INTERNET-DRAFT                                             Erik Nordmark
Jul 4, 2005                                             Sun Microsystems
                     Shim6 Application Referral Issues
                    <draft-ietf-shim6-app-refer-00.txt>


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      Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  All Rights Reserved.

   Abstract

   In order to fully solve the scalable multihoming problem there is a
   need to separate the current IP address functionality into
   identifiers (which are used to identify e.g., TCP connections) and
   locators which are used to forward packets in the routing system.
   Such a separation has an impact on the current use of IP address in
   the application layer.

   This document presents these issues for the purposes of stimulating
   discussions.





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   Contents

      1.  INTRODUCTION.............................................    2
         1.1.  Current IP address usage in applications............    3
         1.2.  Problem Statement...................................    4

      2.  ALTERNATIVES.............................................    6
         2.1.  FQDN instead of IP addresses........................    6
         2.2.  Single IP address...................................    6
         2.3.  Full set of IP addresses............................    7

      3.  FUTURE EVOLUTION.........................................    7

      4.  RECOMMENDATIONS..........................................    8

      5.  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..........................................    9

      6.  REFERENCES...............................................   10
         6.1.  Normative References................................   10
         6.2.  Informative References..............................   10

      AUTHOR'S ADDRESSES...........................................   10

      APPENDIX A: CHANGES SINCE PREVIOUS DRAFT.....................   10





1.  INTRODUCTION

   The goal of the IPv6 multihoming work is to allow a site to take
   advantage of multiple attachments to the global Internet without
   having a specific entry for the site visible in the global routing
   table.  Specifically, a solution should allow hosts to use multiple
   attachments in parallel, or to switch between these attachment points
   dynamically in the case of failures, without an impact on the
   transport and application layer protocols.

   This document assumes a particular approach to solving this which is
   based on there being multiple locators (recorded in the DNS using
   AAAA records) for a host, and for a given transport connection, a
   pair consisting of a local and a peer locator is chosen as part of
   the identification of the connection.  Thus this approach does not
   introduce any new identifier name space, instead the applications and
   transports "see" what looks like just an IP address even though some
   shim6 layer below provides survivability when one of the multiple
   locators become unreachable.  Some more aspects about this approach



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   is specified in [M6SHIM].  For example, the NOID proposal [NOID] used
   this model, and NOID defined a term AID, for "Application
   Identifier", for the locator that is chosen to be part of the
   identification of the transport connection.  The AID term is less
   than ideal; in this document we use the term "ULID" for upper-layer
   identifier for lack of a better one, for this concept.

   Effectively this approach implies that while a single IP address (the
   ULID) is presented to the applications at the API, this IP address
   serves as a handle for the set of IP addresses/locators for the peer.

1.1.  Current IP address usage in applications

   For the purposes of understanding the impact of shim6 on applications
   we here attempt to categorize the usage of IP addresses in
   applications:

    - Short-lived local handle.  The IP addresses is never retained by
      the application.  The only usage is for the application to pass it
      from the DNS APIs (e.g., getaddrinfo()) and the API to the
      protocol stack (e.g., connect() or sendto()).

    - Long-lived application associations.  The IP address is retained
      by the application for several instances of communication.

    - Callbacks.  The application at one end retrieves the IP address of
      the peer and uses that to later communicate "back" to the peer.

    - Referrals.  In an application with more than two parties, party B
      takes the IP address of party A and passes that to party C.  After
      this party C uses the IP address to communicate with A.

    - "Identity" comparison.  Some applications might retain the IP
      address, not as a means to initiate communication as in the above
      cases, but as a means to compare whether a peer is the same as
      another peer.  While this is insecure in general, it might be
      something which is used e.g., when TLS is used.

      Using an IP address for "identity comparison" is problematic today
      due to the lack of security, but also because hosts, such as large
      servers, might be multihomed even in IPv4 resulting in there not
      being a single IP address that can identify the host.  The
      introduction of site multihoming using different locator prefixes
      will make this even more prevalent.  Thus we need to understand to
      what extent IP addresses are used today for "identity comparison"
      in applications; perhaps this is a non-issue.

