One document matched: draft-templin-intarea-seal-54.xml


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<rfc category="info" docName="draft-templin-intarea-seal-54.txt"
     ipr="trust200902" obsoletes="rfc5320">
  <front>
    <title abbrev="SEAL">Boeing's Subnetwork Encapsulation and Adaptation
    Layer (SEAL)</title>

    <author fullname="Fred L. Templin" initials="F. L." role="editor"
            surname="Templin">
      <organization>Boeing Research & Technology</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>P.O. Box 3707</street>

          <city>Seattle</city>

          <region>WA</region>

          <code>98124</code>

          <country>USA</country>
        </postal>

        <email>fltemplin@acm.org</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date day="19" month="April" year="2013"/>

    <keyword>I-D</keyword>

    <keyword>Internet-Draft</keyword>

    <abstract>
      <t>This document specifies a Subnetwork Encapsulation and Adaptation
      Layer (SEAL) developed by Boeing. SEAL operates over virtual topologies
      configured over connected IP network routing regions bounded by
      encapsulating border nodes. These virtual topologies are manifested by
      tunnels that may span multiple IP and/or sub-IP layer forwarding hops,
      where they may incur packet duplication, packet reordering, source
      address spoofing and traversal of links with diverse Maximum
      Transmission Units (MTUs). SEAL uniquely addresses these issues through
      the encapsulation and messaging mechanisms specified in this
      document.</t>
    </abstract>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <section title="Introduction">
      <t>As Internet technology and communication has grown and matured, many
      techniques have developed that use virtual topologies (manifested by
      tunnels of one form or another) over an actual network that supports the
      Internet Protocol (IP) <xref target="RFC0791"/><xref target="RFC2460"/>.
      Those virtual topologies have elements that appear as one hop in the
      virtual topology, but are actually multiple IP or sub-IP layer hops.
      These multiple hops often have quite diverse properties that are often
      not even visible to the endpoints of the virtual hop. This introduces
      failure modes that are not dealt with well in current approaches.</t>

      <t>The use of IP encapsulation (also known as "tunneling") has long been
      considered as the means for creating such virtual topologies (e.g., see
      <xref target="RFC2003"/><xref target="RFC2473"/>). However, the
      encapsulation headers often include insufficiently provisioned
      per-packet identification values. IP encapsulation also allows an
      attacker to produce encapsulated packets with spoofed source addresses
      even if the source address in the encapsulating header cannot be
      spoofed. A denial-of-service vector that is not possible in non-tunneled
      subnetworks is therefore presented.</t>

      <t>Additionally, the insertion of an outer IP header reduces the
      effective path MTU visible to the inner network layer. When IPv6 is used
      as the encapsulation protocol, original sources expect to be informed of
      the MTU limitation through IPv6 Path MTU discovery (PMTUD) <xref
      target="RFC1981"/>. When IPv4 is used, this reduced MTU can be
      accommodated through the use of IPv4 fragmentation, but unmitigated
      in-the-network fragmentation has been found to be harmful through
      operational experience and studies conducted over the course of many
      years <xref target="FRAG"/><xref target="FOLK"/><xref
      target="RFC4963"/>. Additionally, classical IPv4 PMTUD <xref
      target="RFC1191"/> has known operational issues that are exacerbated by
      in-the-network tunnels <xref target="RFC2923"/><xref
      target="RFC4459"/>.</t>

      <t>The following subsections present further details on the motivation
      and approach for addressing these issues.</t>

      <section title="Motivation">
        <t>Before discussing the approach, it is necessary to first understand
        the problems. In both the Internet and private-use networks today, IP
        is ubiquitously deployed as the Layer 3 protocol. The primary
        functions of IP are to provide for routing, addressing, and a
        fragmentation and reassembly capability used to accommodate links with
        diverse MTUs. While it is well known that the IP address space is
        rapidly becoming depleted, there is a lesser-known but growing
        consensus that other IP protocol limitations have already or may soon
        become problematic.</t>

        <t>First, the Internet historically provided no means for discerning
        whether the source addresses of IP packets are authentic. This
        shortcoming is being addressed more and more through the deployment of
        site border router ingress filters <xref target="RFC2827"/>, however
        the use of encapsulation provides a vector for an attacker to
        circumvent filtering for the encapsulated packet even if filtering is
        correctly applied to the encapsulation header. Secondly, the IP header
        does not include a well-behaved identification value unless the source
        has included a fragment header for IPv6 or unless the source permits
        fragmentation for IPv4. These limitations preclude an efficient means
        for routers to detect duplicate packets and packets that have been
        re-ordered within the subnetwork. Additionally, recent studies have
        shown that the arrival of fragments at high data rates can cause
        denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on performance-sensitive networking
        gear, prompting some administrators to configure their equipment to
        drop fragments unconditionally <xref
        target="I-D.taylor-v6ops-fragdrop"/>.</t>

        <t>For IPv4 encapsulation, when fragmentation is permitted the header
        includes a 16-bit Identification field, meaning that at most 2^16
        unique packets with the same (source, destination, protocol)-tuple can
        be active in the network at the same time <xref target="RFC6864"/>.
        (When middleboxes such as Network Address Translators (NATs) re-write
        the Identification field to random values, the number of unique
        packets is even further reduced.) Due to the escalating deployment of
        high-speed links, however, these numbers have become too small by
        several orders of magnitude for high data rate packet sources such as
        tunnel endpoints <xref target="RFC4963"/>.</t>

        <t>Furthermore, there are many well-known limitations pertaining to
        IPv4 fragmentation and reassembly – even to the point that it
        has been deemed “harmful” in both classic and modern-day
        studies (see above). In particular, IPv4 fragmentation raises issues
        ranging from minor annoyances (e.g., in-the-network router
        fragmentation <xref target="RFC1981"/>) to the potential for major
        integrity issues (e.g., mis-association of the fragments of multiple
        IP packets during reassembly <xref target="RFC4963"/>).</t>

        <t>As a result of these perceived limitations, a
        fragmentation-avoiding technique for discovering the MTU of the
        forward path from a source to a destination node was devised through
        the deliberations of the Path MTU Discovery Working Group (PMTUDWG)
        during the late 1980’s through early 1990’s which resulted
        in the publication of <xref target="RFC1191"/>. In this negative
        feedback-based method, the source node provides explicit instructions
        to routers in the path to discard the packet and return an ICMP error
        message if an MTU restriction is encountered. However, this approach
        has several serious shortcomings that lead to an overall
        “brittleness” <xref target="RFC2923"/>.</t>

        <t>In particular, site border routers in the Internet have been known
        to discard ICMP error messages coming from the outside world. This is
        due in large part to the fact that malicious spoofing of error
        messages in the Internet is trivial since there is no way to
        authenticate the source of the messages <xref target="RFC5927"/>.
        Furthermore, when a source node that requires ICMP error message
        feedback when a packet is dropped due to an MTU restriction does not
        receive the messages, a path MTU-related black hole occurs. This means
        that the source will continue to send packets that are too large and
        never receive an indication from the network that they are being
        discarded. This behavior has been confirmed through documented studies
        showing clear evidence of PMTUD failures for both IPv4 and IPv6 in the
        Internet today <xref target="TBIT"/><xref target="WAND"/><xref
        target="SIGCOMM"/><xref target="RIPE"/>.</t>

        <t>The issues with both IP fragmentation and this
        “classical” PMTUD method are exacerbated further when IP
        tunneling is used <xref target="RFC4459"/>. For example, an ingress
        tunnel endpoint (ITE) may be required to forward encapsulated packets
        into the subnetwork on behalf of hundreds, thousands, or even more
        original sources. If the ITE allows IP fragmentation on the
        encapsulated packets, persistent fragmentation could lead to
        undetected data corruption due to Identification field wrapping and/or
        reassembly congestion at the ETE. If the ITE instead uses classical IP
        PMTUD it must rely on ICMP error messages coming from the subnetwork
        that may be suspect, subject to loss due to filtering middleboxes, or
        insufficiently provisioned for translation into error messages to be
        returned to the original sources.</t>

        <t>Although recent works have led to the development of a positive
        feedback-based end-to-end MTU determination scheme <xref
        target="RFC4821"/>, they do not excuse tunnels from accounting for the
        encapsulation overhead they add to packets. Moreover, in current
        practice existing tunneling protocols mask the MTU issues by selecting
        a "lowest common denominator" MTU that may be much smaller than
        necessary for most paths and difficult to change at a later date.
        Therefore, a new approach to accommodate tunnels over links with
        diverse MTUs is necessary.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Approach">
        <t>This document concerns subnetworks manifested through a virtual
        topology configured over a connected network routing region and
        bounded by encapsulating border nodes. Example connected network
        routing regions include Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), enterprise
        networks and the global public Internet itself. Subnetwork border
        nodes forward unicast and multicast packets over the virtual topology
        across multiple IP and/or sub-IP layer forwarding hops that may
        introduce packet duplication and/or traverse links with diverse
        Maximum Transmission Units (MTUs).</t>

        <t>This document introduces a Subnetwork Encapsulation and Adaptation
        Layer (SEAL) developed by Boeing for tunneling inner network layer
        protocol packets over IP subnetworks that connect Ingress and Egress
        Tunnel Endpoints (ITEs/ETEs) of border nodes. It provides a modular
        specification designed to be tailored to specific associated tunneling
        protocols. (A transport-mode of operation is also possible, but out of
        scope for this document.)</t>

        <t>SEAL provides a mid-layer encapsulation that accommodates links
        with diverse MTUs, and allows routers in the subnetwork to perform
        efficient duplicate packet and packet reordering detection. The
        encapsulation further ensures message origin authentication, packet
        header integrity and anti-replay in environments in which these
        functions are necessary.</t>

