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Versions: 00                                                            
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                  K. Ohira
January 27, 2004                                                K. Ogata
                                                            A. Matsumoto
                                                             K. Fujikawa
                                                                Y. Okabe
                                                               M. Kozuka
                                                        Kyoto University
                                                               Y. Koyama
                                                    Trans New Technology



           Hierarchical IPv6 Subnet ID Autoconfiguration for
            Multi-Address Model Multi-Link Multihoming Site
        <draft-ohira-multi6-multilink-auto-prefix-assign-00.txt>


Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to 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/1id-abstracts.html

   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html


Abstract

   This document describes a method of automatic hierarchical IPv6
   address assignment of a multi-link site with prefix
   delegation (PD) option enabled DHCPv6.

   This protocol is mainly designed to provide an effective list of
   addresses which a host will have for multi-address model multihome
   solutions.



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1. Introduction

   The site multihoming in IPv6 (multi6) WG explores scalable multi-
   homing solutions with minimum impacts on routing system and limited
   need for the number of prefixes advertised in the default-free zone.
   After long term discussions, multi-address model multihoming is
   watched with keen interest because it seems very scalable.

   Multi-address model multihoming makes good use of the advantage of
   IPv6: multiple addresses can be assigned to an interface.
   A host in a multihomed site has multiple addresses, one is delegated
   from a transit provider and another from another provider, and
   selects an address of the peer host and the host itself from
   candidate addresses.  This solution gives multiple access paths
   without additional advertisement of prefixes in the default-free
   zone.  As a multi-address multihoming solution, SCTP, TCP-MH (on the
   transport layer) and HIP, LIN6, MAST (on the shim layer which is
   between the network layer and the transport layer) are proposed.

   [ASL] describes that source address based routing is
   recommended to be used in a multihomed site in order to forward an
   outgoing packet to the proper transit provider.

   This protocol is designed to provide an effective list of addresses
   which a host will have for multi-address model multihome solutions.

   This document describes a way of automatic hierarchical IPv6 address
   assignment for a multi-link site with prefix delegation (PD) option
   enabled DHCPv6 [DHC, PDO].


2. Terminology

   This document describes how to assign address prefixes in a multi-
   link multihomed site with "Prefix Option" enabled DHCPv6.

   Concerning about DHCPv6, this document uses the terminology defined
   in RFC 3315 [DHC] and RFC 3633 [PDO].

   Concerning about site multihoming, this document uses the terminology
   defined in RFC 3582 [REQ].










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3. Operation of Multihoming

3.1 Role of This Protocol

   Multi address model multihoming is, roughly speaking, the model in
   which a host has different addresses for each path.  In this model,
   the number of addresses which a host has may increase to infinite.
   Furthermore, according to the increase of the number of addresses,
   the cost of management of those addresses also increase.
   Therefore, it becomes too complicated and troublesome to manage
   manually.

   This protocol proposes how to assign IP address prefix to each link
   in a site automatically.


3.2 Cooperation with Multi-Address aware Upper Layer Protocols

   The main feature of multihoming, redundancy and load sharing, will be
   taken by some multi address aware transport layer protocols (SCTP
   [SCT], TCP-MH [MHO],...) or shim layer protocols (HIP [HIP], LIN6
   [LIN], MAST [MAS],...).

   Addresses which a node has may be renumbered.  In order to be easy
   to rendezvous, it is recommended to use DDNS.  After a connection has
   started, regardless of which upper layer protocol is used, the upper
   layer protocol should be able to handle the renumbering.

   In case that an authorized DNS server of a site itself is placed
   inside of the site, the DNS server is recommended to be placed on the
   first level link of a site exit router.

   This protocol does not prevent the use of MIP6 [MIP] for address
   portability.


4. Protocol Overview

   Basically, the format of messages passed between a delegating router
   and a requesting router in this protocol follows the definitions in
   RFC 3633 [PDO] or RFC 3315 [DHC].  This protocol defines only the
   usage of IPv6 address.  The usage of IPv6 address is described in the
   section 4.1.

   In order addressing mechanism to take part in a routing mechanism,
   both delegating routers and requesting routers are assigned
   additional requirements besides the ones defined in RFC 3633 [PDO] or
   RFC 3315 [DHC].  The additional requirements are described in the



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   section 4.2 and 4.3.

   In this section, an example network (figure 1) is considered.


