow, G., Rekhter, Y.,
Farinacci, D., Li, T., and A. Conta, "MPLS Label Stack
Encoding", RFC 3032, January 2001.
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
[RFC4023] Worster, T., Rekhter, Y., and E. Rosen, "Encapsulating
MPLS in IP or Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)", RFC
4023, March 2005.
[RFC4301] Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.
[RFC6347] Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, January 2012.
[RFC6935] Eubanks, M., Chimento, P., and M. Westerlund, "IPv6 and
UDP Checksums for Tunneled Packets", RFC 6935, April 2013.
[RFC6936] Fairhurst, G. and M. Westerlund, "Applicability Statement
for the Use of IPv6 UDP Datagrams with Zero Checksums",
RFC 6936, April 2013.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.fairhurst-tsvwg-circuit-breaker]
Fairhurst, G., "Network Transport Circuit Breakers",
draft-fairhurst-tsvwg-circuit-breaker-01 (work in
progress), May 2014.
[RFC2474] Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
"Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474, December
1998.
[RFC2914] Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41, RFC
2914, September 2000.
[RFC4817] Townsley, M., Pignataro, C., Wainner, S., Seely, T., and
J. Young, "Encapsulation of MPLS over Layer 2 Tunneling
Protocol Version 3", RFC 4817, March 2007.
[RFC5405] Eggert, L. and G. Fairhurst, "Unicast UDP Usage Guidelines
for Application Designers", BCP 145, RFC 5405, November
2008.
[RFC5640] Filsfils, C., Mohapatra, P., and C. Pignataro, "Load-
Balancing for Mesh Softwires", RFC 5640, August 2009.
[RFC6438] Carpenter, B. and S. Amante, "Using the IPv6 Flow Label
for Equal Cost Multipath Routing and Link Aggregation in
Tunnels", RFC 6438, November 2011.
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
[RFC6830] Farinacci, D., Fuller, V., Meyer, D., and D. Lewis, "The
Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP)", RFC 6830, January
2013.
Authors' Addresses
Xiaohu Xu
Huawei Technologies
No.156 Beiqing Rd
Beijing 100095
CHINA
Phone: +86-10-60610041
Email: xuxiaohu@huawei.com
Nischal Sheth
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
USA
Email: nsheth@juniper.net
Lucy Yong
Huawei USA
5340 Legacy Dr
Plano, TX 75025
USA
Email: Lucy.yong@huawei.com
Carlos Pignataro
Cisco Systems
7200-12 Kit Creek Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
USA
Email: cpignata@cisco.com
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft Encapsulating MPLS in UDP October 2014
Yongbing Fan
China Telecom
Guangzhou
CHINA
Email: fanyb@gsta.com
Ross Callon
Juniper Networks
10 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
USA
Email: rcallon@juniper.net
David Black
EMC Corporation
176 South Street
Hopkinton, MA 01748
USA
Email: david.black@emc.com
Xu, et al. Expires April 27, 2015 [Page 17]