Network Working Group                                          J. Manner
Internet-Draft                                                       TKK
Intended status: Standards Track                                R. Bless
Expires: July 21, 2008                                Univ. of Karlsruhe
                                                        January 18, 2008


  What is Next Steps in Signaling anyway - A User's Guide to the NSIS
                            Protocol Family
                  draft-manner-nsis-user-guide-00.txt

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on July 21, 2008.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).

Abstract

   The Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS) Working group was officially
   formed in November 2001 to standardize a new IP signaling protocol
   suite.  Six years have now passed and the first actual protocol
   specifications have been finalized.  The purpose of this draft is to
   give an overview of what has been achieved, how the industry can make
   use of the new protocols, and how the research community can further



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   extend the designs.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  The NSIS Architecture  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3.  The General Internet Signaling Transport . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Quality of Service NSLP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.  NAT/Firewall Traversal NSLP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   6.  Deploying the Protocols  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     6.1.  Obstacles  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   7.  Security Features  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   8.  Extending the Protocols  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     8.1.  GIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     8.2.  QoS NSLP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     8.3.  NAT/Firewall NSLP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     8.4.  New NSLP protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 16


























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1.  Introduction

   The Transport Area Directors held a Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS)
   birds of a feather session on Wednesday 21st March 2001 at the 50th
   IETF meeting in Minneapolis.  The goal of the session was to discuss
   and gather an initial set of requirements for a next generation
   Internet signaling protocol suite as it was felt that the current
   RSVP-based solutions have short-comings, e.g., with respect to
   mobility or QoS interoperability.  The NSIS Working Group was
   officially formed later that year, in November 2001 and had its first
   meeting at the IETF 52 in Salt Lake City in December 2001.

   The initial charter of NSIS was focused on QoS signaling as the first
   use case, taking RSVP as the background for the work.  In May 2003,
   middlebox traversal was added as an explicit second use case.  The
   requirements for the new generation of signaling protocols are
   documented in [RFC3726] and an analysis of existing signaling
   protocols can be found in [RFC4094].

   The design of NSIS is based on a two-layer model, where a general
   signaling transport layer provides services to an upper signaling
   layer.  The design was influenced by Bob Braden's Internet Draft
   entitled "A Two-Level Architecture for Internet Signaling"
   [I-D.braden-2level-signal-arch].

   This document gives an overview of what the NSIS framework is today,
   provides help and guidelines to the reader as to how NSIS can be used
   in an IP network, and how the protocol can be enhanced to fulfill new
   use cases.


2.  The NSIS Architecture

   The design of the NSIS protocol suite reuses ideas and concepts from
   RSVP but essentially divides the functionality into two layers.  The
   lower layer, the NSIS Transport Layer Protocol (NTLP), is in charge
   of transporting the higher layer protocol messages to the next
   signaling node on the path.  This includes discovery of the next hop
   NSIS node, which may not be the next routing hop, and different
   transport services depending on the signaling application
   requirements.  The General Internet Signaling Transport (GIST) is the
   protocol that fulfills the role of the NTLP.  The NSIS suite supports
   both IP protocol versions, IPv4 and IPv6.

   The actual signaling application logic is implemented in the higher
   layer of the NSIS stack, the NSIS Signaling Layer Protocol (NSLP).
   While GIST is only concerned in transporting NSLP messages between
   two end-points, the end-to-end signaling functionality is provided by



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   the NSLP protocols if needed - not all NSLP protocols need to perform
   end-to-end signaling, even the current protocols have features to
   confine the signaling to a limited path.  Two NSLP protocols are
   currently standardized: one concerning Quality of Service signaling
   and one for NAT/Firewall traversal.

   A central concept of NSIS is the Session Identifier (SID).  Signaling
   application states are indexed and referred to through the SID.  This
   decouples the state information from IP addresses, allowing dynamic
   IP address changes for signaling flows, e.g. due to mobility: changes
   in IP addresses do not force complete tear down and re-initiation of
   a signaling application state, merely an update of the state
   parameters.

   The SID is not meaningfull by itself, but is rather used together
   with the NSLP identifier (NSLPID) and the Message Routing Information
   (MRI).  This 3-tuple is used by GIST to index and manage the
   signaling flows.