        <t>SEAL treats tunnels that traverse the subnetwork as ordinary links
        that must support network layer services. Moreover, SEAL provides
        dynamic mechanisms to ensure a maximal path MTU over the tunnel. This
        is in contrast to static approaches which avoid MTU issues by
        selecting a lowest common denominator MTU value that may be overly
        conservative for the vast majority of tunnel paths and difficult to
        change even when larger MTUs become available.</t>

        <t>The following sections provide the SEAL normative specifications,
        while the appendices present non-normative additional
        considerations.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Differences with RFC5320">
        <t>This specification of SEAL is descended from an experimental
        independent RFC publication of the same name <xref target="RFC5320"/>.
        However, this specification introduces a number of important
        differences from the earlier publication.</t>

        <t>First, this specification includes a protocol version field in the
        SEAL header whereas <xref target="RFC5320"/> does not, and therefore
        cannot be updated by future revisions. This specification therefore
        obsoletes (i.e., and does not update) <xref target="RFC5320"/>.</t>

        <t>Secondly, <xref target="RFC5320"/> forms a 32-bit Identification
        value by concatenating the 16-bit IPv4 Identification field with a
        16-bit Identification "extension" field in the SEAL header. This means
        that <xref target="RFC5320"/> can only operate over IPv4 networks
        (since IPv6 headers do not include a 16-bit version number) and that
        the SEAL Identification value can be corrupted if the Identification
        in the outer IPv4 header is rewritten. In contrast, this specification
        includes a 32-bit Identification value that is independent of any
        identification fields found in the inner or outer IP headers, and is
        therefore compatible with any inner and outer IP protocol version
        combinations.</t>

        <t>Additionally, the SEAL segmentation and reassembly procedures
        defined in <xref target="RFC5320"/> differ significantly from those
        found in this specification. In particular, this specification defines
        a 6-bit Offset field that allows for smaller segment sizes when SEAL
        segmentation is necessary (e.g., in order to observe the IPv4 minimum
        MTU of 68 bytes). In contrast, <xref target="RFC5320"/> includes a
        3-bit Segment field and performs reassembly through concatenation of
        consecutive segments.</t>

        <t>The SEAL header in this specification also includes an optional
        Integrity Check Vector (ICV) that can be used to digitally sign the
        SEAL header and the leading portion of the encapsulated inner packet.
        This allows for a lightweight integrity check and a loose message
        origin authentication capability. The header further includes new
        control bits as well as a link identification and encapsulation level
        field for additional control capabilities.</t>

        <t>Finally, this version of SEAL includes a new messaging protocol
        known as the SEAL Control Message Protocol (SCMP), whereas <xref
        target="RFC5320"/> performs signalling through the use of
        SEAL-encapsulated ICMP messages. The use of SCMP allows SEAL-specific
        departures from ICMP, as well as a control messaging capability that
        extends to other specifications, including Virtual Enterprise
        Traversal (VET) <xref target="I-D.templin-intarea-vet"/>.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Terminology">
      <t>The following terms are defined within the scope of this
      document:</t>

      <t><list style="hanging">
          <t hangText="subnetwork"><vspace/>a virtual topology configured over
          a connected network routing region and bounded by encapsulating
          border nodes.</t>

          <t hangText="IP"><vspace/>used to generically refer to either
          Internet Protocol (IP) version, i.e., IPv4 or IPv6.</t>

          <t hangText="Ingress Tunnel Endpoint (ITE)"><vspace/>a virtual
          interface over which an encapsulating border node (host or router)
          sends encapsulated packets into the subnetwork.</t>

          <t hangText="Egress Tunnel Endpoint (ETE)"><vspace/>a virtual
          interface over which an encapsulating border node (host or router)
          receives encapsulated packets from the subnetwork.</t>

          <t hangText="SEAL Path"><vspace/>a subnetwork path from an ITE to an
          ETE beginning with an underlying link of the ITE as the first hop.
          Note that, if the ITE's interface connection to the underlying link
          assigns multiple IP addresses, each address represents a separate
          SEAL path.</t>

          <t hangText="inner packet"><vspace/>an unencapsulated network layer
          protocol packet (e.g., IPv4 <xref target="RFC0791"/>, OSI/CLNP <xref
          target="RFC0994"/>, IPv6 <xref target="RFC2460"/>, etc.) before any
          outer encapsulations are added. Internet protocol numbers that
          identify inner packets are found in the IANA Internet Protocol
          registry <xref target="RFC3232"/>. SEAL protocol packets that incur
          an additional layer of SEAL encapsulation are also considered inner
          packets.</t>

          <t hangText="outer IP packet"><vspace/>a packet resulting from
          adding an outer IP header (and possibly other outer headers) to a
          SEAL-encapsulated inner packet.</t>

          <t hangText="packet-in-error"><vspace/>the leading portion of an
          invoking data packet encapsulated in the body of an error control
          message (e.g., an ICMPv4 <xref target="RFC0792"/> error message, an
          ICMPv6 <xref target="RFC4443"/> error message, etc.).</t>

          <t hangText="Packet Too Big (PTB) message"><vspace/>a control plane
          message indicating an MTU restriction (e.g., an ICMPv6 "Packet Too
          Big" message <xref target="RFC4443"/>, an ICMPv4 "Fragmentation
          Needed" message <xref target="RFC0792"/>, etc.).</t>

          <t hangText="Don't Fragment (DF) bit"><vspace/>a bit that indicates
          whether the packet may be fragmented by the network. The DF bit is
          explicitly included in the IPv4 header <xref target="RFC0791"/> and
          may be set to '0' to allow fragmentation or '1' to disallow further
          in-network fragmentation. The bit is absent from the IPv6 header
          <xref target="RFC2460"/>, but implicitly set to '1' becauuse
          fragmentation can occur only at IPv6 sources.</t>
        </list></t>

      <t>The following abbreviations correspond to terms used within this
      document and/or elsewhere in common Internetworking nomenclature:</t>

      <t><list>
          <t>HLEN - the length of the SEAL header plus outer
          headers<vspace/></t>

          <t>ICV - Integrity Check Vector<vspace/></t>

          <t>MAC - Message Authentication Code<vspace/></t>

          <t>MTU - Maximum Transmission Unit<vspace/></t>

          <t>SCMP - the SEAL Control Message Protocol<vspace/></t>

          <t>SDU - SCMP Destination Unreachable message<vspace/></t>

          <t>SPP - SCMP Parameter Problem message<vspace/></t>

          <t>SPTB - SCMP Packet Too Big message<vspace/></t>

          <t>SEAL - Subnetwork Encapsulation and Adaptation Layer<vspace/></t>

          <t>TE - Tunnel Endpoint (i.e., either ingress or egress)
          <vspace/></t>

          <t>VET - Virtual Enterprise Traversal<vspace/></t>
        </list></t>
    </section>

    <section title="Requirements">
      <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"/>.
      When used in lower case (e.g., must, must not, etc.), these words MUST
      NOT be interpreted as described in <xref target="RFC2119"/>, but are
      rather interpreted as they would be in common English.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Applicability Statement">
      <t>SEAL was originally motivated by the specific case of subnetwork
      abstraction for Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), however the domain of
      applicability also extends to subnetwork abstractions over enterprise
      networks, ISP networks, SOHO networks, the global public Internet
      itself, and any other connected network routing region.</t>

      <t>SEAL provides a network sublayer for encapsulation of an inner
      network layer packet within outer encapsulating headers. SEAL can also
      be used as a sublayer within a transport layer protocol data payload,
      where transport layer encapsulation is typically used for Network
      Address Translator (NAT) traversal as well as operation over subnetworks
      that give preferential treatment to certain "core" Internet protocols,
      e.g., TCP, UDP, etc.. (However, note that TCP encapsulation may not be
      appropriate for all use cases; particularly those that require low delay
      and/or delay variance.) The SEAL header is processed in a similar manner
      as for IPv6 extension headers, i.e., it is not part of the outer IP
      header but rather allows for the creation of an arbitrarily extensible
      chain of headers in the same way that IPv6 does.</t>

      <t>To accommodate MTU diversity, the Ingress Tunnel Endpoint (ITE) may
      need to perform any necessary segmentation which the Egress Tunnel
      Endpoint (ETE) must reassemble. The ETE further acts as a passive
      observer that informs the ITE of any packet size limitations. This
      allows the ITE to return appropriate PMTUD feedback even if the network
      path between the ITE and ETE filters ICMP messages.</t>

      <t>SEAL further provides mechanisms to ensure message origin
      authentication, packet header integrity, and anti-replay. The SEAL
      framework is therefore similar to the IP Security (IPsec) Authentication
      Header (AH) <xref target="RFC4301"/><xref target="RFC4302"/>, however it
      provides only minimal hop-by-hop authenticating services while leaving
      full data integrity, authentication and confidentiality services as an
      end-to-end consideration.</t>

      <t>In many aspects, SEAL also very closely resembles the Generic Routing
      Encapsulation (GRE) framework <xref target="RFC1701"/>. SEAL can
      therefore be applied in the same use cases that are traditionally
      addressed by GRE, but goes beyond GRE to also provide additional
      capabilities (e.,g., path MTU accommodation, message origin
      authentication, etc.) as described in this document.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="SEAL Specification">
      <t>The following sections specify the operation of SEAL:</t>

      <section title="SEAL Tunnel Model">
        <t>SEAL is an encapsulation sublayer used within point-to-point and
        non-broadcast, multiple access (NBMA) tunnels. Each SEAL path is
        configured over one or more underlying interfaces attached to
        subnetwork links. The SEAL tunnel connects an ITE to one or more ETE
        "neighbors" via encapsulation across an underlying subnetwork, where
        the tunnel neighbor relationship may be either unidirectional or
        bidirectional.</t>