               /~~~~~~~~\                 /~~~~~~~~\
               | ISP  X |                 | ISP  Y |
               \~~~~~~~~/                 \~~~~~~~~/
                    |                          |
    --------------  |  ----------------------  |  ---------------
    |               |                          |
    |site       +------+                   +------+
    |           |   A  |                   |   B  |
    V           +------+                   +------+
                    |                          |
        ========================     =========================
            |            |                |             |
        +------+     +------+         +------+      +------+
        |   C  |     |   D  |         |   E  |      |   F  |
        +------+     +------+         +------+      +------+
                         |                |
                      ========================
                                  |
                              +------+
                              |   G  |
                              +------+

                 figure 1: An Example Network of a Site


4.1 Usage of IPv6 address

   According to [ADD], an IPv6 address is composed as shown in figure 2.
   This protocol describes how to assign "Subnet Identifier" for each
   link in a site and how to delegate IP address block for the next hop
   delegating router recursively.


   |         n bits         |   m bits  |       128-n-m bits         |
   +------------------------+-----------+----------------------------+
   | global routing prefix  | subnet ID |       interface ID         |
   +------------------------+-----------+----------------------------+

                 figure 2: IPv6 Global Unicast Address

   In this protocol, subnet ID is splitted into four fields as shown in
   figure 3.




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   |       p bits       |       q bits       |       m-p-q bits      |
   +--------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
   |     delegated      |     delegating     |       link id         |
   +--------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+

                  figure 3: Usage of Subnet Identifier

   The meaning of each field is as below.

      delegated  : The subnet id part of prefix delegated to a
                   delegating router.
      delegating :   0   - Room for subnet id of link itself.
                   non-0 - A delegating router delegates to each
                           requesting router.
      link id    : Iff the delegating field is 0, this field has a
                   meaning of link id.  A delegating router assigns
                   an id to each link of the delegating router.
                   If the delegating field is non-0, this field has
                   no specific meaning.

   For convenience of explanation, it is assumed that global routing
   prefix has 48 bits length and subnet id has 16 bits length (i.e.
   n=48, m=16) and every prefix delegating router sets the length of
   delegating field and link id field to 4
   (i.e. q=4).  As a result, subnet id field becomes as shown
   in figure 4.

      4       5                                       6
      8   9   0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   0   1   2   3
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    |   delegating  |                  Link ID                      |
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

                         (a) at site exit router

    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    |   delegated   |   delegating  |            Link ID            |
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

                 (b) at the 1st level delegating router

    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    |           delegated           |   delegating  |    Link ID    |
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

                 (c) at the 2nd level delegating router

                 figure 4: Example of Subnet Identifier



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   As shown in figure 4, in this example, p=0 at site exit router,
   p=4 at the 1st level delegating router, p=8 at the 2nd level
   delegating router.

   As a result of prefix delegating, concerning about the prefix start
   with X::/48, the example network is addressed as shown in figure 5.

                   /~~~~~~~~\
                   | ISP  X |
                   \~~~~~~~~/
                        |
        --------------  |  ---------------
        |               |
        |site       +------+            site exit router
        |           |   A  | X::/48          (0th level)
        V           +------+
                        |
            ======================== X:0000::/64
          ----  |  --------  |  --------------
            +------+     +------+
            |   C  |     |   D  | X:1000::/52  1st level
            +------+     +------+
                             |
                  ======================== X:1000::/64
          -----------  |  -------  |  --------
                   +------+    +------+
       X:1100::/56 |   E  |    |   G  |        2nd level
                   +------+    +------+
                       |
             ====================== X:1100::/64
          -----  |  --------  |  -------------
             +------+     +------+
             |   B  |     |   F  |             3rd level
             +------+     +------+

        figure 5: Hierarchical expansion of the example network

   The Link ID field is needed for the case as shown in figure 6.
   Without Link ID field, two different links have to have the same
   Subnet Identifier but this is not allowed.











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                             |
                         +------+
                       +-|   H  | X:2000::/52
                       | +------+
      X:2000::/64      |   |   |                      X:2002::/64
      ===================  |  ===================================
         |         |       |                        |         |
         |         |       | X:2001::/64            |         |
         |         |       |                        |         |
     +------+  +------+ +------+                +------+  +------+
     |   a  |  |   b  | |   I  | X:2100::/56    |   c  |  |   d  |
     +------+  +------+ +------+                +------+  +------+
                           |
                           |                          H,I : router
                                                      a-d : host

                   figure 6: Usage of Link Identifier

   The prefix start with Y::/48 is assigned and delegated as similar as
   X::/48.


4.2 Delegating Router Behavior

   A delegating router can delegate address blocks to (2^q - 1)
   requesting routers.  When a request from the (2^q)th requesting
   router, the delegating router will reject the request.

   In order to keep the management cost reasonable, it is recommended to
   set the number of delegated prefixes to each host to the following
   number:

      Preferred limit : 5
      Maximum limit   : 7.

   At the time when a delegating router has already delegate preferred
   limit numbers of prefix to a requesting host, if the requesting
   router wants to delegate another prefix which has higher priority
   than the prefixes which are already delegated, the delegating router
   must decrease the lifetime of the prefix which has the lowest
   priority of all delegated prefixes.

