Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-radext-radius-fragmentation
draft-ietf-radext-radius-fragmentation
RADIUS EXTensions Working Group A. Perez-Mendez
Internet-Draft R. Marin-Lopez
Intended status: Experimental F. Pereniguez-Garcia
Expires: July 30, 2015 G. Lopez-Millan
University of Murcia
D. Lopez
Telefonica I+D
A. DeKok
Network RADIUS
January 26, 2015
Support of fragmentation of RADIUS packets
draft-ietf-radext-radius-fragmentation-12
Abstract
The Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) protocol is
limited to a total packet size of 4096 octets. Provisions exist for
fragmenting large amounts of authentication data across multiple
packets, via Access-Challenge. No similar provisions exist for
fragmenting large amounts of authorization data. This document
specifies how existing RADIUS mechanisms can be leveraged to provide
that functionality. These mechanisms are largely compatible with
existing implementations, and are designed to be invisible to
proxies, and "fail-safe" to legacy RADIUS Clients and Servers.
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 July 30, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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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
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Status of this document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Scope of this document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5. Fragmentation of packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1. Pre-authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.2. Post-authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6. Chunk size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7. Allowed large packet size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8. Handling special attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8.1. Proxy-State attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8.2. State attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
8.3. Service-Type attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8.4. Rebuilding the original large packet . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9. New flag T field for the Long Extended Type attribute
definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
10. New attribute definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
10.1. Frag-Status attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
10.2. Proxy-State-Length attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
10.3. Table of attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
11. Operation with proxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
11.1. Legacy proxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
11.2. Updated proxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
12. General considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
12.1. Flag T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
12.2. Violation of RFC2865 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
12.3. Proxying based on User-Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
12.4. Transport behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
13. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
14. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
15. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
16. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
16.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
16.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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1. Introduction
The RADIUS [RFC2865] protocol carries authentication, authorization,
and accounting information between a RADIUS Client and an RADIUS
Server. Information is exchanged between them through RADIUS
packets. Each RADIUS packet is composed of a header, and zero or
more attributes, up to a maximum packet size of 4096 octets. The
protocol is a request/response protocol, as described in the
operational model ([RFC6158], Section 3.1).
The intention of the above packet size limitation was to avoid as
much as possible UDP fragmentation. Back then, 4096 seemed large
enough for any purpose. Now, new scenarios are emerging that require
the exchange of authorization information exceeding this 4096 limit.
For instance, the Application Bridging for Federated Access Beyond
web (ABFAB) IETF WG defines the transport of Security Assertion
Markup Language (SAML) sentences from the RADIUS server to the RADIUS
client [I-D.ietf-abfab-aaa-saml]. This assertion is likely to be
larger than 4096 octets.
This means that peers desiring to send large amounts of data must
fragment it across multiple packets. For example, RADIUS-EAP
[RFC3579] defines how an Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
exchange occurs across multiple Access-Request / Access-Challenge
sequences. No such exchange is possible for accounting or
authorization data. [RFC6158] Section 3.1 suggests that exchanging
large amounts authorization data is unnecessary in RADIUS. Instead,
the data should be referenced by name. This requirement allows large
policies to be pre-provisioned, and then referenced in an Access-
Accept. In some cases, however, the authorization data sent by the
RADIUS Server is large and highly dynamic. In other cases, the
RADIUS Client needs to send large amounts of authorization data to
the RADIUS Server. Both of these cases are un-met by the
requirements in [RFC6158]. As noted in that document, the practical
limit on RADIUS packet sizes is governed by the Path MTU (PMTU),
which may be significantly smaller than 4096 octets. The combination
of the two limitations means that there is a pressing need for a
method to send large amounts of authorization data between RADIUS
Client and Server, with no accompanying solution.
[RFC6158] section 3.1 recommends three approaches for the
transmission of large amount of data within RADIUS. However, they
are not applicable to the problem statement of this document for the
following reasons:
o The first approach (utilization of a sequence of packets) does not
talk about large amounts of data sent from the RADIUS Client to a
RADIUS Server. Leveraging EAP (request/challenge) to send the
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data is not feasible, as EAP already fills packet to PMTU, and not
all authentications use EAP. Moreover, as noted for NAS-Filter-
Rule ([RFC4849]), this approach does not entirely solve the
problem of sending large amounts of data from a RADIUS Server to a
RADIUS Client, as many current RADIUS attributes are not permitted
in an Access-Challenge packets.
o The second approach (utilization of names rather than values) is
not usable either, as using names rather than values is difficult
when the nature of the data to be sent is highly dynamic (e.g.
SAML statement or NAS-Filter-Rule attributes). URLs could be used
as a pointer to the location of the actual data, but their use
would require them to be (a) dynamically created and modified, (b)
securely accessed and (c) accessible from remote systems.
Satisfying these constraints would require the modification of
several networking systems (e.g. firewalls and web servers).
Furthermore, the setup of an additional trust infrastructure (e.g.
Public Key Infrastructure - PKI) would be required to allow secure
retrieving of the information from the web server.
o PMTU discovery does not solve the problem, as it does not allow to
send data larger than the minimum of (PMTU or 4096) octets.
This document provides a mechanism to allow RADIUS peers to exchange
large amounts of authorization data exceeding the 4096 octet limit,
by fragmenting it across several exchanges. The proposed solution
does not impose any additional requirements to the RADIUS system
administrators (e.g. need to modify firewall rules, set up web
servers, configure routers, or modify any application server). It
maintains compatibility with intra-packet fragmentation mechanisms
(like those defined in [RFC3579] or in [RFC6929]). It is also
transparent to existing RADIUS proxies, which do not implement this
specification. The only systems needing to implement this RFC are
the ones which either generate, or consume the fragmented data being
transmitted. Intermediate proxies just pass the packets without
changes. Nevertheless, if a proxy supports this specification, it
may re-assemble the data in order to either examine and/or modify it.
A different approach to deal with RADIUS packets above the 4096 octet
limit is described in [I-D.ietf-radext-bigger-packets], which
proposes to extend RADIUS over TCP by allowing the length field in
the RADIUS header to take values up to 65535 octets. This provides a
simpler operation, but it has the drawback of requiring every RADIUS
proxy in the path between the RADIUS client and the RADIUS server to
implement the extension as well.
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1.1. Requirements Language
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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
When these words appear in lower case, they have their natural
language meaning.
2. Status of this document
This document is an Experimental RFC. It defines a proposal to allow
sending and receiving data exceeding the 4096 octet limit in RADIUS
packets imposed by [RFC2865], without requiring the modification of
intermediary proxies.
The experiment consists in verifying whether the approach is usable
on a large scale environment, by observing the uptake, usability, and
operational behavior it shows in large-scale, real-life deployments.
