A Dedicated Routing Policy Specification Language Interface Identifier for Operational Testing
RFC 5943

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                  B. Haberman, Ed.
Request for Comments: 5943                                       JHU APL
Category: Standards Track                                    August 2010
ISSN: 2070-1721

 A Dedicated Routing Policy Specification Language Interface Identifier
                        for Operational Testing

Abstract

   The deployment of new IP connectivity typically results in
   intermittent reachability for numerous reasons that are outside the
   scope of this document.  In order to aid in the debugging of these
   persistent problems, this document proposes the creation of a new
   Routing Policy Specification Language attribute that allows a network
   to advertise an IP address that is reachable and can be used as a
   target for diagnostic tests (e.g., pings).

Status of This Memo

   This is an Internet Standards Track document.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
   Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5943.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Haberman                     Standards Track                    [Page 1]
RFC 5943                 RPSL Pingable Attribute             August 2010

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
   2.  RPSL Extension for Diagnostic Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
   3.  Using the RPSL Pingable Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   5.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   6.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.  Introduction

   The deployment of new IP connectivity typically results in
   intermittent reachability for numerous reasons that are outside the
   scope of this document.  In order to aid in the debugging of these
   persistent problems, this document proposes the creation of a new
   Routing Policy Specification Language attribute [RFC4012] that allows
   a network to advertise an IP address that is reachable and can be
   used as a target for diagnostic tests (e.g., pings).

   The goal of this diagnostic address is to provide operators a means
   to advertise selected hosts that can be targets of tests for such
   common issues as reachability and Path MTU discovery.

   The capitalized key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL",
   "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   [RFC2119].

2.  RPSL Extension for Diagnostic Address

   Network operators wishing to provide a diagnostic address for their
   peers, customers, etc., MAY advertise its existence via the Routing
   Policy Specification Language [RFC4012] [RFC2622].  The pingable
   attribute is a member of the route and route6 objects in the RPSL.
   The definition of the pingable attribute is shown in Figure 1.

   +-----------+-------------------+--------------+
   | Attribute |       Value       |    Type      |
   +-----------+-------------------+--------------+
   |  pingable | <ipv6-address> or |  optional,   |
   |           | <ipv4-address>    | multi-valued |
   +-----------+-------------------+--------------+
   |  ping-hdl |   <nic-handle>    |  optional,   |
   |           |                   | multi-valued |
   +-----------+-------------------+--------------+

                Figure 1: Pingable Attribute Specification

Haberman                     Standards Track                    [Page 2]
RFC 5943                 RPSL Pingable Attribute             August 2010

   The exact definitions of <ipv4-address> and <nic-handle> can be found
   in [RFC2622], while the definition of <ipv6-address> is in [RFC4012].

   The pingable attribute allows a network operator to advertise an IP
   address of a node that should be reachable from outside networks.
   This node can be used as a destination address for diagnostic tests.