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Source-Specific Routing in Babel
draft-ietf-babel-source-specific-03

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9079.
Expired & archived
Authors Matthieu Boutier , Juliusz Chroboczek
Last updated 2018-08-04 (Latest revision 2018-01-31)
Replaces draft-boutier-babel-source-specific
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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Stream WG state In WG Last Call
Document shepherd Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
IESG IESG state Became RFC 9079 (Proposed Standard)
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Send notices to Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3@gmail.com>
draft-ietf-babel-source-specific-03
Network Working Group                                         M. Boutier
Internet-Draft                                             J. Chroboczek
Intended status: Standards Track       IRIF, University of Paris-Diderot
Expires: August 4, 2018                                 January 31, 2018

                    Source-Specific Routing in Babel
                  draft-ietf-babel-source-specific-03

Abstract

   Source-specific routing (also known as Source-Address Dependent
   Routing, SADR) is an extension to traditional next-hop routing where
   packets are forwarded according to both their destination and their
   source address.  This document describes an extension for source-
   specific routing to the Babel routing protocol.

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
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 4, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 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
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   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 and background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Specification of Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  The Source Table  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  The Route Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  The Table of Pending Seqno Requests . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Data Forwarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Protocol Operation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     5.1.  Protocol Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.2.  Wildcard Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Compatibility with the base protocol  . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.1.  Loop-avoidance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.2.  Starvation and Blackholes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Protocol Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.1.  Source Prefix sub-TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.2.  Source-specific Update  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     7.3.  Source-specific (Route) Request . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     7.4.  Source-Specific Seqno Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   11. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     11.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     11.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction and background

   The Babel routing protocol [BABEL] is a distance vector routing
   protocol for next-hop routing.  In next-hop routing, each node
   maintains a forwarding table which maps destination prefixes to next
   hops.  The forwarding decision is a per-packet operation which
   depends on the destination address of the packets and on the entries
   of the forwarding table.  When a packet is about to be routed, its
   destination address is compared to the prefixes of the routing table:
   the entry with the most specific prefix containing the destination
   address of the packet is chosen, and the packet is forwarded to the
   associated next-hop.  Next-hop routing is a simple, well understood
   paradigm that works satisfactorily in a large number of cases.

   Source-specific routing [SS-ROUTING], or Source Address Dependent
   Routing (SADR) [DSR], is a modest extension to next-hop routing where
   the forwarding decision depends not only on the destination address
   but also on the source address of the packet being routed, which
   makes it possible for two packets with the same destination but
   different source addresses to be routed following different paths.

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   The forwarding tables are extended to map pairs of prefixes
   (destination, source) to next hops.  When multiple entries match a
   given packet, the one with the most specific destination prefix is
   chosen, and, in case of equality, the one with the most specific
   source prefix.

   The main application of source-specific routing is a form of
   multihoming known as multihoming with multiple addresses.  When using
   this technique in a network connected to multiple providers, every
   host is assigned multiple addresses, one per provider.  When a host
   sources a packet, it picks one of its addresses as the source
   address, and source-specific routing is used to route the packet to
   an edge router that is connected to the corresponding provider, which
   is compatible with [BCP84].  Unlike classical multihoming, this
   technique is applicable to small networks, as it does not require the
   use of provider-independent addresses, or cause excessive growth of
   the global routing table.  More details are given in [SS-ROUTING] and
   [DSR].

   This document describes a source-specific routing extension for the
   Babel routing protocol [BABEL].  This involves minor changes to the
   data structures, which must include a source prefix in addition to
   the destination prefix already present, and some changes to the
   Update, Route Request and Seqno Request TLVs, which are extended with
   a source prefix.  The source prefix is encoded using a mandatory sub-
   TLV ([BABEL] Section 4.4).

2.  Specification of Requirements

   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.  Data Structures

   A number of the conceptual data structures described in Section 3.2
   of [BABEL] contain a destination prefix.  This specification extends
   these data structures with a source prefix.  Data from the original
   protocol, which do not specify a source prefix, are stored with a
   zero length source prefix, which matches exactly the same set of
   packets as the original, non-source-specific data.

