Internet DRAFT - draft-chakrabarti-nordmark-energy-aware-nd
draft-chakrabarti-nordmark-energy-aware-nd
INTAREA WG S. Chakrabarti
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Updates: 4861 (if approved) E. Nordmark
Intended status: Standards Track Cisco Systems
Expires: September 14, 2012 M. Wasserman
Painless Security
March 13, 2012
Energy Aware IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Optimizations
draft-chakrabarti-nordmark-energy-aware-nd-02
Abstract
IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (RFC 4861) protocol has been designed for
neighbor's address resolution, unreachability detection, address
autoconfiguration, router advertisement and solicitation. With the
progress of Internet adoption on various industries including home,
wireless and machine-to-machine communications, there is a desire for
optimizing legacy IPv6 Neighbor Discovery protocol to be more
efficient in terms of number of signaling messages in the network.
Efficient IPv6 Neighbor Discovery is useful for energy-efficient
networks and as well for overlay networks such as VLANs with large
number of nodes. This document describes a method of optimizations
by reducing periodic multicast messages, frequent Neighbor
Solicitation messages and discusses interoperability with legacy IPv6
nodes. It also addresses the ND denial of service issues by
introducing node Registration procedure.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on September 14, 2012.
Copyright Notice
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Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Definition Of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Assumptions for energy-aware Neighbor Discovery . . . . . . . 6
4. The set of Requirements for Energy-awareness and
optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Basic Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Applicability Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. New Neighbor Discovery Options and Messages . . . . . . . . . 9
7.1. Address Registration Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7.2. Refresh and De-registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7.3. A New Router Advertisement Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8. Energy-aware Neighbor Discovery Messages . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9. Energy-Aware Host Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
10. The Energy Aware Default Router (NEAR) Behavior . . . . . . . 13
10.1. Router Configuration Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
11. NCE Management in Energy-Aware Routers . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
11.1. Handling ND DOS Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12. Mixed-Mode Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
13. Bootstrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
14. Handling Sleepy Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
15. Use Case Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
15.1. Data Center Routers on the link . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
15.2. Edge Routers and Home Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
15.3. M2M Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
16. Mobility Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
17. Other Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
18. Updated Neighbor Discovery Constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
19. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
20. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
21. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
22. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
23. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
23.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
23.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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1. Introduction
IPv6 ND [ND] is based on multicast signaling messages on the local
link in order to avoid broadcast messages. Following power-on and
initialization of the network in IPv6 Ethernet networks, a node joins
the solicited-node multicast address on the interface and then
performs duplicate address detection (DAD) for the acquired link-
local address by sending a solicited-node multicast message to the
link. After that it sends multicast router solicitation (RS)
messages to the all-router address to solicit router advertisements.
Once the host receives a valid router advertisement (RA) with the "A"
flag, it autoconfigures the IPv6 address with the advertised prefix
in the router advertisement (RA). Besides this, the IPv6 routers
usually send router advertisements periodically on the network. RAs
are sent to the all-node multicast address. Nodes send Neighbor
Solicitation (NS) and Neighbor Advertisement (NA) messages to resolve
the IPv6 address of the destination on the link. These NS/NA
messages are also often multicast messages and it is assumed that the
node is on the same link and relies on the fact that the destination
node is always powered and generally available.
The periodic RA messages in IPv6 ND [ND], and NS/NA messages require
all IPv6 nodes in the link to be in listening mode even when they are
in idle cycle. It requires energy for the sleepy nodes which may
otherwise be sleeping during the idle period. Non-sleepy nodes also
save energy if instead of continuous listening, they actually pro-
actively synchronize their states with one or two entities in the
network. With the explosion of Internet-of-things and machine to
machine communication, more and more devices would be using IPv6
addresses in the near future. Today, most electricity usage in
United States and in developing countries are in the home buildings
and commercial buildings; the electronic Internet appliances/tablets
etc. are gaining popularities in the modern home networks. These
network of nodes must be conscious about saving energy in order to
reduce user-cost. This will eventually reduce stress on electrical
grids and carbon foot-print.
IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Optimization for 6LoWPAN [6LOWPAN-ND]
addresses many of the concerns described above by optimizing the
Router advertisement, minimizing periodic multicast packets in the
network and introducing two new options - one for node registration
and another for prefix dissemination in a network where all nodes in
the network are uniquely identified by their 64-bit Interface
Identifier. EUI-64 identifiers are recommended as unique Interface
Identifiers, however if the network is isolated from the Internet,
uniqueness of the identifiers may be obtained by other mechanisms
such as a random number generator with lowest collision rate.
Although, the ND optimization [6LOWPAN-ND] applies to 6LoWPAN
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[LOWPAN] network, the concept is mostly applicable to a power-aware
IPv6 network. Therefore, this document generalizes the address
registration and multicast reduction in [6LOWPAN-ND] to all IPv6
links.
