INTERNET-DRAFT Source-Specific Multicast H. Holbrook
Expires May 21, 2002 Cisco Systems
B. Cain
Cereva Networks
21 November 2001
Source-Specific Multicast for IP
<draft-ietf-ssm-arch-00.txt>
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups
may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
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."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
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 [RFC 2119].
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Abstract
IP addresses in the 232/8 (232.0.0.0 to 232.255.255.255) range are
designated as source-specific multicast (SSM) destination addresses and
are reserved for use by source-specific applications and protocols
[IANA-ALLOCATION]. For IP version 6 (IPv6), a proposed range exists,
although there is currently no IANA allocation [SSMIPv6]. This document
defines the semantics of source-specific multicast addresses and
specifies the policies governing their use. It defines an extension to
the Internet network service that applies to datagrams sent to SSM
addresses and defines the host and router requirements to support this
extension.
A companion document will describe how the Internet Group Management
Protocol Version 3 [IGMPv3] and the Multicast Listener Discovery
Protocol Version 2 [MLDv2] can be adapted to support source-specific
multicast.
1. Overview and Rationale
The Internet Protocol (IP) multicast service model is defined in RFC
1112 [RFC1112]. RFC 1112 specifies that a datagram sent to an IP
multicast address (224.0.0.0 through 239.255.255.255) G is delivered to
each "upper-layer protocol module" that has requested reception of
datagrams sent to address G. RFC 1112 calls the network service
identified by a multicast destination address G a "host group." This
model supports both one-to-many and many-to-many group communication.
This document uses the term "Any-Source Multicast" (ASM) to refer to the
RFC 1112 model of multicast. RFC 2373 [RFC2373] specifies the form of
IPv6 multicast addresses with ASM semantics.
IP addresses in the 232/8 (232.0.0.0 to 232.255.255.255) range are
currently designated as source-specific multicast (SSM) destination
addresses and are reserved for use by source-specific applications and
protocols [IANA-ALLOCATION]. For IPv6, the address prefixes FF3x:: and
FF2x:: are proposed for Source-Specific Multicast, with the former
corresponding to "transient" and the latter corresponding to "permanent"
addresses [SSMIPv6].
Source-Specific Multicast delivery semantics are provided for a datagram
sent to an SSM address. That is, a datagram with source IP address S
and SSM destination address G is delivered to each upper-layer "socket"
that has specifically requested the reception of datagrams sent to
address G by source S, and only to those sockets. The network service
identified by (S,G), for SSM address G and source host address S, is
referred to as a "channel." In contrast to the ASM model of RFC 1112,
SSM provides network-layer support for one-to-many delivery only.
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The benefits of source-specific multicast include:
Elimination of cross-delivery of traffic when two sources
simultaneously use the same source-specific destination address.
The simultaneous use of an SSM destination address by multiple
sources is explicitly supported.
Avoidance of the need for inter-host coordination when choosing
source-specific addresses, as a consequence of the above.
Avoidance of many of the router protocols and algorithms that are
needed to provide the ASM service model. For instance, the "shared
trees" and Rendezvous Points of the PIM-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM)
protocol are not necessary to support the source-specific model.
The router mechanisms required to support SSM are not new, and are
in fact largely a subset of those required to support ASM. For
example, the shortest-path tree mechanism of the PIM-SM protocol can
be adapted easily to provide SSM semantics.
Like ASM, SSM is "receiver-driven," and the set of receivers is unknown
to the sender. An SSM source is provided with neither the identity of
receivers nor their number.
This document defines the semantics of source-specific multicast
addresses and specifies the policies governing their use. In
particular, it defines an extension to the Internet network service that
applies to datagrams sent to SSM addresses and defines host extensions
to support the network service. Hosts, routers, applications, and
protocols that use these addresses MUST comply with the policies
outlined in this document. Failure of a host to comply may prevent that
host or other hosts on the same LAN from receiving traffic sent to an
SSM channel. Failure of a router to comply may cause SSM traffic to be
delivered to parts of the network where it is unwanted, unnecessarily
burdening the network.
2. Semantics of Source-Specific Multicast Addresses
The source-specific multicast service is defined as follows:
A datagram sent with source IP address S and destination IP address
G in the SSM range is delivered to each host socket that has
specifically requested delivery of datagrams sent by S to G, and
only to those sockets.
Where, using the terminology of [IGMPv3],
"socket" is an implementation-specific parameter used to distinguish
among different requesting entities (e.g., programs or processes or
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communication end-points within a program or process) within the
requesting host; the socket parameter of BSD Unix system calls is a
specific example.