3.1.  The Source Table

   Every Babel node maintains a source table, as described in [BABEL]
   Section 3.2.5.  A source-specific Babel node extends this table with
   the following field:

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   o  The source prefix specifying the source address of packets to
      which this entry applies.

   The source table is now indexed by triples of the form (prefix,
   source prefix, router-id).

   Note that the route entry contains a source which itself contains a
   source prefix.  These are two very different concepts that should not
   be confused.

3.2.  The Route Table

   Every Babel node maintains a route table, as described in [BABEL]
   Section 3.2.6.  Each route table entry contains, among other data, a
   source, which this specification extends with a source prefix as
   described above.  The route table is now indexed by triples of the
   form (prefix, source prefix, neighbour), where the prefix and source
   prefix are obtained from the source.

3.3.  The Table of Pending Seqno Requests

   Every Babel node maintains a table of pending seqno requests, as
   described in [BABEL], Section 3.2.7.  A source-specific Babel node
   extends this table with the following entry:

   o  The source prefix being requested.

   The table of pending seqno requests is now indexed by triples of the
   form (prefix, source prefix, router-id).

4.  Data Forwarding

   In next-hop routing, if two routing table entries overlap, then one
   is necessarily more specific than the other; the "longest prefix
   rule" specifies that the most specific applicable routing table entry
   is chosen.

   With source-specific routing, there might no longer be a most
   specific applicable entry: two routing table entries might match a
   given packet without one necessarily being more specific than the
   other.  Consider for example the following routing table:

             destination                source     next-hop
       2001:DB8:0:1::/64                  ::/0            A
                    ::/0     2001:DB8:0:2::/64            B

   This specifies that all packets with destination in 2001:DB8:0:1::/64
   are to be routed through A, while all packets with source in

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   2001:DB8:0:2::/64 are to be routed through B.  A packet with source
   2001:DB8:0:2::42 and destination 2001:DB8:0:1::57 matches both rules,
   although neither is more specific than the other.  A choice is
   necessary, and unless the choice being made is the same on all
   routers in a routing domain, persistent routing loops may occur.
   More details are given in [SS-ROUTING] Section IV.C.

   A Babel implementation MUST choose routing table entries by using the
   so-called destination-first ordering, where a routing table entry R1
   is preferred to a routing table entry R2 when either R1's destination
   prefix is more specific than R2's, or the destination prefixes are
   equal and R1's source prefix is more specific than R2's.  (In more
   formal terms, routing table entries are compared using the
   lexicographic product of the destination prefix ordering by the
   source prefix ordering.)  This is consistent with the behaviour
   described in Section 3.3 of [DSR].

   In practice, this means that a source-specific Babel implementation
   must take care that any lower layer that performs packet forwarding
   obey this semantics.  In particular:

   o  If the lower layers implement the destination-first ordering, then
      the Babel implementation MAY use them directly;

   o  If the lower layers can hold source-specific routes, but not with
      the right semantics, then the Babel implementation MUST
      disambiguate the routing table by using a suitable disambiguation
      algorithm (see [SS-ROUTING] Section V.B for such an algorithm);

   o  If the lower layers cannot hold source-specific routes, then a
      Babel implementation MUST silently ignore (drop) any source-
      specific routes.

5.  Protocol Operation

   This extension does not fundamentally change the operation of the
   Babel protocol, and we therefore only describe differences between
   the original protocol and the extended protocol.

   In the original protocol, three TLVs carry a destination prefix:
   Updates, Route Requests and Seqno Requests.  This specification
   extends these messages to optionally carry a source prefix sub-TLV,
   as described in Section 7 below.  The sub-TLV is marked as mandatory,
   so that an unextended implementation will silently ignore the whole
   enclising TLV.  A node obeying this specification MUST NOT send a TLV
   with a zero-length source prefix: instead, it sends a TLV with no
   source prefix sub-TLV.  Conversely, an extended implementation MUST
   interpret an unextended TLV as carrying a source prefix of zero

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   length.  Taken together, these properties ensure interoperability
   between the original and extended protocols (see Section 6 below).