In that sense, so far the main use case for this specification is the
transportation of large SAML sentences defined within the ABFAB
architecture [I-D.ietf-abfab-arch]. Hence, it can be tested wherever
an ABFAB deployment is being piloted.
Besides, this proposal defines some experimental features that will
need to be tested and verified before the document can be considered
for Standards Track. The first one of them is the requirement of
updating [RFC2865] in order to relax the sentence defined in Section
4.1 and stating that "An Access-Request MUST contain either a User-
Password or a CHAP- Password or a State". This specification might
generate Access-Request packets without any of these attributes.
Although all known implementations have chosen the philosophy of "be
liberal in what you accept", we need to gain more operational
experience to verify that unmodified proxies do not drop this kind of
packets. More details on this aspect can be found in Section 12.2.
Another experimental feature of this specification is that it
requires proxies to base their routing decisions on the value of the
RADIUS User-Name attribute. Our experience is that this is the
common behaviour, thus no issues are expected. However, it needs to
be confirmed after using different implementations of intermediate
proxies. More details on this aspect can be found in Section 12.3.
Moreover, this document requires two minor updates to Standards Track
documents. First, it modifies the definition of the "Reserved" field
of the "Long Extended Type" attribute [RFC6929], by allocating an
additional flag "T". No issues are expected with this update,
although some proxies might drop packets that does not have the
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"Reserved" field set to 0. More details on this aspect can be found
in Section 12.1.
The other Standards Track document that requires a minor update is
[RFC6158]. It states that "attribute designers SHOULD NOT assume
that a RADIUS implementation can successfully process RADIUS packets
larger than 4096 octets", something no longer true if this document
advances.
A proper "Updates" clause will be included for these modifications
when/if the experiment is successful and this document is re-issued
as a Standards Track document.
3. Scope of this document
This specification describes how a RADIUS Client and a RADIUS Server
can exchange data exceeding the 4096 octet limit imposed by one
packet. However, the mechanism described in this specification
SHOULD NOT be used to exchange more than 100 kilo-octets of data.
Any more than this may turn RADIUS into a generic transport protocol,
such as TCP or SCTP, which is undesired. Experience shows that
attempts to transport bulk data across the Internet with UDP will
inevitably fail, unless they re-implement all of the behavior of TCP.
The underlying design of RADIUS lacks the proper retransmission
policies or congestion control mechanisms which would make it a
competitor to TCP.
Therefore, RADIUS/UDP transport is by design unable to transport bulk
data. It is both undesired and impossible to change the protocol at
this point in time. This specification is intended to allow the
transport of more than 4096 octets of data through existing RADIUS/
UDP proxies. Other solutions such as RADIUS/TCP MUST be used when a
"green field" deployment requires the transport of bulk data.
Section 7, below, describes with further details the reasoning for
this limitation, and recommends administrators to adjust it according
to the specific capabilities of their existing systems in terms of
memory and processing power.
Moreover, its scope is limited to the exchange of authorization data,
as other exchanges do not require of such a mechanism. In
particular, authentication exchanges have already been defined to
overcome this limitation (e.g. RADIUS-EAP). Moreover, as they
represent the most critical part of a RADIUS conversation, it is
preferable to not introduce any modification to their operation that
may affect existing equipment.
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There is no need to fragment accounting packets either. While the
accounting process can send large amounts of data, that data is
typically composed of many small updates. That is, there is no
demonstrated need to send indivisible blocks of more than 4 kilo-
octets of data. The need to send large amounts of data per user
session often originates from the need for flow-based accounting. In
this use-case, the RADIUS Client may send accounting data for many
thousands of flows, where all those flows are tied to one user
session. The existing Acct-Multi-Session-Id attribute defined in
[RFC2866] Section 5.11 has been proven to work here.
Similarly, there is no need to fragment Change of Authorization (CoA)
[RFC5176] packets. Instead, according to [RFC5176] the CoA client
will send a CoA-Request packet containing session identification
attributes, along with Service-Type = Additional-Authorization, and a
State attribute. Implementations not supporting fragmentation will
respond with a CoA-NAK, and an Error-Cause of Unsupported-Service.
The above requirement does not assume that the CoA client and the
RADIUS Server are co-located. They may, in fact be run on separate
parts of the infrastructure, or even by separate administrators.
There is, however, a requirement that the two communicate. We can
see that the CoA client needs to send session identification
attributes in order to send CoA packets. These attributes cannot be
known a priori by the CoA client, and can only come from the RADIUS
Server. Therefore, even when the two systems are not co-located,
they must be able to communicate in order to operate in unison. The
alternative is for the two systems to have differing views of the
users authorization parameters, which is a security disaster.
This specification does not allow for fragmentation of CoA packets.
Allowing for fragmented CoA packets would involve changing multiple
parts of the RADIUS protocol, with the corresponding possibility for
implementation issues, mistakes, etc.
Where CoA clients (i.e. RADIUS Servers) need to send large amounts
of authorization data to a CoA server (i.e. RADIUS Client), they
need only send a minimal CoA-Request packet, containing Service-Type
of Authorize-Only, as per [RFC5176], along with session
identification attributes. This CoA packet serves as a signal to the
RADIUS Client that the users' session requires re-authorization.
When the RADIUS Client re-authorizes the user via Access-Request, the
RADIUS Server can perform fragmentation, and send large amounts of
authorization data to the RADIUS Client.
The assumption in the above scenario is that the CoA client and
RADIUS Server are co-located, or at least strongly coupled. That is,
the path from CoA client to CoA server SHOULD be the exact reverse of
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the path from RADIUS Client to RADIUS Server. The following diagram
will hopefully clarify the roles:
+----------------+
| RADIUS CoA |
| Client Server |
+----------------+
| ^
Access-Request | | CoA-Request
v |
+----------------+
| RADIUS CoA |
| Server Client |
+----------------+
Where there is a proxy involved:
+----------------+
| RADIUS CoA |
| Client Server |
+----------------+
| ^
Access-Request | | CoA-Request
v |
+----------------+
| RADIUS CoA |
| Proxy Proxy |
+----------------+
| ^
Access-Request | | CoA-Request
v |
+----------------+
| RADIUS CoA |
| Server Client |
+----------------+
That is, the RADIUS and CoA subsystems at each hop are strongly
connected. Where they are not strongly connected, it will be
impossible to use CoA-Request packets to transport large amounts of
authorization data.
This design is more complicated than allowing for fragmented CoA
packets. However, the CoA client and the RADIUS Server must
communicate even when not using this specification. We believe that
standardizing that communication, and using one method for exchange
of large data is preferred to unspecified communication methods and
multiple ways of achieving the same result. If we were to allow
fragmentation of data over CoA packets, the size and complexity of
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this specification would increase significantly.