   The following design restrictions were imposed for the first phase of
   the protocol suite.  They may be lifted in future and new
   functionality may be added into the protocols at some later stage.

   o  Path-coupled signaling only: GIST transports messages towards an
      identified unicast data flow destination based on the signaling
      application request, and does not directly support path-decoupled
      signaling, e.g., QoS signaling to a bandwidth broker.  The
      framework also supports a "Loose-End" message routing method used
      to discover GIST nodes with particular properties in the direction
      of a given address, for example the NAT/FW NSLP uses this method
      to discover a NAT along the upstream data path.
   o  No multicast support: Introducing support for multicast was deemed
      too much overhead, if considering the currently limited support
      for global IP multicast.  Thus, the current GIST and the NSLP
      specifications consider unicast flows only.

   The key documents specifying the NSIS protocol suite are:

   o  Requirements for Signaling Protocols [RFC3726]
   o  Next Steps in Signaling: Framework [RFC4080]
   o  Security Threats for NSIS [RFC4081]
   o  The General Internet Signaling Transport protocol
      [I-D.ietf-nsis-ntlp]
   o  Quality of Service NSLP [I-D.ietf-nsis-qos-nslp]
   o  The QoS specification template [I-D.ietf-nsis-qspec]
   o  NAT/Firewall traversal NSLP [I-D.ietf-nsis-nslp-natfw]

   The next three sections provide a brief survey of GIST, QoS NSLP, and



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   NAT/FW NSLP.


3.  The General Internet Signaling Transport

   The General Internet Signaling Transport (GIST) [I-D.ietf-nsis-ntlp]
   provides a signaling transport service to NSIS Signaling Layer
   Protocols (NSLP).  GIST does not define new IP transport protocols
   but rather makes use of existing protocols, such TCP and UDP.
   Applications can indicate the desired reliability, e.g., unreliable
   or reliable, and GIST then uses the most appropriate transport
   protocol to achieve the goal.  If applications request also security,
   GIST uses TLS.  The GIST layered protocol stack is shown in Figure 1.


               +-----+ +--------+ +-------+
               |     | |        | |       |
               | QoS | | NAT/FW | |  ...  |       NSLP
               |     | |        | |       |
               +-----+ +--------+ +-------+

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
               +--------------------------+
               |                          |
               |          GIST            |       NTLP
               |                          |
               +--------------------------+

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
               +--------------------------+
               |           TLS            |
               +--------------------------+
               +--------------------------+
               | TCP | UDP | SCTP | DCCP  |
               +--------------------------+
               +--------------------------+
               |         IPsec            |
               +--------------------------+
               +--------------------------+
               | IPv4(+RAO)  | IPv6(+RAO) |
               +--------------------------+



                     Figure 1: The NSIS protocol stack

   When an NSLP application wants to send a message to its next peer,
   GIST starts discovering the next signaling node by sending a Query



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   message towards the destination of the related data flow.  This Query
   carries the NSLP identifier (NSLP ID) and Message Routing Information
   (MRI) among others.  The MRI contains enough information to route the
   signaling message, e.g., information about the actual data flow that
   is signaled for.  The next GIST node on the path receives the message
   and if it is running the same NSLP, it provides the MRI to the NSLP
   application and requests it to make a decision on whether to peer
   with the querying node.  If the NSLP application chooses to peer,
   GIST sets up a Message Routing State (MRS) between the two nodes for
   the future exchange of NSLP data.  State setup is performed by a
   three-way handshake that allows for negotiation of signaling flow
   parameters and provides counter-measures against several attacks like
   denial-of-service by using cookie mechanisms and a late state
   installation option.

   If a transport connection is required and set up for reliable or
   secure signaling, like TCP or TLS/TCP, a Messaging Association (MA)
   is established between the two peers.  An MA can be re-used for
   signaling messages concerning several different data flows, i.e.,
   signaling messages between two nodes are multiplexed over the same
   transport connection.  This can be done when the transport
   requirements (reliability, security) of a new flow can be met with an
   existing MA, i.e., the security and transport properties of an
   existing MA are equivalent or better than what is requested by the
   new MA.

   For path-coupled signaling, we need to find the nodes on the data
   path that should take part in the signaling of an NSLP and invoke
   them to act due to arrival of such NSLP signaling messages.  The
   basic concept is that such nodes along a flow's data path intercept
   the corresponding signaling packets and are thus discovered
   automatically.  GIST uses by default the Router Alert Option (RAO) in
   Query messages to tell a receiving router that the packet must be
   inspected and possibly taken out of the fast path.  This is the the
   same mechanism as in RSVP.  Different RAO values can be used to
   indicate the actual NSLP being signaled, thus, making it possible for
   routers to leave the packet in the fast path if the right NSLP
   protocol is not available on the router; only a router that runs GIST
   and the corresponding NSLP will take the packet out of the fast path,
   and start processing it within GIST.  Further intentional bypassing
   of signaling nodes can be accomplished either in GIST or in the NSLP.

