Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Singh, Ed.
Request for Comments: 6311 G. Kalyani
Category: Standards Track Cisco
ISSN: 2070-1721 Y. Nir
Check Point
Y. Sheffer
Porticor
D. Zhang
Huawei
July 2011
Protocol Support for High Availability of IKEv2/IPsec
Abstract
The IPsec protocol suite is widely used for business-critical network
traffic. In order to make IPsec deployments highly available, more
scalable, and failure-resistant, they are often implemented as IPsec
High Availability (HA) clusters. However, there are many issues in
IPsec HA clustering, and in particular in Internet Key Exchange
Protocol version 2 (IKEv2) clustering. An earlier document, "IPsec
Cluster Problem Statement", enumerates the issues encountered in the
IKEv2/IPsec HA cluster environment. This document resolves these
issues with the least possible change to the protocol.
This document defines an extension to the IKEv2 protocol to solve the
main issues of "IPsec Cluster Problem Statement" in the commonly
deployed hot standby cluster, and provides implementation advice for
other issues. The main issues solved are the synchronization of
IKEv2 Message ID counters, and of IPsec replay counters.
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/rfc6311.
Singh, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]RFC 6311 High Availability in IKEv2/IPsec July 2011Copyright Notice
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Singh, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]RFC 6311 High Availability in IKEv2/IPsec July 2011Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3
2. Terminology .....................................................5
3. Issues Resolved from IPsec Cluster Problem Statement ............7
3.1. Large Amount of State ......................................8
3.2. Multiple Members Using the Same SA .........................9
3.3. Avoiding Collisions in SPI Number Allocation ...............9
3.4. Interaction with Counter Modes .............................9
4. The IKEv2/IPsec SA Counter Synchronization Problem .............10
5. SA Counter Synchronization Solution ............................11
5.1. Processing Rules for IKE Message ID Synchronization .......13
5.2. Processing Rules for IPsec Replay Counter
Synchronization ...........................................14
6. IKEv2/IPsec Synchronization Notification Payloads ..............14
6.1. The IKEV2_MESSAGE_ID_SYNC_SUPPORTED Notification ..........15
6.2. The IPSEC_REPLAY_COUNTER_SYNC_SUPPORTED Notification ......15
6.3. The IKEV2_MESSAGE_ID_SYNC Notification ....................16
6.4. The IPSEC_REPLAY_COUNTER_SYNC Notification ................16
7. Implementation Details .........................................17
8. IKE SA and IPsec SA Message Sequencing .........................18
8.1. Handling of Pending IKE Messages ..........................18
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