The above requirement solves a number of issues. It clearly
separates session identification from authorization. Without this
separation, it is difficult to both identify a session, and change
its authorization using the same attribute. It also ensures that the
authorization process is the same for initial authentication, and for
CoA.
4. Overview
Authorization exchanges can occur either before or after end user
authentication has been completed. An authorization exchange before
authentication allows a RADIUS Client to provide the RADIUS Server
with information that MAY modify how the authentication process will
be performed (e.g. it may affect the selection of the EAP method).
An authorization exchange after authentication allows the RADIUS
Server to provide the RADIUS Client with information about the end
user, the results of the authentication process and/or obligations to
be enforced. In this specification we refer to the "pre-
authorization" as the exchange of authorization information before
the end user authentication has started (from the RADIUS Client to
the RADIUS Server), whereas the term "post-authorization" is used to
refer to an authorization exchange happening after this
authentication process (from the RADIUS Server to the RADIUS Client).
In this specification we refer to the "size limit" as the practical
limit on RADIUS packet sizes. This limit is the minimum between 4096
octets and the current PMTU. We define below a method which uses
Access-Request and Access-Accept in order to exchange fragmented
data. The RADIUS Client and server exchange a series of Access-
Request / Access-Accept packets, until such time as all of the
fragmented data has been transported. Each packet contains a Frag-
Status attribute which lets the other party know if fragmentation is
desired, ongoing, or finished. Each packet may also contain the
fragmented data, or instead be an "ACK" to a previous fragment from
the other party. Each Access-Request contains a User-Name attribute,
allowing the packet to be proxied if necessary (see Section 11.1).
Each Access-Request may also contain a State attribute, which serves
to tie it to a previous Access-Accept. Each Access-Accept contains a
State attribute, for use by the RADIUS Client in a later Access-
Request. Each Access-Accept contains a Service-Type attribute with
the "Additional-Authorization" value. This indicates that the
service being provided is part of a fragmented exchange, and that the
Access-Accept should not be interpreted as providing network access
to the end user.
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When a RADIUS Client or RADIUS Server need to send data that exceeds
the size limit, the mechanism proposed in this document is used.
Instead of encoding one large RADIUS packet, a series of smaller
RADIUS packets of the same type are encoded. Each smaller packet is
called a "chunk" in this specification, in order to distinguish it
from traditional RADIUS packets. The encoding process is a simple
linear walk over the attributes to be encoded. This walk preserves
the order of the attributes of the same type, as required by
[RFC2865]. The number of attributes encoded in a particular chunk
depends on the size limit, the size of each attribute, the number of
proxies between the RADIUS Client and RADIUS Server, and the overhead
for fragmentation signalling attributes. Specific details are given
in Section 6. A new attribute called Frag-Status (Section 10.1)
signals the fragmentation status.
After the first chunk is encoded, it is sent to the other party. The
packet is identified as a chunk via the Frag-Status attribute. The
other party then requests additional chunks, again using the Frag-
Status attribute. This process is repeated until all the attributes
have been sent from one party to the other. When all the chunks have
been received, the original list of attributes is reconstructed and
processed as if it had been received in one packet.
The reconstruction process is performed by simply appending all of
the chunks together. Unlike IPv4 fragmentation, there is no
"fragment offset" field. The chunks in this specification are
explicitly ordered, as RADIUS is a lock-step protocol, as noted in
Section Section 12.4. That is, chunk N+1 cannot be sent until all of
the chunks up to and including N have been received and acknowledged.
When multiple chunks are sent, a special situation may occur for
Extended Type attributes as defined in [RFC6929]. The fragmentation
process may split a fragmented attribute across two or more chunks,
which is not permitted by that specification. We address this issue
by using the newly defined flag "T" in the Reserved field of the
"Long Extended Type" attribute format (see Section 9 for further
details on this flag).
This last situation is expected to be the most common occurrence in
chunks. Typically, packet fragmentation will occur as a consequence
of a desire to send one or more large (and therefore fragmented)
attributes. The large attribute will likely be split into two or
more pieces. Where chunking does not split a fragmented attribute,
no special treatment is necessary.
The setting of the "T" flag is the only case where the chunking
process affects the content of an attribute. Even then, the "Value"
fields of all attributes remain unchanged. Any per-packet security
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attributes such as Message-Authenticator are calculated for each
chunk independently. There are neither integrity nor security checks
performed on the "original" packet.
Each RADIUS packet sent or received as part of the chunking process
MUST be a valid packet, subject to all format and security
requirements. This requirement ensures that a "transparent" proxy
not implementing this specification can receive and send compliant
packets. That is, a proxy which simply forwards packets without
detailed examination or any modification will be able to proxy
"chunks".
5. Fragmentation of packets
When the RADIUS Client or the RADIUS Server desires to send a packet
that exceeds the size limit, it is split into chunks and sent via
multiple client/server exchanges. The exchange is indicated via the
Frag-Status attribute, which has value More-Data-Pending for all but
the last chunk of the series. The chunks are tied together via the
State attribute.
The delivery of a large fragmented RADIUS packet with authorization
data can happen before or after the end user has been authenticated
by the RADIUS Server. We can distinguish two phases, which can be
omitted if there is no authorization data to be sent:
1. Pre-authorization. In this phase, the RADIUS Client MAY send a
large packet with authorization information to the RADIUS Server
before the end user is authenticated. Only the RADIUS Client is
allowed to send authorization data during this phase.
2. Post-authorization. In this phase, the RADIUS Server MAY send a
large packet with authorization data to the RADIUS Client after
the end user has been authenticated. Only the RADIUS Server is
allowed to send authorization data during this phase.
The following subsections describe how to perform fragmentation for
packets for these two phases, pre-authorization and post-
authorization. We give the packet type, along with a RADIUS
Identifier, to indicate that requests and responses are connected.
We then give a list of attributes. We do not give values for most
attributes, as we wish to concentrate on the fragmentation behaviour,
rather than packet contents. Attribute values are given for
attributes relevant to the fragmentation process. Where "long
extended" attributes are used, we indicate the M (More) and T
(Truncation) flags as optional square brackets after the attribute
name. As no "long extended" attributes have yet been defined, we use
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example attributes, named as "Example-Long-1", etc. The maximum
chunk size is established in term of number of attributes (11), for
sake of simplicity.
5.1. Pre-authorization
When the RADIUS Client needs to send a large amount of data to the
RADIUS Server, the data to be sent is split into chunks and sent to
the RADIUS Server via multiple Access-Request / Access-Accept
exchanges. The example below shows this exchange.
The following is an Access-Request which the RADIUS Client intends to
send to a RADIUS Server. However, due to a combination of issues
(PMTU, large attributes, etc.), the content does not fit into one
Access-Request packet.