        <t>A unidirectional tunnel neighbor relationship allows the near end
        ITE to send data packets forward to the far end ETE, while the ETE
        only returns control messages when necessary. A bidirectional tunnel
        neighbor relationship is one over which both TEs can exchange both
        data and control messages.</t>

        <t>Implications of the SEAL unidirectional and bidirectional models
        are the same as discussed in <xref
        target="I-D.templin-intarea-vet"/>.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="SEAL Model of Operation">
        <t>SEAL-enabled ITEs encapsulate each inner packet in a SEAL header
        and any outer header encapsulations as shown in <xref
        target="encaps1"/>:</t>

        <t><figure anchor="encaps1" title="SEAL Encapsulation">
            <artwork><![CDATA[                             +--------------------+  
                             ~   outer IP header  ~
                             +--------------------+
                             ~  other outer hdrs  ~
                             +--------------------+
                             ~    SEAL Header     ~
+--------------------+       +--------------------+
|                    |  -->  |                    |
~        Inner       ~  -->  ~        Inner       ~
~       Packet       ~  -->  ~       Packet       ~
|                    |  -->  |                    |
+--------------------+       +----------+---------+
]]></artwork>
          </figure></t>

        <t>The ITE inserts the SEAL header according to the specific tunneling
        protocol. For simple encapsulation of an inner network layer packet
        within an outer IP header, the ITE inserts the SEAL header following
        the outer IP header and before the inner packet as: IP/SEAL/{inner
        packet}.</t>

        <t>For encapsulations over transports such as UDP, the ITE inserts the
        SEAL header following the outer transport layer header and before the
        inner packet, e.g., as IP/UDP/SEAL/{inner packet}. In that case, the
        UDP header is seen as an "other outer header" as depicted in <xref
        target="encaps1"/> and the outer IP and transport layer headers are
        together seen as the outer encapsulation headers.</t>

        <t>SEAL supports both "nested" tunneling and "re-encapsulating"
        tunneling. Nested tunneling occurs when a first tunnel is encapsulated
        within a second tunnel, which may then further be encapsulated within
        additional tunnels. Nested tunneling can be useful, and stands in
        contrast to "recursive" tunneling which is an anomalous condition
        incurred due to misconfiguration or a routing loop. Considerations for
        nested tunneling and avoiding recursive tunneling are discussed in
        Section 4 of <xref target="RFC2473"/>.</t>

        <t>Re-encapsulating tunneling occurs when a packet arrives at a first
        ETE, which then acts as an ITE to re-encapsulate and forward the
        packet to a second ETE connected to the same subnetwork. In that case
        each ITE/ETE transition represents a segment of a bridged path between
        the ITE nearest the source and the ETE nearest the destination.
        Considerations for re-encapsulating tunneling are discussed in<xref
        target="I-D.templin-ironbis"> </xref>. Combinations of nested and
        re-encapsulating tunneling are also naturally supported by SEAL.</t>

        <t>The SEAL ITE considers each underlying interface as the ingress
        attachment point to a SEAL path to the ETE. The ITE therefore may
        experience different path MTUs on different SEAL paths.</t>

        <t>Finally, the SEAL ITE ensures that the inner network layer protocol
        will see a minimum MTU of 1500 bytes over each SEAL path regardless of
        the outer network layer protocol version, i.e., even if a small amount
        of fragmentation and reassembly are necessary. This is necessary to
        avoid path MTU "black holes" for the minimum MTU configured by the
        vast majority of links in the Internet.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="SEAL Header and Trailer Format">
        <t>The SEAL header is formatted as follows:</t>

        <t><figure anchor="minimal" title="SEAL Header Format ">
            <artwork><![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
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |VER|C|A|I|V|R|RES|M|   Offset  |    NEXTHDR    | LINK_ID |LEVEL|
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                      Identification (optional)                |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                  Integrity Check Vector (optional)            |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+   ...
]]></artwork>
          </figure></t>

        <t><list style="hanging">
            <t hangText="VER (2)"><vspace/>a 2-bit version field. This
            document specifies Version 0 of the SEAL protocol, i.e., the VER
            field encodes the value 0.</t>

            <t hangText="C (1)"><vspace/>the "Control/Data" bit. Set to 1 by
            the ITE in SEAL Control Message Protocol (SCMP) control messages,
            and set to 0 in ordinary data packets.</t>

            <t hangText="A (1)"><vspace/>the "Acknowledgement Requested" bit.
            Set to 1 by the ITE in SEAL data packets for which it wishes to
            receive an explicit acknowledgement from the ETE.</t>

            <t hangText="I (1)"><vspace/>the "Identification Included"
            bit.</t>

            <t hangText="V (1)"><vspace/>the "Integrity Check Vector included"
            bit.</t>

            <t hangText="R (1)"><vspace/>the "Redirects Permitted" bit
            (reserved for use by VET:<xref target="I-D.templin-intarea-vet">
            </xref>).</t>

            <t hangText="RES (2)">a 2-bit reserved field.</t>

            <t hangText="M (1)">the "More Segments" bit. Set to 1 in a
            non-final segment and set to 0 in the final segment of the SEAL
            packet.</t>

            <t hangText="Offset (6)">a 6-bit Offset field. Set to 0 in the
            first segment of a segmented SEAL packet. Set to an integral
            number of 32 byte blocks in subsequent segments (e.g., an Offset
            of 10 indicates a block that begins at the 320th byte in the
            packet).</t>

            <t hangText="NEXTHDR (8)">an 8-bit field that encodes the next
            header Internet Protocol number the same as for the IPv4 protocol
            and IPv6 next header fields.</t>

            <t hangText="LINK_ID (5)"><vspace/>a 5-bit link identification
            value, set to a unique value by the ITE for each SEAL path over
            which it will send encapsulated packets to the ETE (up to 32 SEAL
            paths per ETE are therefore supported). Note that, if the ITE's
            interface connection to the underlying link assigns multiple IP
            addresses, each address represents a separate SEAL path that must
            be assigned a separate LINK_ID.</t>

            <t hangText="LEVEL (3)"><vspace/>a 3-bit nesting level; use to
            limit the number of tunnel nesting levels. Set to an integer value
            up to 7 in the innermost SEAL encapsulation, and decremented by 1
            for each successive additional SEAL encapsulation nesting level.
            Up to 8 levels of nesting are therefore supported.</t>

            <t hangText="Identification (32)"><vspace/>an optional 32-bit
            per-packet identification field; present when I==1. Set to a
            32-bit value (beginning with 0) that is monotonically-incremented
            for each SEAL packet transmitted to this ETE.</t>

            <t hangText="Integrity Check Vector (ICV) (variable)"><vspace/>an
            optional variable-length integrity check vector field; present
            when V==1.</t>
          </list></t>
      </section>

      <section title="ITE Specification">
        <section title="Tunnel Interface MTU">
          <t>The tunnel interface must present a constant MTU value to the
          inner network layer as the size for admission of inner packets into
          the interface. Since NBMA tunnel virtual interfaces may support a
          large set of SEAL paths that accept widely varying maximum packet
          sizes, however, a number of factors should be taken into
          consideration when selecting a tunnel interface MTU.</t>

          <t>Due to the ubiquitous deployment of standard Ethernet and similar
          networking gear, the nominal Internet cell size has become 1500
          bytes; this is the de facto size that end systems have come to
          expect will either be delivered by the network without loss due to
          an MTU restriction on the path or a suitable ICMP Packet Too Big
          (PTB) message returned. When large packets sent by end systems incur
          additional encapsulation at an ITE, however, they may be dropped
          silently within the tunnel since the network may not always deliver
          the necessary PTBs <xref target="RFC2923"/>. The ITE SHOULD
          therefore set a tunnel interface MTU of at least 1500 bytes.</t>

          <t>The inner network layer protocol consults the tunnel interface
          MTU when admitting a packet into the interface. For non-SEAL inner
          IPv4 packets with the IPv4 Don't Fragment (DF) cleared (i.e, DF==0),
          if the packet is larger than the tunnel interface MTU the inner IPv4
          layer uses IPv4 fragmentation to break the packet into fragments no
          larger than the tunnel interface MTU. The ITE then admits each
          fragment into the interface as an independent packet.</t>

          <t>For all other inner packets, the inner network layer admits the
          packet if it is no larger than the tunnel interface MTU; otherwise,
          it drops the packet and sends a PTB error message to the source with
          the MTU value set to the tunnel interface MTU. The message contains
          as much of the invoking packet as possible without the entire
          message exceeding the network layer minimum MTU size.</t>

          <t>The ITE can alternatively set an indefinite MTU on the tunnel
          interface such that all inner packets are admitted into the
          interface regardless of their size. For ITEs that host applications
          that use the tunnel interface directly, this option must be
          carefully coordinated with protocol stack upper layers since some
          upper layer protocols (e.g., TCP) derive their packet sizing
          parameters from the MTU of the outgoing interface and as such may
          select too large an initial size. This is not a problem for upper
          layers that use conservative initial maximum segment size estimates
          and/or when the tunnel interface can reduce the upper layer's
          maximum segment size, e.g., by reducing the size advertised in the
          MSS option of outgoing TCP messages (sometimes known as "MSS
          clamping").</t>

          <t>In light of the above considerations, the ITE should configure an
          indefinite MTU on tunnel *router* interfaces so that SEAL performs
          all subnetwork adaptation from within the interface as specified in
          Section 5.4.3. The ITE can instead set a smaller MTU on tunnel
          *host* interfaces (e.g., the smallest MTU among all of the
          underlying links minus the size of the encapsulation headers) but
          SHOULD NOT set an MTU smaller than 1500 bytes.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Tunnel Neighbor Soft State">
          <t>The tunnel virtual interface maintains a number of soft state
          variables for each ETE and for each SEAL path.</t>

