One document matched: draft-ietf-softwire-ipv6-6rd-02.xml


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<rfc category="std" docName="draft-ietf-softwire-ipv6-6rd-02" ipr="trust200902">
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<!-- ***** FRONT MATTER ***** -->

<front>
<!-- The abbreviated title is used in the page header - it is only
     necessary if the full title is longer than 39 characters -->

<title abbrev="6rd">IPv6 via IPv4 Service Provider Networks "6rd"</title>

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<!-- Another author who claims to be an editor -->

<author fullname="Mark Townsley" initials="W. M." surname="Townsley">
  <organization>Cisco</organization>
  <address>
    <postal>
      <street></street>
      <city>Paris</city>
      <region></region>
      <code></code>
      <country>France</country>
    </postal>
    <email>mark@townsley.net</email>
  </address>
</author>

<author fullname="Ole Troan" initials="O." surname="Troan">
  <organization>Cisco</organization>
  <address>
    <postal>
      <street></street>
      <city>Bergen</city>
      <region></region>
      <code></code>
      <country>Norway</country>
    </postal>
    <email>ot@cisco.com</email>
  </address>
</author>

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      <street>3 rue du President Wilson</street>
      <city>Levallois</city>
      <region></region>
      <code></code>
      <country>France</country>
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    <phone>+33 6 72 74 94 88</phone>
    <email>remi.despres@free.fr</email>
  </address>
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<date month="January" year="2010" />

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<area>Internet</area>

<workgroup>Internet Engineering Task Force</workgroup>

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<keyword>6rd "Provider 6to4" IPv6 softwire "IPv6 Transition" 6to4</keyword>

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<abstract>
  <t>This document specifies an automatic tunneling mechanism
  tailored to advance deployment of IPv6 to end users via a Service
  Provider's IPv4 network infrastructure. Key aspects include
  automatic IPv6 prefix delegation to sites, stateless operation,
  simple provisioning, and service which is equivalent to native IPv6
  at the sites which are served by the mechanism.</t>
</abstract>

</front>


<middle>
 <section title="Introduction">
   <t>The original idea and the name of the mechanism (6rd) specified
   in this document is described in <xref
   target="I-D.despres-6rd">draft-despres-6rd</xref>, which details a
   successful commercial "rapid deployment" of the 6rd mechanism by a
   residential Service Provider and is recommended background
   reading. This document describes the 6rd mechanism, extended for
   use in more general environments, and intended for advancement on
   the IETF Standards Track. Throughout this document, the term 6to4
   is used to refer to the mechanism described in <xref
   target="RFC3056"></xref> and 6rd the mechanism defined herein.</t>

   <t>6rd specifies a protocol mechanism to deploy IPv6 to sites via a
   Service Provider's (SP's) IPv4 network.  It builds on 6to4 <xref
   target="RFC3056"></xref>, with the key differentiator that it
   utilizes an SP's own IPv6 address prefix rather than a well known
   prefix (2002::/16). By using the SP's IPv6 prefix, the operational
   domain of 6rd is limited to the SP network and under its direct
   control. From the perspective of customer sites and the IPv6
   Internet at large, the IPv6 service provided is equivalent to
   native IPv6.</t>

   <t>6rd as described in this document relies upon an algorithmic
   mapping between the IPv6 and IPv4 addresses that are assigned for
   use within the SP network.  This mapping allows for automatic
   determination of IPv4 tunnel endpoints from IPv6 prefixes, allowing
   stateless operation of 6rd. 6rd views the IPv4 network as a link
   layer for IPv6 and supports an automatic tunneling abstraction
   similar to the Non-Broadcast Multiple Access (NBMA) model.</t>

   <t>A 6rd domain consists of 6rd Customer Edge (CE) routers and one
   or more 6rd BRs. IPv6 packets encapsulated by 6rd follow the IPv4
   routing topology within the SP network among CEs and BRs. 6rd BRs
   are traversed only for IPv6 packets that are destined to or are
   arriving from outside the SP's 6rd domain. As 6rd is stateless, BRs
   my be reached using anycast for failover and resiliency.</t>