Access-Request
User-Name
NAS-Identifier
Calling-Station-Id
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2
Figure 1: Desired Access-Request
The RADIUS Client therefore must send the attributes listed above in
a series of chunks. The first chunk contains eight (8) attributes
from the original Access-Request, and a Frag-Status attribute. Since
last attribute is "Example-Long-1" with the "M" flag set, the
chunking process also sets the "T" flag in that attribute. The
Access-Request is sent with a RADIUS Identifier field having value
23. The Frag-Status attribute has value More-Data-Pending, to
indicate that the RADIUS Client wishes to send more data in a
subsequent Access-Request. The RADIUS Client also adds a Service-
Type attribute, which indicates that it is part of the chunking
process. The packet is signed with the Message-Authenticator
attribute, completing the maximum number of attributes (11).
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Access-Request (ID = 23)
User-Name
NAS-Identifier
Calling-Station-Id
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [MT]
Frag-Status = More-Data-Pending
Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
Message-Authenticator
Figure 2: Access-Request (chunk 1)
Compliant RADIUS Servers (i.e. servers implementing fragmentation)
receiving this packet will see the Frag-Status attribute, and
postpone all authorization and authentication handling until all of
the chunks have been received. This postponement also affects to the
verification that the Access-Request packet contains some kind of
authentication attribute (e.g. User-Password, CHAP-Password, State
or other future attribute), as required by [RFC2865] (see
Section 12.2 for more information on this).
Non-compliant RADIUS Servers (i.e. servers not implementing
fragmentation) should also see the Service-Type requesting
provisioning for an unknown service, and return Access-Reject. Other
non-compliant RADIUS Servers may return an Access-Reject, Access-
Challenge, or an Access-Accept with a particular Service-Type other
than Additional-Authorization. Compliant RADIUS Client
implementations MUST treat these responses as if they had received
Access-Reject instead.
Compliant RADIUS Servers who wish to receive all of the chunks will
respond with the following packet. The value of the State here is
arbitrary, and serves only as a unique token for example purposes.
We only note that it MUST be temporally unique to the RADIUS Server.
Access-Accept (ID = 23)
Frag-Status = More-Data-Request
Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
State = 0xabc00001
Message-Authenticator
Figure 3: Access-Accept (chunk 1)
The RADIUS Client will see this response, and use the RADIUS
Identifier field to associate it with an ongoing chunking session.
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Compliant NASes will then continue the chunking process. Non-
compliant NASes will never see a response such as this, as they will
never send a Frag-Status attribute. The Service-Type attribute is
included in the Access-Accept in order to signal that the response is
part of the chunking process. This packet therefore does not
provision any network service for the end user.
The RADIUS Client continues the process by sending the next chunk,
which includes an additional six (6) attributes from the original
packet. It again includes the User-Name attribute, so that non-
compliant proxies can process the packet (see Section 11.1). It sets
the Frag-Status attribute to More-Data-Pending, as more data is
pending. It includes a Service-Type for reasons described above. It
includes the State attribute from the previous Access-accept. It
signs the packet with Message-Authenticator, as there are no
authentication attributes in the packet. It uses a new RADIUS
Identifier field.
Access-Request (ID = 181)
User-Name
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2 [MT]
Frag-Status = More-Data-Pending
Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
State = 0xabc000001
Message-Authenticator
Figure 4: Access-Request (chunk 2)
Compliant RADIUS Servers receiving this packet will see the Frag-
Status attribute, and look for a State attribute. Since one exists
and it matches a State sent in an Access-Accept, this packet is part
of a chunking process. The RADIUS Server will associate the
attributes with the previous chunk. Since the Frag-Status attribute
has value More-Data-Request, the RADIUS Server will respond with an
Access-Accept as before. It MUST include a State attribute, with a
value different from the previous Access-Accept. This State MUST
again be globally and temporally unique.
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Access-Accept (ID = 181)
Frag-Status = More-Data-Request
Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
State = 0xdef00002
Message-Authenticator
Figure 5: Access-Accept (chunk 2)
The RADIUS Client will see this response, and use the RADIUS
Identifier field to associate it with an ongoing chunking session.
The RADIUS Client continues the chunking process by sending the next
chunk, with the final attribute(s) from the original packet, and
again includes the original User-Name attribute. The Frag-Status
attribute is not included in the next Access-Request, as no more
chunks are available for sending. The RADIUS Client includes the
State attribute from the previous Access-accept. It signs the packet
with Message-Authenticator, as there are no authentication attributes
in the packet. It again uses a new RADIUS Identifier field.
Access-Request (ID = 241)
User-Name
Example-Long-2
State = 0xdef00002
Message-Authenticator
Figure 6: Access-Request (chunk 3)
On reception of this last chunk, the RADIUS Server matches it with an
ongoing session via the State attribute, and sees that there is no
Frag-Status attribute present. It then processes the received
attributes as if they had been sent in one RADIUS packet. See
Section 8.4 for further details of this process. It generates the
appropriate response, which can be either Access-Accept or Access-
Reject. In this example, we show an Access-Accept. The RADIUS
Server MUST send a State attribute, which permits link the received
data with the authentication process.
Access-Accept (ID = 241)
State = 0x98700003
Message-Authenticator
Figure 7: Access-Accept (chunk 3)
The above example shows in practice how the chunking process works.
We re-iterate the implementation and security requirements here.
Each chunk is a valid RADIUS packet (see Section 12.2 for some
considerations about this), and all RADIUS format and security
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requirements MUST be followed before any chunking process is applied.
Every chunk except for the last one from a RADIUS Client MUST include
a Frag-Status attribute, with value More-Data-Pending. The last
chunk MUST NOT contain a Frag-Status attribute. Each chunk except
for the last from a RADIUS Client MUST include a Service-Type
attribute, with value Additional-Authorization. Each chunk MUST
include a User-Name attribute, which MUST be identical in all chunks.
Each chunk except for the first one from a RADIUS Client MUST include
a State attribute, which MUST be copied from a previous Access-
Accept.
Each Access-Accept MUST include a State attribute. The value for
this attribute MUST change in every new Access-Accept, and MUST be
globally and temporally unique.
5.2. Post-authorization
When the RADIUS Server wants to send a large amount of authorization
data to the RADIUS Client after authentication, the operation is very
similar to the pre-authorization one. The presence of Service-Type =
Additional-Authorization attribute ensures that a RADIUS Client not
supporting this specification will treat that unrecognized Service-
Type as though an Access-Reject had been received instead ([RFC2865]
Section 5.6). If the original large Access-Accept packet contained a
Service-Type attribute, it will be included with its original value
in the last transmitted chunk, to avoid confusion with the one used
for fragmentation signalling. It is RECOMMENDED that RADIUS Servers
include a State attribute on their original Access-Accept packets,
even if fragmentation is not taking place, to allow the RADIUS Client
to send additional authorization data in subsequent exchanges. This
State attribute would be included in the last transmitted chunk, to
avoid confusion with the ones used for fragmentation signalling.