Any host may send a datagram to any SSM address, and delivery is
provided according to the above semantics.
The IP module interface to upper-layer protocols is extended to allow a
socket to "Subscribe" to or "Unsubscribe" from a particular channel
identified by an SSM destination address and a source IP address. The
extended interface is defined in section 4.1. It is meaningless for an
application or host to request reception of datagrams sent to an SSM
destination address G, as is supported in the Any-Source Multicast
model. without also specifying a corresponding source address, and
routers MUST ignore any such request from a host.
Multiple source applications on different hosts can use the same SSM
destination address G without conflict because datagrams sent by each
source host Si are delivered only to those sockets that requested
delivery of datagrams sent to G specifically by Si.
The key distinguishing property of the model is that a channel is
identified (addressed) by the combination of a unicast source address
and a multicast destination address in the SSM range. So, for example,
the channel
S,G = (36.18.0.1, 232.7.8.9)
differs from
S,G = (36.18.0.2, 232.7.8.9),
even though they have the same destination address portion. Similarly,
for IPv6,
S,G = (2001:3618::1, FF23::1234)
and
S,G = (2001:3618::2, FF23::1234)
are different channels.
3. Terminology
To avoid confusion when talking about the Any-Source and Source-Specific
Multicast models, we use different terminology when discussing them.
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We use the term "channel" to refer to the service associated with an SSM
address. A channel is identified by the combination of an SSM
destination address and a specific source, e.g., an (S,G) pair.
We use the term "host group" (used in RFC 1112) to refer to the service
associated with "regular" ASM multicast addresses (excluding those in
the SSM range). A host group is identified by a single multicast
address.
Any host can send to a host group, and similarly, any host can send to
an SSM destination address. A packet sent by a host S to an ASM
destination address G is delivered to the host group identified by G. A
packet sent by host S to an SSM destination address G is delivered to
the channel identified by (S,G). The receiver operations allowed on a
host group are called "join(G)" and "leave(G)" (as per RFC 1112). The
receiver operations allowed on a channel are called "Subscribe(S,G)" and
"Unsubscribe(S,G)."
The following table summarizes the terminology:
Service Model: Any-Source Source-Specific
Network Abstraction: group channel
Identifier: G S,G
Receiver Operations: join, leave subscribe, unsubscribe
We note that, although this document specifies a new service model
available to applications, the protocols and techniques necessary to
support the service model are largely a subset of those used to support
ASM.
4. Host Requirements
This section describes requirements on hosts that support Source-
Specific Multicast, including:
- Extensions to the IP Module Interface
- Extensions to the IP Module
- Allocation of SSM Addresses
4.1. Extensions to the IP Module Interface
The IP module interface to upper-layer protocols is extended to allow
protocols to request reception of all datagrams sent to a particular
channel.
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Subscribe ( socket, source-address, group-address, interface )
Unsubscribe ( socket, source-address, group-address, interface )
where
"socket" is as previously defined in Section 2,
and, paraphrasing [IGMPv3],
"interface" is a local identifier of the network interface on which
reception of the channel identified by the (source-address,group-
address) pair is to be enabled or disabled. A special value may be
used to indicate a "default" interface. If reception of the same
channel is desired on multiple interfaces, Subscribe is invoked once
for each.
The above are strictly abstract functional interfaces -- the
functionality can be provided in an implementation-specific way. On a
host that supports the multicast source filtering application
programming interface of [MSFAPI], the Subscribe and Unsubscribe
interfaces may be supported via that API.
Widespread implementations of the IP packet reception interface (e.g.,
the recvfrom() system call in BSD unix) do not allow a receiver to
determine the destination address to which a datagram was sent. On a
host with such an implementation, the destination address of a datagram
cannot be inferred when the socket on which the datagram is received is
Subscribed to multiple channels. Host operating systems SHOULD provide
a way for a host to determine both the source and the destination
address to which a datagram was sent. (As one example, the Linux
operating system provides the destination of a packet as part of the
response to the recvmsg() system call.) Until this capability is
present, applications may be forced to use higher-layer mechanisms to
identify the channel to which a datagram was sent.
4.2. Requirements on the Host IP Module
An incoming datagram destined to an SSM address MUST be delivered by the
IP module to all sockets that have indicated (via Subscribe) a desire to
receive data that matches the datagram's source address, destination
address, and arriving interface. It MUST NOT be delivered to other
sockets.