          <t>When per-packet identification is required, the ITE maintains a
          per ETE window of Identification values for the packets it has
          recently sent to this ETE. The ITE then sets a variable "USE_ID" to
          TRUE, and includes an Identification in each packet it sends to this
          ETE; otherwise, it sets USE_ID to FALSE.</t>

          <t/>

          <t>When message origin authentication and integrity checking is
          required, the ITE also includes an ICV in the packets it sends to
          the ETE. The ICV format is shown in <xref target="icv"/>:</t>

          <t><figure anchor="icv" title="Integrity Check Vector (ICV) Format">
              <artwork><![CDATA[   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |F|Key|Algorithm|       Message Authentication Code (MAC)       |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+   ...
]]></artwork>
            </figure></t>

          <t>As shown in the figure, the ICV begins with a 1-octet control
          field with a 1-bit (F)lag, a 2-bit Key identifier and a 5-bit
          Algorithm identifier. The control octet is followed by a
          variable-length Message Authentication Code (MAC). The ITE maintains
          a per ETE algorithm and secret key to calculate the MAC in each
          packet it will send to this ETE. (By default, the ITE sets the F bit
          and Algorithm fields to 0 to indicate use of the HMAC-SHA-1
          algorithm with a 160 bit shared secret key to calculate an 80 bit
          MAC per <xref target="RFC2104"/> over the leading 128 bytes of the
          packet. Other values for F and Algorithm are out of scope.) The ITE
          then sets a variable "USE_ICV" to TRUE, and includes an ICV in each
          packet it sends to this ETE; otherwise, it sets USE_ICV to
          FALSE.</t>

          <t>For each SEAL path, the ITE must also account for encapsulation
          header lengths. The ITE therefore maintains the per SEAL path
          constant values "SHLEN" set to the length of the SEAL header,
          "THLEN" set to the length of the outer encapsulating transport layer
          headers (or 0 if outer transport layer encapsulation is not used),
          "IHLEN" set to the length of the outer IP layer header, and "HLEN"
          set to (SHLEN+THLEN+IHLEN). (The ITE must include the length of the
          uncompressed headers even if header compression is enabled when
          calculating these lengths.) In addition, the ITE maintains a per
          SEAL path variable "MAXMTU" initialized to the maximum of 1500 bytes
          and the MTU of the underlying link minus HLEN. (Thereafter, the ITE
          must not reduce MAXMTU to a value smaller than 1500 bytes.)</t>

          <t>The ITE further sets a variable 'MINMTU' to the minimum MTU for
          the SEAL path over which encapsulated packets will travel. For IPv6
          paths the ITE sets MINMTU=1280 (see: <xref target="RFC2460"/>) and
          for IPv4 paths the ITE sets MINMTU=576 even though the true MINMTU
          for IPv4 is only 68 bytes (see: <xref target="RFC0791"/>).</t>

          <t>The ITE can also set MINMTU to a larger value if there is reason
          to believe that the minimum path MTU is larger, or to a smaller
          value if there is reason to believe there may be additional
          encapsulations on the path. If this value proves too large, the ITE
          will receive PTB message feedback either from the ETE or from a
          router on the path and will be able to reduce its MINMTU to a
          smaller value.</t>

          <t>The ITE may instead maintain the packet sizing variables and
          constants as per ETE (rather than per SEAL path) values. In that
          case, the values reflect the lowest-common-denominator size across
          all of the SEAL paths associated with this ETE.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="SEAL Layer Pre-Processing">
          <t>The SEAL layer is logically positioned between the inner and
          outer network protocol layers, where the inner layer is seen as the
          (true) network layer and the outer layer is seen as the (virtual)
          data link layer. Each packet to be processed by the SEAL layer is
          either admitted into the tunnel interface by the inner network layer
          protocol as described in Section 5.4.1 or is undergoing
          re-encapsulation from within the tunnel interface. The SEAL layer
          sees the former class of packets as inner packets that include inner
          network and transport layer headers, and sees the latter class of
          packets as transitional SEAL packets that include the outer and SEAL
          layer headers that were inserted by the previous hop SEAL ITE. For
          these transitional packets, the SEAL layer re-encapsulates the
          packet with new outer and SEAL layer headers when it forwards the
          packet to the next hop SEAL ITE.</t>

          <t>We now discuss the SEAL layer pre-processing actions for these
          two classes of packets.</t>

          <section title="Inner Packet Pre-Processing">
            <t>For each inner packet admitted into the tunnel interface, if
            the packet is itself a SEAL packet (i.e., one with the port number
            for SEAL in the transport layer header or one with the protocol
            number for SEAL in the IP layer header) and the LEVEL field of the
            SEAL header contains the value 0, the ITE silently discards the
            packet.</t>

            <t>Otherwise, for non-SEAL IPv4 inner packets with DF==0 in the IP
            header and IPv6 inner packets with a fragment header and with
            (MF=0; Offset=0), if the packet is larger than (MINMTU-HLEN) the
            ITE uses IP fragmentation to fragment the packet into N roughly
            equal-length pieces, where N is minimized and each fragment is
            significantly smaller than (MINMTU-HLEN) to allow for additional
            encapsulations in the path. The ITE then submits each fragment for
            SEAL encapsulation as specified in Section 5.4.4.</t>

            <t>For all other inner packets, if the packet is no larger than
            MAXMTU for the corresponding SEAL path the ITE submits it for SEAL
            encapsulation as specified in Section 5.4.4. Otherwise, the ITE
            drops the packet and sends an ordinary ICMP PTB message
            appropriate to the inner protocol version with the MTU field set
            to MAXMTU. (For IPv4 SEAL packets with DF==0, the ITE should set
            DF=1 and re-calculate the IPv4 header checksum before generating
            the PTB message in order to avoid bogon filters.) After sending
            the PTB message, the ITE discards the inner packet.</t>
          </section>

          <section title="Transitional SEAL Packet Pre-Processing">
            <t>For each transitional packet that is to be processed by the
            SEAL layer from within the tunnel interface, the ITE sets aside
            the SEAL encapsulation headers that were received from the
            previous hop. Next, if the packet is no larger than MAXMTU for the
            next hop SEAL path the ITE submits it for SEAL encapsulation as
            specified in Section 5.4.4. Otherwise, the ITE drops the packet
            and sends an SCMP Packet Too Big (SPTB) message to the previous
            hop subject to rate limiting (see: Section 5.6.1.1) with the MTU
            field set to MAXMTU. After sending the SPTB message, the ITE
            discards the packet.</t>
          </section>
        </section>

        <section title="SEAL Encapsulation and Segmentation">
          <t>For each inner packet/fragment submitted for SEAL encapsulation,
          the ITE next encapsulates the packet in a SEAL header formatted as
          specified in Section 5.3. The SEAL header includes an Identification
          field when USE_ID is TRUE, followed by an ICV field when USE_ICV is
          TRUE.</t>

          <t>The ITE next sets C=0 and RES=0 in the SEAL header. The ITE also
          sets A=1 if necessary for ETE reachability determination (see:
          Section 5.4.6) or for stateful MTU determination (see Section
          5.4.9). Otherwise, the ITE sets A=0.</t>

          <t>The ITE then sets LINK_ID to the value assigned to the underlying
          SEAL path, and sets NEXTHDR to the protocol number corresponding to
          the address family of the encapsulated inner packet. For example,
          the ITE sets NEXTHDR to the value '4' for encapsulated IPv4 packets
          <xref target="RFC2003"/>, '41' for encapsulated IPv6 packets <xref
          target="RFC2473"/><xref target="RFC4213"/>, '80' for encapsulated
          OSI/CLNP packets <xref target="RFC1070"/>, etc.</t>

          <t>Next, if the inner packet is not itself a SEAL packet the ITE
          sets LEVEL to an integer value between 0 and 7 as a specification of
          the number of additional layers of nested SEAL encapsulations
          permitted. If the inner packet is a SEAL packet that is undergoing
          nested encapsulation, the ITE instead sets LEVEL to the value that
          appears in the inner packet's SEAL header minus 1. If the inner
          packet is undergoing SEAL re-encapsulation, the ITE instead copies
          the LEVEL value from the SEAL header of the packet to be
          re-encapsulated.</t>

          <t>Next, if the inner packet is no larger than (MINMTU-HLEN) or
          larger than 1500, the ITE sets (M=0; Offset=0). Otherwise, the ITE
          breaks the inner packet into a N roughly equal-length
          non-overlapping segments (where N is minimized and each fragment is
          significantly smaller than (MINMTU-HLEN) to allow for additional
          encapsulations in the path) then appends a clone of the SEAL header
          from the first segment onto the head of each additional segment. The
          ITE then sets (M=1; Offset=0) in the first segment, sets (M=0/1;
          Offset=i) in the second segment, sets (M=0/1; Offset=j) in the third
          segment (if needed), etc., then finally sets (M=0; Offset=k) in the
          final segment (where i, j, k, etc. are the number of 32 byte blocks
          that preceded this segment).</t>

          <t>When USE_ID is FALSE, the ITE next sets I=0. Otherwise, the ITE
          sets I=1 and writes a monotonically-incrementing integer value for
          this ETE in the Identification field beginning with 0 in the first
          packet transmitted. (For SEAL packets that have been split into
          multiple pieces, the ITE writes the same Identification value in
          each piece.) The monotonically-incrementing requirement is to
          satisfy ETEs that use this value for anti-replay purposes. The value
          is incremented modulo 2^32, i.e., it wraps back to 0 when the
          previous value was (2^32 - 1).</t>