Client supporting this specification MUST include a Frag-Status =
Fragmentation-Supported attribute in the first Access-Request sent to
the RADIUS Server, in order to indicate they would accept fragmented
data from the sever. This is not required if pre-authorization
process was carried out, as it is implicit.
The following is an Access-Accept which the RADIUS Server intends to
send to a RADIUS Client. However, due to a combination of issues
(PMTU, large attributes, etc.), the content does not fit into one
Access-Accept packet.
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Access-Accept
User-Name
EAP-Message
Service-Type(Login)
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2
State = 0xcba00003
Figure 8: Desired Access-Accept
The RADIUS Server therefore must send the attributes listed above in
a series of chunks. The first chunk contains seven (7) attributes
from the original Access-Accept, and a Frag-Status attribute. Since
last attribute is "Example-Long-1" with the "M" flag set, the
chunking process also sets the "T" flag in that attribute. The
Access-Accept is sent with a RADIUS Identifier field having value 30
corresponding to a previous Access-Request not depicted. The Frag-
Status attribute has value More-Data-Pending, to indicate that the
RADIUS Server wishes to send more data in a subsequent Access-Accept.
The RADIUS Server also adds a Service-Type attribute with value
Additional-Authorization, which indicates that it is part of the
chunking process. Note that the original Service-Type is not
included in this chunk. Finally, a State attribute is included to
allow matching subsequent requests with this conversation, and the
packet is signed with the Message-Authenticator attribute, completing
the maximum number of attributes of 11.
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Access-Accept (ID = 30)
User-Name
EAP-Message
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [MT]
Frag-Status = More-Data-Pending
Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
State = 0xcba00004
Message-Authenticator
Figure 9: Access-Accept (chunk 1)
Compliant RADIUS Clients receiving this packet will see the Frag-
Status attribute, and suspend all authorization handling until all of
the chunks have been received. Non-compliant RADIUS Clients should
also see the Service-Type indicating the provisioning for an unknown
service, and will treat it as an Access-Reject.
RADIUS Clients who wish to receive all of the chunks will respond
with the following packet, where the value of the State attribute is
taken from the received Access-Accept. They also include the User-
Name attribute so that non-compliant proxies can process the packet
(Section 11.1).
Access-Request (ID = 131)
User-Name
Frag-Status = More-Data-Request
Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
State = 0xcba00004
Message-Authenticator
Figure 10: Access-Request (chunk 1)
The RADIUS Server receives this request, and uses the State attribute
to associate it with an ongoing chunking session. Compliant ASes
will then continue the chunking process. Non-compliant ASes will
never see a response such as this, as they will never send a Frag-
Status attribute.
The RADIUS Server continues the chunking process by sending the next
chunk, with the final attribute(s) from the original packet. The
value of the Identifier field is taken from the received Access-
Request. A Frag-Status attribute is not included in the next Access-
Accept, as no more chunks are available for sending. The RADIUS
Server includes the original State attribute to allow the RADIUS
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Client to send additional authorization data. The original Service-
Type attribute is included as well.
Access-Accept (ID = 131)
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1 [M]
Example-Long-1
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2 [M]
Example-Long-2
Service-Type = Login
State = 0xfda000003
Message-Authenticator
Figure 11: Access-Accept (chunk 2)
On reception of this last chunk, the RADIUS Client matches it with an
ongoing session via the Identifier field, and sees that there is no
Frag-Status attribute present. It then processes the received
attributes as if they had been sent in one RADIUS packet. See
Section 8.4 for further details of this process.
6. Chunk size
In an ideal scenario, each intermediate chunk would be exactly the
size limit in length. In this way, the number of round trips
required to send a large packet would be optimal. However, this is
not possible for several reasons.
1. RADIUS attributes have a variable length, and must be included
completely in a chunk. Thus, it is possible that, even if there
is some free space in the chunk, it is not enough to include the
next attribute. This can generate up to 254 octets of spare
space on every chunk.
2. RADIUS fragmentation requires the introduction of some extra
attributes for signalling. Specifically, a Frag-Status attribute
(7 octets) is included on every chunk of a packet, except the
last one. A RADIUS State attribute (from 3 to 255 octets) is
also included in most chunks, to allow the RADIUS Server to bind
an Access-Request with a previous Access-Challenge. User-Name
attributes (from 3 to 255 octets) are introduced on every chunk
the RADIUS Client sends as they are required by the proxies to
route the packet to its destination. Together, these attributes
can generate from up to 13 to 517 octets of signalling data,
reducing the amount of payload information that can be sent on
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each chunk.
3. RADIUS packets SHOULD be adjusted to avoid exceeding the network
MTU. Otherwise, IP fragmentation may occur, having undesirable
consequences. Hence, maximum chunk size would be decreased from
4096 to the actual MTU of the network.
4. The inclusion of Proxy-State attributes by intermediary proxies
can decrease the availability of usable space into the chunk.
This is described with further detail in Section 8.1.
7. Allowed large packet size
There are no provisions for signalling how much data is to be sent
via the fragmentation process as a whole. It is difficult to define
what is meant by the "length" of any fragmented data. That data can
be multiple attributes, which includes RADIUS attribute header
fields. Or it can be one or more "large" attributes (more than 256
octets in length). Proxies can also filter these attributes, to
modify, add, or delete them and their contents. These proxies act on
a "packet by packet" basis, and cannot know what kind of filtering
actions they take on future packets. As a result, it is impossible
to signal any meaningful value for the total amount of additional
data.
Unauthenticated end users are permitted to trigger the exchange of
large amounts of fragmented data between the RADIUS Client and the
RADIUS Server, having the potential to allow Denial of Service (DoS)
attacks. An attacker could initiate a large number of connections,
each of which requests the RADIUS Server to store a large amount of
data. This data could cause memory exhaustion on the RADIUS Server,
and result in authentic users being denied access. It is worth
noting that authentication mechanisms are already designed to avoid
exceeding the size limit.
Hence, implementations of this specification MUST limit the total
amount of data they send and/or receive via this specification. Its
default value SHOULD be 100 kilo-octets. Any more than this may turn
RADIUS into a generic transport protocol, which is undesired. This
limit SHOULD be configurable, so that it can be changed if necessary.
Implementations of this specification MUST limit the total number of
round trips used during the fragmentation process. Its default value
SHOULD be to 25. Any more than this may indicate an implementation
error, misconfiguration, or a denial of service (DoS) attack. This
limit SHOULD be configurable, so that it can be changed if necessary.
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For instance, let's imagine the RADIUS Server wants to transport an
SAML assertion which is 15000 octets long, to the RADIUS Client. In
this hypothetical scenario, we assume there are 3 intermediate
proxies, each one inserting a Proxy-State attribute of 20 octets.