Thus optimizing the regular IPv6 Neighbor Discovery [ND] to minimize
total number of related signaling messages without losing generality
of Neighbor Discovery and autoconfiguration and making host and
router communication reliable, is desirable in any IPv6 energy-aware
networks such as Home or Enterprise building networks and as well as
Data Centers.
The goal of this document is to provide energy-aware and optimized
Neighbor Discovery Protocols in the general IPv6 subnets and links.
Research indicates that often networked- nodes require more energy
than stand-alone nodes because a node's energy usage depends on
network messages it receives and responds. While reducing energy
consumption is essential for battery operated nodes in some machines,
saving energy actually a cost factor in business in general as the
explosion of more device usage is leading to usage of more servers
and network infrastructure in all sectors of the society and
business. Thus this document introduces the node registration
concept discussed in 6LoWPAN [LOWPAN], without handling the 'multi-
level subnets' scenarios that are not the typical usecases in classic
IPv6 subnets.
In the process, the node registration method is also deemed to be
useful for preventing Neighbor Discovery denial of service (DOS)
attacks.
The proposed changes can be used in two different ways. In one case
all the hosts and routers on a link implement the new mechanisms,
which gives the maximum benefits. In another case the link has a
mixture of new hosts and/or routers and legacy [RFC4861] hosts and
routers, operating in a mixed-mode providing some of the benefits.
In the following sections the document describes the basic operations
of registration methods, optimization of Neighbor Discovery messages,
interoperability with legacy IPv6 implementations and provides a
section on use-case scenarios where it can be typically applicable.
2. Definition Of Terms
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].
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multi-level Subnets:
It is a wireless link determined by one IPv6 off-link prefix in a
network where in order to reach a destination with same prefix a
packet may have to travel throguh one more 'intermediate' routers
which relays the packet to the next 'intermediate' router or the
host in its own.
Border Rotuer(BR):
A border router is typically located at the junction Internet and
Home Network. An IPv6 router with one interface connected to IPv6
subnet and other interface connecting to a non-classic IPv6
interface such as 6LoWPAN interface. Border router is usually the
gateway to the IPv6 network or Internet.
IPv6 ND-energy-aware Rotuer(NEAR):
It is the default Router of the single hop IPv6 subnet. This
router implements the optimizations specified in this document.
This router should be able to handle both legacy IPv6 nodes and
nodes that sends registration request.
Enery-Aware Host(EAH):
A host in a IPv6 network is considered a IPv6 node without routing
and forwarding capability. The EAH is the host which implements
the host functionality for optimized Neighbor Discovery mentioned
in this document.
Legacy IPv6 Host:
A host in a IPv6 network is considered a IPv6 node without routing
and forwarding capability and implements RFC 4861 host functions.
Legacy IPv6 Router:
An IPv6 Router which implements RFC 4861 Neighbor Discovery
protocols.
EUI-64:
It is the IEEE defined 64-bit extended unique identifier formed by
concatenation of 24-bit or 36-bit company id value by IEEE
Registration Authority and the extension identifier within that
company-id assignment. The extension identifiers are 40-bit (for
24-bit company-id) or 28-bit (for the 36-bit company-id)
respectively.
3. Assumptions for energy-aware Neighbor Discovery
o The energy-aware nodes in the network carry unique interface ID in
the network in order to form the auto-configured IPv6 address
uniquely. An EUI-64 interface ID required for global
communication.
o All nodes are single IPv6-hop away from their default router in
the subnet.
o /64-bit IPv6 prefix is used for Stateless Auto-address
configuration (SLAAC). The IPv6 Prefix may be distributed with
Router Advertisement (RA) from the default router to all the nodes
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in that link.
4. The set of Requirements for Energy-awareness and optimization
In future homes, machine-to-machine networks and Data-center Virtual
networks, it is essential to reduce unnecessary number of IPv6
Neighbor Discovery signalings for saving energy and saving bits in
the network.
In the cloud computing environment, the concept of IPv6-subnet of
link-local nodes is often extended across different networks over a
Virtual LAN. Thus reducing Neighbor Discovery signaling messages is
a key for enhanced services.
o Node Registration: Node initiated Registration and address
allocation is done in order to avoid periodic multicast Router
Advertisement messages and often Neighbor Address resolution can
be skipped as all packets go via the default router which now
knows about all the registered nodes. Node Registration enables
reduction of all-node and solicited-node multicast messages in the
subnet.
o Address allocation of registered nodes [ND] are performed using
IPv6 Autoconfiguration [AUTOCONF].
o Host initiated Registration and Refresh is done by sending a
Router Solicitation and then a Neighbor Solicitation Messge using
Address Registration Option (described below).
o The node registration may replace the requirement of doing
Duplicate Address Detection.
o Sleepy hosts are supported by this Neighbor Discovery procedures
as they are not woken up periodically by Router Advertisement
multicast messages or Neighbor Solicitation multicast messages.