          <t>When USE_ICV is FALSE, the ITE next sets V=0. Otherwise, the ITE
          sets V=1, includes an ICV and calculates the MAC using HMAC-SHA-1
          with a 160 bit secret key and 80 bit MAC field. Beginning with the
          SEAL header, the ITE sets the ICV field to 0, calculates the MAC
          over the leading 128 bytes of the packet (or up to the end of the
          packet if there are fewer than 128 bytes) and places the result in
          the MAC field. (For SEAL packets that have been split into multiple
          pieces, each piece calculates its own MAC.) The ITE then writes the
          value 0 in the F flag and 0x00 in the Algorithm field of the ICV
          control octet (other values for these fields, and other MAC
          calculation disciplines, are outside the scope of this document and
          may be specified in future documents.)</t>

          <t>The ITE then adds the outer encapsulating headers as specified in
          Section 5.4.5.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Outer Encapsulation">
          <t>Following SEAL encapsulation, the ITE next encapsulates each
          segment in the requisite outer transport (when necessary) and IP
          layer headers. When a transport layer header such as UDP or TCP is
          included, the ITE writes the port number for SEAL in the transport
          destination service port field.</t>

          <t>When UDP encapsulation is used, the ITE sets the UDP checksum
          field to zero for IPv4 packets and also sets the UDP checksum field
          to zero for IPv6 packets even though IPv6 generally requires UDP
          checksums. Further considerations for setting the UDP checksum field
          for IPv6 packets are discussed in <xref
          target="I-D.ietf-6man-udpzero"/><xref
          target="I-D.ietf-6man-udpchecksums"/>.</t>

          <t>The ITE then sets the outer IP layer headers the same as
          specified for ordinary IP encapsulation (e.g., <xref
          target="RFC1070"/><xref target="RFC2003"/><xref
          target="RFC2473">,</xref><xref target="RFC4213">,</xref>, etc.)
          except that for ordinary SEAL packets the ITE copies the "TTL/Hop
          Limit", "Type of Service/Traffic Class" and "Congestion Experienced"
          values in the inner network layer header into the corresponding
          fields in the outer IP header. For transitional SEAL packets
          undergoing re-encapsulation, the ITE instead copies the "TTL/Hop
          Limit", "Type of Service/Traffic Class" and "Congestion Experienced"
          values in the outer IP header of the received packet into the
          corresponding fields in the outer IP header of the packet to be
          forwarded (i.e., the values are transferred between outer headers
          and *not* copied from the inner network layer header).</t>

          <t>The ITE also sets the IP protocol number to the appropriate value
          for the first protocol layer within the encapsulation (e.g., UDP,
          TCP, SEAL, etc.). When IPv6 is used as the outer IP protocol, the
          ITE then sets the flow label value in the outer IPv6 header the same
          as described in <xref target="RFC6438"/>. When IPv4 is used as the
          outer IP protocol, the ITE instead sets DF=0 in the IPv4 header to
          allow the packet to be fragmented if it encounters a restricting
          link (for IPv6 SEAL paths, the DF bit is implicitly set to 1).</t>

          <t>The ITE finally sends each outer packet via the underlying link
          corresponding to LINK_ID.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Path Probing and ETE Reachability Verification">
          <t>All SEAL data packets sent by the ITE are considered implicit
          probes. SEAL data packets will elicit an SCMP message from the ETE
          if it needs to acknowledge a probe and/or report an error condition.
          SEAL data packets may also be dropped by either the ETE or a router
          on the path, which may or may not result in an ICMP message being
          returned to the ITE.</t>

          <t>The ITE processes ICMP messages as specified in Section
          5.4.7.</t>

          <t>The ITE processes SCMP messages as specified in Section
          5.6.2.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Processing ICMP Messages">
          <t>When the ITE sends SEAL packets, it may receive ICMP error
          messages <xref target="RFC0792"/><xref target="RFC4443"/> from an
          ordinary router within the subnetwork. Each ICMP message includes an
          outer IP header, followed by an ICMP header, followed by a portion
          of the SEAL data packet that generated the error (also known as the
          "packet-in-error") beginning with the outer IP header.</t>

          <t>The ITE should process ICMPv4 Protocol Unreachable messages and
          ICMPv6 Parameter Problem messages with Code "Unrecognized Next
          Header type encountered" as a hint that the IP destination address
          does not implement SEAL. The ITE can optionally ignore ICMP messages
          that do not include sufficient information in the packet-in-error,
          or process them as a hint that the SEAL path may be failing.</t>

          <t>For other ICMP messages, the ITE should use any outer header
          information available as a first-pass authentication filter (e.g.,
          to determine if the source of the message is within the same
          administrative domain as the ITE) and discards the message if first
          pass filtering fails.</t>

          <t>Next, the ITE examines the packet-in-error beginning with the
          SEAL header. If the value in the Identification field (if present)
          is not within the window of packets the ITE has recently sent to
          this ETE, or if the MAC value in the SEAL header ICV field (if
          present) is incorrect, the ITE discards the message.</t>

          <t>Next, if the received ICMP message is a PTB the ITE sets the
          temporary variable "PMTU" for this SEAL path to the MTU value in the
          PTB message. If PMTU==0, the ITE consults a plateau table (e.g., as
          described in <xref target="RFC1191"/>) to determine PMTU based on
          the length field in the outer IP header of the packet-in-error. For
          example, if the ITE receives a PTB message with MTU==0 and length
          4KB, it can set PMTU=2KB. If the ITE subsequently receives a PTB
          message with MTU==0 and length 2KB, it can set PMTU=1792, etc. to a
          minimum value of PMTU=(1500+HLEN). If the ITE is performing stateful
          MTU determination for this SEAL path (see Section 5.4.9), the ITE
          next sets MAXMTU=MAX((PMTU-HLEN), 1500).</t>

          <t>If the ICMP message was not discarded, the ITE then transcribes
          it into a message to return to the previous hop. If the inner packet
          was a SEAL data packet, the ITE transcribes the ICMP message into an
          SCMP message. Otherwise, the ITE transcribes the ICMP message into a
          message appropriate for the inner protocol version.</t>

          <t>To transcribe the message, the ITE extracts the inner packet from
          within the ICMP message packet-in-error field and uses it to
          generate a new message corresponding to the type of the received
          ICMP message. For SCMP messages, the ITE generates the message the
          same as described for ETE generation of SCMP messages in Section
          5.6.1. For (S)PTB messages, the ITE writes (PMTU-HLEN) in the MTU
          field.</t>

          <t>The ITE finally forwards the transcribed message to the previous
          hop toward the inner source address.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="IPv4 Middlebox Reassembly Testing">
          <t>The ITE can perform a qualification exchange to ensure that the
          subnetwork correctly delivers fragments to the ETE. This procedure
          can be used, e.g., to determine whether there are middleboxes on the
          path that violate the <xref target="RFC1812"/>, Section 5.2.6
          requirement that: "A router MUST NOT reassemble any datagram before
          forwarding it".</t>

          <t>The ITE should use knowledge of its topological arrangement as an
          aid in determining when middlebox reassembly testing is necessary.
          For example, if the ITE is aware that the ETE is located somewhere
          in the public Internet, middlebox reassembly testing should not be
          necessary. If the ITE is aware that the ETE is located behind a NAT
          or a firewall, however, then reassembly testing can be used to
          detect middleboxes that do not conform to specifications.</t>

          <t>The ITE can perform a middlebox reassembly test by selecting a
          data packet to be used as a probe. While performing the test with
          real data packets, the ITE should select only inner packets that are
          no larger than (1500-HLEN) bytes for testing purposes. The ITE can
          also construct a dummy probe packet instead of using ordinary SEAL
          data packets.</t>

          <t>To generate a dummy probe packet, the ITE creates a packet buffer
          beginning with the same outer headers, SEAL header and inner network
          layer header that would appear in an ordinary data packet, then pads
          the packet with random data to a length that is at least 128 bytes
          but no longer than (1500-HLEN) bytes. The ITE then writes the value
          '0' in the inner network layer TTL (for IPv4) or Hop Limit (for
          IPv6) field.</t>

          <t>The ITE then sets C=0 in the SEAL header of the probe packet and
          sets the NEXTHDR field to the inner network layer protocol type.
          (The ITE may also set A=1 if it requires a positive acknowledgement;
          otherwise, it sets A=0.) Next, the ITE sets LINK_ID and LEVEL to the
          appropriate values for this SEAL path, sets Identification and I=1
          (when USE_ID is TRUE), then finally calculates the ICV and sets V=1
          (when USE_ICV is TRUE).</t>

          <t>The ITE then encapsulates the probe packet in the appropriate
          outer headers, splits it into two outer IPv4 fragments, then sends
          both fragments over the same SEAL path.</t>

          <t>The ITE should send a series of probe packets (e.g., 3-5 probes
          with 1sec intervals between tests) instead of a single isolated
          probe in case of packet loss. If the ETE returns an SCMP PTB message
          with MTU != 0, then the SEAL path correctly supports fragmentation;
          otherwise, the ITE enables stateful MTU determination for this SEAL
          path as specified in Section 5.4.9.</t>

          <t>(Examples of middleboxes that may perform reassembly include
          stateful NATs and firewalls. Such devices could still allow for
          stateless MTU determination if they gather the fragments of a
          fragmented IPv4 SEAL data packet for packet analysis purposes but
          then forward the fragments on to the final destination rather than
          forwarding the reassembled packet.)</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Stateful MTU Determination">
          <t>SEAL supports a stateless MTU determination capability, however
          the ITE may in some instances wish to impose a stateful MTU limit on
          a particular SEAL path. For example, when the ETE is situated behind
          a middlebox that performs IPv4 reassembly (see: Section 5.4.8) it is
          imperative that fragmentation be avoided. In other instances (e.g.,
          when the SEAL path includes performance-constrained links), the ITE
          may deem it necessary to cache a conservative static MTU in order to
          avoid sending large packets that would only be dropped due to an MTU
          restriction somewhere on the path.</t>

