PCP T. Reddy
Internet-Draft P. Patil
Intended status: Standards Track Cisco
Expires: November 19, 2015 M. Isomaki
Nokia
D. Wing
Cisco
May 18, 2015
Optimizing NAT and Firewall Keepalives Using Port Control Protocol (PCP)
draft-ietf-pcp-optimize-keepalives-06
Abstract
This document describes how Port Control Protocol is useful in
reducing NAT and firewall keepalive messages for a variety of
applications.
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 November 19, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Overview of Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Application Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. NAT Topologies and Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.1. PCP based detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.2. Application based detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3. Detection of PCP unaware firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Keepalive Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Keepalive Interval Determination Procedure when PCP unaware
Firewall or NAT is detected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Application-Specific Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1. SIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2. HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3. Media and data channels with ICE . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.4. Detecting Flow Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.5. Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.5.1. IPv6 Network with Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.5.2. Mobile Network with Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Appendix A. Example PHP script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Appendix B. Savings with PCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1. Introduction
Many types of applications need to keep their Network Address
Translator (NAT) and Firewall (FW) mappings alive for long periods of
time, even when they are otherwise not sending or receiving any
traffic. This is typically done by sending periodic keep-alive
messages just to prevent the mappings from expiring. As NAT/FW
mapping timers may be short and unknown to the endpoint, the
frequency of these keepalives may be high. An IPv4 or IPv6 host can
use the Port Control Protocol (PCP)[RFC6887] to flexibly manage the
IP address and port mapping information on NATs and Firewalls to
facilitate communications with remote hosts. This document describes
how PCP can be used to reduce keepalive messages for both client-
server and peer-to-peer type of communication.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
The mechanism described in this document is especially useful in
cellular mobile networks, where frequent keepalive messages make the
radio transition between active and power-save states causing
congestion in the signaling path. The excessive time spent on the
active state due to keepalives also greatly reduces the battery life
of the cellular connected devices such as smartphones or tablets.
[I-D.ietf-v6ops-mobile-device-profile] recommends cellular hosts to
be PCP-compliant in order to save battery consumption exacerbated by
keepalive messages.
2. Notational Conventions
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 [RFC2119].
This note uses terminology defined in [RFC5245] and [RFC6887].
3. Overview of Operation
3.1. Application Scenarios
PCP can help both client-server and peer-to-peer applications to
reduce their keepalive rate. The relevant applications are the ones
that need to keep their NAT/FW mappings alive for long periods of
time, for instance to be able to send or receive application messages
in both directions at any time.
A typical client-server scenario is depicted in Figure 1. A client,
who may reside behind one or multiple layers of NATs/FWs, opens a
connection to a globally reachable server, and keeps it open to be
able to receive messages from the server at any time. The connection
may be a connection-oriented transport protocol such as TCP or SCTP
or connection-less transport protocol such as UDP. Protocols
operating in this manner include the Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) [RFC3261], the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
(XMPP) [RFC3921], the Internet Mail Application Protocol (IMAP)
[RFC2177] with its IDLE command, the WebSocket protocol [RFC6455] and
the various HTTP long-polling protocols. There are also a number of
proprietary instant messaging, Voice over IP, e-mail and notification
delivery protocols that belong in this category. All of these
protocols aim to keep the client-server connection alive for as long
as the application is running. When the application has otherwise no
traffic to send, specific keepalive messages are sent periodically to
ensure that the NAT/FW state in the middle does not expire. The
client can use PCP to keep the required mappings at the NAT/FWs and
use application keepalives to keep the state on the Application
Server/Peer as mentioned in Section 3.4.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
PCP PCP
Client Server __________
+-----------+ +------+ / \ +-----------+
|Application|___| NAT/ |____| Internet |___|Application|
| Client | | FW | | | | Server |
+-----------+ +------+ \__________/ +-----------+
(multiple
layers)
------------> PCP
----------------------------------------->
Application keepalive
Figure 1: PCP with Client-Server applications
There are also scenarios where the long-term communication
association is between two peers, both of whom may reside behind one
or more layers of NAT/FW. This is depicted in Figure 2. The
initiation of the association may have happened using mechanisms such
as Interactive Communications Establishment (ICE), perhaps first
triggered by a "signaling" protocol such as SIP or XMPP or WebRTC
[I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]. Examples of the peer-to-peer protocols
include RTP and WebRTC data channel. A number of proprietary VoIP or
video call or streaming or file transfer protocols also exist in this
category. Typically the communication is based on UDP, but TCP or
SCTP may be used. If there is no traffic flowing, the peers have to
inject periodic keepalive packets to keep the NAT/FW mappings on both
sides of the communication active. Instead of application
keepalives, both peers can use PCP to control the mappings on the
NAT/FWs to reduce the keepalive frequency as explained in
Section 3.4.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
PCP PCP PCP PCP
Client Server __________ Server Client
+-----------+ +------+ / \ +------+ +-----------+
|Application|___| NAT/ |____| Internet |___| NAT/ |___|Application|
| Peer | | FW | | | | FW | | Peer |
+-----------+ +------+ \__________/ +------+ +-----------+
(multiple (multiple
layers) layers)
------------> PCP PCP <------------
<--------------------------------------------------->
Application keepalive
Figure 2: PCP with Peer-to-Peer applications
3.2. NAT Topologies and Detection
Before an application can reduce its keepalive rate, it has to make
sure it has all of the NATs and firewalls on its path under control.