Sleepy nodes may wake up in its own schedule and send unicast
registration refresh messages when needed.
o Since this document requires formation of an IPv6 address with an
unique 64-bit Interface ID(EUI-64) is required for global IPv6
addresses. If the network is an isolated one and uses ULA [ULA]
as its IPv6 address then the deployment should make sure that each
MAC address in that network has unique address and can provide a
unique 64-bit ID for each node in the network.
o /64-bit Prefix is required to form the IPv6 address.
o MTU requirement is same as IPv6 network.
5. Basic Operations
In the energy-aware IPv6 Network, the NEAR routers are the default
routers for the energy-aware hosts (EAH). During the startup or
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joining the network the host does not wait for the Router
Advertisements as the NEAR routers do not perform periodic multicast
RA as per RFC 4861. Instead, the EAH sends a multicast RS to find
out a NEAR router in the network. The RS message is the same as in
RFC 4861. The advertising routers in the link responds to the RS
message with RA with Prefix Information Option and any other options
configured in the network. If EAH hosts will look for a RA from a
NEAR (E-flag) and choose a NEAR as its default router and
consequently sends a unicast Neighbor Solicitation Message with ARO
option in order to register itself with the default router. The EAH
does not do Duplicate Address Detection or NS Resolution of
addresses. NEAR maintains a binding of registered nodes and
registration life-time information along with the neighbor Cache
information. The NEAR is responsible for forwarding all the messages
from its EAH including on-link messages from one EAH to another. For
details of protocol operations please see the sections below.
When a IPv6 network consists of both legacy hosts and EAH, and if the
NEAR is configured for 'mixed mode' operation, it should be able to
handle ARO requests and send periodic RA. Thus it should be able to
serve both energy-aware hosts and legacy hosts. Similarly, a legacy
host compatible EAH falls back to RFC 4861 host behavior if a NEAR is
not present in the link. See the section on 'Mixed Mode Operations'
for details below.
6. Applicability Statement
This document aims to guide the implementors to choose an appropriate
IPv6 neighbor discovery and Address configuration procedures suitable
for any efficient IPv6 network. These optimization is useful for the
classical IPv6 subnet i.e home networks, Data-Center IPv6 overlay
networks where saving Neighbor Discovery messages will reduce cost of
control signaling and network bandwidth and as well as energy of the
connected nodes. See use cases towards the end of the document.
Note that the specification allows 'Mixed-mode' operation in the
energy-aware nodes for backward compatibility and transitioning to a
complete energy-aware network of hosts and routers. Though the
energy-aware only nodes will minimize the ND signalling and DOS
attacks in the LAN.
Applicability of this solution is limited to the legacy IPv6 nodes
and subnets and it optimizes the generic IPv6 siganling activities at
network layer. However, further optimization at the application
layers are possible for increased efficiency based on particular
usecases and applications.
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7. New Neighbor Discovery Options and Messages
This section will discuss the registration and de-registration
procedure of the hosts in the network.
7.1. Address Registration Option
The Address Registration Option(ARO) is useful for avoiding Duplicate
Address Detection messages since it requires a unique ID for
registration. The address registration is used for maintaining
reachability of the node or host by the router. This option is
exactly the same as in [6LOWPAN-ND] which is reproduced here for the
benefits of the readers.
The routers keep track of host IP addresses that are directly
reachable and their corresponding link-layer addresses. This is
useful for lossy and lowpower networks and as well as wired networks.
An Address Registration Option (ARO) can be included in unicast
Neighbor Solicitation (NS) messages sent by hosts. Thus it can be
included in the unicast NS messages that a host sends as part of
Neighbor Unreachability Detection to determine that it can still
reach a default router. The ARO is used by the receiving router to
reliably maintain its Neighbor Cache. The same option is included in
corresponding Neighbor Advertisement (NA) messages with a Status
field indicating the success or failure of the registration. This
option is always host initiated.
The ARO is required for reliability and power saving. The lifetime
field provides flexibility to the host to register an address which
should be usable (the reachability information may be propagated to
the routing protocols) during its intended sleep schedule of nodes
that switches to frequent sleep mode.
The sender of the NS also includes the EUI-64 of the interface it is
registering an address from. This is used as a unique ID for the
detection of duplicate addresses. It is used to tell the difference
between the same node re-registering its address and a different node
(with a different EUI-64) registering an address that is already in
use by someone else. The EUI-64 is also used to deliver an NA
carrying an error Status code to the EUI-64 based link-local IPv6
address of the host.