   <t>On the "customer-facing" (i.e., "LAN") side of a CE, IPv6 is
   implemented as it would be for any native IP service delivered by
   the SP. On the "SP-Facing" (i.e., "WAN") side of the 6rd CE, the
   WAN interface itself, encapsulation over Ethernet, ATM or PPP, as
   well as control protocols such as PPPoE, IPCP, DHCP, etc. all
   remain unchanged from current IPv4 operation. Although 6rd was
   designed primarily to support IPv6 deployment to a customer site
   (such as a residential home network) by an SP, it can equally be
   applied to an individual IPv6 host acting as a CE.</t>

   <t>6rd relies on IPv4 and is designed to deliver production-quality
   IPv6 alongside IPv4 with as little change to IPv4 networking and
   operations as possible. Native IPv6 deployment within the SP
   network itself may continue for the SP's own purposes aside of
   delivering IPv6 service to sites supported by 6rd.  Once the SP
   network and operations can support fully native IPv6 access and
   transport, 6rd may be discontinued. IPv4 may then be discontinued
   entirely or tunneled over IPv6 as described in <xref
   target="I-D.durand-softwire-dual-stack-lite">draft-ietf-softwire-dual-stack-lite</xref>.</t>

 </section>

 <section title="Requirements Language">
    <t>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 <xref target="RFC2119">RFC
    2119</xref>.</t>
 </section>

 <section anchor="terminology" title="Terminology">
   <t><list hangIndent="22" style="hanging">
       <t hangText="6rd prefix">An IPv6 prefix selected by the Service
       Provider for use by a 6rd domain. There is exactly one 6rd
       Prefix for a given 6rd domain. An SP may deploy 6rd with a
       single 6rd domain or multiple 6rd domains.</t>

       <t hangText="6rd Customer Edge">A 6rd CE is a device
       functioning as a Customer Edge in a 6rd deployment. In a
       residential broadband deployment this type of device is
       sometimes referred to as a "Residential Gateway (RG)," or
       "Customer Premises Equipment" (CPE). A typical CE router
       serving a residential site has one CE WAN Side interface, one
       or more CE LAN Side interfaces, and a virtual 6rd interface. A
       6rd CE may also be referred to simply as a "CE" within the
       context of 6rd. </t>

       <t hangText="6rd delegated prefix">The IPv6 prefix calculated
       by the CE for use by hosts within the customer site by
       combining the 6rd prefix and the CE IPv4 Address obtained via
       IPv4 configuration methods. This prefix can be considered
       logically equivalent to a DHCPv6 IPv6 delegated prefix <xref
       target="RFC3633"></xref>. </t>

       <t hangText="6rd domain">A set of 6rd CEs and BRs connected to
       the same virtual 6rd link. A Service Provider may deploy 6rd
       with a single 6rd domain, or may utilize multiple 6rd
       domains. Each domain requires a separate 6rd prefix.</t>

       <t hangText="CE LAN side"> The functionality of a 6rd CE that
       serves the "Local Area Network (LAN)" or "Home-facing" side the
       CE. The CE LAN Side interface is fully IPv6 enabled.</t>

       <t hangText="CE WAN side">
       The functionality of a 6rd CE that serves the "Wide Area
       Network (WAN)" or "Service Provider-facing" side of the CE. The
       CE WAN Side is IPv4-only.</t>

       <t hangText="6rd Border Relay (BR)">A 6rd-enabled router
       managed by the service provider at the edge of a 6rd domain. The 6rd BR
       router has at least one of each of the following: an
       IPv4-enabled interface, a 6rd virtual interface acting as an
       endpoint for the 6rd IPv6 in IPv4 tunnel, and an IPv6 interface
       reachable outside of the 6rd domain. A 6rd BR may also be
       referred to simply as a "BR" within the context of 6rd.</t>

       <t hangText="BR IPv4 address">The IPv4 address of the 6rd
       Border Relay for a given 6rd domain. This IPv4 address is used
       by the CE to send packets to a BR in order to reach IPv6
       destinations outside of the 6rd domain. Typically, the BR IPv4
       address will be an anycast address. </t>

       <t hangText="6rd virtual interface"> Internal multi-point
       tunnel interface where 6rd encapsulation and decapsulation of
       IPv6 packets inside IPv4 occurs. A typical CE or BR
       implementation requires only one 6rd virtual interface. A BR
       operating in multiple 6rd domains may require more than one 6rd
       Virtual Interface, but no more than one per 6rd domain.</t>