This means it has to detect the presence of any PCP-unaware NATs and
firewalls on its path to the Internet.
3.2.1. PCP based detection
PCP itself is able to detect unexpected NATs between the PCP client
and PCP server as depicted in Figure 3. The PCP client includes its
own IP address and UDP port within the PCP request. The PCP server
compares them to the source IP address and UDP port it sees on the
packet. If they differ, there are one or more additional NATs
between the PCP client and PCP server, and the server will return an
error. Unless the application has some other means (like UPnP) to
control these PCP unaware NATs, it has to fall back to its default
keepalive mechanism.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
PCP PCP PCP
Client Unaware Aware __________
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ / \ +-----------+
|Application|___| NAT |___| NAT/ |____| Internet |___|Application|
| Client | | | | FW | | | | Server |
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ \__________/ +-----------+
<-----------///---------->
PCP based detection
Figure 3: PCP unaware NAT between PCP client and PCP server
3.2.2. Application based detection
Figure 4 shows a topology where one or more PCP unaware NATs are
deployed on the exterior of the PCP capable NAT/FWs. To detect this,
the application client must have the capability to request from its
application server or peer what IP and transport address it sees. If
those differ from the IP and transport address given by the PCP aware
NAT/FW then the application client can determine that there is at
least one PCP unaware NAT on the path. In this case, the application
client has to fall back to its default keepalive mechanism.
PCP PCP PCP
Client Aware Unaware __________
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ / \ +-----------+
|Application|___| NAT/ |___| NAT |____| Internet |___|Application|
| Client | | FW | | | | | | Server |
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ \__________/ +-----------+
<------------>
PCP
<---------------------///--------------------------->
Application based detection
Figure 4: PCP unaware NAT external to the last PCP aware NAT
3.3. Detection of PCP unaware firewalls
PCP and application based detection mechanisms explained in
Section 3.2.1 and Section 3.2.2 are based on change in the address
and will not detect PCP unaware firewalls. In order to detect a PCP
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
unaware firewall, the application client sends a Session Traversal
Utilities for NAT (STUN) [RFC5389] Binding request to the STUN
server. If STUN server supports the STUN extensions defined in
[RFC5780] then it returns its alternate IP address and alternate port
in OTHER-ADDRESS attribute in the STUN Binding response. The client
then uses PCP to send MAP request with FILTER option to PCP server to
permit STUN server to reach the client using the STUN servers
alternate IP address and alternate port. The client then sends a
Binding request to the primary address of the STUN server with the
CHANGE-REQUEST attribute set to change-port and change-IP. This will
cause the server to send its response from its alternate IP address
and alternate port. If the client receives a response then the
client is aware that on path firewall devices are PCP aware. If the
client does not receive a response then the client is aware that
there could be one or more on path PCP unaware firewall devices. The
application client will perform the tests separately for each
transport protocol. If no response is received, the client will then
repeat the test at most three times for connectionless transport
protocols.
