Network Working Group                                              X. Fu
Internet-Draft                                               C. Dickmann
Intended status: Experimental                   University of Goettingen
Expires: October 30, 2010                                   J. Crowcroft
                                                 University of Cambridge
                                                          April 28, 2010


    General Internet Signaling Transport (GIST) over Stream Control
   Transmission Protocol (SCTP) and Datagram Transport Layer Security
                                 (DTLS)
                    draft-ietf-nsis-ntlp-sctp-11.txt

Abstract

   The General Internet Signaling Transport (GIST) protocol currently
   uses TCP or Transport Layer Security (TLS) over TCP for connection
   mode operation.  This document describes the usage of GIST over the
   Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) and Datagram Transport
   Layer Security (DTLS).  The use of SCTP can take advantage of
   features provided by SCTP, namely streaming-based transport, support
   of multiple streams to avoid head of line blocking, the support of
   multi-homing to provide network level fault tolerance, as well as
   partial reliability extension for partially reliable data
   transmission.  This document also specifies how to establish GIST
   security over datagram transport protocols using an extension to
   DTLS.

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 October 30, 2010.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the



Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 1]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


   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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Terminology and Abbreviations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  GIST Over SCTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     3.1.  Message Association Setup  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       3.1.1.  Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       3.1.2.  Protocol-Definition: Forwards-SCTP . . . . . . . . . .  4
     3.2.  Effect on GIST State Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.3.  PR-SCTP Support  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.4.  API between GIST and NSLP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.  Bit-Level Formats  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.1.  MA-Protocol-Options  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.  Application of GIST over SCTP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.1.  Multi-homing support of SCTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.2.  Streaming support in SCTP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   6.  NAT Traversal Issue  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   7.  Use of DTLS with GIST  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   8.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   9.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   10. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10













Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 2]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


1.  Introduction

   This document describes the usage of the General Internet Signaling
   Transport (GIST) protocol [1] and Datagram Transport Layer Security
   (DTLS) over the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) [2].

   GIST, in its initial specification for connection mode operation,
   runs on top of a byte-stream oriented transport protocol providing a
   reliable, in-sequence delivery, i.e., using the Transmission Control
   Protocol (TCP) [7] for signaling message transport.  However, some
   Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS) Signaling Layer Protocol (NSLP) [8]
   context information has a definite lifetime, therefore, the GIST
   transport protocol could benefit from flexible retransmission, so
   stale NSLP messages that are held up by congestion can be dropped.
   Together with the head-of-line blocking and multihoming issues with
   TCP, these considerations argue that implementations of GIST should
   support the Stream Control Transport Protocol (SCTP)[2] as an
   optional transport protocol for GIST.  Like TCP, SCTP supports
   reliability, congestion control and fragmentation.  Unlike TCP, SCTP
   provides a number of functions that are desirable for signaling
   transport, such as multiple streams and multiple IP addresses for
   path failure recovery.  Furthermore, SCTP offers an advantage of
   message-oriented transport instead of using the byte stream oriented
   TCP where one has to provide its own framing mechanisms.  In
   addition, its Partial Reliability extension (PR-SCTP) [3] supports
   partial retransmission based on a programmable retransmission timer.
   Furthermore, Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) [4] provides a
   viable solution for securing SCTP [5], which allows SCTP to use
   almost all its transport features and its extensions.

   This document defines the use of SCTP as a transport protocol and the
   use of DTLS as a security mechanism for GIST Messaging Associations
   and discusses the implications on GIST state maintenance and API
   between GIST and NSLPs.  Furthermore, this document describes how
   GIST should be interfaced to SCTP and used by NSLPs in order to
   exploit the additional capabilities offered by SCTP to deliver GIST
   C-mode messages more effectively.  More specifically:
   o  How to use the multiple streams feature of SCTP.
   o  How to use the PR-SCTP extension of SCTP.
   o  How to take advantage of the multi-homing support of SCTP.

   The methods of using an unchanged SCTP with GIST described in this
   document do not require any changes to the high level operation and
   structure of GIST.  Addition of new transport options requires
   additional interface code and configuration support to allow
   applications to exploit the additional transport when appropriate.
   In addition, SCTP over GIST implementations MUST support the optional
   feature of fragmentation of SCTP user messages.



Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 3]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


   Additionally, this document also specifies how to establish GIST
   security using DTLS for use in combination with e.g., SCTP and UDP.


2.  Terminology and Abbreviations

   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 [6].  Other
   terminologies and abbreviations used in this document are taken from
   related specifications (e.g., [1] and [2]).


