| DHC Working Group | P. Patil |
| Internet-Draft | M. Boucadair |
| Intended status: Standards Track | France Telecom |
| Expires: August 08, 2014 | D. Wing |
| Cisco | |
| T. Reddy | |
| Cisco | |
| February 04, 2014 |
IP Connectivity Status Notifications for DHCPv6
draft-ietf-dhc-conn-status-00
This specification extends DHCPv6 so that a DHCPv6 Relay Agent can dynamically inform the DHCPv6 server about the IP connectivity status of a host. The IP connectivity status information is also triggered by any change in the connectivity as provided to the host. The DHCPv6 server uses this information as an input to its decision-making about configuration parameters to be conveyed to that host.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 08, 2014.
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Some networks are expected to support IPv4-only, dual-stack, and IPv6-only hosts at the same time. Due to devices capabilities and available connectivity types, providing generic configuration from a DHCP server to connected hosts is sub-optimal in most cases, and may even break functionality in some cases. The network infrastructure is usually well equipped to be aware of the connectivty delivered to connected hosts. The network can also track and detect transitions from single to dual-stack or vice-versa.
This document specifies a DHCPv6 extension for relay agents to indicate status of hosts connectivity to remote DHCPv6 servers. The information passed by a relay is generic and a DHCPv6 server can interpret and process this information to make a more informed decision on the configuration parameters that a client is to receive.
The DHCPv6 server can either be configured or have built-in logic to use this information as desired, which is outside the scope of this document.
Section 3 describes a typical problem that can be solved owing to the mechanism described in this specification. A DHCPv6 server prioritizes the DNS servers to be sent back to a requesting client based on host connectivity characteristics provided by the DHCPv6 relay agent.
While the host stack can be upgraded to send this information to the DHCPv6 server on its own, a generalized upgrade of all DHCPv6 client implementations on all operating systems is extremely difficult.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Dual-Stack host: Denotes a host that is configured with both an IPv4 address and IPv6 prefix and is reachable using both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity.
Default address selection rules specified in [RFC6724] prefers IPv6 over IPv4. If a dual-stack host is configured to use a DNS64 server [RFC6147], it will send its DNS queries to that DNS64 server which will synthesize a AAAA response if no A records are found. Thus, a dual-stack host will always use IPv6 if a DNS lookup was involved, even if IPv4 could have been used more optimally.
In some deployments, if NAT44 [RFC3022] and NAT64 [RFC6146] are deployed within the same network, it is preferable to use NAT44 over NAT64 because of scale, performance and application incompatibility issues (e.g., FTP) [RFC6384]. At the same time, native IPv6 can still be preferred over IPv4.
A DHCPv6 relay agent can observe host characteristics on a network to determine if a host is IPv4-only, dual-stack, or IPv6-only and also detect transitions from single to dual-stack or vice-versa. This information can be used by the DHCPv6 relay agent to influence the DHCPv6 server to send appropriately prioritized DNS Servers to the client. The DHCPv6 server can implement the following based on connectivity information received from the DHCPv6 relay agent.
The option (Figure 1) includes an 8-bit status code that indicates specific host connectivity characteristics. The option can be included by a DHCPv6 relay agent in RELAY-FORW and RECONFIGURE-REQUEST.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY | option-len |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| status | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
option-code OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY (TBA).
option-len 1.
status 8-bit field indicating IP family connectivity status
of a host. The following codes are defined:
+------+----------+
| Bit | Status |
+----- +----------+
| 1 | IPv4 |
| 2 | IPv6 |
| 3..8 | Reserved |
+------+----------+
Figure 1: Relay Agent Host Connectivity Option message format
DHCPv6 relay agents that implement this specification MUST be configurable for tracking host connectivity and inserting the OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY option in RELAY-FORW and RECONFIGURE-REQUEST messages.
To be able to notify details of hosts' connectivity, a DHCPv6 relay agent must be able to track host connectivity. A DHCPv6 relay agent can detect host connectivity type using mechanisms discussed in Section 7. The DHCPv6 relay agent then includes this information in the appropriate DHCPv6 message.