When the first socket on host H subscribes to a channel (S,G) on
interface I, the host IP module on H sends a request on interface I to
indicate to neighboring routers that the host wishes to receive traffic
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sent by source S to source-specific destination G. Similarly, when the
last socket on a host unsubscribes from a channel on interface I, the
host IP module sends an unsubscription request for that channel out
interface I.
These requests will typically be IGMPv3 messages for IPv4, or MLDv2
messages for IPv6. The exact rules for sending source-specific
subscription and unsubscription requests and the algorithms used to
maintain subscriptions are defined in other documents.
4.3. Allocation of Source-Specific Multicast Addresses
The SSM destination address 232.0.0.0 is reserved, and hosts MUST NOT
send datagrams with destination address of 232.0.0.0. The address range
232.0.0.1-232.0.0.255 is currently reserved for allocation by IANA. The
IPv6 SSM address range FF2x:: is reserved for IANA allocation.
The policy for allocating the rest of the SSM addresses to sending
applications is strictly locally determined by the sending host.
When allocating SSM addresses dynamically, a host or host operating
system MUST NOT allocate sequentially starting at the first allowed
address. It is RECOMMENDED to allocate SSM addresses to applications
randomly, while ensuring that allocated addresses are not given
simultaneously to multiple applications (and avoiding the reserved
address range for IPv4). For IPv6, the randomization should apply to
the lower 32 bits of the address.
As described in Section 6, the mapping of an IP packet with SSM
destination address onto a link-layer multicast address does not take
into account the datagram's source IP address (on commonly-used link
layers like Ethernet). If all hosts started at the first allowed
address, then with high probability, many source-specific channels on
shared-medium local area networks would collide on the same link-layer
multicast address. As a result, traffic destined for one channel member
would potentially be delivered to another as the link-layer (unaware of
the IP Source Address) accepts the multicast datagram, passes it to the
IP layer, which then simply rejects it.
A host operating system SHOULD provide an interface to allow an
application to request a unique allocation of a channel destination
address in advance of a session's commencement, and this allocation
database SHOULD persist across host reboots. By providing persistent
allocations, a host application can advertise the session in advance of
its start time on a web page or in another directory. (We note that
this issue is not specific to SSM applications -- the same problem
arises for ASM.)
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This document neither defines the interfaces for requesting or returning
addresses nor specifies the host algorithms for storing those
allocations. One plausible abstract API is defined in RFC 2771
[RFC2771], although the interface of RFC 2771 allows an application to
request an address from a specific sub-range of the SSM allocation.
This is NOT RECOMMENDED for SSM, unless the start address of the allowed
range is selected at random.
No globally agreed-upon administratively-scoped address range [ADMIN-
SCOPE] is needed for the source-specific multicast range because there
is no possibility of address conflict between hosts in different
administrative domains (or between two hosts of any kind).
Administrative scoping of SSM addresses can be implemented within an
administrative domain by filtering at domain boundary routers.
5. Router Requirements
5.1. Packet Forwarding
A router that receives an IP datagram with a source-specific destination
address MUST silently drop it unless a neighboring host or router has
communicated a desire to receive packets sent to the source and
destination address of the received packet.
5.2. Protocols
Certain IP multicast routing protocols already have the ability to
communicate source-specific joins to neighboring routers (in particular,
PIM-SM), and these protocols can, with slight modifications, be used to
provide source-specific semantics. Companion documents will specify the
required modifications to those protocols to support the source-
specific address range.
A network can concurrently support SSM semantics in the SSM address
range and Any-Source Multicast in the rest of the multicast address
space, and it is expected that this will be commonplace. In such a
network, a router may receive a non-source-specific, or "(*,G)" in
conventional terminology, request for delivery of traffic in the SSM
range from a neighbor that does not implement source-specific multicast
in a manner compliant with this document. A router that receives such a
non-source-specific request for data in the SSM range MUST NOT use the
request to establish forwarding state and MUST NOT propagate the request
to other neighboring routers. This applies both to any request received
from a host, e.g., an IGMPv1 or IGMPv2 host report, and to any request
received from a routing protocol, e.g., a PIM-SM (*,G) join [PIM-SM].
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The inter-router case is further discussed in section 8, Transition
Considerations.
It is essential that all routers in the network give source-specific
semantics to the same range of addresses in order to achieve the full
benefit of SSM. To comply with this specification, a router MUST treat
ALL SSM addresses with source-specific semantics.