       <t hangText="CE IPv4 address">The IPv4 address given to the CE
       as part of normal IPv4 Internet access (i.e., configured via
       DHCP, PPP, or otherwise). This address may be global or private
       <xref target="RFC1918"></xref> within the 6rd domain. This
       address is used by a 6rd CE to create the 6rd delegated prefix
       as well as to send and receive IPv4 encapsulated IPv6
       packets.</t>

   </list></t>
 </section>


 <section anchor="prefix_alloc" title="6rd prefix delegation">
   <t>The 6rd delegated prefix for use at a customer site is created
   by combining the 6rd prefix and some or all of the CE IPv4
   Address. From these elements, the 6rd delegated prefix is
   automatically created by the CE for the customer site when IPv4
   service is obtained. This 6rd delegated prefix is used in the same
   manner as a prefix obtained via DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation <xref
   target="RFC3633"></xref>.</t>

   <t>In 6to4, a similar operation is performed by incorporating an
   entire IPv4 address at a fixed location within a well-known /16
   IPv6 prefix. In 6rd, the IPv6 prefix as well as the position and
   number of bits of the IPv4 address incorporated varies from one 6rd
   domain to the next. 6rd allows the SP to adjust the size of the 6rd
   prefix, bits used by the 6rd mechanism, and how many bits are left
   to be delegated to customer sites. To allow for stateless address
   auto-configuration on the CE LAN Side, a 6rd delegated prefix MUST
   be /64 or shorter.</t>

   <t>The 6rd delegated prefix is created by concatenating the 6rd
   prefix and a consecutive set of bits from the CE IPv4 address in
   order. The sum of the number of bits used by each determines the
   size of the prefix that is delegated to the CE.</t>

   <figure align="center" anchor="v6address">
     <artwork align="left"><![CDATA[

|<--- 6rd delegated prefix --->|<----- Customer IPv6 Addresses ----->        
+------------------+-----------+-----------+------------------------+
|   6rd_Prefix     |  IPv4_add | Subnet ID |      Interface ID      |
|     /n bits      | 0-32 bits | 0-16 bits |        64 bits         |
+------------------+-----------+-----------+------------------------+

        ]]></artwork></figure>

   <t>For example, if the 6rd prefix is /32 and 24 bits of the CE IPv4
   address is used (e.g all CE IPv4 addresses can be aggregated by a
   10.0.0.0/8), then the size of the 6rd delegated prefix for
   each CE is automatically calculated to be /56 (32 + 24 = 56).</t>

   <t>Embedding less than the full 32 bits of a CE IPv4 address is
   possible only when an aggregated block of IPv4 addresses is
   available for a given 6rd domain. This may not be practical with
   global IPv4 addresses, but is quite likely in a deployment where
   private addresses are being assigned to CEs. If private addresses
   overlap within a given 6rd deployment, the deployment may be
   divided into separate 6rd domains, likely along the same topology
   lines the NAT-based IPv4 deployment itself would require. In this
   case, each domain is addressed with a different 6rd prefix.</t>

   <t>Each 6rd domain may use a different encoding of the embedded
   IPv4 address, even within the same service provider. For example,
   if multiple IPv4 address blocks with different levels of
   aggregation are used at the same service provider, the number of
   IPv4 bits needed to encode the 6rd delegated prefix may vary
   between each block. In this case, a different 6rd prefix, and hence
   separate 6rd domain, may be used to disambiguate the different
   encodings. </t>

   <t>Since 6rd delegated prefixes are selected algorithmically from
   an IPv4 address, changing the IPv4 address will cause a change in
   the IPv6 delegated prefix which would ripple through the site's
   network and could be disruptive. As such, the service provider should
   assign CE IPv4 addresses with relatively long lifetimes.</t>

   <t>6rd IPv6 address assignment and hence the IPv6 service itself is
   tied to the IPv4 address lease (whether set via DHCP, PPP, or
   otherwise), thus the 6rd service is also tied to this in terms of
   authorization, accounting, etc. For example, the 6rd delegated
   prefix has the same DHCP lease time as its associated IPv4
   address. The prefix lifetimes advertised in Router Advertisements
   or used by DHCP on the CE LAN Side MUST be equal to or shorter
   than the IPv4 address lease time.</t>
 </section>

