Internet DRAFT - draft-du-anima-ipv4-acp
draft-du-anima-ipv4-acp
ANIMA WG Z. Du
Internet-Draft S. Jiang
Intended status: Informational Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
Expires: January 23, 2016 July 22, 2015
Autonomic Control Plane Based on IPv4
draft-du-anima-ipv4-acp-00
Abstract
This document describes an Autonomic Control Plane (ACP) based on
IPv4. The ACP is an overlay control plane logically separate from
the data plane. It is established autonomically independent of the
operator's configurations. This document introduces the approach of
using IPv4 addresses for the routing in an ACP.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on January 23, 2016.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Requirements Language and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Issues Needed to be Considered and Possible Solutions . . . . 4
4.1. Link-local Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2. Link-local Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.3. Addressing Inside the ACP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.4. Autonomic Address Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.5. Routing Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove] . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
Autonomic Control Plane (ACP) provides a secure and always-on
communication plane. It is one of the infrastructure functions for
Autonomic Network (AN). Autonomic Service Agents in the autonomic
network can use ACP to discover or negotiate. The background to
Autonomic Network is described in [RFC7575] and [RFC7576].
An IPv6-based ACP has been proposed in
[I-D.behringer-anima-autonomic-control-plane], and it is suggested
that ACP should rely exclusively on IPv6. In this approach, the ACP
is organized as a pure IPv6 network, while the network data plane can
be based on any protocol, including IPv4 or IPv6. The advantages of
this approach are no need to support dual stack IPv4/v6, better self-
configuration ability of IPv6, etc.
IPv6 is the best candidate for the ACP, but it should not be
precluded to provide an IPv4 based ACP for the operator as an option.
When the network data plane is running IPv4, an IPv4 based ACP can
offer better compatibility, which means no need to run IPv4 in the
data plane, and IPv6 in the control plane.
The purpose of this document is to address the issues that arise if
an IPv4 based ACP is considered needed, including clarifying the
additional requirements and solutions compared to the IPv6 one.
{Editor notes: an operator, who has difficulties to upgrade the whole
network to IPv6, maybe wants an IPv4 based ACP to simplify the
management jobs. This document makes sense for the network operators
who have an essential requirement to simple the network management,
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but have a less urgent requirement to upgrade to IPv6. Hence,
defining an IPv4 based ACP is helpful for the deployment of Autonomic
Network, or at least harmless.}
{Editor notes: It should be noticed that ACP can work while the data
plane is unchanged, i.e., remaining IPv4, because ACP and AN have
been designed as transparent as possible, which means the operator
will rarely notice them. However, it is not always true in practice.
The network operator may need to maintain two address systems in this
case, for examples, when developing or debugging, or in network
monitoring, or if connecting to an IPv4 server for the ACP is
needed.}
2. Requirements Language and Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
[RFC2119] when they appear in ALL CAPS. When these words are not in
ALL CAPS (such as "should" or "Should"), they have their usual
English meanings, and are not to be interpreted as [RFC2119] key
words.
Autonomic Control Plane: A self-forming, self-managing and self-
protecting control plane used in the Autonomic Network, which is
inband on the network, yet as independent as possible of
configuration, addressing and routing problems.
Autonomic Function: A feature or function which requires no
configuration, and can derive all required information either
through self-knowledge, discovery or through Intent.
Autonomic Node: A node which employs exclusively Autonomic
Functions.
Autonomic Network: A network containing exclusively Autonomic Nodes.
It may contain one or several Autonomic Domains.
Autonomic Service Agent: An agent implemented on an Autonomic Node
which implements an Autonomic Function.
3. Overview
Steps of constructing an IPv4 based Autonomic Control Plane are as
follows.
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o Each Autonomic Node has a vendor specific Unique Device Identifier
(UDI) or IDevID certificate, based on which it joins the autonomic
domain, and obtains a domain certificate.
o Based on the domain certificate, an Autonomic Node authenticates
the discovered neighbors and establishes a secure tunnel with each
of them.
o Each Autonomic Node maintains a virtual routing and forwarding
instance, and owns a loopback IPv4 addresses.
o Through the tunnels established in the previous steps, a routing
protocol is run, and each Autonomic Node establishes its ACP
routing table which is separated from the global routing table.
The following figurer illustrates the ACP.
autonomic node 1 autonomic node 2
................... ...................
secure . . secure . . secure
tunnel : +-----------+ : tunnel : +-----------+ : tunnel
..--------| ACP VRF |---------------------| ACP VRF |---------..