When the ARO is used by hosts an SLLA option MUST be included and the
address that is to be registered MUST be the IPv6 source address of
the Neighbor Solicitation message.
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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 | Length = 2 | Status | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reserved | Registration Lifetime |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ EUI-64 or equivalent +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Fields:
Type: TBD1 ( See [6LOWPAN-ND] )
Length: 8-bit unsigned integer. The length of the option in
units of 8 bytes. Always 2.
Status: 8-bit unsigned integer. Indicates the status of a
registration in the NA response. MUST be set to 0 in
NS messages. See below.
Reserved: This field is unused. It MUST be initialized to zero
by the sender and MUST be ignored by the receiver.
Registration Lifetime: 16-bit unsigned integer. The amount of time
in a unit of 10 seconds that the router should retain
the Neighbor Cache entry for the sender of the NS that
includes this option.
EUI-64: 64 bits. This field is used to uniquely identify the
interface of the registered address by including the
EUI-64 identifier assigned to it unmodified.
The Status values used in Neighbor Advertisements are:
+--------+--------------------------------------------+
| Status | Description |
+--------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0 | Success |
| 1 | Duplicate Address |
| 2 | Neighbor Cache Full |
| 3-255 | Allocated using Standards Action [RFC2434] |
+--------+--------------------------------------------+
Table 1
7.2. Refresh and De-registration
A host SHOULD send a Registration messge in order to renew its
registration before its registration lifetime expires in order to
continue its connectivity with the network. If anytime, the node
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decides that it does not need the default router's service anymore,
it MUST send a de-registration message - i,e, a registration message
with lifetime being set to zero. A mobile host SHOULD first de-
register with the default router before it moves away from the
subnet.
7.3. A New Router Advertisement Flag
A new Router Advertisment flag [RF] is needed in order to distnguish
a router advertisement from a energy-aware default router or a legacy
IPv6 router. This flag is ignored by the legacy IPv6 hosts. EAH
hosts use this flag in oder to discover a NEAR router if it receives
multiple RA from both legacy and NEAR routers.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|M|O|H|Prf|P|E|R|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The 'E' bit above MUST be 1 when a IPv6 router implements and
configures the Energy-aware Router behavior for Neighbor Discovery as
per this document. All other cases E bit is 0.
The legacy IPv6 hosts will ignore the E bit in RA advertisement. All
EAH MUST look for E bit in RA in order to determine the Energy-aware
support in the default router in the link.
This document assumes that an implementation will have configuration
knobs to determine whether it is running in classical IPv6 ND [ND] or
Optimized Energy Aware ND (this document) mode or both(Mixed mode).
8. Energy-aware Neighbor Discovery Messages
Router Advertisement(RA): Periodic RAs SHOULD be avoided. Only
solicited RAs are RECOMMENDED. An RA MUST
contain the Source Link-layer Address option
containing Router's link-layer address (this
is optional in [ND]. An RA MUST carry Prefix
information option with L bit being unset, so
that hosts do not multicast any NS messages
as part of address resolution. A new flag
(E-flag) is introduced in the RA in order to
characterize the energy-aware mode support.
Unlike RFC4861 which suggests multicast
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Router Advertisements, this specification
optimizes the exchange by always unicasting
RAs in response to RS. This is possible
since the RS always includes a SLLA option,
which is used by the router to unicast the
RA.
Router Solicitation(RS): Upon system startup, the node sends a
multicast or link broadcast (when multicast
is not supported at the link-layer) RS to
find out the available routers in the link.
An RS may be sent at other times as described
in section 6.3.7 of RFC 4861. A Router
Solicitation MUST carry Source Link-layer
Address option. Since no periodic RAs are
allowed in the energy-aware IPv6 network, the
host may send periodic unicast RS to the
routers. The time-periods for the RS varies
on the deployment scenarios and the Default
Router Lifetime advertised in the RAs.
Default Router Selection: Same as in section 6.3.6 of RFC 4861[ND].
Neighbor Solicitation (NS): Neighbor solicitation is used between
the hosts and the default-router as part of
NUD and registering the host's address(es).
An NS message MUST use the Address
Registration option in order to accomplish
the registration.
Neighbor Advertisement (NA): As defined in [ND] and ARO option.
Redirect Messages: A router SHOULD NOT send a Redirect message
to a host since the link has non-transitive
reachability. The host behavior is same as
described in section 8.3 of RFC 4861[ND],
i,e. a host MUST NOT send or accept redirect
messages when in energy-aware mode.
Same as in RFC 4861[ND]
MTU option: As per the RFC 4861.
Address Resolution: No NS/NA are sent as the prefixes are treated
as off-link. Thus no address resolution is
performed at the hosts. The routers keep
track of Neighbor Solicitations with Address
Registration options(ARO) and create an
extended neighbor cache of reachable
addresses. The router also knows the nexthop
link-local address and corresponding link-
layer address when it wants to route a
packet.