3.  GIST Over SCTP

   This section defines a new MA-Protocol-ID type, "Forwards-SCTP", for
   using SCTP as GIST transport protocol.

3.1.  Message Association Setup

3.1.1.  Overview

   The basic GIST protocol specification defines two possible protocols
   to be used in Messaging Associations, namely Forwards-TCP and TLS.
   This information are main part of the Stack Configuration Data (SCD)
   [1].  This document adds Forwards-SCTP and DTLS as another two
   possible protocol options.  In Forwards-SCTP, analog to Forwards-TCP,
   connections between peers are opened in the forwards direction, from
   the querying node, towards the responder.

3.1.2.  Protocol-Definition: Forwards-SCTP

   This MA-Protocol-ID "Forwards-SCTP" denotes a basic use of SCTP
   between peers.  Support for this protocol is OPTIONAL.  If this
   protocol is offered, MA-protocol-options data MUST also be carried in
   the SCD object.  The MA-protocol-options field formats are:
   o  in a Query: no information apart from the field header.
   o  in a Response: 2 byte port number at which the connection will be
      accepted, followed by 2 pad bytes.

   The connection is opened in the forwards direction, from the querying
   node towards the responder.  The querying node MAY use any source
   address and source port.  The destination for establishing the
   message association MUST be derived from information in the Response:
   the address from the interface- address from the Network-Layer-
   Information object and the port from the SCD object as described
   above.




Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 4]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


   Associations using Forwards-SCTP can carry messages with the transfer
   attribute Reliable=True.  If an error occurs on the SCTP connection
   such as a reset, as can be reported by an SCTP socket API
   notification[9], GIST MUST report this to NSLPs as discussed in
   Section 4.1.2 of [1].  For the multi-homing scenario, when a
   destination address of a GIST over SCTP peer encounters a change, the
   SCTP API will notify GIST about the availability of different SCTP
   endpoint addresses and possible change of the primary path.

3.2.  Effect on GIST State Maintenance

   As SCTP provides additional functionality over TCP, this section
   discusses the implications of using GIST over SCTP on GIST State
   Maintenance.

   While SCTP defines uni-directional streams, for the purpose of this
   document, the concept of a bi-directional stream is used.
   Implementations MUST establish downstream and upstream (uni-
   directional) SCTP streams always together and use the same stream
   identifier in both directions.  Thus, the two uni-directional streams
   (in opposite directions) form a bi-directional stream.

   Due to the multi-streaming support of SCTP, it is possible to use
   different SCTP streams for different resources (e.g., different NSLP
   sessions), rather than maintaining all messages along the same
   transport connection/association in a correlated fashion as TCP
   (which imposes strict (re)ordering and reliability per transport
   level).  However, there are limitations to the use of multi-
   streaming.  All GIST messages for a particular session MUST be sent
   over the same SCTP stream to assure the NSLP assumption of in-order
   delivery.  Multiple sessions MAY share the same SCTP stream based on
   local policy.

   The GIST concept of Messaging Association re-use is not affected by
   this document or the use of SCTP.  All rules defined in the GIST
   specification remain valid in the context of GIST over SCTP.

3.3.  PR-SCTP Support

   A variant of SCTP, PR-SCTP [3] provides a "timed reliability"
   service, which would be particular useful for delivering GIST
   Connection mode messages.  It allows the user to specify, on a per
   message basis, the rules governing how persistent the transport
   service should be in attempting to send the message to the receiver.
   Because of the chunk bundling function of SCTP, reliable and
   partially reliable messages can be multiplexed over a single PR-SCTP
   association.  Therefore, a GIST over SCTP implementation SHOULD
   attempt to establish a PR-SCTP association using "timed reliability"



Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 5]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


   service instead of a standard SCTP association, if available, to
   support more flexible transport features for potential needs of
   different NSLPs.

   In a standard SCTP, instead, if a node has sent the first
   transmission before the lifetime expires, then the message MUST be
   sent as a normal reliable message.  During episodes of congestion
   this is particularly unfortunate, as retransmission wastes bandwidth
   that could have been used for other (non-lifetime expired) messages.
   The "timed reliability" service in PR-SCTP eliminates this issue and
   is hence RECOMMENDED to be used for GIST over PR-SCTP.

