One document matched: draft-fairhurst-6man-tsvwg-udptt-03.txt
Differences from draft-fairhurst-6man-tsvwg-udptt-02.txt
Internet Engineering Task Force G. Fairhurst
Internet-Draft University of Aberdeen
Intended status: Informational February 10, 2010
Expires: August 14, 2010
The UDP Tunnel Transport mode
draft-fairhurst-6man-tsvwg-udptt-03.txt
Abstract
This document proposes a standards track protocol called the UDP
Tunnel Transport. This protocol updates the UDP processing of RFC
2460 for IPv6 hosts and routers. The update enables a sender to
generate a UDP datagram where the UDP checksum is replaced by a
header check determined only by the protocol header information. For
this use, the document also updates the way the IPv6 UDP length field
is interpreted. This mode is intended to minimise the processing
cost for the transport of tunnel packets using UDP.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 14, 2010.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
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publication of this document. Please review these documents
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Use of UDP Tunnels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Update to RFC 2460 to support UDTT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. UDPTT Next Header Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. UDPTT Header Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4. UDP and UDPTT Datagrams with no payload . . . . . . . . . 6
2.5. Calculation of IPv6 UDPTT Header Check . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.6. Multicast support for UDPTT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Using UDPTT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. UDPTT Usage Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Requirements for Tunnelled Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3. Backwards compatibility with RFC 2460 . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4. Middlebox Traversal and Incremental Checksum Update . . . 10
4. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Appendix A. Why do we need a checksum? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
A.1. IPv4 Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
A.2. Why not set the IPv6 UDP checksum to zero? . . . . . . . . 15
Appendix B. Applicability for AMT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Appendix C. Document Change History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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1. Introduction
The UDP Tunnel Transport (UDPTT) is a protocol that updates the User
Datagram Protocol (UDP) processing of RFC2460 [RFC2460] for IPv6
hosts and routers. UDPTT is intended to transport datagrams that
carry tunnel-encapsulated packets. It is not intended as a general
purpose transport, since it is applicable only for cases where the
tunnel application can provide a set of checks on the correctness of
the received payload.
A UDPTT end point may be either a host or a router. The tunneling
protocol introduces a header check that validates the delivery of the
packet to the correct transport endpoint. This check is not intended
as an authentication check (in the manner of a security protocol),
but is introduced to reduce the probability that the endpoint stacks
receive erroneous packets that may corrupt internal state, introduce
unnecessary packet processing, or lead to ambiguous packet counts.
The way in which the header check is computed in UDPTT will usually
result in a constant value for each UDPTT flow. This value may be
cached as a part of the tunnel endpoint flow state. Once the tunnel
has been created, this requires a receiver to perform a 16-bit
comparison operation, rather than a 1's complement checksum. This
approach was driven by a desire to eliminate expensive computation in
routers that may need to handle many flows operating at high rate.
The next section provides background information on UDP variants and
the use of UDP for tunneling. Section 2 defines the UDPTT protocol
and section 3 provides information about the use of UDPTT.
1.1. Background
UDP is defined in [RFC0768]. This supports two checksum behaviours
when used with IPv4. The normal behaviour is for the sender to
calculate a checksum over a block of data that includes a pseudo
header and the UDP datagram payload. The receiver validates this
checksum to verify delivery to the intended transport endpoint.
The UDP header includes a 16-bit one's complement checksum that
provides a statistical guarantee that the payload was not corrupted
in transit. It also allows the receiver to verify that the endpoint
was the intended destination of the datagram, because it includes a
pseudo header that covers the IP addresses, port numbers, transport
payload length, and Next Header/Protocol value corresponding to the
UDP transport protocol. The length field verifies that the datagram
is not truncated or padded. The checksum therefore protects an
application against receiving corrupted payload data in place of, or
in addition to, the data that was sent. Applications are recommended
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to enable UDP checksums [RFC5405], although UDP [RFC0768] permits the
option to be disabled when used with IPv4.
Unlike IPv4, when UDP datagrams are originated by an IPv6 node, the
UDP checksum is not optional. The use of the UDP checksum is
required when applications transmit UDP over IPv6 [RFC2460], since
there is no network-layer integrity check. UDPTT provides an
alternative intended to achieve at least equivalent protection to
using IPv4 (with the associated header checksum) and UDP (with the
checksum disabled).