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Neighbor Unreachability Detection(NUD): NUD is performed in
"forward-progress" fashion as described in
section 7.3.1 of RFC 4861[ND]. However, if
Address Registration Option is used, the NUD
SHOULD be combined with the Re-registration
of the node. This way no extra message for
NUD is required.
9. Energy-Aware Host Behavior
A host sends Router Solicitation at the system startup and also when
it suspects that one of its default routers have become
unreachable(after NUD fails). The EAH MUST process the E-bit in RA
as described in this document. The EAH MUST use ARO option to
register with the neighboring NEAR router.
A host SHOULD be able to autoconfigure its IPv6 addresses using the
IPv6 prefix obtained from Router Advertisement. The host SHOULD form
its link-local address from the EUI-64 as specified by IEEE
Registration Authority and RFC 2373. If this draft feature is
implemented and configured, the host MUST NOT re-direct Neighbor
Discovery messages. The host does not require to join solicited-node
multicast address but it MUST join the all-node multicast address.
A host always sends packets to (one of) its default router(s). This
is accomplished by the routers never setting the 'L' flag in the
Prefix options.
The host is unable to forward routes or participate in a routing
protocol. A legacy IPv6 Host compliant EAH SHOULD be able to fall
back to RFC 4861 host behavior if there is no energy-aware router
(NEAR) in the link.
The energy-aware host MUST NOT send or accept re-direct messages. It
does not join solicited node multicast address.
10. The Energy Aware Default Router (NEAR) Behavior
The main purpose of the default router in the context of this
document is to receive and process the registration request, forward
packets from one neighbor to the other, informs the routing protocol
about the un-availability of the registered nodes if the routing
protocol requires this information for the purpose of mobility or
fast convergence. A default router (NEAR) behavior may be observed
in one or more interfaces of a Border Router(BR).
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A Border Router normally may have multiple interfaces and connects
the nodes in a link like a regular IPv6 subnet(s) or acts as a
gateway between separate networks such as Internet and home networks
. The Border Router is responsible for distributing one or more /64
prefixes to the nodes to identify a packet belonging to the
particular network. One or more of the interfaces of the Border
Router may be connected with the energy-aware hosts or a energy-aware
router(NEAR).
The Energy-Aware default router MUST not send periodic RA unless it
is configured to support both legacy IPv6 and energy-aware hosts. If
the Router is configured for Energy-Aware hosts support, it MUST send
Router Advertisments with E-bit flag ON and MUST NOT set 'L' bit in
the advertisements.
The router SHOULD NOT garbage collect Registered Neighbor Cache
entries since they need to retain them until the Registration
Lifetime expires. If a NEAR receives a NS message from the same host
one with ARO and another without ARO then the NS message with ARO
gets the precedence and the NS without ARO is ignored. This behavior
protects the router from Denial Of Service attacks. Similarly, if
Neighbor Unreachability Detection on the router determines that the
host is UNREACHABLE (based on the logic in [ND]), the Neighbor Cache
entry SHOULD NOT be deleted but be retained until the Registration
Lifetime expires. If an ARO arrives for an NCE that is in
UNCREACHABLE state, that NCE should be marked as STALE.
A default router keeps a cache for all the nodes' IP addresses,
created from the Address Registration processing.
10.1. Router Configuration Modes
An energy-aware Router(NEAR) MUST be able to configure in energy-
aware-only mode where it will expect all hosts register with the
router following RS; thus will not support legacy hosts. However, it
will create legacy NCE for NS messages for other routers in the
network. This mode is able to prevent ND flooding on the link.
An energy-aware Router(NEAR) SHOULD be able to have configuration
knob to configure itself in Mixed-Mode where it will support both
energy-aware hosts and legacy hosts. However even in mixed-mode the
router should check for duplicate entries in the NCE before creating
a new ones and it should rate-limit creating new NCE based on
requests from the same host MAC address.
The RECOMMENDED default mode of operation for the energy-aware router
is Mixed-mode.
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11. NCE Management in Energy-Aware Routers
The use of explicit registrations with lifetimes plus the desire to
not multicast Neighbor Solicitation messages for hosts imply that we
manage the Neighbor Cache entries slightly differently than in [ND].
This results in two different types of NCEs and the types specify how
those entries can be removed:
Legacy: Entries that are subject to the normal rules in
[ND] that allow for garbage collection when low
on memory. Legacy entries are created only
when there is no duplicate NCE. In mixed-mode
and energy-aware mode the legacy entries are
converted to the registered entries upon
successful processing of ARO. Legacy type can
be considered as union of garbage-collectible
and Tentative Type NCEs described in
[6LOWPAN-ND].