PCP PCP PCP
Client Aware Unaware __________
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ / \ +-----------+
|Application|___| NAT/ |___| FW |____| Internet |___| STUN |
| Client | | FW | | | | | | Server |
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ \__________/ +-----------+
<--------------------------------------------------->
STUN
<------------>
PCP
X<---------------------------
STUN based detection
Figure 5: PCP unaware firewall
This procedure can be adopted by other protocols to detect PCP
unaware firewalls.
3.4. Keepalive Optimization
If the application determines that all NATs and firewalls on its path
to the Internet support PCP, it can start using PCP instead of its
default keepalives to maintain the NAT/FW state. It can use PCP PEER
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
Request with the Requested Lifetime set to an appropriate value. The
application may still send some application-specific heartbeat
messages end-to-end to refresh state on the application server, which
typically requires keepalives far less frequently than NATs /FWs do.
Processing the lifetime value of the PEER Opcode is described in
Sections 10.3 and 15 of [RFC6887]. Sending a PEER request with a
very short Requested Lifetime can be used to query the lifetime of an
existing mapping. PCP recommends that lifetimes of mapping created
or lengthened with PEER be longer than the lifetimes of implicitly-
created NAT and firewall mappings. Thus PCP can be used to reduce
power consumption by making PCP PEER message interval longer than
what the application would normally use to the keep the middle box
state alive, and strictly shorter than the server state refresh
interval.
An example of savings with PCP is described in Appendix B.
4. Keepalive Interval Determination Procedure when PCP unaware Firewall
or NAT is detected
If a PCP unaware NAT/firewall is detected, then a client can use the
following heuristics method to determine the keepalive interval:
1. The client sends a STUN Binding request to the STUN server. This
connection is called the Primary Channel. STUN server will
return its alternate IP address and alternate port in OTHER-
ADDRESS in the Binding response [RFC5780].
2. The client then sends a STUN Binding request to the STUN server
using alternate IP address and alternate port. This connection
is called the Secondary Channel.
3. The Client will initially set the default keepalive interval for
NAT/FW mappings to 60 seconds (FWa).
4. After FWa seconds the Client will send a Binding request to the
STUN server using the Primary Channel with the CHANGE-REQUEST
attribute set to change-port and change-IP. This will cause the
STUN server to send its response from the Secondary channel.
5. If the client receives response from the server then it will
increase the keepalive interval value FWa = (old FWa) + (old
FWa)/2. This indicates that NAT/FW mappings are alive.
6. Steps 4 and 5 will be repeated until there is no response from
the STUN server. If there is no response from the STUN server
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
then the client will use the old FWa value as Keepalive interval
to refresh FW/NAT mappings.
The above procedure will be done separately for each transport
protocol. For connectionless transport protocols such as UDP, if 2
seconds elapse without a response from the STUN server then the
client will repeat step 4 at most three times to handle packet loss.
This procedure can be adopted by other protocols to use Primary and
Secondary channels, so that the client can determine the keepalive
interval to refresh FW/NAT mapping. This procedure only serves as a
guideline and if applications already use some other heuristic to
determine the keepalive interval, they can continue with the existing
logic. For example Teredo determines the Refresh interval using the
procedure in "Optional Refresh Interval Determination Procedure"
(Section 5.2.7 of [RFC4380]).
Note: The keepalive interval learnt using the above method can be
inaccurate if a firewall is configured with an application-specific
inactivity timeout.
To improve reliability, applications SHOULD continue to use PCP to
lengthen the FW/NAT mappings even if the above mechanism is used to a
detect PCP unaware NAT/firewall. This ensures that PCP aware FW/NATs
do not close old mappings with no packet exchange when there is a
resource-scarcity situation.
5. Application-Specific Operation
This section describes how PCP is used with specific application
protocols.
5.1. SIP
For connection-less transports the User Agent (UA) sends a STUN
Binding request over the SIP flow as described in section 4.4.2 of
[RFC5626]. The UA then learns the External IP Address and Port using
a PCP PEER request/response. If the XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS in the STUN
Binding response matches the external address and port provided by
PCP PEER response then the UA optimizes the keepalive traffic as
described in Section 3.4. There is no further need to send STUN
Binding requests over the SIP flow to keep the NAT Binding alive.