 <section anchor="Troubleshooting" title="Troubleshooting and Traceability">
   <t>A 6rd IPv6 address and associated IPv4 address for a given
   customer can always be determined algorithmically by the service
   provider that operates the given 6rd domain.  This may be useful
   for referencing logs and other data at a service provider which may
   have more robust operational tools for IPv4 than IPv6. This also
   allows IPv4 data path, node, and endpoint monitoring to be
   applicable to IPv6.</t>

   <t>The 6rd CE and BR SHOULD support the IPv6 Subnet-Router anycast
   address <xref target="RFC4291"></xref> for its own 6rd delegated
   prefix. This allows, for example, IPv6 ping messages to be sent to
   the 6rd Virtual Interface itself for additional troubleshooting of
   the internal operation of 6rd at a given CE or BR, over and above
   an IPv4 ping to the associated CE or BR IPv4 address. In the case
   of the BR, the IPv4 address used to calculate the 6rd delegated
   prefix is the configured BR IPv4 Address.</t>
 </section>

 <section title="Address Selection">
   <t>All addresses assigned from 6rd delegated prefixes should be
   treated as native IPv6. No changes to the <xref
   target="RFC3484">source address selection or destination address
   selection policy table</xref> are necessary.</t>

 </section>

 <section anchor="provisioning" title="6rd Configuration">

   <t>For a given 6rd domain, the BR and CE MUST be configured with the
   following four 6rd elements. The configured values for these four 6rd elements
   are identical for all CEs and BRs within a given 6rd domain.</t>

  <t><list hangIndent="26" style="hanging">

         <t hangText="IPv4PrefixLen">The number of high-order bits
         that are identical across all CE IPv4 addresses within a
         given 6rd domain. For example, if there are no identical
         bits, IPv4PrefixLen is 0 and the entire CE IPv4 address is
         used to create the 6rd delegated prefix. If there are 8
         identical bits (e.g., the Private IPv4 address range
         10.0.0.0/8 is being used), IPv4PrefixLen is equal to
         8.</t>

         <t hangText="6rdPrefix">The 6rd IPv6 prefix for the given 6rd
         domain.  </t>

         <t hangText="6rdPrefixLen">The length of the 6rd IPv6 prefix
         for the given 6rd domain. </t>

         <t hangText="6rdBRIPv4Address">The IPv4 address of the 6rd
         Border Relay for a given 6rd domain (typically anycast).</t>

     </list></t>

 <section anchor="ce-config" title="Customer Edge Configuration">

   <t>The four 6rd elements are set to values which are the same
   across all CEs within a 6rd domain. The values may be configured in
   a variety of manners, including automatic provisioning methods such
   as the Broadband Forum's "TR-69" Residential Gateway management
   interface, an XML-based object retrieved after IPv4 connectivity is
   established, a DNS record, an SNMP MIB, PPP IPCP, or manual
   configuration by an end-user or operator. This document describes
   how to configure the necessary parameters via a single DHCP
   option. For consistency and convenience, this option format may be
   used by other automatic configuration methods by normative
   reference to this document.
   </t>

   <t> The only remaining provisioning information the CE requires in
   order to calculate the 6rd delegated prefix and enable IPv6
   connectivity is an IPv4 address for the CE. This CE IPv4 Address is
   configured as part of obtaining IPv4 Internet access (i.e.,
   configured via DHCP, PPP, or otherwise). This address may be global
   or private <xref target="RFC1918"></xref> within the 6rd
   domain.</t>

   <t> A single 6rd CE MAY be connected to more than one 6rd domain,
   just as any router may have more than one IPv6-enabled service
   provider facing interface and more than one set of associated
   delegated prefixes assigned by DHCPv6 PD or other means. Each
   domain a given CE operates within would require its own set of 6rd
   configuration elements, and would generate its own 6rd delegated
   prefix.</t>

   <section anchor="dhcp" title="6rd DHCPv4 Option">

     <figure align="center" anchor="6rd_dhcp_option">
       <artwork align="left"><![CDATA[

0                   1                   2                   3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|  OPTION_6RD   | option-length | IPv4PrefixLen |  6rdPrefixLen |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|                     6rdBRIPv4Address (4 octets)               |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|                                                               |
|                           6rdPrefix                           |
|                   (variable, up to 16 octets)                 |
|                                                               |
|                                                               |
|                                                               |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