3.4.  API between GIST and NSLP

   GIST specification defines an abstract API between GIST and NSLPs.
   While this document does not change the API itself, the semantics of
   some parameters have slightly different interpretation in the context
   of SCTP.  This section only lists those primitives and parameters,
   that need special consideration when used in the context of SCTP.
   The relevant primitives from [1] are as follows:
   o  The Timeout parameter in API "SendMessage": According to [1], this
      parameter represents the "length of time GIST should attempt to
      send this message before indicating an error."  When used with PR-
      SCTP, this parameter is used as the timeout for the "timed
      reliability" service of PR-SCTP.
   o  "NetworkNotification": According to [1], this primitive "is passed
      from GIST to a signalling application.  It indicates that a
      network event of possible interest to the signalling application
      occurred."  Here, if SCTP detects a failure of the primary path,
      GIST SHOULD also indicate this event to the NSLP by calling this
      primitive with Network-Notification-Type "Routing Status Change".
      This notification should be done even if SCTP was able to retain
      an open connection to the peer due to its multi-homing
      capabilities.


4.  Bit-Level Formats

4.1.  MA-Protocol-Options

   This section provides the bit-level format for the MA-protocol-
   options field that is used for SCTP protocol in the Stack-
   Configuration-Data object of GIST.








Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 6]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


    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
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   :       SCTP port number        |         Reserved              :
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   SCTP port number  = Port number at which the responder will accept
                       SCTP connections


   The SCTP port number is only supplied if sent by the responder.


5.  Application of GIST over SCTP

5.1.  Multi-homing support of SCTP

   In general, the multi-homing support of SCTP can be used to improve
   fault-tolerance in case of a path- or link-failure.  Thus, GIST over
   SCTP would be able to deliver NSLP messages between peers even if the
   primary path is not working anymore.  However, for the Message
   Routing Methods (MRMs) defined in the basic GIST specification such a
   feature is only of limited use.  The default MRM is path-coupled,
   which means, that if the primary path is failing for the SCTP
   association, it most likely is also for the IP traffic that is
   signaled for.  Thus, GIST would need to perform a refresh to the NSIS
   nodes to the alternative path anyway to cope with the route change.
   When the two endpoints of a multi-homed SCTP association (but none of
   the intermediate nodes between them) support NSIS, GIST over SCTP
   provides a robust means for GIST to deliver NSLP messages even when
   the primary path fails but at least one alternative path between
   these (NSIS-enabled) endpoints of the multihomed path is available.
   Additionally, the use of the multi-homing support of SCTP provides
   GIST and the NSLP with another source to detect route changes.
   Furthermore, for the time between detection of the route change and
   recovering from it, the alternative path offered by SCTP can be used
   by the NSLP to make the transition more smoothly.  Finally, future
   MRMs might have different properties and therefore benefit from
   multi-homing more broadly.

5.2.  Streaming support in SCTP

   Streaming support in SCTP is advantageous for GIST.  It allows better
   parallel processing, in particular by avoiding head of line blocking
   issue in TCP.  Since a same GIST MA may be reused by multiple
   sessions, using TCP as transport for GIST signaling messages
   belonging to different sessions may be blocked if another message is
   dropped.  In the case of SCTP, this can be avoided as different



Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 7]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


   sessions having different requirements can belong to different
   streams, thus a message loss or reordering in a stream will only
   affect the delivery of messages within that particular stream, and
   not any other streams.


6.  NAT Traversal Issue

   NAT traversal for GIST over SCTP will follow Section 7.2 of [1] and
   the GIST extensibility capabilities defined in [10].  This
   specification does not define NAT traversal procedure for GIST over
   SCTP, although an approach for SCTP NAT traversal is described in
   [11].


7.  Use of DTLS with GIST

   This section specifies a new "MA-Protocol-ID" for the use of DTLS in
   GIST, which denotes a basic use of datagram transport layer channel
   security, initially in conjunction with SCTP over GIST.  It provides
   authentication, integrity and optionally replay protection for
   control packets.  The use of DTLS for securing GIST over SCTP allows
   GIST to take the advantage of features provided by SCTP and its
   extensions.  Note replay protection is not available for DTLS over
   SCTP [5].  The usage of DTLS for GIST over SCTP is similar to TLS for
   GIST as specified in [1], where a stack-proposal containing both MA-
   Protocol-IDs for SCTP and DTLS during the GIST handshake phase.