If the XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS in the STUN Binding response does not match
the external address and port provided by the PCP PEER response then
PCP will not be used to keep the NAT bindings alive for the flow that
is being used for the SIP traffic. This means that multiple layers
of NAT are involved and intermediate NATs are not PCP aware. In this
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
case the UA will continue to use the technique in section 4.4.2 of
[RFC5626].
For connection-oriented transports, the UA sends a STUN Binding
request multiplexed with SIP over the TCP connection. STUN
multiplexed with other data over a TCP or TLS-over-TCP connection is
explained in section 7.2.2 of [RFC5389]. The UA then learns the
External IP address and port using a PCP PEER request/response. If
the XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS in the STUN Binding response matches the
external address and port provided by the PCP PEER response, then the
UA optimizes the keepalive traffic as described in Section 3.4.
If the XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS in the STUN Binding response does not match
the external address and port provided by the PCP PEER response, then
PCP will not be used to keep the NAT bindings alive. In this case
the UA performs a keepalive check by sending a double-CRLF (the
"ping") then waits to receive a single CRLF (the "pong") using the
technique in section 4.4.1 of [RFC5626].
5.2. HTTP
Web Applications that require persistent connections use techniques
such as HTTP long polling and Websockets for session keep alive as
explained in section 3.1 of [I-D.isomaki-rtcweb-mobile]. In such
scenarios, after the client establishes a connection with the HTTP
server, it can execute server side scripts such as PHP residing on
the server to provide the transport address and port of the HTTP
client seen at the HTTP server. In addition, the HTTP client also
learns the external IP Address and port using a PCP PEER request/
response.
If the IP address and port learned from the server matches the
external address and port provided by the PCP PEER response then the
HTTP client optimizes keepalive traffic as described in Section 3.4.
If the IP address and port do not match, then PCP will not be used to
keep the NAT bindings alive for the flow that is being used for the
HTTP traffic. This means that there are NATs or HTTP proxies between
the PCP server and the HTTP server. The HTTP client will have to
resort to use existing techniques for keep alive. Please see
Appendix A for an example server side PHP script to obtain the client
source IP address.
The HTTP protocol allows intermediaries such as transparent proxies
to be involved and there is no way for the client to know that a
request/response is relayed through a proxy.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
5.3. Media and data channels with ICE
The ICE agent learns the External IP Addresses and Ports using the
PCP MAP opcode. If server reflexive candidates learnt using STUN
[RFC5389] and external IP addresses learnt using PCP are different
then candidates learnt through both STUN and PCP are encoded in the
ICE offer and answer . When using the Recommended Formula explained
in section 4.1.2.1 of [RFC5245] to compute priority for the candidate
learnt through PCP, the ICE agent MUST use a preference value greater
than the server reflexive candidate and hence tested before the
server reflexive candidate. The recommended type preference value is
105 for candidates discovered using PCP and is explained in section
4.2 of [RFC6544].
The ICE agent, in addition to the ICE connectivity checks, performs
the following:
1. The ICE agent checks if the XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS from the STUN
Binding response received as part of ICE connectivity check
matches the External IP address and Port provided by PCP MAP
response.
2. If the match is successful then PCP will be used to keep the NAT
bindings alive. The ICE agent optimizes keepalive traffic by
refreshing the mapping via a new PCP MAP request containing
information from the earlier PCP response.
3. If the match is not successful then PCP will not be used for keep
NAT binding alive. The ICE agent will use the technique in
section 4.4 of [RFC6263] to keep NAT bindings alive. This means
that multiple layers of NAT are involved and intermediate NATs
are not PCP- aware.
Some network operators deploying a PCP Server may allow PEER but not
MAP. In such cases the ICE agent learns the external IP address and
port using a STUN Binding request/response during ICE connectivity
checks. The ICE agent also learns the external IP Address and port
using a PCP PEER request/response. If the IP address and port
learned from the STUN Binding response matches the external address
and port provided by the PCP PEER response then the ICE agent
optimizes keepalive traffic as described in Section 3.4.
5.4. Detecting Flow Failure
Using the Rapid Recovery technique in section 14 of [RFC6887] upon
receiving a PCP ANNOUNCE from a PCP server, a PCP client becomes
aware that the PCP server has rebooted or lost its mapping state.