        ]]></artwork></figure>

     <t><list hangIndent="26" style="hanging">
         <t hangText="option-code">OPTION_6RD(TBD)</t>

         <t hangText="option-length">the length of the DHCP option in
         octets (between 6 and 22 octets).</t>

         <t hangText="IPv4PrefixLen">The number of high-order bits that
         are identical across all CE IPv4 addresses within a given 6rd
         domain.  This may be any value between 0 and 32. Any value
         greater than 32 is invalid.</t>

         <t hangText="6rdPrefixLen">IPv6 Prefix length of the SP's 6rd
         IPv6 prefix in number of bits. For the purpose of bounds
         checking by DHCP option processing, the IPv4PrefixLen +
         6rdPrefixLen MUST be less then or equal than 128. The 6rd
         implementation may further limit the sum of these lengths to
         64. </t>

         <t hangText="6rdBRIPv4Address">The IPv4 address of the 6rd
         Border Relay for a given 6rd domain (typically anycast). </t>

         <t hangText="6rdPrefix">Variable length field containing the
         Service Provider's 6rd IPv6 prefix. The sender of this option
         MUST pad with zero to at least to a full octet, and MAY pad
         with zero to the full 16 octets. Length of the 6rd_prefix is
         determined from the option-length.</t>
     </list></t>

     <t>When 6rd is enabled, a typical CE router will install a
     default route to the BR, a black hole route for the 6rd delegated
     prefix, and routes for any LAN Side assigned and advertised
     prefixes. For example, using a CE IPv4 address of 10.100.100.1, a
     6rd BR IPv4 relay address of 10.0.0.1, an IPv4PrefixLen of 8,
     2001:ABC0::/32 as the 6rdPrefix, and one /64 prefix assigned to a
     LAN Side Interface, a typical CE Routing Information Base (RIB)
     will look like:</t>

     <figure><artwork align="left"><![CDATA[
   ::/0 -> 2001:ABC0:0000:0100::   (default route)
   2001:ABC0::/32 -> 6rd-virtual-interface0 (direct connect to 6rd)
   2001:ABC0:6464:0100::/56 -> Null0 (delegated prefix sink route)
   2001:ABC0:6464:0100::/64 -> Ethernet0 (LAN interface)
      ]]></artwork></figure>

   </section>

 </section>

 <section anchor="br-config" title="Border Relay Configuration">

   <t>The 6rd BR MUST be configured with the same 6rd elements as the
   6rd CEs operating within the same domain.</t>

   <t>For increased reliability and load-balancing, the BR IPv4
   address SHOULD be an anycast address shared across a given 6rd
   domain. As 6rd is stateless, any BR may be used at any time. The
   6rd relay MUST use its anycast IPv4 address as the source address
   in packets relayed via the SP network to the CE.</t>

   <t>Since 6rd uses provider address space, no specific routes need
   to be advertised externally for 6rd to operate, neither in IPv6 nor
   IPv4 BGP. However, the 6rd IPv4 relay anycast addresses must be
   advertised in the service provider's IGP.</t>

 </section>
</section>

 <section anchor="nud" title="Neighbor Unreachability Detection">

     <t>Neighbor Unreachability Detection (NUD) for tunnels is
     described in Section 3.8 of <xref target="RFC4213"></xref>.
     In 6rd, all CEs and BRs can be considered as connected to the
     same virtual link and therefore neighbors to each other. This
     section describes how to utilize neighbor unreachability
     detection without negatively impacting the scalability of a 6rd
     deployment.</t>

     <t>A typical 6rd deployment may consist of a very large number of
     CEs within the same domain. Reachability between CEs is based on
     IPv4 routing, and sending NUD or any periodic packets between 6rd
     CE devices beyond isolated troubleshooting of the 6rd mechanism
     is not recommended. </t>

     <t>While reachability detection between a given 6rd CE and BR is
     not necessary for the proper operation of 6rd, in cases where a
     CE has alternate paths for BR reachability to choose from it
     could be useful. Sending NUD messages to a BR, in particular
     periodic messages from a very large number of CEs, could result
     in overloading of the BR control message processing path,
     negatively affecting scalability of the 6rd deployment. Instead,
     a CE that needs to determine BR reachability MUST utilize a
     method which allows reachability detection packets to follow a
     typical data forwarding path without special processing by the
     BR. One such method is described below.</t>