UDP-Lite [RFC3828] provides a checksum with an optional partial
coverage. When using this option, a datagram is divided into a
sensitive part (covered by the checksum) and an insensitive part (not
covered by the checksum). Errors in the insensitive part will not
cause the packet to be discarded by the transport layer at the
receiving host. When the checksum covers the entire packet, which
should be the default, UDP-Lite is semantically identical to UDP.
UDP-Lite is specified for use with IPv4 and IPv6, and uses an IP
protocol type (or IPv6 next header) with a value of 136 decimal.
While UDP-Lite benefits from differential link error treatment, where
the packet header is afforded higher protection on a radio link
compared to the payload, this is explicitly not the goal of UDPTT.
For UDPTT, the payload is expected to be protected by other integrity
checks, and generally all parts of the packet will seek equal
protection, as for UDP and TCP. Since UDP-Lite also includes the
total packet length (extracted from the IP module), the calculated
checksum depends on the size of the encapsulated packet, whereas in
UDPTT, the checksum protection does not validate the actual size of
the transport layer payload.
1.2. Use of UDP Tunnels
One increasingly popular use of UDP is as a tunneling protocol, where
a tunnel endpoint encapsulates the packets of another protocol inside
UDP datagrams and transmits them to another tunnel endpoint. Using
UDP as a tunneling protocol is attractive when the payload protocol
is not supported by middleboxes that may exist along the path,
because many middleboxes support transmission using UDP. In this
use, the receiving endpoint decapsulates the UDP datagrams and
forwards the original packets contained in the payload [RFC5405].
Tunnels establish virtual links that appear to directly connect
locations that are distant in the physical Internet topology and can
be used to create virtual (private) networks.
This is expected to be the normal use of UDPTT, where UDPTT may
replace UDP as the tunnel transport when there is a desire to reduce
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processing costs at the tunnel endpoints. The end point for the
UDPTT may be either a host or a router.
{Note: The current specification targets use with IPv6, however the
method may also be applicable to IPv4}
2. Update to RFC 2460 to support UDTT
This section defines the update to IPv6 [RFC2460], if this document
is approved for publication by the IETF.
2.1. Terminology
The 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].
2.2. UDPTT Next Header Value
UDPTT datagrams are carried in the payload of IPv6 packets. UDP and
UDPTT share the next header protocol number (decimal 17) and are
differentiated only by the Length of the IP payload.
2.3. UDPTT Header Format
The UDPTT header is shown in figure Figure 1. This format resembles
that of UDP.
0 15 16 31
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Source | Destination |
| Port | Port |
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| | Header |
| 0x0008 | Check |
+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| |
: UDPTT Payload :
| (no additional integrity check) |
+-----------------------------------+
Figure 1: UDPTT Header Format
The source and destination ports are used in the same way as for UDP
and UDP-Lite. UDPTT places the constant value 0x0008 in the position
occupied by the Length field in UDP and the Checksum Coverage Field
in UDP-Lite. The value of 0x0008 is legal for both UDP and UDP-Lite.
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The length of the payload part is determined from the size
information provided by the IP module in the same manner as for TCP
[RFC0793].
The Header Check field is a 16-bit value calculated as specified in
the next section. This value is set by the sender and validated by
the receiver.
2.4. UDP and UDPTT Datagrams with no payload
It is expected that UDPTT datagrams will carry a tunnel-encapsulated
packet as payload. A UDPTT datagram with no payload is
indistinguishable from a UDP datagram with no payload. Both have the
same representation on the wire, and the same semantics at the sender
and receiver. There is no need for a receiver to differentiate these
packets.
2.5. Calculation of IPv6 UDPTT Header Check
The Header Check is computed as the 16-bit one's complement of the
one's complement sum [RFC1071] of a pseudo-header of information
collected from the IPv6 and UDPTT header fields.