DHCPv6 relay agents need to maintain connectivity state of each host it can track. This ensures that notifications to the DHCPv6 server, especially DHCPv6 RECONFIGURE_REQUEST, are accurately sent when there is a change in status. If a DHCPv6 relay agent loses state due to some reason (e.g., during restart events), it will build state again using the mechanisms described in Section 7 and then send appropriate notifications to the server. Such notifications are redundant and a DHCPv6 server can choose to ignore such redundant notifications from the DHCPv6 relay agent. Redundant notifications are also possible when DHCPv6 relay agents are deployed in fault tolerant mode.
DHCPv6 relay agents that implement this specification MAY include the option OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY in the RELAY_FORW to indicate status of host connectivity.
DHCPv6 relay agents that implement this specification MUST be configurable for sending the RECONFIGURE_REQUEST message. The DHCPv6 relay agent generates a Reconfigure-Request [RFC6977] anytime status of host connectivity changes by including OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY in the request.
A DHCPv6 server that supports OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY may either have specific configuration or built-in logic to process information available in the option and send configuration parameters in DHCPv6 responses. How the server consumes and acts on the information obtained in the option is outside the scope of this document.
The DHCPv6 server may use this connectivity information, if available, in addition to other DHCPv6 relay agent option data, other options included in the DHCPv6 client messages, server configuration, and physical network topology information in order to assign appropriate configuration to the client.
The server MUST ignore the option if it doesn't recognize the status in the OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY option. The server SHOULD maintain the latest status received from the DHCPv6 relay agent. The server can use this state to match against subsequent notifications and only further process if there is change in status. A DHCPv6 relay agent could, for reasons such as restart, fault-tolerant mode etc, send redundant notifications and matching of status at the server will avoid unnecessary processing and message exchanges.
Upon receiving a RELAY-FORW message containing OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY, the server can send appropriate configuration in the RELAY-REPLY response. The server MUST NOT return this option in a RELAY-REPLY message.
Upon receiving a RECONIFURE-REQUEST message containing an OPTION_HOST_CONNECTIVITY option, the server MUST follow the mechanism described in [RFC6977] to create and send Reconfigure message. The server MUST NOT return this option in a RECONFIGURE-REPLY message.
DHCPv6 relay agents can actively keep track of all IPv4/IPv6 addresses and associated lease times assigned to hosts via the respective DHCP servers. DHCPv6 relay agents can therefore detect transitions from single to dual-stack and vice-versa efficiently. In addition to this technique, DHCPv6 relay agents closest to the client can detect transitions using snooping mechanisms. Network devices today use mechanisms such as ARP and NDP snooping (bindings learnt by snooping all NDP traffic, NS, NA, RS, RA) to determine host characteristics such as IPv4/IPv6 - MAC - DUID bindings. IPv4/IPv6 and MAC counters are also used to determine host liveliness.
First hop devices that implement first hop security features can also track IP address bindings and determine binding updates such as temporary addresses, deprecated addresses, etc. Existing work such as [I-D.ietf-savi-dhcp] and [I-D.levy-abegnoli-savi-plbt] also aim to active current host bindings, all of which can be leveraged to track host addresses.
These mechanisms help determine if a particular IP address family is inactive, has reverted to using a single stack even though it initially had dual-stack capabilities and detect active dual-stack usage after long periods of single-stack activity.
Other techniques to track host connectivity can be envisaged. It is out of scope of this document to provide an exhaustive list of host tracking techniques.
This document describes an application of the mechanism specified in [RFC6977].
Host tracking mechanisms MUST be reliable. If a DHCPv6 relay agent is compromised, it may be used to force an uncompromised DHCPv6 server abuse DHCPv6 clients by triggering repetitive reconfigurations. Security considerations described in [RFC6977] are applicable to this specification.
IANA is requested to assign the following new DHCPv6 Option Code in the registry maintained in http://www.iana.org/assignments/ dhcpv6-parameters:
| [RFC2119] | Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. |
| [RFC6977] | Boucadair, M. and X. Pougnard, "Triggering DHCPv6 Reconfiguration from Relay Agents", RFC 6977, July 2013. |
| [RFC3315] | Droms, R., Bound, J., Volz, B., Lemon, T., Perkins, C. and M. Carney, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6)", RFC 3315, July 2003. |