     <t><list style="numbers"> 

     <t>The CE constructs a Payload of any size and content to be sent
     to the BR (e.g., a zero length null payload, a padded payload
     designed to test a certain MTU, a NUD message, etc.). The exact
     format of the message payload is not important as the BR will not
     be processing it directly.</t>

     <t>The desired Payload is encapsulated with the inner IPv6 and
     outer IPv4 headers as follows:

     <list style="symbols">
       <t>The IPv6 Destination Address is set to an address from the
       CE's 6rd delegated prefix for which the CE itself will process
       (e.g., a CE "loopback" or other type of local interface
       address).</t>
       <t>The IPv6 Source Address is set to an address from the CE's
       6rd delegated prefix as well, including the same as used for
       the IPv6 Destination Address.</t>
       <t>The IPv4 header is then added as it normally would for any
       packet destined for the BR. That is, the IPv4 Destination
       Address is that of the BR, and Source Address is the CE IPv4
       Address.</t>
     </list></t>

     <t>The CE sends the constructed packet out the proper
     interface it is monitoring BR reachability on. On successful
     receipt at the BR, the BR MUST decapsulate and forward the packet
     normally. This is, the IPv4 header is decapsulated normally,
     revealing the IPv6 destination as the CE, which in turn results
     in the packet being forwarded to that CE via the 6rd mechanism
     (i.e., the IPv4 Destination is that of the CE that originated the
     packet, and the IPv4 Source is that of the BR).</t>

     <t>Arrival of the constructed IPv6 packet at the CE's IPv6
     address completes one round trip to and from the BR, without
     causing the BR to process the message outside of its normal data
     forwarding path. The CE then processes the IPv6 packet
     accordingly (updating keepalive timers, metrics, etc).</t>
   </list></t>

   <t>The payload may be empty, or could contain values that are
   meaningful to the CE. Sending a proper NUD message could be
   convenient for some implementations. Since the BR forwards the
   packet as any other data packet without any processing of the
   payload itself, the format of the payload is left as a choice to
   the implementer.</t>

   </section>

   <section anchor="encaps" title="IPv6 in IPv4 Encapsulation">

     <t>IPv6 in IPv4 encapsulation is done as specified in 6to4 <xref
     target="RFC3056"></xref> and in <xref target="RFC4213">Basic
     Transition Mechanisms for IPv6 Hosts and Routers</xref>.</t>

     <t>IPv6 packets from a CE are encapsulated in IPv4 packets when
     they leave the site via its CE WAN Side interface. The CE IPv4
     address MUST be configured to send and receive packets on this
     interface.</t>

     <t> The 6rd link is modeled as an NBMA<xref
     target="RFC2491"></xref> link with all 6rd CEs and BRs defined to
     be off-link from each other. The link-local address of a 6rd
     virtual-interface performing the 6rd encapsulation would, if
     needed, be formed as described in Section 3.7 of <xref
     target="RFC4213"></xref>. However, no communication using
     link-local addresses will occur.</t>

     <section title="Maximum Transmission Unit">

       <t>MTU and fragmentation issues for IPv6 in IPv4 tunneling are
       discussed in detail in section 3.2 of <xref target="RFC4213">
       RFC4213</xref>. 6rd's scope is limited to a service provider
       network. IPv4 Path MTU discovery MAY be used to adjust the MTU of the
       tunnel as described in section 3.2.2 of <xref target="RFC4213">
       RFC4213</xref> or the 6rd Tunnel MTU may be explicitly
       configured.</t>

       <t>If the MTU is well-managed such that the IPv4 MTU on the CE
       WAN Side interface is set so that no fragmentation occurs
       within the boundary of the SP, then the 6rd Tunnel MTU should
       be set to the known IPv4 MTU minus the size of the
       encapsulating IPv4 header (20 bytes). For example, if the IPv4
       MTU is known to be 1500 bytes, the 6rd Tunnel MTU may be set to
       1480 bytes. Absent of more specific information the 6rd Tunnel
       MTU SHOULD default to 1280 bytes.</t>

       <t>A 6rd CE SHOULD advertise the 6rd Tunnel MTU, whether
       determined automatically or configured directly, on the LAN
       Side by setting the MTU option in <xref target="RFC4861">Router
       Advertisements</xref> messages to the 6rd Tunnel MTU.</t>