Also we assume the State attributes generated by the RADIUS Server
have a size of 6 octets, and the User-Name attribute take 50 octets.
Therefore, the amount of free space in a chunk for the transport of
the SAML assertion attributes is: Total (4096) - RADIUS header (20) -
User-Name (50 octets) - Frag-Status (7 octets) - Service-Type (6
octets) - State (6 octets) - Proxy-State (20 octets) - Proxy-State
(20) - Proxy-State (20) - Message-Authenticator (18 octets),
resulting in a total of 3929 octets, that is, 15 attributes of 255
bytes.
According to [RFC6929], a Long-Extended-Type provides a payload of
251 octets. Therefore, the SAML assertion described above would
result into 60 attributes, requiring of 4 round-trips to be
completely transmitted.
8. Handling special attributes
8.1. Proxy-State attribute
RADIUS proxies may introduce Proxy-State attributes into any Access-
Request packet they forward. If they are unable to add this
information to the packet, they may silently discard forwarding it to
its destination, leading to DoS situations. Moreover, any Proxy-
State attribute received by a RADIUS Server in an Access-Request
packet MUST be copied into the reply packet to it. For these
reasons, Proxy-State attributes require a special treatment within
the packet fragmentation mechanism.
When the RADIUS Server replies to an Access-Request packet as part of
a conversation involving a fragmentation (either a chunk or a request
for chunks), it MUST include every Proxy-State attribute received
into the reply packet. This means that the RADIUS Server MUST take
into account the size of these Proxy-State attributes in order to
calculate the size of the next chunk to be sent.
However, while a RADIUS Server will always know how much space MUST
be left on each reply packet for Proxy-State attributes (as they are
directly included by the RADIUS Server), a RADIUS Client cannot know
this information, as Proxy-State attributes are removed from the
reply packet by their respective proxies before forwarding them back.
Hence, RADIUS Clients need a mechanism to discover the amount of
space required by proxies to introduce their Proxy-State attributes.
In the following we describe a new mechanism to perform such a
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discovery:
1. When a RADIUS Client does not know how much space will be
required by intermediate proxies for including their Proxy-State
attributes, it SHOULD start using a conservative value (e.g. 1024
octets) as the chunk size.
2. When the RADIUS Server receives a chunk from the RADIUS Client,
it can calculate the total size of the Proxy-State attributes
that have been introduced by intermediary proxies along the path.
This information MUST be returned to the RADIUS Client in the
next reply packet, encoded into a new attribute called Proxy-
State-Length. The RADIUS Server MAY artificially increase this
quantity in order to handle with situations where proxies behave
inconsistently (e.g. they generate Proxy-State attributes with a
different size for each packet), or for situations where
intermediary proxies remove Proxy-State attributes generated by
other proxies. Increasing this value would make the RADIUS
Client to leave some free space for these situations.
3. The RADIUS Client SHOULD react upon the reception of this
attribute by adjusting the maximum size for the next chunk
accordingly. However, as the Proxy-State-Length offers just an
estimation of the space required by the proxies, the RADIUS
Client MAY select a smaller amount in environments known to be
problematic.
8.2. State attribute
This RADIUS fragmentation mechanism makes use of the State attribute
to link all the chunks belonging to the same fragmented packet.
However, some considerations are required when the RADIUS Server is
fragmenting a packet that already contains a State attribute for
other purposes not related with the fragmentation. If the procedure
described in Section 5 is followed, two different State attributes
could be included into a single chunk, incurring into two problems.
First, [RFC2865] explicitly forbids that more than one State
attribute appears into a single packet.
A straightforward solution consists on making the RADIUS Server to
send the original State attribute into the last chunk of the sequence
(attributes can be re-ordered as specified in [RFC2865]). As the
last chunk (when generated by the RADIUS Server) does not contain any
State attribute due to the fragmentation mechanism, both situations
described above are avoided.
Something similar happens when the RADIUS Client has to send a
fragmented packet that contains a State attribute on it. The RADIUS
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Client MUST assure that this original State is included into the
first chunk sent to the RADIUS Server (as this one never contains any
State attribute due to fragmentation).
8.3. Service-Type attribute
This RADIUS fragmentation mechanism makes use of the Service-Type
attribute to indicate an Access-Accept packet is not granting access
to the service yet, since additional authorization exchange needs to
be performed. Similarly to the State attribute, the RADIUS Server
has to send the original Service-Type attribute into the last Access-
Accept of the RADIUS conversation to avoid ambiguity.
8.4. Rebuilding the original large packet
The RADIUS Client stores the RADIUS attributes received on each chunk
in order to be able to rebuild the original large packet after
receiving the last chunk. However, some of these received attributes
MUST NOT be stored in this list, as they have been introduced as part
of the fragmentation signalling and hence, they are not part of the
original packet.
o State (except the one in the last chunk, if present)
o Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
o Frag-Status
o Proxy-State-Length
Similarly, the RADIUS Server MUST NOT store the following attributes
as part of the original large packet:
o State (except the one in the first chunk, if present)
o Service-Type = Additional-Authorization
o Frag-Status
o Proxy-State (except the ones in the last chunk)
o User-Name (except the one in the first chunk)
9. New flag T field for the Long Extended Type attribute definition
This document defines a new field in the "Long Extended Type"
attribute format. This field is one bit in size, and is called "T"
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for Truncation. It indicates that the attribute is intentionally
truncated in this chunk, and is to be continued in the next chunk of
the sequence. The combination of the flags "M" and "T" indicates
that the attribute is fragmented (flag M), but that all the fragments
are not available in this chunk (flag T). Proxies implementing
[RFC6929] will see these attributes as invalid (they will not be able
to reconstruct them), but they will still forward them as [RFC6929]
section 5.2 indicates they SHOULD forward unknown attributes anyway.
As a consequence of this addition, the Reserved field is now 6 bits
long (see Section 12.1 for some considerations). The following
figure represents the new attribute format.
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 | Extended-Type |M|T| Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Value ...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 12: Updated Long Extended Type attribute format
10. New attribute definition
This document proposes the definition of two new extended type
attributes, called Frag-Status and Proxy-State-Length. The format of
these attributes follows the indications for an Extended Type
attribute defined in [RFC6929].
10.1. Frag-Status attribute
This attribute is used for fragmentation signalling, and its meaning
depends on the code value transported within it. The following
figure represents the format of the Frag-Status attribute.
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 | Extended-Type | Code
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Code (cont) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 13: Frag-Status format
Type
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241 (To be confirmed by IANA)
Length
7
Extended-Type
TBD1
Code
4 byte. Integer indicating the code. The values defined in this
specifications are:
0 - Reserved
1 - Fragmentation-Supported
2 - More-Data-Pending
3 - More-Data-Request
This attribute MAY be present in Access-Request, Access-Challenge and
Access-Accept packets. It MUST NOT be included in Access-Reject
packets. RADIUS Clients supporting this specification MUST include a
Frag-Status = Fragmentation-Supported attribute in the first Access-
Request sent to the RADIUS Server, in order to indicate they would
accept fragmented data from the sever.