      The reason "identity comparison" solely using IP addresses is



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      insecure is because the IP address spoofing is a common element of
      attacks in today's Internet.  Even though there are techniques
      such as ingress filtering [INGRESS] which can reduce the places
      from which arbitrary IP address spoofing is possible, they are not
      deployed everywhere, and can not prevent "local" IP address
      spoofing such as using a different IP address in the same subnet.
      And when using some security, such as IPsec or TLS, then it is
      true that the application will have better certainty about the
      identity of the peer in many cases, but the identity it has
      certainty about isn't the IP address, but the identity to which
      the certificate is bound.

      Stated differently, if host A uses IP address X with IKE/IPsec and
      its certificate, and host B later uses the same IP address with
      IKE/IPsec and its certificate, it doesn't mean that the IP address
      refers to the same identity in the two cases.


1.2.  Problem Statement

   The use of a single locator as a handle for the set of locators for
   the peer at the API impacts the applications as typified above except
   for the case of the short-lived handle.  This case is simple because
   in fact the IP address, when not used for anything in the application
   itself, is just a handle that is carried between the DNS API and the
   TCP/UDP APIs, hence having it effectively be a handle on the set of
   locators does not introduce any effect on the applications.

   The long-lived local handle, callbacks, and referrals cases can
   continue to work in limited ways, but such applications will not be
   able to take advantage of the multiple locators of the peers.  This
   limitation seems rather natural given that the only name space we
   will have with this approach that would name a node using a single
   name is a FQDN (even though FQDNs have issues as will be discussed
   below), and to name a node using IP addresses would require using the
   entire set of locators.  Thus unless we introduce a new 128-bit name
   space for node identifiers (or "stack names" in [NSRG]) there would
   need to be some changes to applications with these types of IP
   address usage.

   In this approach, the upper level protocols will operate on ULIDs
   which are mere locators.  Thus as long as a site hasn't renumbered,
   the ULID can be used to either send packets to the host, or (e.g. if
   that locator isn't working) it is possible for an application to do a
   reverse lookup plus forward lookup of the ULID to get the set of
   locators for the peer.

   Once a site has been renumbered, the ULIDs which contain the old



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   prefix will no longer be useful.  Hence applications must try to
   honor the DNS TTL somehow.  But this is a renumbering issue and not
   an effect of the multihoming support.

   Applications, which map the peer's IP address to a domain name, today
   perform a reverse lookup in the DNS (e.g., using the getnameinfo()
   API).  The approach [M6SHIM] doesn't add or subtract to neither the
   benefits nor the issues associated with performing such reverse
   lookups.

   Applications which today either retain a peer's IPv6 address for
   future use, such as connecting back to that peer ("callbacks"), or
   pass a peer's IPv6 address to a third party ("referrals") will not
   break with this multihoming support; they will end up retaining
   and/or passing the ULID instead of an IPv6 address.  Since the ULID
   is a locator things will still work as long as that locator is
   reachable.

   Should the locator which is the ULID not be reachable, the
   application/host will fail to communicate with the peer.  If the DNS
   is maintained, a reverse plus forward lookup of the ULID can be used
   to determine the other locators.  Whether these lookups can be hidden
   from the application, or whether the applications need to be modified
   to make the callbacks and referrals take full advantage of the
   multihoming is for further study.

   Alternatively, the applications can be modified to either pass a
   domain name, or pass the set of locators, when performing referrals.
   Such an approach would handle multihoming, but not necessarily site
   renumbering.

   Note that large parts of the issues of multiple locators for a host
   where in fact introduced as part of the dual-stack transition
   mechanism for IPv6, where a host ends up with at least one IPv4
   address and at least one IPv6 address.  Thus the introduction of
   multihoming using multiple locators is not the first case of
   introducing these issues to applications, but can be viewed as an
   opportunity to better architect the general issue.













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2.  ALTERNATIVES

   Given that multihoming will at least introduce multiple
   addresses/locators for a given host, continuing to use a single
   address for the long-lived local handle, callbacks, and referrals
   cases isn't likely to be optimal.

2.1.  FQDN instead of IP addresses

   Applications where it is possible to use FQDNs (or protocol elements
   which embed FQDNs such as URIs) should definitely do so because that
   would hide the multiple addresses from the core of the application.