The PCP client issues new PCP requests to recreate any lost mapping
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
state and thus reconstructs lost mappings fast enough that existing
media, HTTP and SIP flows do not break. If the NAT state cannot be
recovered the endpoint will find the new external address and port as
part of the Rapid Recovery technique in PCP itself and reestablish a
connection with the peer.
5.5. Firewalls
PCP allows applications to communicate with firewall devices with PCP
functionality to create mappings for incoming connections. In such
cases PCP can be used by the endpoint to create an explicit mapping
on firewall in order to permit inbound traffic. The endpoint can
further use PCP to send keepalives to keep the firewall mappings
alive.
5.5.1. IPv6 Network with Firewalls
For scenarios where the client uses the ICE Lite implementation
explained in section 2.7 of [RFC5245], the ICE Lite endpoint will not
generate its own ICE connectivity checks, by definition. As part of
the call setup, the ICE Lite endpoint would gather its host
candidates and relayed candidate from a TURN server and send the
candidates in the offer to the peer endpoint. On receiving the
answer from the peer endpoint, the ICE Lite endpoint sends a PCP MAP
request with FILTER opcode to create a dynamic mapping in the
firewall to permit ICE connectivity checks and subsequent media
traffic from the remote peer. This way, the ICE Lite endpoint and
its network are protected from unsolicited incoming UDP traffic, and
can still operate using ICE Lite (rather than full ICE).
5.5.2. Mobile Network with Firewalls
Some mobile networks are also making use of a firewall to protect
their customers from various attacks like downloading malicious
content. The firewall is usually configured to block all unknown
inbound connections as explained in section 2.1 of
[I-D.chen-pcp-mobile-deployment]. As described in Section 3.4, in
such cases, PCP can be used by mobile devices to create an explicit
mapping on the firewall to permit inbound traffic and optimize the
keepalive traffic. This would result in saving of radio and power
consumption of the mobile device while protecting it from attacks.
6. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
7. Security Considerations
The security considerations in [RFC5245] and [RFC6887] apply to this
use.
8. Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank Dave Thaler, Basavaraj Patil, Anca
Zamfir, Reinaldo Penno, Suresh Kumar, Dilipan Janarthanan and Mohamed
Boucadair for their valuable inputs.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC5245] Rosenberg, J., "Interactive Connectivity Establishment
(ICE): A Protocol for Network Address Translator (NAT)
Traversal for Offer/Answer Protocols", RFC 5245, April
2010.
[RFC5389] Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing,
"Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389,
October 2008.
[RFC5626] Jennings, C., Mahy, R., and F. Audet, "Managing Client-
Initiated Connections in the Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP)", RFC 5626, October 2009.
[RFC5780] MacDonald, D. and B. Lowekamp, "NAT Behavior Discovery
Using Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC
5780, May 2010.
[RFC6263] Marjou, X. and A. Sollaud, "Application Mechanism for
Keeping Alive the NAT Mappings Associated with RTP / RTP
Control Protocol (RTCP) Flows", RFC 6263, June 2011.
[RFC6544] Rosenberg, J., Keranen, A., Lowekamp, B., and A. Roach,
"TCP Candidates with Interactive Connectivity
Establishment (ICE)", RFC 6544, March 2012.
[RFC6887] Wing, D., Cheshire, S., Boucadair, M., Penno, R., and P.
Selkirk, "Port Control Protocol (PCP)", RFC 6887, April
2013.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
9.2. Informative References
[I-D.chen-pcp-mobile-deployment]
Chen, G., Cao, Z., Boucadair, M., Ales, V., and L.
Thiebaut, "Analysis of Port Control Protocol in Mobile
Network", draft-chen-pcp-mobile-deployment-04 (work in
progress), July 2013.
[I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]
Alvestrand, H., "Overview: Real Time Protocols for
Browser-based Applications", draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview-13
(work in progress), November 2014.
[I-D.ietf-v6ops-mobile-device-profile]
Binet, D., Boucadair, M., Ales, V., Chen, G., Heatley, N.,
Chandler, R., Michaud, D., Lopez, D., and W. Haeffner, "An
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Profile for 3GPP Mobile
Devices", draft-ietf-v6ops-mobile-device-profile-21 (work
in progress), March 2015.