5.1.  Protocol Messages

   This extension allows three TLVs of the original Babel protocol to
   carry a source prefix: Update TLVs, Route Request TLVs and Seqno
   Request TLVs.

   In order to advertise a route with a non-zero-length source prefix, a
   node sends a source-specific Update, i.e., an Update with a source
   prefix sub-TLV.  When a node receives a source-specific Update
   (prefix, source prefix, router-id, seqno, metric) from a neighbour
   neigh, it behaves as described in [BABEL] Section 3.5.4, except that
   the entry under consideration is indexed by (prefix, source prefix,
   neigh) rather than just (prefix, neigh).

   Similarly, when a node needs to send a Request of either kind that
   applies to a route with a non-zero length source prefix, it sends a
   source-specific Request, i.e., a Request with a source prefix sub-
   TLV.  When a node receives a source-specific Request, it behaves as
   described in Section 3.8 of [BABEL], except that the request applies
   to the Route Table entry carrying the source prefix indicated by the
   sub-TLV.

5.2.  Wildcard Messages

   In the original protocol, the Address Encoding value 0 is used for
   wildcard messages: messages that apply to all routes, of any address
   family and with any destination prefix.  Wildcard messages are
   allowed in two places in the protocol: wildcard retractions are used
   to retract all of the routes previously advertised by a node on a
   given interface, and wildcard Route Requests are used to request a
   full dump of the Route Table from a given node.  Wildcard messages
   are intended to apply to all routes, including routes decorated with
   additional data and AE values to be defined by future extensions, and
   hence this specification extends wildcard operations to apply to all
   routes, whatever the value of the source prefix.

   More precisely, a node receiving an Update with the AE field set to 0
   and the Metric field set to infinity (a wildcard retraction) MUST
   apply the route acquisition procedure described in Section 3.5.4 of
   [BABEL] to all of the routes that is has learned from the sending
   node, whatever the value of the source prefix.  A node MUST NOT send
   a wildcard retraction with an attached source prefix, and a node that
   receives a wildcard retraction with a source prefix MUST silently
   ignore it.

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   Similarly, a node that receives a route request with the AE field set
   to 0 (a wildcard route request) SHOULD send a full routing table
   dump, including routes with a non-zero-length source prefix.  A node
   MUST NOT send a wildcard request that carries a source prefix, and a
   node receiving a wildcard request with a with a source prefix MUST
   silently ignore it.

6.  Compatibility with the base protocol

   The protocol extension defined in this document is, to a great
   extent, interoperable with the base protocol defined in [BABEL] (and
   all of its extensions).  More precisely, if non-source-specific
   routers and source-specific routers are mixed in a single routing
   domain, Babel's loop-avoidance properties are preserved, and, in
   particular, no persistent routing loops will occur.

   However, this extension is encoded using mandatory sub-TLVs,
   introduced in [BABEL], and therefore is not compatible with the older
   version of the Babel Routing Protocol [RFC6126].  Consequently, this
   extension MUST NOT be used with routers implementing RFC 6126,
   otherwise persistent routing loops may occur.

6.1.  Loop-avoidance

   The extension defined in this protocol uses a new Mandatory sub-TLV
   to carry the source prefix information.  As discussed in Section 4.4
   of [BABEL], this encoding ensures that non-source-specific routers
   will silently ignore the whole TLV, which is necessary to avoid
   persistent routing loops in hybrid networks.

   Consider two nodes A and B, with A source-specific announcing a route
   to (D, S).  Suppose that B (non source-specific) merely ignores the
   source prefix information when it receives the update rather than
   ignoring the whole TLV, and re-announces the route as D.  This re-
   announcement reaches A, which treats it as (D, ::/0).  Packets
   destined to D but not sourced in S will be forwarded by A to B, and
   by B to A, causing a persistent routing loop:

       (D,S)                 (D)
        <--                 <--
     ------ A ----------------- B
              -->
             (D,::/0)

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6.2.  Starvation and Blackholes

   In general, discarding source-specific routes by non-source-specific
   routers will cause route starvation.  Intuitively, unless there are
   enough non-source-specific routes in the network, non-source-specific
   routers will suffer starvation, and discard packets for destinations
   that are only announced by source-specific routers.