          <t>To determine a static MTU value, the ITE sends a series of dummy
          probe packets of various sizes to the ETE with A=1 in the SEAL
          header and DF=1 in the outer IP header. The ITE then caches the size
          'S' of the largest packet for which it receives a probe reply from
          the ETE by setting MAXMTU=MAX((S-HLEN), 1500) for this SEAL
          path.</t>

          <t>For example, the ITE could send probe packets of 4KB, followed by
          2KB, followed by 1792 bytes, etc. While probing, the ITE processes
          any ICMP PTB message it receives as a potential indication of probe
          failure then discards the message.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Detecting Path MTU Changes">
          <t>When stateful MTU determination is used, the ITE SHOULD
          periodically reset MAXMTU and/or re-probe the path to determine
          whether MAXMTU has increased. If the path still has a too-small MTU,
          the ITE will receive a PTB message that reports a smaller size.</t>
        </section>
      </section>

      <section title="ETE Specification">
        <section title="Minimum Reassembly Buffer Requirements">
          <t>For IPv6, the ETE must configure a minimum reassembly buffer size
          of (1500 + HLEN) bytes for the reassembly of outer IPv6 packets,
          i.e., even though the true minimum reassembly size for IPv6 is only
          1500 bytes <xref target="RFC2460"/>. For IPv4, the ETE must also
          configure a minimum reassembly buffer size of (1500 + HLEN) bytes
          for the reassembly of outer IPv4 packets, i.e., even though the true
          minimum reassembly size for IPv4 is only 576 bytes <xref
          target="RFC1122"/>.</t>

          <t>In addition to this outer reassembly buffer requirement, the ETE
          must further configure a minimum SEAL reassembly buffer size of
          (1500 + HLEN) bytes for the reassembly of segmented SEAL packets
          (see: Section 5.5.4).</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Tunnel Neighbor Soft State">
          <t>When message origin authentication and integrity checking is
          required, the ETE maintains a per-ITE MAC calculation algorithm and
          a symmetric secret key to verify the MAC. When per-packet
          identification is required, the ETE also maintains a window of
          Identification values for the packets it has recently received from
          this ITE.</t>

          <t>When the tunnel neighbor relationship is bidirectional, the ETE
          further maintains a per SEAL path mapping of outer IP and transport
          layer addresses to the LINK_ID that appears in packets received from
          the ITE.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="IP-Layer Reassembly">
          <t>The ETE reassembles fragmented IP packets that are explcitly
          addressed to itself. For IP fragments that are received via a SEAL
          tunnel, the ETE SHOULD maintain conservative reassembly cache high-
          and low-water marks. When the size of the reassembly cache exceeds
          this high-water mark, the ETE SHOULD actively discard stale
          incomplete reassemblies (e.g., using an Active Queue Management
          (AQM) strategy) until the size falls below the low-water mark. The
          ETE SHOULD also actively discard any pending reassemblies that
          clearly have no opportunity for completion, e.g., when a
          considerable number of new fragments have arrived before a fragment
          that completes a pending reassembly arrives.</t>

          <t>The ETE processes non-SEAL IP packets as specified in the
          normative references, i.e., it performs any necessary IP reassembly
          then discards the packet if it is larger than the reassembly buffer
          size or delivers the (fully-reassembled) packet to the appropriate
          upper layer protocol module.</t>

          <t>For SEAL packets, the ETE performs any necessary IP reassembly
          then submits the packet for SEAL decapsulation as specified in
          Section 5.5.4. (Note that if the packet is larger than the
          reassembly buffer size, the ETE still examines the leading portion
          of the (partially) reassembled packet during decapsulation as
          specified in the next section.)</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Decapsulation and Re-Encapsulation">
          <t>For each SEAL packet accepted for decapsulation, when I==1 the
          ETE first examines the Identification field. If the Identification
          is not within the window of acceptable values for this ITE, the ETE
          silently discards the packet.</t>

          <t>Next, if V==1 the ETE SHOULD verify the MAC value (with the MAC
          field itself reset to 0) and silently discard the packet if the
          value is incorrect.</t>

          <t>Next, if the packet arrived as multiple IP fragments, the ETE
          sends an SPTB message back to the ITE with MTU set to the size of
          the largest fragment received minus HLEN (see: Section 5.6.1.1).</t>

          <t>Next, if the packet arrived as multiple IP fragments and the
          inner packet is larger than 1500 bytes, the ETE silently discards
          the packet; otherwise, it continues to process the packet.</t>

          <t>Next, if there is an incorrect value in a SEAL header field
          (e.g., an incorrect "VER" field value), the ETE discards the packet.
          If the SEAL header has C==0, the ETE also returns an SCMP "Parameter
          Problem" (SPP) message (see Section 5.6.1.2).</t>

          <t>Next, if the SEAL header has C==1, the ETE processes the packet
          as an SCMP packet as specified in Section 5.6.2. Otherwise, the ETE
          continues to process the packet as a SEAL data packet.</t>

          <t>Next, if the SEAL header has (M==1 || Offset!==0) the ETE checks
          to see if the other segments of this already-segmented SEAL packet
          have arrived, i.e., by looking for additional segments that have the
          same outer IP source address, destination address, source transport
          port number (if present) and SEAL Identification value. If the other
          segments have already arrived, the ETE discards the SEAL header and
          other outer headers from the non-initial segments and appends them
          onto the end of the first segment according to their offset value.
          Otherwise, the ETE caches the segment for at most 60 seconds while
          awaiting the arrival of its partners. During this process, the ETE
          discards any segments that are overlapping with respect to segments
          that have already been received. The ETE further SHOULD manage the
          SEAL reassembly cache the same as described for the IP-Layer
          Reassembly cache in Section 5.5.3, i.e., it SHOULD perform an early
          discard for any pending reassemblies that have low probability of
          completion.</t>

          <t>Next, if the SEAL header in the (reassembled) packet has A==1,
          the ETE sends an SPTB message back to the ITE with MTU=0 (see:
          Section 5.6.1.1).</t>

          <t>Finally, the ETE discards the outer headers and processes the
          inner packet according to the header type indicated in the SEAL
          NEXTHDR field. If the inner (TTL / Hop Limit) field encodes the
          value 0, the ETE silently discards the packet. Otherwise, if the
          next hop toward the inner destination address is via a different
          interface than the SEAL packet arrived on, the ETE discards the SEAL
          header and delivers the inner packet either to the local host or to
          the next hop interface if the packet is not destined to the local
          host.</t>

          <t>If the next hop is on the same interface the SEAL packet arrived
          on, however, the ETE submits the packet for SEAL re-encapsulation
          beginning with the specification in Section 5.4.3 above and without
          decrementing the value in the inner (TTL / Hop Limit) field. In this
          process, the packet remains within the tunnel (i.e., it does not
          exit and then re-enter the tunnel); hence, the packet is not
          discarded if the LEVEL field in the SEAL header contains the value
          0.</t>
        </section>
      </section>

      <section title="The SEAL Control Message Protocol (SCMP)">
        <t>SEAL provides a companion SEAL Control Message Protocol (SCMP) that
        uses the same message types and formats as for the Internet Control
        Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6) <xref target="RFC4443"/>. As for
        ICMPv6, each SCMP message includes a 32-bit header and a
        variable-length body. The ITE encapsulates the SCMP message in a SEAL
        header and outer headers as shown in <xref target="scmpencaps"/>:</t>

        <t><figure anchor="scmpencaps" title="SCMP Message Encapsulation">
            <artwork><![CDATA[                                    +--------------------+
                                    ~   outer IP header  ~
                                    +--------------------+
                                    ~  other outer hdrs  ~
                                    +--------------------+
                                    ~    SEAL Header     ~
       +--------------------+       +--------------------+
       | SCMP message header|  -->  | SCMP message header|
       +--------------------+       +--------------------+
       |                    |  -->  |                    |
       ~  SCMP message body ~  -->  ~  SCMP message body ~
       |                    |  -->  |                    |
       +--------------------+       +--------------------+
 
            SCMP Message                  SCMP Packet
        before encapsulation          after encapsulation]]></artwork>
          </figure></t>

        <t>The following sections specify the generation, processing and
        relaying of SCMP messages.</t>

        <section title="Generating SCMP Error Messages">
          <t>ETEs generate SCMP error messages in response to receiving
          certain SEAL data packets using the format shown in <xref
          target="control2"/>:</t>

          <t><figure anchor="control2" title="SCMP Error Message Format">
              <artwork><![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
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |     Type      |     Code      |           Checksum            |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                      Type-Specific Data                       |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |      As much of the invoking SEAL data packet as possible     |
   ~       (beginning with the SEAL header) without the SCMP       ~
   |             packet exceeding MINMTU bytes (*)                 |

   (*) also known as the "packet-in-error"]]></artwork>
            </figure>The error message includes the 32-bit SCMP message
          header, followed by a 32-bit Type-Specific Data field, followed by
          the leading portion of the invoking SEAL data packet beginning with
          the SEAL header as the "packet-in-error". The packet-in-error
          includes as much of the invoking packet as possible extending to a
          length that would not cause the entire SCMP packet following outer
          encapsulation to exceed MINMTU bytes.</t>

          <t>When the ETE processes a SEAL data packet for which the
          Identification and ICV values are correct but an error must be
          returned, it prepares an SCMP error message as shown in <xref
          target="control2"/>. The ETE sets the Type and Code fields to the
          same values that would appear in the corresponding ICMPv6 message
          <xref target="RFC4443"/>, but calculates the Checksum beginning with
          the SCMP message header using the algorithm specified for ICMPv4 in
          <xref target="RFC0792"/>.</t>