   However, it is far from clear that this is feasible for all
   applications in all deployments.  Reasons why FQDNs are problematic
   include:

    - Client hosts typically do not have a FQDN which is resolvable in
      the DNS today.

    - Even if the bullet above is addressed somehow, the introduction of
      RFC 3041 temporary addresses for improved privacy adds to the
      burden.  Today there is no mechanism for a host with temporary
      addresses to create temporary FQDNs that resolve to those
      addresses, and temporary FQDNs are necessary to preserve the
      difficulty of correlating these addresses with more permanent
      identifiers of the host.

    - At the server end a FQDN is often used, not as a host name, but as
      an identifier of a service, where the service might be implemented
      by multiple hosts.  In some cases the individual servers might
      have their own host name as well (such as www17.example.com) but
      it isn't clear how common this is.


2.2.  Single IP address

   As stated above a single address can't in general represent all the
   locators of a host, and all the locators are needed for the
   application to take advantage of the multiple paths offered by
   multihoming.  However, in the specific case where the DNS forward and
   reverse maps for a host are maintained, a single address is
   sufficient.

   In this case it is possible to perform a reverse lookup of the single
   IP address to find out the FQDN, followed by a forward lookup of the
   FQDN to find all the AAAA records.  This method finds all the
   locators registered in the DNS but assumes that both the reverse tree



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   and the forward tree are maintained in some consistent manner.  This
   is not likely to be the case for RFC 3041 temporary addresses
   [RFC3041], and will be problematic for "home multihoming" where a
   small site is multihomed using multiple ISPs and each ISP provides
   the forward and reverse DNS for the IP addresses it provides to the
   site but there is no place to have a single FQDN which maps to both
   the IP addresses with matching entries in the reverse tree, unless
   the reverse tree is delegated to the subscriber.

   Hence this is not recommended except as a transitional measure.

2.3.  Full set of IP addresses

   When FQDNs can not be used, the second most attractive approach to
   handle the general case of multihoming with multiple locators per
   host is to make the applications that use long-lived handles, perform
   callbacks, or referrals, use the full set of IP addresses for their
   peers and themselves.

   This approach requires APIs by which the applications can retrieve
   the locators used.  For example, at the socket API layer, such APIs
   could be getmylocators(int socket, ...) and getpeerlocators(int
   socket, ...) which return the set of locators for the local and
   remote end of the communication represented by a socket.

   Together with the existing getsockname() and getpeername() API calls,
   which return the identifier used by the transport protocol (the
   ULID), such new APIs would allow the applications to retrieve the
   transport layer identifiers, whether or not they are locators, and
   the locator sets.





3.  FUTURE EVOLUTION

   There are two things which might have an impact on long-lived
   sessions, callbacks and referrals in the near future.  The first in
   using unreachable locators, for instance centrally-assigned Unique
   local addresses [ULA], as ULIDs.  The second is the possibility of
   introducing a scheme with a separate 128-bit identifier name space
   and lookup functions, where [HIP] is the best current example.

   Unique local addresses could be treated following approach as just
   another locator which is known to be unreachable (at least when
   outside the site to which it is assigned), thus there might be some
   performance optimizations that can be applied.  But the fact that the



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   identifier is centrally assigned means that it is reasonable to
   maintain reverse and forward DNS entries for at least the /48 prefix.
   Depending on issues like RFC 3041 addresses, it may or may not be
   reasonable to expect reverse and forward DNS entries for the full
   ULA.  But in any case, this doesn't seem to have an impact on how
   referrals would take place; passing a FQDN or the list of locators
   would work in any case.  However, should the unreachable ULA not be
   treated as a locator but instead solely as a ULID, then the referrals
   would need to carry a ULID plus the list of locators.

   As currently defined HIP uses a 128-bit hash of a public key (the
   HIT) at the socket API and in the transport protocols, which has
   quite different implications than using one of the locators which is
   the focus of this document.

   A question is whether there are some minimum things that can be done
   that would cause less future obstacles to adopt HIP on a large scale,
   should that come to pass.  The thing that is an obvious issue in
   terms of this proposal is the assumption that the ULID is one of the
   locators.  As a result of this, the recommendations below suggest
   that the ULID be carried together with the list of locators, so that
   should the ULID not be one of the locators the application mechanism
   will at least not loose track of the ULID.