Registered: Entries that have an explicit registered
lifetime and are kept until this lifetime
expires or they are explicitly unregistered.
Note that the type of the NCE is orthogonal to the states specified
in [ND].
When a host interacts with a router by sending Router Solicitations
that does not match with the existing NCE entry of any type, a Legacy
NCE is first created. Once a node successfully registers with a
Router the result is a Registered NCE. As Routers send RAs to legacy
hosts, or receive multicast NS messages from other Routers the result
is Legacy NCEs. There can only be one kind of NCE for an IP address
at a time.
A Router Solicitation might be received from a host that has not yet
registered its address with the router or from a legacy[ND] host in
the Mixed-mode of operation.
In the 'Enrgy-aware' only mode the router MUST NOT modify an existing
Neighbor Cache entry based on the SLLA option from the Router
Solicitation. Thus, a router SHOULD create a tentative Legacy
Neighbor Cache entry based on SLLA option when there is no match with
the existing NCE. Such a legacy Neighbor Cache entry SHOULD be timed
out in TENTATIVE_LEGACY_NCE_LIFETIME seconds unless a registration
converts it into a Registered NCE.
However, in 'Mixed-mode' operation, the router does not require to
keep track of TENTATIVE_LEGACY_NCE_LIFETIME as it does not know if
the RS request is from a legacy host or the energy-aware hosts.
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However, it creates the legacy type of NCE and updates it to a
registered NCE if the ARO NS request arrives corresponding to the
legacy NCE. Successful processing of ARO will complete the NCE
creation phase.
If ARO did not result in a duplicate address being detected, and the
registration life-time is non-zero, the router creates and updates
the registered NCE for the IPv6 address. if the Neighbor Cache is
full and new entries need to be created, then the router SHOULD
respond with a NA with status field set to 2. For successful
creation of NCE, the router SHOULD include a copy of ARO and send NA
to the requestor with the status field 0. A TLLA(Target Link Layer)
Option is not required with this NA.
Typically for energy-aware routers (NEAR), the registration life-time
and EUI-64 are recorded in the Neighbor Cache Entry along with the
existing information described in [ND]. The registered NCE are meant
to be ready and reachable for communication and no address resolution
is required in the link. The energy-aware hosts will renew their
registration to keep maintain the state of reachability of the NCE at
the router. However the router may do NUD to the idle or unreachable
hosts as per [ND].
11.1. Handling ND DOS Attack
IETF community has discussed possible issues with /64 DOS attacks on
the ND networks when a attacker host can send thousands of packets to
the router with a on-link destination address or sending RS messages
to initiate a Neighbor Solicitation from the neighboring router which
will create a number of INCOMPLETE NCE entries for non-existent nodes
in the network resulting in table overflow and denial of service of
the existing communications.
The energy-aware behavior documented in this specification avoids the
ND DOS attacks by:
o Having the hosts register with the default router
o Having the hosts send their packets via the default router
o Not resolving addresses for the Routing Solicitor by mandating
SLLA option along with RS
o Checking for duplicates in NCE before the registration
o Checking against the MAC-address and EUI-64 id is possible now for
NCE matches
o On-link IPv6-destinations on a particular link must be registered
else these packets are not resolved and extra NCEs are not created
It is recomended that Mixed-mode operation and legacy hosts SHOULD
NOT be used in the IPv6 link in order to avoid the ND DOS attacks.
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For the general case of Mixed-mode the router does not create
INCOMPLETE NCEs for the registered hosts, but it follows the [ND]
steps of NCE states for legacy hosts.
12. Mixed-Mode Operations
Mixed-Mode operation discusses the protocol behavior where the IPv6
subnet is composed with legacy IPv6 Neighbor Discovery compliant
nodes and energy-aware IPv6 nodes implementing this specification.
The mixed-mode model SHOULD support the following configurations in
the IPv6 link:
o The legacy IPv6 hosts and energy-aware-hosts in the network and a
NEAR router
o legacy IPv6 default-router and energy-aware hosts(EAH) in the link
o one router is in mixed mode and the link contains both legacy IPv6
hosts and EAH
o A link contains both energy-aware IPv6 router and hosts and legacy
IPv6 routers and hosts and each host should be able to communicate
with each other.
In mixed-mode operation, a NEAR MUST be configured for mixed-mode in
order to support the legacy IPv6 hosts in the network. In mixed-
mode, the NEAR MUST act as proxy for Neighbor Solicitation for DAD
and Address Resolution on behalf of its registered hosts on that
link. It should follow the NCE management for the EAH as described
in this document and follow RFC 4861 NCE management for the legacy
IPv6 hosts. Both in mixed-mode and energy-aware mode, the NEAR sets
E-bit flag in the RA and does not set 'L' on-link bit.