   GIST message associations using DTLS may carry messages with transfer
   attributes requesting confidentiality or integrity protection.  The
   specific DTLS version will be negotiated within the DTLS layer
   itself, but implementations MUST NOT negotiate to protocol versions
   prior to DTLS v1.0 and MUST use the highest protocol version
   supported by both peers.  GIST nodes supporting DTLS MUST be able to
   negotiate the DTLS NULL and block ciphers and SHOULD be able to
   negotiate the new cipher suites.  They MAY negotiate any mutually
   acceptable ciphersuite that provides authentication, integrity, and
   confidentiality.  The same rules for negotiating TLS cipher suites as
   specified in Section 5.7.3 of [1] apply.

   No MA-protocol-options field is required for DTLS.  The configuration
   information for the transport protocol over which DTLS is running
   (e.g.  SCTP port number) is provided by the MA-protocol-options for
   that protocol.







Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 8]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


8.  Security Considerations

   The security considerations of [1], [2] and [4] apply.  Following
   [5], replay detection of DTLS over SCTP is not supported.

   The usage of DTLS [4] for securing GIST over datagram transport
   protocols MUST be implemented and SHOULD be used.  An implementation
   of GIST over SCTP with no PR-SCTP support MAY use TLS for its channel
   security, when DTLS is not available between two GIST peers.


9.  IANA Considerations

   This specification requests the following codepoints (MA-Protocol-
   IDs) be assigned in a registry created by [1]:

     +---------------------+------------------------------------------+
     | MA-Protocol-ID      | Protocol                                 |
     +---------------------+------------------------------------------+
     | 3                   | SCTP opened in the forwards direction    |
     |                     |                                          |
     | 4                   | DTLS initiated in the forwards direction |
     +---------------------+------------------------------------------+


   Note that MA-Protocol-ID 4 is never used alone but always coupled
   with a transport protocol in the stack proposal.


10.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank John Loughney, Jukka Manner, Magnus
   Westerlund, Robert Hancock, Andrew McDonald, Martin Stiemerling,
   Fang-Chun Kuo, Jan Demter, Lauri Liuhto, Michael Tuexen, and Roland
   Bless for their helpful suggestions.


11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [1]   Schulzrinne, H. and M. Stiemerling, "GIST: General Internet
         Signalling Transport", draft-ietf-nsis-ntlp-20 (work in
         progress), June 2009.

   [2]   Stewart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 4960,
         September 2007.




Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010                [Page 9]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


   [3]   Stewart, R., Ramalho, M., Xie, Q., Tuexen, M., and P. Conrad,
         "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Partial
         Reliability Extension", RFC 3758, May 2004.

   [4]   Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
         Security", RFC 4347, April 2006.

   [5]   Tuexen, M., Seggelmann, R., and E. Rescorla, "Datagram
         Transport Layer Security (DTLS) for Stream Control Transmission
         Protocol (SCTP)", draft-ietf-tsvwg-dtls-for-sctp-05 (work in
         progress), March 2010.

   [6]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
         Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

11.2.  Informative References

   [7]   Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC 793,
         September 1981.

   [8]   Hancock, R., Karagiannis, G., Loughney, J., and S. Van den
         Bosch, "Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS): Framework", RFC 4080,
         June 2005.

   [9]   Stewart, R., Poon, K., Tuexen, M., Yasevich, V., and P. Lei,
         "Sockets API Extensions for Stream Control Transmission
         Protocol (SCTP)", draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctpsocket-22 (work in
         progress), March 2010.

   [10]  Manner, J., Bless, R., Loughney, J., and E. Davies, "Using and
         Extending the NSIS Protocol Family", draft-ietf-nsis-ext-07
         (work in progress), April 2010.

   [11]  Stewart, R., Tuexen, M., and I. Ruengeler, "Stream Control
         Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Network Address Translation",
         draft-ietf-behave-sctpnat-02 (work in progress), December 2009.















Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010               [Page 10]


Internet-Draft           GIST over SCTP and DTLS              April 2010


Authors' Addresses

   Xiaoming Fu
   University of Goettingen
   Institute of Computer Science
   Goldschmidtstr. 7
   Goettingen  37077
   Germany

   Email: fu@cs.uni-goettingen.de


   Christian Dickmann
   University of Goettingen
   Institute of Computer Science
   Goldschmidtstr. 7
   Goettingen  37077
   Germany

   Email: mail@christian-dickmann.de


   Jon Crowcroft
   University of Cambridge
   Computer Laboratory
   William Gates Building
   15 JJ Thomson Avenue
   Cambridge  CB3 0FD
   UK

   Email: jon.crowcroft@cl.cam.ac.uk




















Fu, et al.              Expires October 30, 2010               [Page 11]