: / \ / \ <--routing--> / \ / \ :
: \ / IPv4 \ / \ / IPv4 \ / :
..--------| loopback |---------------------| loopback |---------..
: +-----------+ : : +-----------+ :
: : : :
: +-----------+ : : +-----------+ :
: | global | : : | global | :
: | routing | : <--routing--> : | routing | :
: | | : : | | :
..........| data plane|.....................| data plane|...........
: +-----------+ : link : +-----------+ :
:.................: :.................:
Figure 1 Overview of the IPv4 Based Autonomic Control Plane
IPv4 has a link-local address mechanism defined in [RFC3927]. Either
those link-local addresses can be used for an IPSec tunnel to be
established, or the MACSec channels can be used here to encrypt the
control traffic hop-by-hop.
4. Issues Needed to be Considered and Possible Solutions
{Editor notes: It is not complete. Further discussions are needed.}
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4.1. Link-local Address
In IPv6, a network node will acquire a valid link-local address
without any pre-configuration. These link-local addresses are used
by the Autonomic Node to set up tunnels with their neighbors in IPv6
based ACP.
As mentioned before, IPv4 has a link-local address mechanism.
However, according to [RFC3927], this address is only used when no IP
address is manually configured on the interface and no DHCP server is
found. In addition, that document does not recommend that IPv4 link-
local addresses and routable addresses be configured simultaneously
on the same interface.
Therefore, it brings in some troubles for an IPv4 ACP to establish a
secure channel with neighbors using link-local addresses.
4.2. Link-local Multicast
In the IPv6 ACP, link-local multicast is suggested to be used in the
adjacency discovery. In IPv4 ACP, perhaps a multicast in L2 may be
considered instead of the link-local multicast based on the IPv6
link-local address.
4.3. Addressing Inside the ACP
In the IPv6 ACP, Unique Local Addresses (ULA) specified in [RFC4193]
is suggested to be used as the overlay addresses of autonomic nodes
in the ACP.
IPv4 has the private IP address space, such as 10/8; however, it is
maybe not statistically unique inside the AS.
4.4. Autonomic Address Configuration
In the IPv6 ACP, the ULA address can be self-configured. This
feature is important in the Autonomic network. However, there is no
mechanism for self-configuration of IPv4 addresses. The length of an
IPv4 address is much shorter than an IPv6 one, which causes a larger
possbility of confilcting in the address self-configuration.
4.5. Routing Protocol
In the IPv6 ACP, RPL is proposed for the routing protocol. However,
it does not have an IPv4 version. Perhaps OSPF or ISIS can be used
in an IPv4 ACP.
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5. Security Considerations
Relevant security issues can be found in
[I-D.behringer-anima-autonomic-control-plane].
6. IANA Considerations
Currently, this document reuqestes no action by IANA.
7. Acknowledgements
Valuable comments were received from Bing Liu.
This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool [RFC2629].
8. Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove]
draft-du-anima-ipv4-acp-00: original version, 2015-07-xx.
9. References
[I-D.behringer-anima-autonomic-control-plane]
Behringer, M., Bjarnason, S., BL, B., and T. Eckert, "An
Autonomic Control Plane", draft-behringer-anima-autonomic-
control-plane-03 (work in progress), June 2015.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC2629] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2629, June 1999,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2629>.
[RFC3927] Cheshire, S., Aboba, B., and E. Guttman, "Dynamic
Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses", RFC 3927,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3927, May 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3927>.
[RFC4193] Hinden, R. and B. Haberman, "Unique Local IPv6 Unicast
Addresses", RFC 4193, DOI 10.17487/RFC4193, October 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4193>.
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[RFC7575] Behringer, M., Pritikin, M., Bjarnason, S., Clemm, A.,
Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and L. Ciavaglia, "Autonomic
Networking: Definitions and Design Goals", RFC 7575,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7575, June 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7575>.
[RFC7576] Jiang, S., Carpenter, B., and M. Behringer, "General Gap
Analysis for Autonomic Networking", RFC 7576,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7576, June 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7576>.
Authors' Addresses
Zongpeng Du
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
Q14, Huawei Campus, No.156 Beiqing Road
Hai-Dian District, Beijing, 100095
P.R. China
Email: duzongpeng@huawei.com
Sheng Jiang
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
Q14, Huawei Campus, No.156 Beiqing Road
Hai-Dian District, Beijing, 100095
P.R. China
Email: jiangsheng@huawei.com
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