     </section>

   <section anchor="receiving_rules" title="Receiving Rules">

     <t>In order to prevent spoofing of IPv6 addresses, the 6rd BR and
     CE MUST validate the source address of the encapsulated IPv6
     packet with the IPv4 source address it is encapsulated by
     according to the configured parameters of the 6rd domain. If the
     two source addresses do not match, the packet MUST be dropped and
     a counter incremented to indicate that a potential spoofing
     attack may be underway. Additionally, a CE MUST allow packets
     sourced by the configured BR IPv4 Address.</t>

     <t>The CE router SHOULD drop packets received on the 6rd virtual
     interface (i.e., after decapsulation of IPv4) for IPv6 destinations
     not within its own 6rd delegated prefix.</t>

   </section>
 </section>

 <section title="Transition Considerations">
   <t>6rd is intended to deliver a production-level IPv6 service to
   customer sites. Once 6rd IPv6 access is available, the SP network
   can migrate to IPv6 at its own pace with little or no effect on the
   customer. When native IPv6 is fully available, the CE is
   provisioned with IPv6 on its WAN side. 6rd and native IPv6 can
   coexist for a time while the customer site adopts the new IPv6
   service, and then 6rd de-provisioned.</t>

   <t>6rd utilizes the same encapsulation and base mechanism as 6to4
   and could in fact be viewed as a superset of 6to4. 6to4 service can
   be made with 6rd by setting the 6rd prefix to 2002::/16. Unlike
   6to4, 6rd is for use only in an environment where a service
   provider cooperates closely to deliver the IPv6 service.  6to4
   routes with the 2002::/16 prefix may exist alongside 6rd in the 6rd
   CE router, and doing so may offer some efficiencies when
   communicating directly with 6to4 routers.</t>
 </section>

 <section title="IPv6 Address Space Usage">

   <t>As 6rd uses service provider address space, 6rd uses the normal
   address delegation a service provider gets from its RIR and no
   global allocation of a single 6rd IANA assigned address block like
   the 6to4 2002::/16 is needed.</t>

   <t>The service provider's prefix must be short enough to encode the
   unique bits of all IPv4 addresses within a given 6rd domain and
   still provide a production-quality IPv6 service to the residential
   site. Assuming a worst case scenario using the full 32 bits for the
   IPv4 address, assigning a /56 for customer sites would mean that
   each service provider using 6rd would require a /24 for 6rd in
   addition to other IPv6 addressing needs. Assuming that 6rd would be
   stunningly successful and taken up by almost all AS number holders
   (32K today) then the total address usage of 6rd would be equivalent
   to a /9. If the SP instead delegated /60s to sites the service
   provider would require a /28 and the total global address
   consumption by 6rd would be equivalent to a /13. Again, this
   assumes that 6rd is used by all AS number holders in the IPv4
   Internet today at the same time, none used any of 6rd's address
   compression techniques, and that none have moved to native IPv6 and
   reclaimed the 6rd space which was being used for other
   purposes.</t>

   <t>To alleviate concerns about address usage, 6rd allows for leaving out
   redundant IPv4 prefix bits in the encoding of the IPv4 address inside the
   6rd IPv6 address. This is most useful where the IPv4 address space is very
   well aggregated. For example to provide each customer with a /60, if a
   service provider has all its IPv4 customers under a /12 then only 20 bits
   needs to be used to encode the IPv4 address and the service provider would
   only need a /40 IPv6 allocation for 6rd. If private address space is used
   then a 10/8 would require a /36. If multiple 10/8 domains are used then up
   to 16 could be supported within a /32.</t>

   <t>The 6rd address block can be reclaimed when all users of it have
   transitioned to native IPv6 service. This may require
   renumbering of customer sites and use of additional address
   space during the transition period.</t>

 </section>

 <section anchor="Security" title="Security Considerations">
   <t>A 6to4 relay router as specified in <xref target="RFC3056">RFC
   3056</xref> can be used as an open relay. It can be used to relay
   IPv6 traffic and as a traffic anonymizer. By restricting the 6rd
   domain to within a provider network a CE only needs to accept
   packets from a single or small set of known 6rd BR IPv4 Addresses. As
   such, many of the threats against 6to4 as described in <xref
   target="RFC3964">RFC3964</xref> do not apply.</t>

