IPv6 and UDP Checksums for Tunneled Packets
RFC 6935
| Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(April 2013; Errata)
Updates RFC 2460
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2020-01-21 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata bibtex | ||
| Reviews | |||
| Stream | WG state | Submitted to IESG for Publication | |
| Document shepherd | Ole Trøan | ||
| Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2012-09-13) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 6935 (Proposed Standard) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Brian Haberman | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Eubanks
Request for Comments: 6935 AmericaFree.TV LLC
Updates: 2460 P. Chimento
Category: Standards Track Johns Hopkins University Applied
ISSN: 2070-1721 Physics Laboratory
M. Westerlund
Ericsson
April 2013
IPv6 and UDP Checksums for Tunneled Packets
Abstract
This document updates the IPv6 specification (RFC 2460) to improve
performance when a tunnel protocol uses UDP with IPv6 to tunnel
packets. The performance improvement is obtained by relaxing the
IPv6 UDP checksum requirement for tunnel protocols whose header
information is protected on the "inner" packet being carried.
Relaxing this requirement removes the overhead associated with the
computation of UDP checksums on IPv6 packets that carry the tunnel
protocol packets. This specification describes how the IPv6 UDP
checksum requirement can be relaxed when the encapsulated packet
itself contains a checksum. It also describes the limitations and
risks of this approach and discusses the restrictions on the use of
this method.
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/rfc6935.
Eubanks, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 6935 IPv6/UDP Checksums for Tunneled Packets April 2013
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1. Analysis of Corruption in Tunnel Context . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2. Limitation to Tunnel Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3. Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. The Zero UDP Checksum Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Additional Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Eubanks, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 6935 IPv6/UDP Checksums for Tunneled Packets April 2013
1. Introduction
This document constitutes an update of the IPv6 specification
[RFC2460] for cases where a tunnel protocol uses UDP with IPv6 to
tunnel packets. With the rapid growth of the Internet, tunnel
protocols have become increasingly important to enable the deployment
of new protocols. Tunnel protocols can be deployed rapidly, while
the time to upgrade and deploy a new protocol on a critical mass of
routers, middleboxes, and hosts on the global Internet is now
measured in decades. At the same time, the increasing use of
firewalls and other security-related middleboxes means that truly new
tunnel protocols, with new protocol numbers, are also unlikely to be
deployable in a reasonable time frame. The result is an increasing
interest in and use of UDP-based tunnel protocols. In such
protocols, there is an encapsulated "inner" packet, and the "outer"
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