10.2. Proxy-State-Length attribute
This attribute indicates to the RADIUS Client the length of the
Proxy-State attributes received by the RADIUS Server. This
information is useful to adjust the length of the chunks sent by the
RADIUS Client. The format of this Proxy-State-Length attribute is
the following:
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 | Extended-Type | Value
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Value (cont) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 14: Proxy-State-Length format
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Type
241 (To be confirmed by IANA)
Length
7
Extended-Type
TBD2
Value
4 octets. Total length (in octets) of received Proxy-State
attributes (including headers). As the RADIUS "length" field
cannot take values over 4096 octets, values of Proxy-State-Length
MUST be less than that maximum length.
This attribute MAY be present in Access-Challenge and Access-Accept
packets. It MUST NOT be included in Access-Request or Access-Reject
packets.
10.3. Table of attributes
The following table shows the different attributes defined in this
document related with the kind of RADIUS packets where they can be
present.
| Kind of packet |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Attribute Name | Req | Acc | Rej | Cha |
----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Frag-Status | 0-1 | 0-1 | 0 | 0-1 |
----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Proxy-State-Length | 0 | 0-1 | 0 | 0-1 |
----------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+
11. Operation with proxies
The fragmentation mechanism defined above is designed to be
transparent to legacy proxies, as long as they do not want to modify
any fragmented attribute. Nevertheless, updated proxies supporting
this specification can even modify fragmented attributes.
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11.1. Legacy proxies
As every chunk is indeed a RADIUS packet, legacy proxies treat them
as the rest of packets, routing them to their destination. Proxies
can introduce Proxy-State attributes to Access-Request packets, even
if they are indeed chunks. This will not affect how fragmentation is
managed. The RADIUS Server will include all the received Proxy-State
attributes into the generated response, as described in [RFC2865].
Hence, proxies do not distinguish between a regular RADIUS packet and
a chunk.
11.2. Updated proxies
Updated proxies can interact with RADIUS Clients and Servers in order
to obtain the complete large packet before starting forwarding it.
In this way, proxies can manipulate (modify and/or remove) any
attribute of the packet, or introduce new attributes, without
worrying about crossing the boundaries of the chunk size. Once the
manipulated packet is ready, it is sent to the original destination
using the fragmentation mechanism (if required). The following
example shows how an updated proxy interacts with the RADIUS Client
to obtain a large Access-Request packet, modify an attribute
resulting into an even more large packet, and interacts with the
RADIUS Server to complete the transmission of the modified packet.
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+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+
| RADIUS | | RADIUS |
| Client | | Proxy |
+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| Access-Request(1){User-Name,Calling-Station-Id, |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[MT],Frag-Status(MDP)} |
|--------------------------------------------------->|
| |
| Access-Challenge(1){User-Name, |
| Frag-Status(MDR),State1} |
|<---------------------------------------------------|
| |
| Access-Request(2)(User-Name,State1, |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1} |
|--------------------------------------------------->|
PROXY MODIFIES ATTRIBUTE Data INCREASING ITS
SIZE FROM 9 FRAGMENTS TO 11 FRAGMENTS
Figure 15: Updated proxy interacts with RADIUS Client
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+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+
| RADIUS | | RADIUS |
| Proxy | | Server |
+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| Access-Request(3){User-Name,Calling-Station-Id, |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[MT],Frag-Status(MDP)} |
|--------------------------------------------------->|
| |
| Access-Challenge(1){User-Name, |
| Frag-Status(MDR),State2} |
|<---------------------------------------------------|
| |
| Access-Request(4){User-Name,State2, |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[M],Example-Long-1[M], |
| Example-Long-1[MT],Frag-Status(MDP)} |
|--------------------------------------------------->|
| |
| Access-Challenge(1){User-Name, |
| Frag-Status(MDR),State3} |
|<---------------------------------------------------|
| |
| Access-Request(5){User-Name,State3,Example-Long-1} |
|--------------------------------------------------->|
Figure 16: Updated proxy interacts with RADIUS Server
12. General considerations
12.1. Flag T
As described in Section 9, this document modifies the definition of
the "Reserved" field of the "Long Extended Type" attribute [RFC6929],
by allocating an additional flag "T". The meaning and position of
this flag is defined in this document, and nowhere else. This might
generate an issue if subsequent specifications want to allocate a new
flag as well, as there would be no direct way for them to know which
parts of the "Reserved" field have already been defined.
An immediate and reasonable solution for this issue would be
declaring that this RFC updates [RFC6929]. In this way, [RFC6929]
would include an "Updated by" clause that will point readers to this
document. Another alternative would be creating an IANA registry for
the "Reserved" field. However, the working group thinks that would
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be overkill, as not such a great number of specifications extending
that field are expected.
In the end, the proposed solution is that this experimental RFC
should not update RFC 6929. Instead, we rely on the collective mind
of the WG to recall that this T flag is used. When/if the experiment
will be successful, the T flag will be properly assigned.
12.2. Violation of RFC2865
Section 5.1 indicates that all authorization and authentication
handling will be postponed until all the chunks have been received.
This postponement also affects to the verification that the Access-
Request packet contains some kind of authentication attribute (e.g.
User-Password, CHAP-Password, State or other future attribute), as
required by [RFC2865]. This checking will therefore be delayed until
the original large packet has been rebuilt, as some of the chunks may
not contain any of them.
The authors acknowledge that this specification violates the "MUST"
requirement of [RFC2865] Section 4.1 that states that "An Access-
Request MUST contain either a User-Password or a CHAP- Password or a
State". We note that a proxy which enforces that requirement would
be unable to support future RADIUS authentication extensions.
Extensions to the protocol would therefore be impossible to deploy.
All known implementations have chosen the philosophy of "be liberal
in what you accept". That is, they accept traffic which violates the
requirement of [RFC2865] Section 4.1. We therefore expect to see no
operational issues with this specification. After we gain more
operational experience with this specification, it can be re-issued
as a standards track document, and update [RFC2865].
12.3. Proxying based on User-Name
This proposal assumes legacy proxies to base their routing decisions
on the value of the User-Name attribute. For this reason, every
packet sent from the RADIUS Client to the RADIUS Server (either
chunks or requests for more chunks) MUST contain a User-Name
attribute.
12.4. Transport behaviour
This proposal does not modify the way RADIUS interacts with the
underlying transport (UDP). That is, RADIUS keeps following a lock-
step behaviour, that requires receiving an explicit acknowledge for
each chunk sent. Hence, bursts of traffic which could congest links
between peers are not an issue.