   <t>When applying the receiving rules in <xref
   target="receiving_rules"></xref>, IPv6 packets are as well
   protected against spoofing as IPv4 packets are within an SP
   network.</t>

   <t>A malicious user that is aware of a 6rd domain and the BR IPv4
   address could use this information to construct a packet that would cause a
   Border Relay Router to reflect tunneled packets outside of the domain that
   it is serving. If the attacker constructs the packet accordingly, and can
   inject a packet with an IPv6 source address that looks as if it originates
   from within the 6rd domain of the second border relay, forwarding loops
   between 6rd domains may be created, allowing the malicious user to launch a
   packet amplification attack between 6rd domains.</t>

   <t>One possible mitigation for this is to simply not allow the BR IPv4
   address to be reachable from outside the SP's 6rd domain. In this case,
   carefully constructed IPv6 packets still may be reflected off a single BR,
   but the looping condition will not occur. Tunnelled packets with the BR
   IPv4 address as the source address may also be filtered to prohibit 6rd
   tunnels from exiting the 6rd domain.</t>

   <t>To avoid forwarding loops via other internal relays, the BR
   should employ outgoing and incoming IPv4 packets filters, filtering
   out all known relay addresses for internal 6rd BRs, ISATAP routers or 6to4
   relays, including the well known anycast address space for
   6to4.</t>

   <t>The BR MUST install a sink route for its 6rd delegated prefix
   created based on its BR IPv4 address, with the exception of the
   IPv6 Subnet-Router anycast address.</t>

 </section>

 <section anchor="IANA" title="IANA Considerations">
   <t>IANA is requested to assign a new DHCP Option code point for
   OPTION_6RD.</t>
 </section>

 <section anchor="Acknowledgements" title="Acknowledgements">
   <t>This draft is based on Remi Despres' original idea described in
   <xref target="I-D.despres-6rd"></xref> and the work done by Rani
   Assaf, Alexandre Cassen, and Maxime Bizon at Free Telecom. Brian
   Carpenter and Keith Moore documented 6to4, which all of this work
   is based upon. Review and encouragement have been provided by many
   others and in particular Chris Chase, Thomas Clausen, Wojciech Dec,
   Bruno Decraene, Remi Despres, Alain Durand, Washam Fan, Martin
   Gysi, Fred Templin, Dave Thaler, Eric Voit and David Ward.</t>
 </section>

</middle>

<!--  *****BACK MATTER ***** -->

<back>
<!-- References split into informative and normative -->

<!-- There are 2 ways to insert reference entries from the citation
     libraries: 1. define an ENTITY at the top, and use "ampersand
     character"RFC2629; here (as shown) 2. simply use a PI "less than
     character"?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119.xml"?> here (for I-Ds:
     include="reference.I-D.narten-iana-considerations-rfc2434bis.xml")

 Both are cited textually in the same manner: by using xref elements.
 If you use the PI option, xml2rfc will, by default, try to find
 included files in the same directory as the including file. You can
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<!--  -->
 <references title="Normative References">
   <!--?rfc include="http://xml.resource.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.2119.xml"? -->
   &RFC2119;
   &RFC3056;
   &RFC4213;
   &RFC1918;
   &RFC3964;
   &RFC4861;
   &RFC2491;
   &RFC4291;
 </references>

 <references title="Informative References">
   &I-D.despres-6rd;
   &RFC3484;
   &RFC3068;
   &RFC3633;
   &I-D.durand-softwire-dual-stack-lite;
 </references>

<!-- Change Log

v00 2009-04-15  OT	Initial version
v00 2009-04-29	OT	Tidied up language. Added security section.
v00 2009-04-29	OT	First set of comments from Mark.
v00 2009-05-12	MT	New Text & Edits
v00 2009-05-29	OT	Variable length DHCP/IPCP options
v00 2009-07-06  MT/OT   Drastic rush to finish before Stockholm -00 deadline
v02 2009-12-01  OT      Hiroshima IETF comments. Readying for last call.
v02 2009-12-14  OT      Incorporated comments from Dave Thaler.
v02 2010-01-04  MT/OT   Vast cleanups and intro of NUD text

-->
</back>
</rfc>

PAFTECH AB 2003-20262026-04-24 02:43:10