Internet DRAFT - draft-kivinen-802-15-ie
draft-kivinen-802-15-ie
Network Working Group T. Kivinen
Internet-Draft INSIDE Secure
Intended status: Informational P. Kinney
Expires: September 2, 2017 Kinney Consulting LLC
March 1, 2017
IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF
draft-kivinen-802-15-ie-06.txt
Abstract
IEEE Std 802.15.4 defines Information Elements (IEs) that can be used
to extend 802.15.4 in an interoperable manner. The IEEE 802.15
Assigned Numbers Authority (ANA) manages the registry of the
Information Elements. This document formulates a request for ANA to
allocate a number from that registry for IETF, and describes how the
IE is formatted to provide subtypes.
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 2, 2017.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 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
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
Kivinen & Kinney Expires September 2, 2017 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF March 2017
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Working Groups Benefiting from the IETF 802.15.4 IE . . . . . 3
4. IETF IE Subtype Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Request to allocate IETF IE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Appendix A. Vendor Specific IE in IEEE 802.15.4 . . . . . . . . 6
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
IEEE Std 802.15.4 [IEEE-802-15-4] is a standard, referred to by RFC
4944 ([RFC4944]), et al, that enables very low-cost, low-power
communications. The standard defines numerous optional physical
layers (PHYs),operating in many different frequency bands with a
simple and effective medium access control (MAC).
IEEE Std 802.15.4 defines Information Elements (IEs) that can be used
to extend 802.15.4 in an interoperable manner. An information
element (IE) provides a flexible, extensible, and easily
implementable method of encapsulating information. The general
format of an IE as defined in 7.4 of IEEE Std 802.15.4-2015
[IEEE-802-15-4], consists of an identification (ID) field, a length
field, and a content field. Multiple IEs may be concatenated, and
elements with unknown ID values in a list of IEs can be skipped since
their length is known. IEs provide a flexible container for
information that allows for adding new IE definitions in future
versions of the standard in a backwards-compatible manner.
There are two different IE types, Header IE and Payload IE. A Header
IE is part of the Medium Access Control (MAC) header; it is never
encrypted, but may be authenticated. Most of the Header IE
processing is done by the MAC, and IETF protocols should not have any
direct effect on that processing. A Payload IE is part of the MAC
payload, and may be encrypted and authenticated.
IETF protocols will need to insert information in the 802.15.4
frames; the 802.15.4 enables that by including one or more payload
IEs in the frame that will contain the information. For this purpose
Kivinen & Kinney Expires September 2, 2017 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF March 2017
the IETF requests a dedicated Payload IE from the IEEE 802.15
Assigned Numbers Authority (ANA) [IEEE-802-15-ANA]. The current
802.15 ANA database can be found at [IEEE-802-15-ANA-DB].
The 802.15.4 operations manual [IEEE-802-15-OPS] describes how a
standardization organization (SDO) may request an allocation of one
IE. To make this request the SDO has to provide (i) the reason for
the request, (ii) a description of the protocol format that shows an
appropriate subtype capability, and (iii) an agreement that only one
IE number will be allocated for use by the SDO.
This document provides the information needed for the request.
2. Terminology
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].
3. Working Groups Benefiting from the IETF 802.15.4 IE
There are several IETF working groups such as 6TiSCH, 6lo, CoRE, etc,
which could benefit from the IETF IE. The 6TiSCH working group has
already expressed the need for the IE, and this allocation is
expected to satisfy that need.
4. IETF IE Subtype Format
The maximum length of the Payload IE content is 2047 octets, and
802.15.4 frame contains a list of payload IEs. A single frame can
have multiple payload IEs, terminated with the payload IE terminator,
which may then be followed by the payload.
Since the 802.15.4 standard defines a list of payload IEs along with
their structures, there is no need for this document to specify the
internal structure inside the IETF IE. The Payload IE format of IEEE
802.15.4 contains the Length field. The length of the subtype
content can be calculated from the IEEE 802.15.4 Payload IE Length
field of the IETF IE.
