A Uniform Format for IPv6 Extension Headers
RFC 6564
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(April 2012; Errata)
Updates RFC 2460
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Authors | Suresh Krishnan , james woodyatt , Erik Kline , James Hoagland , Manav Bhatia | ||
Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | WG Document | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 6564 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Jari Arkko | ||
IESG note | Brian Haberman (brian@innovationslab.net) is the document shepherd. | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Krishnan Request for Comments: 6564 Ericsson Updates: 2460 J. Woodyatt Category: Standards Track Apple ISSN: 2070-1721 E. Kline Google J. Hoagland Symantec M. Bhatia Alcatel-Lucent April 2012 A Uniform Format for IPv6 Extension Headers Abstract In IPv6, optional internet-layer information is encoded in separate headers that may be placed between the IPv6 header and the transport- layer header. There are a small number of such extension headers currently defined. This document describes the issues that can arise when defining new extension headers and discusses the alternate extension mechanisms in IPv6. It also provides a common format for defining any new IPv6 extension headers, if they are needed. 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/rfc6564. Krishnan, et al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 6564 Format for IPv6 Extension Headers April 2012 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2012 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. Conventions Used in This Document ...............................3 3. Applicability ...................................................3 4. Proposed IPv6 Extension Header Format ...........................4 5. Backward Compatibility ..........................................4 6. Future Work .....................................................5 7. Security Considerations .........................................5 8. Acknowledgements ................................................5 9. Normative References ............................................5 1. Introduction The base IPv6 standard [RFC2460] defines extension headers as an expansion mechanism to carry optional internet-layer information. Extension headers, with the exception of the Hop-by-Hop Options header, are not usually processed on intermediate nodes. However, several existing deployed IPv6 routers and several existing deployed IPv6 firewalls, in contradiction to [RFC2460], are capable of parsing past or ignoring all currently defined IPv6 extension headers (e.g., to examine transport-layer header fields) at wire speed (e.g., by using custom Application-specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for packet processing). Hence, one must also consider that any new IPv6 extension header will break IPv6 deployments that use these existing capabilities. Any IPv6 header or option that has hop-by-hop behavior, and is intended for general use in the public IPv6 Internet, could be subverted to create an attack on IPv6 routers that process packets containing such a header or option. Reports from the field indicate that some IP routers deployed within the global Internet are configured either to ignore the presence of headers with hop-by-hop Krishnan, et al. Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 6564 Format for IPv6 Extension Headers April 2012 behavior or to drop packets containing headers with hop-by-hop behavior. 2. Conventions Used in This Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",Show full document text