   Since GIST carries information about the data flow inside its
   messages (in the MRI), NAT gateways must be aware of GIST in order to
   let it work correctly.  GIST provides a special object for NAT
   traversal so that the actual translation is disclosed if a GIST-aware
   NAT gateway provides this object.




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   GIST may use different triggers in order to detect a route change.
   It probes periodically for the next peer by sending a GIST Query,
   thereby detecting a changed route and GIST peer.  GIST monitors
   routing tables, the GIST peer states, and notifies NSLPs of any
   routing changes.  It is up to the NSLPs to act appropriately then, if
   needed, e.g., by issuing a refresh message.

   In summary, GIST provides several services in one package to the
   upper layer signaling protocols:

   o  Signaling peer discovery: GIST is able to find the next hop node
      that runs the NSLP being signaled for.
   o  Multiplexing: GIST reuses already established signaling
      relationships and messaging associations to peers if the signaling
      flows traverse the same next signaling hop.
   o  Transport: GIST provides transport with different attributes,
      namely reliable/unreliable and secure/unsecure.
   o  Confidentiality: If security is requested, GIST uses TLS to
      provide an encrypted and integrity protected message transport to
      the next signaling peer.
   o  Routing changes: GIST detects routing changes, but instead of
      acting on its own, it merely sends a notification to the local
      NSLP.  It is then up to the NSLP to act.
   o  Fragmentation: GIST uses either a known Path MTU for the next hop
      or limits its message size to 576 bytes.  If fragmentation is
      required it automatically establishes an MA and sends the
      signaling traffic over a reliable protocol, e.g., TCP.


4.  Quality of Service NSLP

   The Quality of Service (QoS) NSIS Signaling Layer Protocol (NSLP)
   establishes and maintains state at nodes along the path of a data
   flow for the purpose of providing some forwarding resources for that
   flow.  It is intended to satisfy the QoS-related requirements of RFC
   3726 [RFC3726].  No support for QoS architectures based on bandwidth
   brokers is currently included.

   The design of the QoS NSLP is conceptually similar to RSVP, RFC 2205
   [RFC2205], and uses soft-state peer-to-peer refresh messages as the
   primary state management mechanism (i.e., state installation/refresh
   is performed between pairs of adjacent NSLP nodes, rather than in an
   end-to-end fashion along the complete signaling path).  The QoS NSLP
   extends the set of reservation mechanisms to meet the requirements of
   RFC 3726 [RFC3726], in particular support of sender or receiver-
   initiated reservations, as well as, a type of bi-directional
   reservation and support of reservations between arbitrary nodes,
   e.g., edge-to-edge, end-to-access, etc.  On the other hand, there is



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   currently no support for IP multicast.

   A distinction is made between the operation of the signaling protocol
   and the information required for the operation of the Resource
   Management Function (RMF).  RMF-related information is carried in the
   QSPEC (QoS Specification) [I-D.ietf-nsis-qspec] object in QoS NSLP
   messages.  This is similar to the decoupling between RSVP and the
   IntServ architecture, RFC 1633 [RFC1633].  The QSPEC carries
   information on resources available, resources required, traffic
   descriptions and other information required by the RMF.

   QoS NSLP supports different QoS models, because it does not define
   the QoS mechanisms and RMF that have to be used in a domain.  As long
   as a domain knows how to perform admission control for a given QSPEC,
   QoS NSLP actually does not care how the specified constraints are
   enforced and met, e.g., by putting the related data flow in the
   topmost of four DiffServ classes, or by putting it into the third
   highest of twelve DiffServ classes.  The particular used QoS
   configuration is up to the network provider of the domain.  The QSPEC
   can be seen as a common language to express QoS requirements between
   different domains and QoS models.