   A delegating router must not delegate more than the maximum limit
   numbers of prefixes to a requesting router in any case.

   The priority of delegated prefix is as below.

      1. Shortest prefix length



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      2. From different delegating router (from the nearest prior
         prefix)
      3. Arrival order

   For the multihoming feature, this priority is calculated for each
   global routing prefix (/n).  At the time of merging, even if the
   priority of a prefix is low, the most prior prefix of each global
   routing prefix should be delegated.  Note that this is the reason
   why p bits length delegated subnet id is separately treated from
   n bit length global routing prefix.

   This ordering mechanism may be done with penalty based algorithm.
   First of all, pick up an address prefix with the shortest prefix
   length as the first prior prefix.  Therefore, following the
   similarity with the first prior prefix, add penalty to the
   other prefixes and pick up a prefix with the least penalty as the
   second prior prefix.  The third and less prior prefixes are picked
   up one after another.

   In order to prevent the loop of address assignment, a delegating
   router must not delegate smaller address block which is fully
   included into an address block which the delegating router itself
   has delegated.

   A son of site local address may be delegated and assigned.  If [GLU]
   is used as son of site local address, a prefix and a global ID should
   be settled by only (candidates of) site exit routers.

   A multicast address must not be delegated by this protocol.

   Of course, link local address must not be delegated.


4.3 Requesting Router Behavior

   For calculating the priority of prefixes, a requesting router must
   hold the correspondence between a delegated prefix and a delegating
   router.

   For easy routing, it is recommended that a requesting router sets
   delegating router(s) as default next hop router(s).  If a requesting
   router is delegated address prefixes from multiple delegating
   routers, then source address based routing should be put in operation
   at the requesting router.







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5. Considerations on RFC 3582

   In this section, assessment how much this protocol meets the
   requirements described in RFC 3582 [REQ].

5.1 Capabilities of IPv4 multihoming

5.1.1 Redundancy

   Every external connection is treated completely separate.
   Therefore, our proposing method is able to continue a connection
   unless all external connection fail.


5.1.2 Load Sharing

   A site is able to distribute both inbound and outbound traffic
   between multiple transit providers.


5.1.3 Performance

   No information between upstream ISPs is required.

   If a corresponding node can divide a stream into several destination
   addresses, we can accomplish to distribute inbound traffic.


5.1.4 Policy

   Policies of a site should be expressed as to assign or not to assign
   an address to a host.  If a site does not want a host to use an
   external connection, the site can decide not to assign an address
   with the prefix specific to the external connection.

   If the site wants to shift traffic of a certain application to a
   specific ISP, the site should assign multiple addresses to a host and
   filter traffic whose source or destination has a specific pair of IP
   address and port number.  Therefore the host knows the pair of IP
   address and port number is not usable and tries another pair.  The
   behavior of a host should be defined in upper layer protocol,
   therefore it is out of scope of this proposal.


5.1.5 Simplicity

    It is recommended that routers are placed as balanced tree.  Once
    topology of routers is fixed, addresses of each routers are



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    automatically assigned.


5.1.6 Transport-Layer Survivability

   Answer of this issue is fully depend on what upper layer protocol
will
   be used.  This is out of scope of this proposal.


5.1.7 Impact on DNS

   Any change of external connections of a site cause change(s) of
   prefixes which the site has.  Therefore, in the worst case, we may
   be required to change DNS information at every time.


5.1.8 Packet Filtering

   Our proposing method is designed to cooperate with ingress/egress
   filtering.  If the source address of an IP packet is valid then the
   packet is forwarded to the proper next hop, otherwise the packet will
   be discarded.


5.2 Additional requirements

5.2.1 Scalability

   Only a Provider Aggregatable IP address block from upstream is
   required.  This address is always aggregated at upstream, so even if
   the number of multihoming site with our proposing method increase,
   the number of routing information at default free zone.  Still
   more, no AS number is required for a site to be multihomed.

   In these points, our proposing method is very scalable.


5.2.2 Impact on Routers

   Source address based routing is required for at least one router in
   a multihoming site.  If there are some routers which cannot handle
   source address based routing, according to the position, routing
   loop may be occurred.

   The authors think that this requirement is relatively little because
   source address based routing is required only for default route
entry.



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   These modifications do not prevent normal single-homed operations.
   In a single-homed site, modified routers and unmodified routers
   can coexist.


5.2.3 Impact on Hosts

   Source address based routing is required for all end hosts who want
   to be fully multihomed.  However, a legacy (without source address
   based routing) host can be obtain some functions of multihome.

   If you want to bind several IP addresses to a single TCP connection,
   TCP Extension for Multihoming may be useful.


