Homenet Routing Requirements
draft-howard-homenet-routing-requirements-00

Abstract

This document describes the requirements for routing in an unmanaged home network.

Status of this Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on June 01, 2012.

Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Requirements
• 3. Security Considerations
• 4. IANA Considerations
• 5. References
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

This document describes the requirements for routing in an unmanaged home network. Home networks are evolving to include multiple routers and potentially multiple possible exits. These exist may include multiple Internet access paths (through one or more multiple access providers), "walled garden" environments for video, VPN, or other service access, and smart energy devices.

2. Requirements

• Reachability between all nodes in the home network. Links may be Ethernet, WiFi, MoCA, or any other; test all solutions against mutliple L2 types.
• Border detection. Any solution will have to determine the routing boundary. It is assumed that no home networking device can handle a full routing table for the Internet, and that a home router should not be required to do so.
  • Border may be upstream ISP, or may be a device that is a gateway to SmartGrid devices, e.g. a controller that speaks RPL to 802.15.4 and foo to home net. Or there may be no border, if no external connection has been established.
  • Must be able to find “up” (a path to the Internet), but must not be dependent on “up” (Internet connectivity) existing for intra-home reachability.
  • May be discovered by routing protocol, or other means.
• Robust to routers being moved/added/removed/renumbered. Convergence time a few minutes or less.
• No configuration required. It may be acceptable to require a single password or passphrase to be entered on each device, both for security, and to establish the administrative boundary.
• Best-path is a non-requirement.
• Support for multiple upstream networks is a requirement.
  • Including wireless offload, video-only, and split-tunnel VPN scenarios.
  • It may be assumed that each upstream will be connected via a separate router, not multihomed off the same router.
  • Must support a prefix delegated from each provider. How hosts handle multiple prefixes is not a routing problem.
  • Load-balancing among providers is a non-requirement.
  • If multiple upstream networks can provide a path to the same destination (such as an Internet host), the solution must allow for backup in case the router or link to one upstream fails. Failover time should be within a few minutes.
  • Must support a "walled-garden" network. This might routing based on either source address (from the walled garden network) or destination address (to the walled garden network); support for both is not required.
  • Source address selection is out of scope for the routing solution. Choosing which address to use to look up the destination address is out of scope for the routing solution.
• Cannot assume hierarchical prefix delegation in the home, unless the Homenet working group finds consensus on a hierarchical addressing mechanism.
• A host with mutliple upstream paths to the same destination (in-home or external) should be able to use another in case on fails.
• Prevent looping.
• Should be a lightweight solution.
• Must handle multi-dwelling units or other potential dense wireless or wired networks.
• Must be resilient to running on wireless networks. Must be able to handle both wired and wireless links.
• Robustness in the face of unintentional joining of networks.

3. Security Considerations

As a requirements document, no security considerations are created. The solution should be safe from route injection to perpetrate man-in-the-middle attacks, especially in multi-dwelling or other dense/mesh networks, but this may be a link requirement more than a routing requirement.

4. IANA Considerations

There are no IANA considerations or implications that arise from this document.

5. References

Author's Address