   In short, the functionality of the QoS NSLP includes:
   o  Conveying resource requests for unicast flows
   o  Resource requests (QSPEC) are decoupled from the signaling
      protocol (QoS NSLP)
   o  Sender- and receiver-initiated reservations, as well as, bi-
      directional
   o  Soft state and reduced refresh (keep-alive) signaling
   o  Session binding, session X can be valid only if session Y is too
   o  Message scoping, end-to-end, edge-to-edge or end-to-edge (proxy
      mode)
   o  Protection against message re-ordering and duplication
   o  Group tear, tearing down several session with a single message
   o  Support for re-routing, e.g., due to mobility
   o  Support for request priorities and pre-emption
   o  Stateful and stateless nodes
   o  Reservation aggregation


5.  NAT/Firewall Traversal NSLP

   The NAT/Firewall Traversal NSLP [I-D.ietf-nsis-nslp-natfw] lets end-
   hosts interact with NAT and firewall devices in the data path.
   Basically it allows for a dynamic configuration of NATs and/or
   firewalls along the data path in order to enable data flows to
   traverse these devices without being obstructed.  For instance,
   firewall pinholes could be opened on demand by authorized hosts.



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   Furthermore, it is possible to block unwanted incoming traffic on
   demand, e.g., if an end-host is under attack.

   Basically NATFW signaling starts at the data sender (NSIS Initiator)
   before any actual application data packets are sent.  Signaling
   messages may pass several NATFW NSLP-aware middleboxes (NSIS
   Forwarder) on their way downstream and usually hit the receiver
   (being the NSIS Responder).  A proxy mode is also available for cases
   where NATFW is not fully supported along the complete data path.
   NATFW NSLP is based on a soft-state concept, i.e., the sender must
   periodically repeat its request in order to keep it active.

   Additionally, the protocol also provides functions for receivers
   behind NATs.  The receiver may request an external address that is
   reachable from outside.  The reserved external address must, however,
   be communicated to the sender out-of-band by other means, e.g., by
   application level signaling.  After this step the data sender may
   initiate a normal NATFW signaling in order to create firewall
   pinholes.


6.  Deploying the Protocols

   First of all, NSIS implementations must be available in the
   corresponding network nodes (i.e., routers, firewalls, or NAT
   gateways) and end-hosts.  That means not only GIST support, but also
   the NSLPs and their respective control functions (such as a resource
   management function for QoS admission control etc.) must be
   implemented.  In dependence on the specific NSLP, scenarios are also
   supported where only one end-host is NSIS-capable and the end-host on
   the other is not NSIS-capable.  This is usually accomplished by
   performing some kind of proxying functions in the domain of the
   responding end-host.

   Another important issue is that applications must be made NSIS-aware,
   thereby requiring some effort on the applications programmer's side.
   Yet, it is possible to implement separate applications to control,
   e.g., the network QoS requests or firewall holes.

6.1.  Obstacles

   As there is network equipment with broken implementations of the
   Router Alert Option deployed, there may be some obstacles for initial
   deployment due to this legacy equipment.  For controlled environments
   an operation without RAO is also possible as GIST uses a specific UDP
   port and a special magic number in order to detect Query signaling
   messages reliably.




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   NAT gateways and firewalls may also hinder initial deployment of NSIS
   protocols as they may either filter signaling traffic or perform
   NSIS-unaware address translations.


7.  Security Features

   Basic security functions are provided at the GIST layer, e.g.,
   protection against some blind or denial-of-service attacks.
   Conceptually it is difficult to protect against on-path attacker and
   man-in-the-middle attacks, because a basic functionality of GIST is
   to discover yet unknown signaling peers.  Transport security can be
   requested by signaling applications and is realized by using TLS
   between signaling peers, i.e., authenticity and confidentiality of
   signaling messages can be assured between peers.  GIST allows for
   mutual authentication of the signaling peers (using TLS means like
   certificates) and can verify the authenticated identity against a
   database of nodes authorized to take part in GIST signaling.  It is,
   however, a matter of policy that the identity of peers is verified
   and accepted upon establishment of the secure TLS connection.

   While GIST is handling authentication of peer nodes, more fine
   grained authentication may be required in the NSLP protocols.  There
   is currently an ongoing work to specify common authorization
   mechanisms to be used in NSLP protocols [I-D.manner-nsis-nslp-auth],
   thus allowing, e.g., per-user and per-service authorization.


8.  Extending the Protocols

   This section discusses the ways to extend the NSIS protocols.  One
   key functionality of all three current protocols are the so-called
   "Extensibility flags (AB)".  The protocols can carry new experimental
   objects, where the AB-flags can indicate whether a receiving node
   must interpret the object, or whether it can just drop them or pass
   them along in subsequent messages sent out further on the path.  This
   functionality allows defining new objects without forcing all network
   entities to understand them.