6. Link-Layer Transmission of Datagrams
Source-specific multicast packets are transmitted on link-layer networks
as specified in RFC 1112 for IPv4 and as in [ETHERv6] for IPv6. On most
shared-medium link-layer networks that support multicast (e.g.,
Ethernet), the IP source address is not used in the selection of the
link-layer destination address. Consequently, on such a network, all
packets sent to destination address G will be delivered to any host that
has subscribed to any channel (S,G), regardless of S. And therefore,
the IP module MUST filter packets it receives from the link layer before
delivering them to the socket layer. A socket on which an (S,G)
subscription has been requested MUST receive packets whose source and
destination address match the requested subscription(s) for that socket.
7. Security Considerations
7.1. Denial-of-Service
A subscription request creates (S,G) state in a router to record the
subscription and invokes processing on that router and possibly causes
processing at neighboring routers. A host can mount a denial of service
attack by requesting a large number of subscriptions. A denial of
service can result if:
- a large amount of traffic arrives when it was otherwise undesired,
consuming network resources to deliver it and host resources to drop
it
- a large amount of source-specific multicast state is created in
network routers, using router memory and CPU resources to store and
process the state
- a large amount of control traffic is generated to manage the
source-specific state, using router CPU and network bandwidth
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To reduce the damage from such an attack, a router MAY have a
configuration option to limit the following items:
- The total rate at which all hosts on any one interface are allowed
to initiate subscriptions (to limit the damage caused by forged
source-address attacks)
- The total number of subscriptions that can be initated from any
single interface or host.
Any decision by an implementor to artificially limit the rate or number
of subscriptions should be taken carefully, however, as future
applications may use large numbers of channels. Tight limits on the
rate or number of channel subscriptions would inhibit the deployment of
such applications.
A router SHOULD verify that the source of a subscription request is a
valid address for the interface on which it was received. Failure to do
so would exacerbate a spoofed-source address attack.
We note that these attacks are not unique to SSM -- they are also
present for Any-Source Multicast.
7.2. Spoofed Source Addresses
By forging the source address in a datagram, an attacker can potentially
violate the SSM service model by transmitting datagrams on a channel
belonging to another host. Thus, an application requiring strong
authentication should not assume that all packets that arrive on a
channel were sent by the requested source. Higher-layer authentication
mechanisms should be used in such an application. The IPSEC
Authentication Header [IPSEC] may be used to authenticate the source of
an SSM transmission, for instance.
Some degree of protection against spoofed source addresses in multicast
is already fairly widespread, because the commonly deployed IP multicast
routing protocols [PIM-DM, PIM-SM, DVMRP] incorporate a "reverse-path
forwarding check" that validates that a multicast packet arrived on the
expected interface for its source address. Routing protocols used for
SSM SHOULD incorporate such a check.
We note that Source Routing [RFC791] (both Loose and Strict) in
combination with source address spoofing may be used to allow an
impostor of the true channel source to inject packets onto an SSM
channel. An SSM router MUST have a configuration option to disable
source routing to an SSM destination addresses, and the default value
SHOULD be to disable Source Routing to an SSM destination address.
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Anti-source spoofing mechanisms like source address filtering at the
edges of the network are also strongly encouraged.
8. Transition Considerations
A host that complies with this document will send ONLY source-specific
host reports for addresses in the SSM range. A router that receives a
non-source-specific (IGMPv1 or IGMPv2) host report for a source-specific
destination addresses SHOULD ignore these reports. Failure to do so
would violate the SSM service model promised to the sender: that a
packet sent to (S,G) would only be delivered to hosts that specifically
requested delivery of packets sent to G by S.
During a transition period, it would be possible to deliver SSM
datagrams in a domain where the routers do not support SSM semantics by
simply forwarding any packet destined to G to all hosts that have
requested subscription of (S,G) for any S. However, this implementation
risks unduly burdening the network infrastructure by deliver (S,G)
datagrams to hosts that did not request them. Such an implementation
for addresses in the SSM range is specifically not compliant with
Section 5.2 of this document.
9. IANA Considerations
Addresses in the range 232.0.0.1 through 232.0.0.255 and IPv6 addresses
with prefix FF2x:: are reserved for services with wide applicability
that either require or would strongly benefit if all hosts used a well-
known SSM destination address for that service. IANA shall allocate
addresses in this range according to IETF Consensus [IANA-
CONSIDERATIONS]. Any proposal for allocation must consider the fact
that, on an Ethernet network, all datagrams sent to any SSM destination
address will be transmitted with the same link-layer destination
address, regardless of the source. Furthermore, the fact that SSM
destinations in 232.0.0.0/24 and 232.128.0.0/24 use the same link-layer
addresses as the reserved IP multicast group range 224.0.0.0/24 must
also be considered. Similar consideration should be given to the IPv6
reserved multicast addresses.