[I-D.isomaki-rtcweb-mobile]
Isomaki, M., "RTCweb Considerations for Mobile Devices",
draft-isomaki-rtcweb-mobile-00 (work in progress), July
2012.
[RFC2177] Leiba, B., "IMAP4 IDLE command", RFC 2177, June 1997.
[RFC3261] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
June 2002.
[RFC3921] Saint-Andre, P., Ed., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence", RFC
3921, October 2004.
[RFC4380] Huitema, C., "Teredo: Tunneling IPv6 over UDP through
Network Address Translations (NATs)", RFC 4380, February
2006.
[RFC6455] Fette, I. and A. Melnikov, "The WebSocket Protocol", RFC
6455, December 2011.
Appendix A. Example PHP script
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
<html>
Connected to <?PHP echo gethostname(); ?> on port <?PHP echo
getenv(SERVER_PORT)?> on <?PHP echo date("d-M-Y H:i:s");?>
Pacific Time
<p>
Your IP address is: <?PHP echo getenv(REMOTE_ADDR); ?>,
port <?PHP echo getenv(REMOTE_PORT); ?>
</p>;
</html>
Appendix B. Savings with PCP
The following example illustrates the savings in keepalive messages
with PCP.
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
PCP PCP
Client Server __________
+-----------+ +------+ / \ +-----------+
|Application|________| NAT/ |_______| Internet |___|Application|
| Client | | FW | | | | Server |
+-----------+ +------+ \__________/ +-----------+
With Application Heartbeat (without PCP):
<---------------------///--------------------------->
Application heartbeat (Max Interval = 30 seconds)
<---------------------///--------------------------->
Application heartbeat (Max Interval = 30 seconds)
<---------------------///--------------------------->
Application heartbeat (Max Interval = 30 seconds)
<---------------------///--------------------------->
Application heartbeat (Max Interval = 30 seconds)
....
....
....
....
With PCP:
<------------------>
PCP PEER request
(Max Lifetime = 3600 seconds)
....
....
<------------------>
PCP PEER request
(Max Lifetime = 3600 seconds)
Figure 6: Savings with PCP
In the example above, let's suppose normally an application would
need to send a heartbeat every 30s to keep mappings active on the
NAT/firewall device. In 24 hours, in the absence of PCP, the number
of packets sent by the application to keep those mappings active
would be (86400/30) = 2880 packets.
If the same application uses PCP PEER to create a mapping, with a
lifetime of 3600 seconds, on a PCP controlled NAT/firewall device,
the number of packets sent by the application to keep those mappings
active would be (86400/3600) = 24 packets.
With the above assumptions, using PCP saves 99.16% of keepalive
traffic. As the number of applications running on a host increase,
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
savings in cost of sending application heartbeats are significant
with the use of PCP.
PCP PCP PCP
Client Proxy/ Server
Server __________
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ / \ +-----------+
|Application|_________| NAT/ |_________| NAT/ |__| Internet |___|Application|
| Client | | FW | | FW | | |
+-----------+ +------+ +------+ \__________/ +-----------+
<-multiple NAT/FW->
<------------------> <------------------>
PCP PEER request PCP PEER request
If there are multiple PCP-aware NAT/firewall devices on a client's
path to the internet, e.g., PCP servers at a home gateway and also at
a CGN, the savings with PCP are the same. The PCP server at the home
gateway is a PCP proxy that can create associated mappings on the PCP
server at the CGN. The client will only have to communicate with the
PCP proxy, and receives a single mapping lifetime that needs to be
refreshed.
Authors' Addresses
Tirumaleswar Reddy
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Cessna Business Park, Varthur Hobli
Sarjapur Marathalli Outer Ring Road
Bangalore, Karnataka 560103
India
Email: tireddy@cisco.com
Prashanth Patil
Cisco Systems, Inc
Bangalore
India
Email: praspati@cisco.com
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft Optimizing Keepalives with PCP May 2015
Markus Isomaki
Nokia
Keilalahdentie 2-4
FI-02150 Espoo
Finland
Email: markus.isomaki@nokia.com
Dan Wing
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, California 95134
USA
Email: dwing@cisco.com
Reddy, et al. Expires November 19, 2015 [Page 18]