8.1.  GIST

   GIST is extensible in several aspects.
   o  Use of different Message Routing Methods.  Currently only two
      message routing methods are supported (Path-coupled MRM and Loose-
      End MRM), but further MRMs may be defined in the future.
   o  Use of different transport protocols.  The initial handshake
      allows a negotiation of the transport protocols to be used.
      Currently, a proposal to add DCCP and DTLS to GIST exists



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      [I-D.manner-nsis-gist-dccp].
   o  The AB-flags enable the community to specify new objects into
      GIST, that can be carried inside a signaling session without
      breaking existing implementations.  The AB-flags can also be used
      to indicate in a controlled fashion that a certain object must be
      understood by all GIST nodes, which makes it possible to probe for
      the support of an extension.  One such object already designed is
      the "Peering Information Object (PIO)"
      [I-D.manner-nsis-peering-data] that allows a QUERY message to
      carry additional peering data for the recipient for making the
      peering decision.

8.2.  QoS NSLP

   A foreseen development within the QoS signaling is the introduction
   of new QoS Models to enable deployment of NSIS in specific scenarios.
   One such example is the Integrated Services Controlled Load Service
   for NSIS [I-D.kappler-nsis-qosmodel-controlledload].

   There is already work to extend the base QoS NSLP and GIST to enable
   new QoS signaling scenarios.  One such proposal is the Inter-Domain
   Reservation Aggregation aiming to support large-scale deployment of
   the QoS NSLP [I-D.bless-nsis-resv-aggr].  Another current proposal
   seeks to extend the whole NSIS framework towards path-decoupled
   signaling and QoS reservations [I-D.cordeiro-nsis-hypath].

8.3.  NAT/Firewall NSLP

   The NATFW signaling can be extended in the same way as the QoS NSLP.
   No proposals currently exist to fulfill new use cases for the
   protocol.

8.4.  New NSLP protocols

   Designing a new NSLP is both challenging and easy.  On one hand, GIST
   provides many important functions through its service layer API, and
   allows the signaling application programmer to offload, e.g., the
   channel security, transport characteristics and signaling node
   discovery to GIST.

   Yet, on the other hand, the signaling application designer must take
   into account that the network environment can be dynamic, both in
   terms of routing and node availability.  The new NSLP designer must
   take into account at least the following issues:

   o  Routing changes, e.g., due to mobility: GIST sends Network
      Notifications when something happens in the network, e.g., peers
      or routing paths change.  All signaling applications must be able



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      to handle these notifications and act appropriately.  GIST does
      not include logic to figure out what the NSLP would want to do due
      to a certain network event.  Therefore, GIST gives the
      notification to the application, and lets it make the right
      decision.
   o  GIST indications: GIST will also send other notifications, e.g.,
      if a signaling peer does not reply to refresh messages, or a
      certain NSLP message was not successfully delivered to the
      recipient.  Again, NSLP applications must be able to handle these
      events, too.  Appendix B in the GIST specification discusses the
      GIST-NSLP API and the various functionality required, but
      implementing this interface can be quite challenging; the
      multitude of asynchronous notifications than can from GIST
      increases the implementation complexity of the NSLP.
   o  Lifetime of the signaling flow: NSLPs should inform GIST when a
      flow is no longer needed using the SetStateLifetime primitive.
      This reduces bandwidth demands in the network.
   o  NSLP IDs: there is a limited number of NSLP IDs available for
      experimental use.  In practise, a new signaling protocol will
      eventually require its own NSLP ID number.
   o  Source IP address: It is sometimes challenging to find out at the
      NSLP, what will the source IP address be, especially when a node
      has multiple interfaces.  Moreover, the logic in specifying the
      source IP address may differ if the node processing an NSLP
      message is the source of the signaling flow, or an intermediate
      node on the signaling.  Thus, the NSLP must be able to find out
      the right source IP address from its internal interfaces, and its
      location on the signaling.
   o  New MRMs: GIST defines currently two Message Routing Methods, and
      leave the door open for new ideas.  Thus, it is possible that a
      new NSLP also requires a new MRM, path-decoupled routing being one
      example.

   The informational API between GIST and NSLPs (see Appendix B in
   [I-D.ietf-nsis-ntlp]) is very important to understand.  It does not
   specify the exact messaging between GIST and the NSLPs but gives an
   understanding of the interactions, especially what kinds of
   asynchronous notifications from GIST the NSLP must be prepared to
   handle.