          <t>The ETE next encapsulates the SCMP message in the requisite SEAL
          and outer headers as shown in <xref target="scmpencaps"/>. During
          encapsulation, the ETE sets the outer destination address/port
          numbers of the SCMP packet to the values associated with the ITE and
          sets the outer source address/port numbers to its own outer
          address/port numbers.</t>

          <t>The ETE then sets (C=1; A=0; RES=0; M=0; Offset=0) in the SEAL
          header, then sets I, V, NEXTHDR and LEVEL to the same values that
          appeared in the SEAL header of the data packet. If the neighbor
          relationship between the ITE and ETE is unidirectional, the ETE next
          sets the LINK_ID field to the same value that appeared in the SEAL
          header of the data packet. Otherwise, the ETE sets the LINK_ID field
          to the value it would use in sending a SEAL packet to this ITE.</t>

          <t>When I==1, the ETE next sets the Identification field to an
          appropriate value for the ITE. If the neighbor relationship between
          the ITE and ETE is unidirectional, the ETE sets the Identification
          field to the same value that appeared in the SEAL header of the data
          packet. Otherwise, the ETE sets the Identification field to the
          value it would use in sending the next SEAL packet to this ITE.</t>

          <t>When V==1, the ETE then prepares the ICV field the same as
          specified for SEAL data packet encapsulation in Section 5.4.4.</t>

          <t>Finally, the ETE sends the resulting SCMP packet to the ITE the
          same as specified for SEAL data packets in Section 5.4.5.</t>

          <t>The following sections describe additional considerations for
          various SCMP error messages:</t>

          <section title="Generating SCMP Packet Too Big (SPTB) Messages">
            <t>An ETE generates an SPTB message when it receives a SEAL data
            packet that arrived as multiple outer IP fragments. The ETE
            prepares the SPTB message the same as for the corresponding ICMPv6
            PTB message, and writes the length of the largest outer IP
            fragment received minus HLEN in the MTU field of the message.</t>

            <t>The ETE also generates an SPTB message when it accepts a SEAL
            protocol data packet with A==1 in the SEAL header. The ETE
            prepares the SPTB message the same as above, except that it writes
            the value 0 in the MTU field.</t>
          </section>

          <section title="Generating Other SCMP Error Messages">
            <t>An ETE generates an SCMP "Destination Unreachable" (SDU)
            message under the same circumstances that an IPv6 system would
            generate an ICMPv6 Destination Unreachable message.</t>

            <t>An ETE generates an SCMP "Parameter Problem" (SPP) message when
            it receives a SEAL packet with an incorrect value in the SEAL
            header.</t>

            <t>TEs generate other SCMP message types using methods and
            procedures specified in other documents. For example, SCMP message
            types used for tunnel neighbor coordinations are specified in VET
            <xref target="I-D.templin-intarea-vet"/>.</t>
          </section>
        </section>

        <section title="Processing SCMP Error Messages">
          <t>An ITE may receive SCMP messages with C==1 in the SEAL header
          after sending packets to an ETE. The ITE first verifies that the
          outer addresses of the SCMP packet are correct, and (when I==1) that
          the Identification field contains an acceptable value. The ITE next
          verifies that the SEAL header fields are set correctly as specified
          in Section 5.6.1. When V==1, the ITE then verifies the ICV. The ITE
          next verifies the Checksum value in the SCMP message header. If any
          of these values are incorrect, the ITE silently discards the
          message; otherwise, it processes the message as follows:</t>

          <section title="Processing SCMP PTB Messages">
            <t>After an ITE sends a SEAL data packet to an ETE, it may receive
            an SPTB message with a packet-in-error containing the leading
            portion of the packet (see: Section 5.6.1.1). For IP SPTB messages
            with MTU==0, the ITE processes the message as confirmation that
            the ETE received a SEAL data packet with A==1 in the SEAL header.
            The ITE then discards the message.</t>

            <!--The following sentence should be reconsidered. Do we want to allow for a variable MINMTU, or should we keep it as constant????-->

            <t>For SPTB messages with MTU != 0, the ITE processes the message
            as an indication of a packet size limitation as follows. If the
            inner packet is no larger than 1500 bytes, the ITE reduces its
            MINMTU value for this ITE. If the inner packet length is larger
            than 1500 and the MTU value is not substantially less than MINMTU
            bytes, the value is likely to reflect the true MTU of the
            restricting link on the path to the ETE; otherwise, a router on
            the path may be generating runt fragments.</t>

            <t>In that case, the ITE can consult a plateau table (e.g., as
            described in <xref target="RFC1191"/>) to rewrite the MTU value to
            a reduced size. For example, if the ITE receives an IPv4 SPTB
            message with MTU==256 and inner packet length 4KB, it can rewrite
            the MTU to 2KB. If the ITE subsequently receives an IPv4 SPTB
            message with MTU==256 and inner packet length 2KB, it can rewrite
            the MTU to 1792, etc., to a minimum of 1500 bytes. If the ITE is
            performing stateful MTU determination for this SEAL path, it then
            writes the new MTU value minus HLEN in MAXMTU.</t>

            <t>The ITE then checks its forwarding tables to discover the
            previous hop toward the source address of the inner packet. If the
            previous hop is reached via the same tunnel interface the SPTB
            message arrived on, the ITE relays the message to the previous
            hop. In order to relay the message, the first writes zero in the
            Identification and ICV fields of the SEAL header within the
            packet-in-error. The ITE next rewrites the outer SEAL header
            fields with values corresponding to the previous hop and
            recalculates the MAC using the MAC calculation parameters
            associated with the previous hop. Next, the ITE replaces the
            SPTB's outer headers with headers of the appropriate protocol
            version and fills in the header fields as specified in Section
            5.4.5, where the destination address/port correspond to the
            previous hop and the source address/port correspond to the ITE.
            The ITE then sends the message to the previous hop the same as if
            it were issuing a new SPTB message. (Note that, in this process,
            the values within the SEAL header of the packet-in-error are
            meaningless to the previous hop and therefore cannot be used by
            the previous hop for authentication purposes.)</t>

            <t>If the previous hop is not reached via the same tunnel
            interface, the ITE instead transcribes the message into a format
            appropriate for the inner packet (i.e., the same as described for
            transcribing ICMP messages in Section 5.4.7) and sends the
            resulting transcribed message to the original source. (NB: if the
            inner packet within the SPTB message is an IPv4 SEAL packet with
            DF==0, the ITE should set DF=1 and re-calculate the IPv4 header
            checksum while transcribing the message in order to avoid bogon
            filters.) The ITE then discards the SPTB message.</t>

            <t>Note that the ITE may receive an SPTB message from another ITE
            that is at the head end of a nested level of encapsulation. The
            ITE has no security associations with this nested ITE, hence it
            should consider this SPTB message the same as if it had received
            an ICMP PTB message from an ordinary router on the path to the
            ETE. That is, the ITE should examine the packet-in-error field of
            the SPTB message and only process the message if it is able to
            recognize the packet as one it had previously sent.</t>
          </section>

          <section title="Processing Other SCMP Error Messages">
            <t>An ITE may receive an SDU message with an appropriate code
            under the same circumstances that an IPv6 node would receive an
            ICMPv6 Destination Unreachable message. The ITE either transcribes
            or relays the message toward the source address of the inner
            packet within the packet-in-error the same as specified for SPTB
            messages in Section 5.6.2.1.</t>

            <t>An ITE may receive an SPP message when the ETE receives a SEAL
            packet with an incorrect value in the SEAL header. The ITE should
            examine the SEAL header within the packet-in-error to determine
            whether a different setting should be used in subsequent packets,
            but does not relay the message further.</t>

            <t>TEs process other SCMP message types using methods and
            procedures specified in other documents. For example, SCMP message
            types used for tunnel neighbor coordinations are specified in VET
            <xref target="I-D.templin-intarea-vet"/>.</t>
          </section>
        </section>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Link Requirements">
      <t>Subnetwork designers are expected to follow the recommendations in
      Section 2 of <xref target="RFC3819"/> when configuring link MTUs.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="End System Requirements">
      <t>End systems are encouraged to implement end-to-end MTU assurance
      (e.g., using Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery (PLPMTUD) per <xref
      target="RFC4821"/>) even if the subnetwork is using SEAL.</t>

      <t>When end systems use PLPMTUD, SEAL will ensure that the tunnel
      behaves as a link in the path that assures an MTU of at least 1500 bytes
      while not precluding discovery of larger MTUs. The PMPMTUD mechanism
      will therefore be able to function as designed in order to discover and
      utilize larger MTUs.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Router Requirements">
      <t>Routers within the subnetwork are expected to observe the standard IP
      router requirements, including the implementation of IP fragmentation
      and reassembly as well as the generation of ICMP messages <xref
      target="RFC0792"/><xref target="RFC1122"/><xref target="RFC1812"/><xref
      target="RFC2460"/><xref target="RFC4443"/><xref target="RFC6434"/>.</t>

      <t>Note that, even when routers support existing requirements for the
      generation of ICMP messages, these messages are often filtered and
      discarded by middleboxes on the path to the original source of the
      message that triggered the ICMP. It is therefore not possible to assume
      delivery of ICMP messages even when routers are correctly
      implemented.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Nested Encapsulation Considerations">
      <t>SEAL supports nested tunneling for up to 8 layers of encapsulation.
      In this model, the SEAL ITE has a tunnel neighbor relationship only with
      ETEs at its own nesting level, i.e., it does not have a tunnel neighbor
      relationship with other ITEs, nor with ETEs at other nesting levels.</t>