Except for the aforementioned addresses, IANA SHALL NOT allocate any SSM
destination address to a particular entity or application. To do so
would compromise one of the important benefits of the source-specific
model: the ability for a host to simply and autonomously allocate a
source-specific address from a large flat address space.
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10. Acknowledgments
The SSM service model draws on a variety of prior work on alternative
aproaches to IP multicast, including the EXPRESS multicast model of
Holbrook and Cheriton [EXPRESS], Green's [SMRP] and the Simple multicast
proposal of Perlman et. al. [SIMPLE]. We would also like to thank Jon
Postel and David Cheriton for their support in reassigning the 232/8
address range to SSM. Thanks also to Brian Haberman for his
contributions to the IPv6 portions of this document.
11. References
[ADMIN-SCOPE] Meyer, D., "Administratively Scoped IP Multicast", BCP 23,
RFC 2365, July 1998.
[DVMRP] Waitzman, D., Partridge, C., and S. Deering., "Distance Vector
Multicast Routing Protocol," RFC 1075, Nov 1988.
[ETHERv6] Crawford, M., "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over Ethernet
Networks", RFC2464, Dec 1998.
[EXPRESS] Holbrook, H., and Cheriton, D. "Explicitly Requested Source-
Specific Multicast: EXPRESS support for Large-scale Single-source
Applications." Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '99, Cambridge, MA, September
1999.
[IANA-ALLOCATION] Internet Assigned Numbers Authority,
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/multicast-addresses.
[IANA-CONSIDERATIONS] Narten, T., and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs," RFC 2434, October 1998.
[IGMPv2] Fenner, W., "Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 2,"
RFC 2236, November 1997.
[IGMPv3] Cain, B., Deering, S., and A. Thyagarajan, "Internet Group
Management Protocol, Version 3," Work in Progress.
[IPSEC] S. Kent, R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for the Internet
Protocol.", RFC 2401.
[MLDv2] R. Vida, L. Costa, R. Zara, S. Fdida, S. Deering, B. Fenner, I.
Kouvelas, B. Haberman. "Multicast Listener Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2)
for IPv6." Work in Progress.
[MSFAPI] Thaler, D., Fenner, B., and Quinn, B. "Socket Interface
Extensions for Multicast Source Filters." Work in Progress.
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[PIM-SM] Estrin, D., Farinacci, D., Helmy, A., Thaler, D., Deering, S.,
Handley, M., Jacobson, V., Liu, C., Sharma, P. and L. Wei, "Protocol
Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification," RFC
2362, June 1998.
[PIM-DM] Deering, S., Estrin, D., Farinacci, D., Jacobson, V., Helmy,
A., Meyer, D., and L. Wei, "Protocol Independent Multicast Version 2
Dense Mode Specification," Work in Progress.
[RFC791] Postel, J., ed., "Internet Protocol, Darpa Internet Program
Protocol Specification," September 1981.
[RFC1112] Deering, S., "Host Extensions for IP Multicasting," RFC 1112,
August 1989.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels," RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2710] S. Deering, W. Fenner, B. Haberman, "Multicast Listener
Discovery (MLD) for IPv6", RFC 2710, October 1999.
[RFC2373] Hinden, R. and Deering, S. "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture." RFC 2373, July 1998.
[RFC2771] Finlayson, R., "An Abstract API for Multicast Address
Allocation," RFC 2771, February 2000.
[SIMPLE] R. Perlman, C-Y Lee, A. Ballardie, J. Crowcroft, Z. Wang, T.
Maufer, C. Diot, and M. Green. "Simple Multicast: A Design for Simple,
Low-Overhead Multicast." Work in Progress.
[SMRP] Green, M. "Method and System of Multicast Routing for Groups
with a Single Transmitter." United States Patent Number 5,517,494.
[SSMIPv6] Haberman, B. and Thaler, D. "Unicast-Prefix-based IPv6
Multicast Addresses." Work in Progress.
12. Author's Address
Brad Cain
Cereva Networks
3 Network Drive
Marlborough, MA 01752
bcain@cereva.com
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Hugh Holbrook
Cisco Systems
170 W. Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
holbrook@cisco.com
This document expires May 21, 2002.
Holbrook/Cain [Page 14]