The following illustration shows the UDPTT pseudo-header for IPv6:
0 7 8 15 16 23 24 31
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ +
| |
+ Source Address +
| |
+ +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ +
| |
+ Destination Address +
| |
+ +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| 0x0000000008 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| zero | Next H value |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
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UDPTT Pseudo header fields
o As in UDP, if the IPv6 packet carrying the UDPTT datagrams also
carries an additional extension header that contains a Routing
header, the Destination Address used in the pseudo-header is that
of the final destination. At the originating node, that address
will be in the last element of the Routing header; at the
recipient(s), that address will be in the Destination Address
field of the IPv6 header [RFC2460].
o The pseudo header of UDPTT is different from the pseudo header of
UDP in one way: This pseudo header replaces the Upper-Layer Packet
Length field, with a constant of 8. This value is identical to
the Upper-Layer Packet Length field that would be returned by a
compliant IPv6 UDP stack with no transport-layer payload
[RFC2460]. (It differs from the value that would have been used
by UDP-Lite, which utilises the length reported by the IP Module
in the pseudo header). Encapsulated packets need to include their
own methods to verify integrity and correct payload length.
o The Next H value in the pseudo-header is the value specified for
UDP (17 decimal). This value will differ from the Next Header
value in the IPv6 header if there are extension headers between
the IPv6 header and the upper-layer header.
Prior to computation, the Header Check field MUST be set to zero. If
the computed checksum is zero, it is transmitted as all ones (the
equivalent in one's complement arithmetic) [RFC2460] specifies that
IPv6 receivers must discard UDP datagrams containing a zero checksum,
and should log the error. This processing is preserved in this
update.
The way in which the Header check is computed in UDPTT will usually
result in a constant value for each UDP flow. This value may be
cached as part of the tunnel endpoint flow state. Once the tunnel
has been created, a sender MAY insert the cached value instead of
computing the checksum, and a receiver may then use a 16-bit
comparison of the received value against the cached value, rather
than a 1's complement checksum. This approach may be desirable to
minimise expensive computation in routers that need to handle many
UDPTT flows operating at high rate.
2.6. Multicast support for UDPTT
Like UDP and UDP-Lite, UDPTT MAY be used as a transport for multicast
datagrams.
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3. Using UDPTT
This section provides information for implementors and users of
UDPTT.
3.1. UDPTT Usage Guidelines
Implementors may use UDPTT in the same way as UDP providing that the
application does not need UDPTT to validate the tunnel-encapsulated
packet. The protocol is not constrained to the semantics of one
particular tunnel usage, and is believed compatible with a range of
tunnel mechanisms. If the tunnel requires greater assurance that
tunnel-encapsulated packet is correct or has been delivered to the
correct end point (e.g. where control data is carried over UDPTT),
then the tunnel encapsulation MUST introduce its own integrity
checks. This is consistent with the expected behaviour of IETF-
defined tunnel encapsulations.
IPv6 Jumbograms are not supported in the UDPTT protocol. If
required, such packets may be sent using UDP.
The UDP Usage Guidelines [RFC5405] provides guidance for application
designers the use of UDP to support tunneling. These guidelines also
apply to this protocol.
Unlike UDP, UDPTT does not validate the Length field of the IP header
when calculating the transport checksum. This design decision was
driven by the goal that the checksum value should not normally change
from packet to packet within a single transport flow. The omission
of this value is a relaxation of the integrity check. Therefore:
o A tunnel receiver MUST discard UDPTT packets where the UDPTT
payload size is less than the minimum required by the tunnelled
protocol being transported.
o Application stacks SHOULD provide a way for a tunnel endpoint to
identify whether UDPTT is to be used. This could be identified by
a socket option, or similar operating system mechanism. A sender
uses the socket option to include data in a UDPTT datagram (beyond
the base UDP header), the receiver uses this to ensure the
protocol stack passes data based on the Upper Layer payload,
rather than the UDP header).
3.2. Requirements for Tunnelled Protocols
This section identifies the requirements for protocols transported
within the payload of a UDPTT datagram.
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Specifically, these requirements dictate that:
o An inner IPv4 (or IPv6) packet with a UDP checksum equal to zero
MUST NOT be tunneled.
o The tunneling protocol and implementation MUST NOT be used to
transport IPv4 or IPv6 packets that use network-layer
fragmentation.
o A receiver MUST check the size of the tunnel-encapsulated packet
based on information contained in the tunnel-encapsulated packet.