If a NEAR receives NS message from the same host one with ARO and
another without ARO then the NS message with ARO gets the precedence.
An Energy-Aware Host implementation SHOULD support falling back to
legacy IPv6 node behavior when no energy-aware routers are available
in the network during the startup. If the EAH was operational in
energy-aware mode and it determines that the NEAR is no longer
available, then it should send a RS and find an alternate default
router in the link. If no energy-aware router is indicated from the
RA, then the EAH SHOULD fall back into RFC 4861 behavior. On the
otherhand, in the energy-aware mode EAH SHOULD ignore multicast
Router Advertisements(RA) sent by the legacy and Mixed-mode routers
in the link.
The routers that are running on energy-aware mode or legacy mode
SHOULD NOT dynamically switch the mode without flushing the Neighbor
Cache Entries.
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13. Bootstrapping
If the network is a energy-aware IPv6 subnet, and the energy-aware
Neighbor Discovery mechansim is used by the hosts and routers as
described in this document. At the start, the node uses its link-
local address to send Router Solicitation and then it sends the Node
Registration message as described in this document in order to form
the address. The Duplicate address detection process should be
skipped if the network is guaranteed to have unique interface
identifiers which is used to form the IPv6 address.
Node Router
| |
1. | ---------- Router Solicitation --------> |
| [SLLAO] |
2. | <-------- Router Advertisement --------- |
| [PIO + SLLAO] |
| |
3. | ----- Address Registration (NS) --------> |
| [ARO + SLLAO] |
4. | <-------- Neighbor Advertisement ------- |
| [ARO with Status code] |
5. ====> Address Assignment Complete
Figure 1: Neighbor Discovery Address Registration and bootstrapping
In the mixed mode operation, it is expected that logically there will
be at least one legacy IPv6 router and another NEAR router present in
the link. The legacy IPv6 router will follow RFC 4861 behavior and
NEAR router will follow the energy-aware behavior for registration,
NCE maintenance, forwarding packets from a EAH and it will also act
as a ND proxy for the legacy IPv6 hosts querying to resolve a EAH
node.
A legacy IPv6 host and EAH are not expected to see a difference in
their bootstrapping if both legacy and energy-aware functionalities
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of rotuers are available in the network. It is RECOMMEDED that the
EAH implementation SHOULD be able to behave like a legacy IPv6 host
if it discovers that no energy-aware routing support is present in
the link.
14. Handling Sleepy Nodes
The solution allows the sleepy nodes to complete its sleep schedule
without waking up due to periodic Router Advertisement messages or
due to Multicast Neighbor Solicitation for address resolution. The
node registration lifetime SHOULD be synchronized with its sleep
interval period in order to avoid waking up in the middle of sleep
for registration refresh. Depending on the application, the
registration lifetime SHOULD be equal to or integral multiple of a
node's sleep interval period.
15. Use Case Analysis
This section provides applicability scenarios where the energy-aware
Neighbor Discovery will be most beneficial.
15.1. Data Center Routers on the link
Energy-aware Routers and hosts are useful in IPv6 networks in the
Data Center as they produce less signaling and also provides ways to
minimize the ND flood of messages. Moreover, this mechanism will
work with data-center nodes which are deliberately in sleep mode for
saving energy.
This solution will work well in Data Center Virtual network and VM
scenarios where number of VLANs are very high and ND signalings are
undesirably high due the multicast messaging and periodic Router
Advertisments and Neighbor Unreachability detections.
15.2. Edge Routers and Home Networks
An Edge Router in the network will also benefit implementing the
energy-aware Neighbor Discovery behavior in order to save the
signaling and keeping track of the registered nodes in its domain. A
BNG sits at the operator's edge network and often the BNG has to
handle a large number of home CPEs. If a BNG runs Neighbor Discovery
protocol and acts as the default router for the CPE at home, this
solution will be helpful for reducing the control messages and
improving network performances.
The same solution can be run on CPE or Home Residential Gateways to
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assign IPv6 addresses to the wired and wireless home devices without
the problem of ND flooding issues and consuming less power. It
provides mechanism for the sleepy nodes to adjust their registration
lifetime according to their sleep schedules.
15.3. M2M Networks
Any Machine-to-machine(M2M) networks such as IPv6 surveilance
networks, wireless monitoring networks and other m2m networks desire
for energy-aware control protocols and dynamic address allocation.
The in-built address allocation and autoconfiguration mechanism in
IPv6 along with the default router capability will be useful for the
simple small-scale networks without having the burden of DHCPv6
service and Routing Protocols.
16. Mobility Considerations
If the hosts move from one subnet to another, they MUST first de-
register and then register themselves in the new subnet or network.
Otherwise, the regular IPv6 Mobility [IPV6M]behavior applies.