The format of the IETF IE is as follows:
Kivinen & Kinney Expires September 2, 2017 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF March 2017
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
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Subtype ID | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |
~ subtype content ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: IETF IE Subtype Format
o Subtype ID is the IANA allocated number specifying the subtype of
the IETF IE. Value 0 is reserved for future extensibility, i.e.,
in case a longer subtype ID field is needed.
o Subtype content is the actual content of the information element,
and its length can be calculated from the Length field of the IETF
IE.
One IEEE 802.15.4 frame MAY contain multiple IETF IEs with the same
or different subtypes.
5. Request to allocate IETF IE
The IETF requests that the 802.15 Working Group allocate an ID for a
Payload IE for IETF use. Furthermore the IETF understands that only
one ID will be issued to it.
6. Security Considerations
This document creates an IANA registry for IETF IE subtype ID (see
Section 7). The security of the protocols using the IEs MUST be
described in the documents requesting allocations from this registry.
The IEEE Std 802.15.4-2015 [IEEE-802-15-4] contains methods where
security of the IE can be enforced when a frame is received, but this
is only per IE type. Therefore, all IETF IEs will have same security
level requirements regardless of the subtype ID used. This can cause
issues if different security processing would be needed and any of
those IEs would need to be processed in the MAC level. Since all
IETF protocols should operate at a higher level than the MAC level,
the higher layer processing for these IEs SHOULD perform separate
security policy checking based on the IETF IE subtype ID in addition
to the checks done by the MAC.
Kivinen & Kinney Expires September 2, 2017 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF March 2017
7. IANA Considerations
This document creates a new registry for IEEE Std 802.15.4 IETF IE
subtype IDs registry:
Value Subtype ID
0 Reserved
1-200 Unassigned
201-255 Experimental Use
Any change or addition to this registry requires expert review.
Note, that there is Vendor specific IEs already defined in the IEEE
802.15.4 (see Appendix A), and because of this, there is no need to
reserve any subtype IDs for the vendor-specific uses.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[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>.
8.2. Informative References
[IEEE-802-15-4]
"IEEE Standard for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area
Networks (WPANs)", IEEE Standard 802.15.4, 2015.
[IEEE-802-15-ANA]
"IEEE 802.15 Assigned Numbers Authority",
<http://www.ieee802.org/15/ANA.html>.
[IEEE-802-15-ANA-DB]
"IEEE 802.15 ANA database",
<https://mentor.ieee.org/802.15/
documents?is_dcn=257&is_group=0000>.
[IEEE-802-15-OPS]
"IEEE 802.15 Operations Manual",
<https://mentor.ieee.org/802.15/
documents?is_dcn=235&is_group=0000>.
Kivinen & Kinney Expires September 2, 2017 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft IEEE 802.15.4 Information Element for IETF March 2017
[RFC4944] Montenegro, G., Kushalnagar, N., Hui, J., and D. Culler,
"Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4
Networks", RFC 4944, DOI 10.17487/RFC4944, September 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4944>.
Appendix A. Vendor Specific IE in IEEE 802.15.4
IEEE 802.15.4 has already several numbers for different Vendor
Specific IE types. There is one for the Vendor Specific Header IE
for Header IEs. There is one incorrectly named Vendor Specific
Nested IE for Payload IEs, and there is another one with exactly the
same name, but under the MLME Nested IE long format. All of the
Vendor Specific IEs start with a 3-octet vendor OUI to identify the
organization.
Authors' Addresses
Tero Kivinen
INSIDE Secure
Eerikinkatu 28
HELSINKI FI-00180
FI
Email: kivinen@iki.fi
Pat Kinney
Kinney Consulting LLC
Email: pat.kinney@kinneyconsultingllc.com
Kivinen & Kinney Expires September 2, 2017 [Page 6]