A tunnel receiver MUST discard any tunnel-encapsulated packets
where the reported length of the tunnelled packet is different to
that reported by the IP module (reduced by the size of any header
extensions present).
o A packet encapsulated over UDPTT MAY also use the UDPTT tunnel
encapsulation mode, that is, tunnels may be recursively
encpauslated. However, the inner encapsulated packet MUST provide
an integrity check of the transported payload information (e.g.
the inner encapsulated IPv6 packet MUST NOT itself use UDPTT or be
an IPv4 UDP datagram with the checksum disabled).
o A tunnel protocol that introduces control information MUST provide
its own integrity check methods (e.g. validating the integrity of
all control information and the length of the control packet).
o Non-IP inner packets MUST use a CRC or other mechanism for
checking packet length and integrity.
3.3. Backwards compatibility with RFC 2460
There are three possible behaviours when a UDPTT datagram is received
by an IPv6 host that only supports UDP as defined in [RFC2460].
1. A receiver checksum algorithm that uses the transport header
Length field to calculate the UDP checksum (as defined for UDP in
[RFC2460]) will result in a valid checksum. However, the number
of bytes forwarded to the upper layer, is dependent on how the
payload length is interpreted when forwarding to the upper layer.
An implementation could forward a number of bytes corresponding
to the UDP Length field (i.e. 8 bytes), removing the payload
part. Since the UDP Length could be interpreted as indicating
there is no payload part. This behaviour would result in an
application receiving null UDP datagrams. Application designers
are encouraged to design their applications to be robust to
reception of such datagrams [RFC5405]. Since no data is passed
to the application, there is no danger of inserting unwanted
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bytes into the data stream at the receiver. This behaviour is
safe, but no tunnel can be established until the stack is updated
to support UDPTT.
2. A receiver with a checksum that uses the Upper-Layer Packet
Length from the UDP Length field, and forwards a number of bytes
corresponding to the IP Length field (less any extension headers
present). This receiver will calculate a correct checksum. The
transport layer will forward the UDP datagram towards the
application with the payload part. This is also the expected
behaviour for UDPTT. The application using the transport service
will receive a set of bytes that are bit protected and therefore
may have been modified in transit. Since the UDP payload length
is not verified, the number of bytes could also be modified in
transit. This behaviour may not be what was intended by a UDP
application developer. A tunnel application designed for UDPTT
can use this behaviour.
3. A receiver with a checksum that uses the IP Length field is not
compliant with UDP defined in [RFC2460]). This receiver will
silently discard the packet, because a mismatching pseudo header
would cause the UDP checksum to fail. This behaviour is safe,
but no tunnel can be established until the stack is updated to
support UDPTT.
3.4. Middlebox Traversal and Incremental Checksum Update
Middlebox traversal needs to be considered when planning the
deployment of any new transport protocol. Middleboxes are known to
exist that verify the correctness of the UDP header. Following
publication of this specification it is expected that middleboxes
will support UDPTT:
o Middleboxes MUST NOT truncate IPv6 datagrams the UDP Header Length
is 8 and the IP length exceeds this length.
o If required to update the transport checksum (UDPTT Header Check),
a middlebox MAY use the incremental checksum update procedure
[RFC1141].
o If required to validate the transport checksum (UDPTT Header
Check), a middlebox MUST use the method defined in this document
for IPv6 packets with a UDP length of 8.
This document does not modify the requirement that IPv6 receivers
must discard UDP datagrams containing a zero checksum [RFC2460].
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4. Acknowledgements
The author greatfuly acknowledges inputs provided by Magnus
Westerlund and Marshall Eubanks on the first version of the draft.
Discussion and inputs were provided by Philip Chimento to draft -01.
5. IANA Considerations
The IANA IPv6 Next Header registry entry for the decimal value 17
needs to reference this document in addition to the RFC 2460.
6. Security Considerations
Transport checksums provide the first stage of protection for the
stack, although they can not be considered authentication mechanisms.
These checks are also desirable to ensure packet counters correctly
log actual activity, and can spot unusual behaviours.
Section 3.3 describes middlebox traversal. Firewalls and other
security devices may need to be updated to correctly process UDPTT
datagrams.
UDPTT presents a possibility of an attack where an attacker sends a
flood of 'empty' UDPTT datagrams towards a tunnel endpoint. Datagram
applications should be designed to safely receive null datagrams,
there is therefore no danger that the tunnel receiver will insert
unwanted bytes in the application stream, such packets can contribute
to the load of a receiving tunnel server and any middleboxes that
process the UDPTT packet stream.