      <t>Therefore, when an ITE 'A' within an outer nesting level needs to
      return an error message to an ITE 'B' within an inner nesting level, it
      generates an ordinary ICMP error message the same as if it were an
      ordinary router within the subnetwork. 'B' can then perform message
      validation as specified in Section 5.4.7, but full message origin
      authentication is not possible.</t>

      <t>Since ordinary ICMP messages are used for coordinations between ITEs
      at different nesting levels, nested SEAL encapsulations should only be
      used when the ITEs are within a common administrative domain and/or when
      there is no ICMP filtering middlebox such as a firewall or NAT between
      them. An example would be a recursive nesting of mobile networks, where
      the first network receives service from an ISP, the second network
      receives service from the first network, the third network receives
      service from the second network, etc.</t>

      <t>NB: As an alternative, the SCMP protocol could be extended to allow
      ITE 'A' to return an SCMP message to ITE 'B' rather than return an ICMP
      message. This would conceptually allow the control messages to pass
      through firewalls and NATs, however it would give no more message origin
      authentication assurance than for ordinary ICMP messages. It was
      therefore determined that the complexity of extending the SCMP protocol
      was of little value within the context of the anticipated use cases for
      nested encapsulations.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Reliability Considerations">
      <t>Although a SEAL tunnel may span an arbitrarily-large subnetwork
      expanse, the IP layer sees the tunnel as a simple link that supports the
      IP service model. Links with high bit error rates (BERs) (e.g., IEEE
      802.11) use Automatic Repeat-ReQuest (ARQ) mechanisms <xref
      target="RFC3366"/> to increase packet delivery ratios, while links with
      much lower BERs typically omit such mechanisms. Since SEAL tunnels may
      traverse arbitrarily-long paths over links of various types that are
      already either performing or omitting ARQ as appropriate, it would
      therefore be inefficient to require the tunnel endpoints to also perform
      ARQ.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Integrity Considerations">
      <t>The SEAL header includes an integrity check field that covers the
      SEAL header and at least the inner packet headers. This provides for
      header integrity verification on a segment-by-segment basis for a
      segmented re-encapsulating tunnel path.</t>

      <t>Fragmentation and reassembly schemes must also consider
      packet-splicing errors, e.g., when two fragments from the same packet
      are concatenated incorrectly, when a fragment from packet X is
      reassembled with fragments from packet Y, etc. The primary sources of
      such errors include implementation bugs and wrapping IPv4 ID fields.</t>

      <t>In particular, the IPv4 16-bit ID field can wrap with only 64K
      packets with the same (src, dst, protocol)-tuple alive in the system at
      a given time <xref target="RFC4963"/>. When the IPv4 ID field is
      re-written by a middlebox such as a NAT or Firewall, ID field wrapping
      can occur with even fewer packets alive in the system. It is therefore
      essential that IPv4 fragmentation and reassembly be avoided.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>The IANA is requested to allocate a User Port number for "SEAL" in
      the 'port-numbers' registry. The Service Name is "SEAL", and the
      Transport Protocols are TCP and UDP. The Assignee is the IESG
      (iesg@ietf.org) and the Contact is the IETF Chair (chair@ietf.org). The
      Description is "Subnetwork Encapsulation and Adaptation Layer (SEAL)",
      and the Reference is the RFC-to-be currently known as
      'draft-templin-intarea.seal'.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="security" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>SEAL provides a segment-by-segment message origin authentication,
      integrity and anti-replay service. The SEAL header is sent in-the-clear
      the same as for the outer IP and other outer headers. In this respect,
      the threat model is no different than for IPv6 extension headers. Unlike
      IPv6 extension headers, however, the SEAL header can be protected by an
      integrity check that also covers the inner packet headers.</t>

      <t>An amplification/reflection/buffer overflow attack is possible when
      an attacker sends IP fragments with spoofed source addresses to an ETE
      in an attempt to clog the ETE's reassembly buffer and/or cause the ETE
      to generate a stream of SCMP messages returned to a victim ITE. The SCMP
      message ICV, Identification, as well as the inner headers of the
      packet-in-error, provide mitigation for the ETE to detect and discard
      SEAL segments with spoofed source addresses.</t>

      <t>Security issues that apply to tunneling in general are discussed in
      <xref target="RFC6169"/>.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Related Work">
      <t>Section 3.1.7 of <xref target="RFC2764"/> provides a high-level
      sketch for supporting large tunnel MTUs via a tunnel-level segmentation
      and reassembly capability to avoid IP level fragmentation.</t>

      <t>Section 3 of <xref target="RFC4459"> </xref> describes inner and
      outer fragmentation at the tunnel endpoints as alternatives for
      accommodating the tunnel MTU.</t>

      <t>Section 4 of <xref target="RFC2460"/> specifies a method for
      inserting and processing extension headers between the base IPv6 header
      and transport layer protocol data. The SEAL header is inserted and
      processed in exactly the same manner.</t>

      <t>IPsec/AH is <xref target="RFC4301"/><xref target="RFC4301"/> is used
      for full message integrity verification between tunnel endpoints,
      whereas SEAL only ensures integrity for the inner packet headers. The
      AYIYA proposal <xref target="I-D.massar-v6ops-ayiya"/> uses similar
      means for providing message authentication and integrity.</t>

      <t>SEAL, along with the Virtual Enterprise Traversal (VET) <xref
      target="I-D.templin-intarea-vet"/> tunnel virtual interface abstraction,
      are the functional building blocks for the Interior Routing Overlay
      Network (IRON) <xref target="I-D.templin-ironbis"/> and Routing and
      Addressing in Networks with Global Enterprise Recursion (RANGER) <xref
      target="RFC5720"/><xref target="RFC6139"/> architectures.</t>

      <t>The concepts of path MTU determination through the report of
      fragmentation and extending the IPv4 Identification field were first
      proposed in deliberations of the TCP-IP mailing list and the Path MTU
      Discovery Working Group (MTUDWG) during the late 1980's and early
      1990's. An historical analysis of the evolution of these concepts, as
      well as the development of the eventual PMTUD mechanism, appears in
      <xref target="RFC5320"/>.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Implementation Status">
      <t>An early implementation of the first revision of SEAL <xref
      target="RFC5320"/> is available at: http://isatap.com/seal.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="acknowledge" title="Acknowledgments">
      <t>The following individuals are acknowledged for helpful comments and
      suggestions: Jari Arkko, Fred Baker, Iljitsch van Beijnum, Oliver
      Bonaventure, Teco Boot, Bob Braden, Brian Carpenter, Steve Casner, Ian
      Chakeres, Noel Chiappa, Remi Denis-Courmont, Remi Despres, Ralph Droms,
      Aurnaud Ebalard, Gorry Fairhurst, Washam Fan, Dino Farinacci, Joel
      Halpern, Sam Hartman, John Heffner, Thomas Henderson, Bob Hinden,
      Christian Huitema, Eliot Lear, Darrel Lewis, Joe Macker, Matt Mathis,
      Erik Nordmark, Dan Romascanu, Dave Thaler, Joe Touch, Mark Townsley, Ole
      Troan, Margaret Wasserman, Magnus Westerlund, Robin Whittle, James
      Woodyatt, and members of the Boeing Research & Technology NST
      DC&NT group.</t>

      <t>Discussions with colleagues following the publication of <xref
      target="RFC5320"/> have provided useful insights that have resulted in
      significant improvements to this, the Second Edition of SEAL.</t>

      <t>This document received substantial review input from the IESG and
      IETF area directorates in the February 2013 timeframe. IESG members and
      IETF area directorate representatives who contributed helpful comments
      and suggestions are gratefully acknowledged.</t>

      <t>Path MTU determination through the report of fragmentation was first
      proposed by Charles Lynn on the TCP-IP mailing list in 1987. Extending
      the IP identification field was first proposed by Steve Deering on the
      MTUDWG mailing list in 1989.</t>
    </section>
  </middle>

  <back>
    <references title="Normative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.0791"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.0792"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1122"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4443"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.3971"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4861"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2460"?>
    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1063"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.0994"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1146"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1191"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1701"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1981"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2003"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2473"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2827"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2923"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.3366"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.3819"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4213"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1812"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2780"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4301"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4302"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5246"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4459"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4821"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4963"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2764"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2675"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5445"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.1070"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.3232"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4191"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4987"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5720"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5226"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5320"?>

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.6335"?>

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          <author fullname="Christopher Kent" initials="C" surname="Kent">
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          <author fullname="Jeffrey Mogul" initials="J" surname="Mogul">
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          <date month="October" year="1987"/>
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          <author fullname="Colleen Shannon" initials="C" surname="Shannon">
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          <author fullname="David Moore" initials="D" surname="Moore">
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          <author fullname="k claffy" initials="k" surname="claffy">
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          <date month="December" year="2002"/>
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          <title>Measuring Interactions Between Transport Protocols and
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          <author fullname="Alberto Medina" initials="A" surname="Medina">
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          <author fullname="Mark Allman" initials="M" surname="Allman">
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          <author fullname="Sally Floyd" initials="S" surname="Floyd">
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          <date month="October" year="2004"/>
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          <author fullname="Matthew Luckie" initials="M" surname="Luckie">
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          <author fullname="Kenjiro Cho" initials="K" surname="Cho">
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          <author fullname="Bill Owens" initials="B" surname="Owens">
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          <date month="October" year="2005"/>
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          <title>Measuring Path MTU Discovery Behavior</title>

          <author fullname="Matthew Luckie" initials="M" surname="Luckie">
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          <author fullname="Ben Stasiewicz" initials="B" surname="Stasiewicz">
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          <date month="November" year="2010"/>
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          <author fullname="Maikel De Boer" initials="M" surname="De Boer">
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          <author fullname="Jeffrey Bosma" initials="J" surname="Bosma">
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PAFTECH AB 2003-20262026-04-24 11:53:23