9.  Security Considerations

   This document provides information to the community.  It does not
   raise new security concerns.






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10.  Acknowledgements

   Max Laier, Nuutti Varis and Lauri Liuhto have provided reviews of
   this draft and valuable input.


11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-nsis-nslp-natfw]
              Stiemerling, M., Tschofenig, H., Aoun, C., and E. Davies,
              "NAT/Firewall NSIS Signaling Layer Protocol (NSLP)",
              draft-ietf-nsis-nslp-natfw-16 (work in progress),
              November 2007.

   [I-D.ietf-nsis-ntlp]
              Schulzrinne, H. and R. Hancock, "GIST: General Internet
              Signalling Transport", draft-ietf-nsis-ntlp-14 (work in
              progress), July 2007.

   [I-D.ietf-nsis-qos-nslp]
              Manner, J., "NSLP for Quality-of-Service Signaling",
              draft-ietf-nsis-qos-nslp-15 (work in progress), July 2007.

   [I-D.ietf-nsis-qspec]
              Ash, G., Bader, A., Kappler, C., and D. Oran, "QoS NSLP
              QSPEC Template", draft-ietf-nsis-qspec-18 (work in
              progress), October 2007.

   [RFC3726]  Brunner, M., "Requirements for Signaling Protocols",
              RFC 3726, April 2004.

   [RFC4080]  Hancock, R., Karagiannis, G., Loughney, J., and S. Van den
              Bosch, "Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS): Framework",
              RFC 4080, June 2005.

   [RFC4081]  Tschofenig, H. and D. Kroeselberg, "Security Threats for
              Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS)", RFC 4081, June 2005.

11.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.bless-nsis-resv-aggr]
              Doll, M. and R. Bless, "Inter-Domain Reservation
              Aggregation for QoS NSLP", draft-bless-nsis-resv-aggr-01
              (work in progress), July 2007.

   [I-D.braden-2level-signal-arch]



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              Braden, R. and B. Lindell, "A Two-Level Architecture for
              Internet Signaling", draft-braden-2level-signal-arch-01
              (work in progress), November 2002.

   [I-D.cordeiro-nsis-hypath]
              Cordeiro, L., "GIST Extension for Hybrid On-path Off-path
              Signaling (HyPath)", draft-cordeiro-nsis-hypath-04 (work
              in progress), July 2007.

   [I-D.kappler-nsis-qosmodel-controlledload]
              Kappler, C., "A QoS Model for Signaling IntServ
              Controlled-Load Service with NSIS",
              draft-kappler-nsis-qosmodel-controlledload-05 (work in
              progress), July 2007.

   [I-D.manner-nsis-gist-dccp]
              Manner, J., "Generic Internet Signaling Transport over
              DCCP and DTLS", draft-manner-nsis-gist-dccp-00 (work in
              progress), June 2007.

   [I-D.manner-nsis-nslp-auth]
              Manner, J., "Authorization for NSIS Signaling Layer
              Protocols", draft-manner-nsis-nslp-auth-03 (work in
              progress), March 2007.

   [I-D.manner-nsis-peering-data]
              Manner, J., "Peering Data for NSIS Signaling Layer
              Protocols", draft-manner-nsis-peering-data-00 (work in
              progress), June 2007.

   [RFC1633]  Braden, B., Clark, D., and S. Shenker, "Integrated
              Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview",
              RFC 1633, June 1994.

   [RFC2205]  Braden, B., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, S., and S.
              Jamin, "Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) -- Version 1
              Functional Specification", RFC 2205, September 1997.

   [RFC4094]  Manner, J. and X. Fu, "Analysis of Existing Quality-of-
              Service Signaling Protocols", RFC 4094, May 2005.











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Authors' Addresses

   Jukka Manner
   Helsinki University of Technology (TKK)
   P.O. Box 3000
   Espoo  FIN-02015 TKK
   Finland

   Phone: +358 9 451 2481
   Email: jukka.manner@tkk.fi
   URI:   http://www.netlab.tkk.fi/~jmanner/


   Roland Bless
   Institute of Telematics, Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH)
   Zirkel 2
   Karlsruhe  76128
   Germany

   Phone: +49 721 608 6413
   Email: bless@tm.uka.de
   URI:   http://www.tm.uka.de/~bless





























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