Unlike UDP, the UDPTT Header Check does not validate the length field
of the IP header when calculating the transport checksum. This
design decision was driven by the goal that the checksum value does
not normally change from packet to packet within a single transport
flow. The omission of this value is a relaxation of the integrity
check. However, a UDPTT application is required to provide its own
integrity check methods. If the IP length field of a UDPTT datagram
was modified in transit, a reduced value would result in "truncation"
of the packet payload, whereas an increase in value would result in
additional data after the intended payload. Endpoints are required
to discard any datagrams with an inconsistent length (after
accounting for any extension headers that may be present).
Endpoints that enable the use of UDPTT in the same port number range
as used for UDP SHOULD provide a method to allow a sending and
receiving application to indicate which port use a specific mode.
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This could be performed using a socket option call to allow an
application to request use of the UDPTT semantics.
UDPTT is compatible with the IPsec Encapsulation Security Protocol,
ESP [RFC4303], and the Authentication Header, AH [RFC4302]. This may
be used to encapsulated a UDPTT packet, although this introduces
processing that may not be desirable in some deployment scenarios.
IPsec may be used within a tunnel-encapsulated packet.
A section describes issues relating to backwards compatibility in
hosts. This section may also be applicable to middleboxes that
manipulate the transport-layer information.
7. References
7.1. Normative References
[RFC0791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
September 1981.
[RFC0793] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, September 1981.
[RFC1071] Braden, R., Borman, D., Partridge, C., and W. Plummer,
"Computing the Internet checksum", RFC 1071,
September 1988.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
7.2. Informative References
[ID-UDP-Z]
"IPv6 UDP Checksum Considerations", 2010.
[RFC0768] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", STD 6, RFC 768,
August 1980.
[RFC1141] Mallory, T. and A. Kullberg, "Incremental updating of the
Internet checksum", RFC 1141, January 1990.
[RFC3828] Larzon, L-A., Degermark, M., Pink, S., Jonsson, L-E., and
G. Fairhurst, "The Lightweight User Datagram Protocol
(UDP-Lite)", RFC 3828, July 2004.
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[RFC4302] Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302,
December 2005.
[RFC4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
RFC 4303, December 2005.
[RFC5405] Eggert, L. and G. Fairhurst, "Unicast UDP Usage Guidelines
for Application Designers", BCP 145, RFC 5405,
November 2008.
Appendix A. Why do we need a checksum?
Guidance on the use of UDP checksums with IPv6 is provided in UDP
[ID-UDP-Z].
Previous research showed malformed packets can be received across the
Internet, a side effect of broken internal processing (internal
transfer errors) in routers or hosts. When the checksum is used with
UDP/IPv6, it significantly reduces the impact of such errors,
reducing the probability of undetected corruption of state (and data)
on both the host stack and the applications using the transport
service.
Corruption in the network may result in:
o a datagram being mis-delivered to the wrong host/router or the
wring transport entity within a host/router. Such a datagram
should be discarded.
o a datagram payload being corrupted and delivered to the intended
host/router transport entity. Such a datagram needs to be either
discarded or correctly processed by an application that has its
own integrity checks.
o a datagram payload being truncated by corruption of the length
field. Such a datagram needs to be discarded.
The decision to omit an integrity check at the IPv6 level means that
the transport check is overloaded with many functions including
validating:
o the endpoint address was not corrupted within a router - this
packet was meant for this destination and a wrong header has not
been spliced to a different payload.
o the extension header processing is correctly delimited - the start
of data has not been corrupted. The protocol types does this also
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to some extent.
o reassembly processing, when used.
o the length of the payload.
o the port values - i.e. the correct application gets the payload
(applications should also check source ports/address).
o the payload integrity.
In IPv4, the first 4 checks are made by the IPv4 header checksum.
In IPv6, this checking occurs within the stack using the UDP checksum
information. UDPTT also performs these checks (with the exception of
the length field, which UDPTT performs using the tunnel encapsulated
packet).
An IPv6 node also relies on the header information to determine
whether to send an ICMPv6 error message and to determine the node to
which this is sent. Corrupted information may lead to misdelivery to
an unintended application socket on an unexpected host.