5.2.4 Interaction between Hosts and the Routing System

   Information about proper next hop for each source address prefixes is
   needed to be exchanged.

   This interaction is quite simple and scalable.


5.2.5 Operations and Management

   Administrators of a site are completely capable to monitor the state
   or to configure parameters of multihoming.  At this time, the
   administrators do not have to do any cooperative work with
   administrators of upstream.


5.2.6 Cooperation between Transit Providers

   Our proposing method does not require any cooperative work between
   upstream providers at all.


5.2.7 Multiple Solutions

   It is recommended that this protocol is used with a multiple address
   aware upper layer protocol on transport layer or shim layer.

6. Security Considerations

   Security considerations in DHCP are described in section 23,
   "Security Considerations" of RFC 3315 [DHC].

   Security considerations in Prefix Options for DHCP are described in



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   section 15, "Security Considerations" of RFC 3633 [PDO].

   The use of this protocol does not introduce any additional known
   security concerns.


7. IANA Considerations

   There are no IANA considerations in this document.


8. References

   [REQ] J. Abley, et. al., "Goals for IPv6 Site-Multihoming
         Architectures", RFC3582, August 2003.

   [MAS] D. Crocker, "Multiple Address Service for Transport (MAST) :
         An Extended Proposal", Internet Draft (work in progress),
         draft-crocker-mast-proposal-01.txt, September 2003.

   [DHC] R. Droms, Ed., et. al., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
         for IPv6 (DHCPv6)", RFC3315, July 2003.

   [GLU] R. Hinden, et. al., "Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Address",
         Internet Draft (work in progress), draft-ietf-ipv6-unique-
         local-addr-01.txt, September 2003.

   [ADD] R. Hinden, et. al., "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
         Addressing Architecture", RFC3513, April 2003.

   [MIP] D. Johnson, et. al., "Mobility Support in IPv6", Internet Draft
         (work in progress), draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-24.txt, June 2003.

   [MHO] A. Matsumoto, et. al., "TCP Multi-Home Options", Internet Draft
         (work in progress), draft-arifumi-tcp-mh-00.txt, October 2003.

   [HIP] P. Nikander, et. al., "End-Host Mobility and Multi-Homing with
         Host Identity Protocol", Internet Draft (work in progress),
         draft-nikander-hip-mm-01,txt, December 2003.

   [ASL] K. Ohira, et. al., "IPv6 Address Assignment and Route Selection
         for End-to-End Multihoming", Internet Draft (work in progress),
         draft-ohira-assign-select-e2e-multihome-02.txt, October 2003.

   [SCT] R. Stewart, et. al., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol",
         RFC2960, October 2000.





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   [LIN] F. Teraoka, et. al., "LIN6: A Solution to Multihoming and
         Mobility in IPv6", Internet Draft (work in progress, expired),
         draft-teraoka-multi6-lin6-00.txt, December 2003.

   [PDO] O. Troan, et. al., "IPv6 Prefix Options for Dynamic Host
         Configuration Protocol (DHCP) version 6", RFC3633,
         December 2003.


9. Authors' Addresses

   Kenji Ohira
   Graduate School of Informatics
   Kyoto University
   Yoshida-Hommachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 JAPAN
   Tel: +81-75-753-7468
   Fax: +81-75-753-7472
   Email: ohira@net.ist.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp

   Katsuya Ogata
   Graduate School of Informatics
   Kyoto University
   Yoshida-Hommachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 JAPAN
   Tel: +81-75-753-7468
   Fax: +81-75-753-7472
   Email: ogata@net.ist.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp

   Arifumi Matsumoto
   Graduate School of Informatics
   Kyoto University
   Yoshida-Hommachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 JAPAN
   Tel: +81-75-753-7468
   Fax: +81-75-753-7472
   Email: arifumi@net.ist.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp

   Kenji Fujikawa
   Graduate School of Informatics
   Kyoto University
   Yoshida-Hommachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 JAPAN
   Tel: +81-75-753-5387
   Fax: +81-75-753-4961
   Email: fujikawa@real-internet.org









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   Yasuo Okabe
   Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies
   Kyoto University
   Yoshida-Hommachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 JAPAN
   Tel: +81-75-753-7458
   Fax: +81-75-751-0482
   Email: okabe@i.kyoto-u.ac.jp

   Masahiro Kozuka
   Faculty of Law, Kyoto University
   Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 JAPAN
   Tel: +81 75-753-7468
   Fax: +81 75-753-7472
   Email: ma-kun@kozuka.jp

   Youichi Koyama
   Trans New Technology, Inc.
   Inohara BLDG. 2F, 72 Tanaka Monzencho, Sakyo,
   Kyoto 606-8225 JAPAN
   Tel: +81-75-706-9800
   Fax: +81-75-706-9801
   Email: koyama-y@trans-nt.com





























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