   This clearly doesn't solve the issue of referrals etc for HIP, since
   a general solution would require some way to lookup a HIT which does
   not yet exist.  But it does at least ensure that the applications
   would contain both the ULID=HIT and the set of locators.





4.  RECOMMENDATIONS

   The applications that are not already using FQDNs, and can't be
   converted to use FQDNs, seem to be best served by carrying a list
   locators plus the ULID where these applications today carry a single
   IP address.

   Carrying the ULID in addition to the list of locators means that the
   applications is more likely to be able to move to a possible future
   world where the ULID is not necessarily one of the locators.

   This requires the definition and implementation of new APIs for the
   applications to retrieve the set of peer and local locators from the
   protocol stack, as exemplified in the section above with the made up
   getpeerlocators() and getmylocators() API calls.  But it also



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   requires a mechanism by which the application can pass that
   information to the protocol stack so that the shim6 protocol layer
   has all the alternate locators available when establishing
   communication.  Thus we need to study the implications of a
   setpeerlocators() type of API.

   Note that the multihoming approach we are discussing, and as a result
   these recommendations for applications, does not necessarily handle
   the all the cases of renumbering any better than we handle them today
   in the IPv4 Internet.  For instance, when renumbering the set of
   locators for a host will change.  If a peer retains the set of
   locators, as long as at least one of those remain valid after the
   renumbering (and that locator doesn't experience a temporary routing
   failure), the peer will be able to contact the host.  But should all
   the locators be renumbered, the stale set of locators retained by the
   peer will be useless.  Hence the ULID plus the set of locators will
   not serve as some long-term stable "identifier" for a host, but they
   do allow applications to take full advantage of the multiple paths
   available when multihoming is used.

   Furthermore, note that noting in these recommendations say that
   applications need to be aware of any semantics of the different
   locators in a set; the applications merely need to store the set and
   pass it to peers when doing referrals.





5.  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

   This document was originally produced of a MULTI6 design team
   consisting of (in alphabetical order):  Jari Arkko, Iljitsch van
   Beijnum, Marcelo Bagnulo Braun, Geoff Huston, Erik Nordmark, Margaret
   Wasserman, and Jukka Ylitalo.
















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6.  REFERENCES

6.1.  Normative References
6.2.  Informative References

     [M6SHIM] Nordmark, E, and M. Bagnulo, Multihoming L3 Shim Approach,
             draft-ietf-shim6-l3shim-00.txt, July 2005.

     [NSRG] Lear, E., and R. Droms, "What's In A Name: Thoughts from the
             NSRG", draft-irtf-nsrg-report-09.txt (work in progress),
             March 2003.

     [RFC3041] T. Narten and Draves, R, "Privacy Extensions for
             Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6", January 2001.

     [NOID] Erik Nordmark, "Multihoming without IP Identifiers", Oct 27,
             2003, <draft-nordmark-multi6-noid-01.txt>

     [ULA] R. Hinden, and B. Haberman, Centrally Assigned Unique Local
             IPv6 Unicast Addresses, draft-ietf-ipv6-ula-central-00.txt

     [HIP] Pekka Nikander, "End-Host Mobility and Multi-Homing with Host
             Identity Protocol", 17-April-04, draft-ietf-hip-mm-00.txt



AUTHOR'S ADDRESSES

     Erik Nordmark
     Sun Microsystems, Inc.
     17 Network Circle
     Mountain View, CA
     USA

     phone: +1 650 786 2921
     fax:   +1 650 786 5896
     email: erik.nordmark@sun.com

APPENDIX A: CHANGES SINCE PREVIOUS DRAFT


   The following changes have been made since draft-ietf-multi6-app-
   refer-00.txt:

    o Renamed draft since it is now a shim6 WG document.


   The following changes have been made since draft-nordmark-multi6dt-



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   refer-00.txt:

    o Clarified why identity comparison is insecure in general.

    o Point out that issues where in fact already introduced with dual-
      stack IPv6 transition, where a single host has one IPv4 and one
      IPv6 address.

    o Clarified that applications should not be concerned with the
      semantics of the locators in the set; just need to carry the set
      around instead of carrying a single address around.

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Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  This document is subject
   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
   except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.


Acknowledgment

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.








































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