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Another benefit of the lock-step nature of RADIUS, is that there are
no security issues with overlapping fragments. Each chunk simply has
a length, with no "fragment offset" field as with IPv4. The order of
the fragments is determined by the order in which they are received.
There is no ambiguity about the size or placement of each chunk, and
therefore no security issues associated with overlapping chunks.
13. Security Considerations
As noted in many earlier specifications ([RFC5080], [RFC6158], etc.)
RADIUS security is problematic. This specification changes nothing
related to the security of the RADIUS protocol. It requires that all
Access-Request packets associated with fragmentation are
authenticated using the existing Message-Authenticator attribute.
This signature prevents forging and replay, to the limits of the
existing security.
The ability to send bulk data from one party to another creates new
security considerations. RADIUS Clients and Servers may have to
store large amounts of data per session. The amount of this data can
be significant, leading to the potential for resource exhaustion. We
therefore suggest that implementations limit the amount of bulk data
stored per session. The exact method for this limitation is
implementation-specific. Section 7 gives some indications on what
could be reasonable limits.
The bulk data can often be pushed off to storage methods other than
the memory of the RADIUS implementation. For example, it can be
stored in an external database, or in files. This approach mitigates
the resource exhaustion issue, as RADIUS Servers today already store
large amounts of accounting data.
14. IANA Considerations
The authors request that Attribute Types and Attribute Values defined
in this document be registered by the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) from the RADIUS namespaces as described in the "IANA
Considerations" section of [RFC3575], in accordance with BCP 26
[RFC5226]. For RADIUS packets, attributes and registries created by
this document IANA is requested to place them at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/radius-types.
In particular, this document defines two new RADIUS attributes,
entitled "Frag-Status" and "Proxy-State-Length" (see Section 10),
with assigned values of 241.TBD1 and 241.TBD2 from the Short Extended
Space of [RFC6929]:
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Type Name Length Meaning
---- ---- ------ -------
241.TBD1 Frag-Status 7 Signals fragmentation
241.TBD2 Proxy-State-Length 7 Indicates the length of the
received Proxy-State attributes
The Frag-Status attribute also defines a 8-bit "Code" field, for
which the IANA is to create and maintain a new sub-registry entitled
"Code values" under the RADIUS "Frag-Status" attribute. Initial
values for the RADIUS Frag-Status "Code" registry are given below;
future assignments are to be made through "RFC required" [RFC5226].
Assignments consist of a Frag-Status "Code" name and its associated
value.
Value Frag-Status Code Name Definition
---- ------------------------ ----------
0 Reserved See Section 10.1
1 Fragmentation-Supported See Section 10.1
2 More-Data-Pending See Section 10.1
3 More-Data-Request See Section 10.1
4-255 Unassigned
Additionally, allocation of a new Service-Type value for "Additional-
Authorization" is requested.
Value Service Type Value Definition
---- ------------------------ ----------
TBA Additional-Authorization See Section 5.1
15. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the members of the RADEXT working
group who have contributed to the development of this specification,
either by participating on the discussions on the mailing lists or by
sending comments about our RFC.
The authors also thank David Cuenca (University of Murcia) for
implementing a proof of concept implementation of this RFC that has
been useful to improve the quality of the specification.
This work has been partly funded by the GEANT GN3+ SA5 and CLASSe
(http://sec.cs.kent.ac.uk/CLASSe/) projects.
16. References
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16.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2865] Rigney, C., Willens, S., Rubens, A., and W. Simpson,
"Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)",
RFC 2865, June 2000.
[RFC3575] Aboba, B., "IANA Considerations for RADIUS (Remote
Authentication Dial In User Service)", RFC 3575,
July 2003.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
[RFC6158] DeKok, A. and G. Weber, "RADIUS Design Guidelines",
BCP 158, RFC 6158, March 2011.
[RFC6929] DeKok, A. and A. Lior, "Remote Authentication Dial In User
Service (RADIUS) Protocol Extensions", RFC 6929,
April 2013.
16.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-abfab-aaa-saml]
Howlett, J. and S. Hartman, "A RADIUS Attribute, Binding,
Profiles, Name Identifier Format, and Confirmation Methods
for SAML", draft-ietf-abfab-aaa-saml-09 (work in
progress), February 2014.
[I-D.ietf-abfab-arch]
Howlett, J., Hartman, S., Tschofenig, H., Lear, E., and J.
Schaad, "Application Bridging for Federated Access Beyond
Web (ABFAB) Architecture", draft-ietf-abfab-arch-13 (work
in progress), July 2014.
[I-D.ietf-radext-bigger-packets]
Hartman, S., "Larger Packets for RADIUS over TCP",
draft-ietf-radext-bigger-packets-01 (work in progress),
July 2014.
[RFC2866] Rigney, C., "RADIUS Accounting", RFC 2866, June 2000.
[RFC3579] Aboba, B. and P. Calhoun, "RADIUS (Remote Authentication
Dial In User Service) Support For Extensible
Authentication Protocol (EAP)", RFC 3579, September 2003.
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[RFC4849] Congdon, P., Sanchez, M., and B. Aboba, "RADIUS Filter
Rule Attribute", RFC 4849, April 2007.
[RFC5080] Nelson, D. and A. DeKok, "Common Remote Authentication
Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Implementation Issues and
Suggested Fixes", RFC 5080, December 2007.
[RFC5176] Chiba, M., Dommety, G., Eklund, M., Mitton, D., and B.
Aboba, "Dynamic Authorization Extensions to Remote
Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)", RFC 5176,
January 2008.
Authors' Addresses
Alejandro Perez-Mendez (Ed.)
University of Murcia
Campus de Espinardo S/N, Faculty of Computer Science
Murcia, 30100
Spain
Phone: +34 868 88 46 44
Email: alex@um.es
Rafa Marin-Lopez
University of Murcia
Campus de Espinardo S/N, Faculty of Computer Science
Murcia, 30100
Spain
Phone: +34 868 88 85 01
Email: rafa@um.es
Fernando Pereniguez-Garcia
University of Murcia
Campus de Espinardo S/N, Faculty of Computer Science
Murcia, 30100
Spain
Phone: +34 868 88 78 82
Email: pereniguez@um.es
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Gabriel Lopez-Millan
University of Murcia
Campus de Espinardo S/N, Faculty of Computer Science
Murcia, 30100
Spain
Phone: +34 868 88 85 04
Email: gabilm@um.es
Diego R. Lopez
Telefonica I+D
Don Ramon de la Cruz, 84
Madrid, 28006
Spain
Phone: +34 913 129 041
Email: diego@tid.es
Alan DeKok
Network RADIUS
15 av du Granier
Meylan, 38240
France
Phone: +34 913 129 041
Email: aland@networkradius.com
URI: http://networkradius.com
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