17. Other Considerations
IPv6 DNA[DNA] also uses unicast ND probes to detect movement of its
network attachments. However DNA [DNA] optimizes the IPv6 address
operability while a node is moving and its network attachments are
changing with respect to the neighboring routers. This document does
not expect Router Advertisements from the neighboring routers, thus
this solution will rely on the ND probes for movement detection and
as well as link-layer indication.
Although the solution described in this document prevents unnecesary
multicast messages in the IPv6 ND procedure, it does not affect
normal IPv6 multicast packets and ability of nodes to join and leave
the multicast group or forwarding multicast traffic or responding to
multicast queries.
ND proxy support in mixed-mode operation [TBD].
18. Updated Neighbor Discovery Constants
This section discusses the updated default values of ND constants
based on [ND] section 10. New and changed constants are listed only
for energy-aware-nd implementation.
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Router Constants:
MAX_RTR_ADVERTISEMENTS(NEW) 3 transmissions
MIN_DELAY_BETWEEN_RAS(CHANGED) 1 second
TENTATIVE_LEGACY_NCE_LIFETIME(NEW) 30 seconds
Host Constants:
MAX_RTR_SOLICITATION_INTERVAL(NEW) 60 seconds
19. Security Considerations
These optimizations are not known to introduce any new threats
against Neighbor Discovery beyond what is already documented for IPv6
[RFC 3756].
Section 11.2 of [ND] applies to this document as well.
This mechanism minimizes the possibility of ND /64 DOS attacks in
energy-aware mode. See Section 11.1.
20. IANA Considerations
A new flag (E-bit) in RA has been introduced. IANA assignment of the
E-bit flag is required upon approval of this document.
21. Changelog
Changes from 00 to 01:
o Removed ABRO options and Multi-level subnet concept
o Removed intermediate-router concept, behavior and definition
o Added use-cases, Support for Mixed-mode operations and a diagram
for bootstrapping scenario.
o Added updates to ND constant values
o A new co-author has beed added
o Text for NCE Management and ND-DOS handling has been added
o A new Router Advertisement flag has been added
22. Acknowledgements
The primary idea of this document are from 6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery
document [6LOWPAN-ND] and the discussions from the 6lowpan working
group members, chairs Carsten Bormann and Geoff Mulligan and through
our discussions with Zach Shelby, editor of the [6LOWPAN-ND].
The inspiration of such a IPv6 generic document came from Margaret
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Wasserman who saw a need for such a document at the IOT workshop at
Prague IETF.
23. References
23.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2434] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434,
October 1998.
[6LOWPAN-ND]
Shelby, Z., Chakrabarti, S., and E. Nordmark, "ND
Optimizations for 6LoWPAN", draft-ietf-6lowpan-nd-17.txt
(work in progress), June 2011.
[ND] Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman,
"Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6", RFC 4861,
September 2007.
[LOWPAN] Montenegro, G. and N. Kushalnagar, "Transmission of IPv6
Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 networks", RFC 4944,
September 2007.
[LOWPANG] Kushalnagar, N. and G. Montenegro, "6LoWPAN: Overview,
Assumptions, Problem Statement and Goals", RFC 4919,
August 2007.
23.2. Informative References
[IPV6] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6), Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
[DNA] Krishnan, S. and G. Daley, "Simple Procedures for
Detecting Network Attachments in IPv6", RFC 6059,
November 2010.
[AUTOCONF]
Thomson, S., Narten, T., and T. Jinmei, "IPv6 Stateless
Autoconfiguration", RFC 4862, September 2007.
[SEND] Arkko, J., Kempf, J., Zill, B., and P. Nikander, "Secure
Neighbor Discovery", RFC 3971, March 2005.
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[AUTOADHOC]
Baccelli, E. and M. Townsley, "IP Addressing Model in
Adhoc Networks",
draft-ietf-autoconf-adhoc-addr-model-02.txt (work in
progress), December 2009.
[IEEE] IEEE Computer Society, "IEEE Std. 802.15.4-2003", ,
October 2003.
[PD] Miwakawya, S., "Requirements for Prefix Delegation",
RFC 3769, June 2004.
[RF] Haberman, B. and B. Hinden, "IPv6 Router Advertisement
Flags option", RFC 5175, March 2008.
[ULA] "Unique Local IPv6 Addresses", RFC 4193.
[IPV6M] Johnson, D., Perkins, C., and J. Arkko, "Mobility Support
in IPv6", RFC 6275, July 2011.
Authors' Addresses
Samita Chakrabarti
Ericsson
San Jose, CA
USA
Email: samita.chakrabarti@ericsson.com
Erik Nordmark
Cisco Systems
San Jose, CA
USA
Email: nordmark@cisco.com
Margaret Wasserman
Painless Security
Email: mrw@lilacglade.org
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