Understanding Apple's Back to My Mac (BTMM) Service
RFC 6281
| Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(June 2011; Errata)
Was draft-zhu-mobileme-doc (individual in tsv area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2020-03-05 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata bibtex | ||
| Reviews | |||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 6281 (Informational) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Lars Eggert | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Cheshire
Request for Comments: 6281 Apple Inc.
Category: Informational Z. Zhu
ISSN: 2070-1721 UCLA
R. Wakikawa
Toyota ITC
L. Zhang
UCLA
June 2011
Understanding Apple's Back to My Mac (BTMM) Service
Abstract
This document describes the implementation of Apple Inc.'s Back to My
Mac (BTMM) service. BTMM provides network connectivity between
devices so that a user can perform file sharing and screen sharing
among multiple computers at home, at work, or on the road. The
implementation of BTMM addresses the issues of single sign-on
authentication, secure data communication, service discovery, and
end-to-end connectivity in the face of Network Address Translators
(NATs) and mobility of devices.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
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). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see 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/rfc6281.
Cheshire, et al. Informational [Page 1]
RFC 6281 BTMM June 2011
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 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.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. An Overview of Back to My Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Encoding Host Information in DNS Resource Records . . . . . . 5
4. NAT Traversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. Introduction to NAT-PMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2. Requesting/Removing a Port Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3. Obtaining NAT Box's Public IP Address . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.4. Unsupported Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Handling IP Address or Port Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1. Updating Local Interfaces and Tunnels . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2. Dynamically Updating Reachability Information . . . . . . 8
5.3. Getting Up-to-Date DNS Resource Records without Polling . 9
6. IPv6 ULA as Host ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1. The Need for a Host Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.2. What to Use as Host Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.3. IPv6 ULA Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Securing Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.1. Authentication for Connecting to Remote Host . . . . . . . 12
7.2. Authentication for DNS Exchanges . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.3. IPsec for Secure End-to-End Data Communication . . . . . . 13
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9.1. Normative Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Cheshire, et al. Informational [Page 2]
RFC 6281 BTMM June 2011
1. Introduction
Apple Inc.'s Back to My Mac (BTMM) service was first shipped with MAC
OS X 10.5 release in October 2007; since then, it has been widely
used. BTMM provides an integrated solution to host mobility support,
NAT traversal, and secure end-to-end data delivery through a
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