In tunnel encapsulations, payload integrity and length verification
may be provided by higher layer tunnel encapsulations (often using
the IPv4, UDP, UDP-Lite, or TCP checksums).
There are implications on the detectability of mis-delivery of a
packet to an incorrect endpoint/socket, and the robustness of the
Internet infrastructure.
The IETF has defined other tunneling protocols that do not include a
check value. However, these are typically layered directly over the
Internet layer (identified by the upper layer type field) and are not
also used as endpoint transport protocols. Specifically packets are
only delivered to protocol modules that process a specific next
header value. The next header field therefore provides a first-level
check of correct demultiplexing. Since the UDP port space is shared
many diverse application, this check is not available when UDP is
used as transport and therefore the demultiplexing relies solely on
the destination port number.
Deterministic reporting of statistics is desirable: router/endpoint
MIBs and other statistics gathering methods have the ability to
detect this type of error, rather than recording this as valid
traffic between spurious endpoints.
Some IPv6 aware middleware and firewalls may drop or truncate UDPTT
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datagrams.
{Note: The author would be glad to know of specific cases of
truncation and other behaviours.}
A.1. IPv4 Compatibility
The current version of this document does not specify encapsulation
using IPv4 [RFC0791]. For this network protocol. UDP is permitted
to disable the UDP checksum and rely on the IPv4 header checksum.
{Note: Future versions of this document could also consider support
for IPv4 if the WG considers this useful|}
A.2. Why not set the IPv6 UDP checksum to zero?
{This section to be expanded in future revisions}
Topics to be discussed:
o The role of a router and host are not fixed. It can not be
assumed that a particular protocol (or transport mode) will only
be used on a specific type of network node (e.g. the UDP checksum
can be disabled only on a router). In IPv6, a node may select a
role of a router or host on a per interface basis. Protocol
changes intended for one specific use are often re-used for
different applications.
o Why ignore checksum on reception is niave
o Behaviour of NAT/Middleboxes needs to be updated for UDPTT and for
UDP cksum==0
o Implications on host acting as routers and transport end points.
o Requires restrictions on recursive tunnels that are not necessary
with UDPTT
Appendix B. Applicability for AMT
This specification is intended to be suited to use with "Automatic IP
Multicast Without Explicit Tunnels", also known as "AMT". AMT
currently specifies UDP as the transport protocol for tunneled
packets; that is, the outer packet carrying a tunneled (inner)
packet. The specification is for packets carrying tunneled multicast
data only. In AMT, the UDP checksum in the UDP header of the outer
packet SHOULD be 0 (See draft-ietf-mboned-auto-multicast-09, Section
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6.6). However RFC 2460 (IPv6) explicitly states that IPv6 receivers
MUST discard UDP packets with a 0 checksum. So, while sending a UDP
packet with a 0 checksum is permitted in IPv4 packets, it is
explicitly forbidden in IPv6 packets. The computation of an
additional checksum, when the inner packet(s) are already adequately
protected, is seen to be an unwarranted burden on nodes implementing
lightweight tunneling protocols.
The intention is that UDPTT offers a safe alternate approach to the
IPv6 method currently defined in AMT.
Appendix C. Document Change History
{RFC EDITOR NOTE: This section must be deleted prior to publication}
Individual Draft 00 This is the first presentation of this
document.
Draft -01 Phil Chimento helped define changes to improve the
protocol.
* Added text on excluding the header length value in the pseudo
header for the UDPTT Header Check.
* Rewrote security considerations
* Added caveats for protocols using UDPTT
Draft -02
* Fixed typos from XML formatting
* Added some text on ICMP
* Middleboxes MUST use UDPTT semantics for UDPTT
* Added more text on why UDP cksum==0 may be bad
* Added text on UDPTT API needs
* Allowed recursion, of UDPTT, but not final inner protocol
Draft -03 Fixed typos and added reference to "IPv6 UDP Checksum
Considerations"
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Issues
* More detailed analysis of the UDP cksum==0 case could be added
Author's Address
Godred Fairhurst
University of Aberdeen
School of Engineering
Aberdeen, AB24 3UE,
Scotland, UK
Phone:
Email: gorry@erg.abdn.ac.uk
URI: http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry
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