   A simple yet sufficient condition for avoiding starvation is to build
   a connected source-specific backbone that includes all of the edge
   routers, and announce a (non-source-specific) default route towards
   the backbone.

7.  Protocol Encoding

   This extension defines a new sub-TLV used to carry a source prefix:
   the Source Prefix sub-TLV.  It can be used within an Update, a Route
   Request or a Seqno Request TLV to match a source-specific entry of
   the Route Table, in conjunction with the destination prefix natively
   carried by these TLVs.

   Since a source-specific routing entry is characterized by a single
   destination prefix and a single source prefix, a source-specific
   message contains exactly one Source Prefix sub-TLV.  A node MUST NOT
   send more that one Source Prefix sub-TLV in a TLV, and a node
   receiving more than one Source Prefix sub-TLV in a single TLV SHOULD
   ignore this TLV.  It MAY ignore the whole packet.

7.1.  Source Prefix sub-TLV

    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 = 128  |    Length     |  Source Plen  | Source Prefix...
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

   Fields:

   Type      Set to 128 to indicate a Source Prefix sub-TLV.

   Length    The length of the body, exclusive of the Type and Length
             fields.

   Source Plen  The length of the advertised source prefix.  This MUST
             NOT be 0.

   Source Prefix  The source prefix being advertised.  This field's size
             is (Source Plen)/8 rounded upwards.

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   The contents of the source prefix sub-TLV are interpreted according
   to the AE of the enclosing TLV.

   Note that this sub-TLV is a mandatory sub-TLV.  Threfore, as
   described in Section 4.4 of [BABEL], the whole TLV MUST be ignored if
   that sub-TLV is not understood (or malformed).  Otherwise, routing
   loops may occur (see Section 6.1).

7.2.  Source-specific Update

   The source-specific Update is an Update TLV with a Source Prefix sub-
   TLV.  It advertises or retracts source-specific routes in the same
   manner than routes with non-source-specific Updates (see [BABEL]).  A
   wildcard retraction (Update with AE equals to 0) MUST NOT carry a
   Source Prefix sub-TLV.

   Contrary to the destination prefix, this extension does not compress
   the source prefix attached to Updates.  However, compression is
   allowed for the destination prefix of source-specific routes.  As
   described in Section 4.5 of [BABEL], unextended implementations will
   correctly update their parser state while otherwise ignoring the
   whole TLV.

7.3.  Source-specific (Route) Request

   A source-specific Route Request is a Route Request TLV with a Source
   Prefix sub-TLV.  It prompts the receiver to send an update for a
   given pair of destination and source prefixes, as described in
   Section 3.8.1.1 of [BABEL].  A wildcard request (Route Request with
   AE equals to 0) MUST NOT carry a Source Prefix sub-TLV.

7.4.  Source-Specific Seqno Request

   A source-specific Seqno Request is a Seqno Request TLV with a Source
   Prefix sub-TLV.  It requests the receiving node to perform the
   procedure described in Section 3.8.1.2 of [BABEL], but applied to a
   pair of a destination and source prefix.

8.  IANA Considerations

   IANA has allocated sub-TLV number 128 for the Source Prefix sub-TLV
   in the Babel Sub-TLV Numbers registry.

9.  Security considerations

   The extension defined in this document adds a new sub-TLV to three
   TLVs already present in the original Babel protocol, and does not in
   itself change the security properties of the protocol.  However,

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   source-specific routing gives more control over routing to the
   sending hosts, which might have security implications (see Section 8
   of [DSR]).

10.  Acknowledgments

   The authors are grateful to Joel Halpern for his help with this
   document.

11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [BABEL]    Chroboczek, J., "The Babel Routing Protocol", Internet
              Draft draft-ietf-babel-rfc6126bis-04, May 2017.

   [BCP84]    Baker, F. and P. Savola, "Ingress Filtering for Multihomed
              Networks", BCP 84, RFC 3704, March 2004.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997.

11.2.  Informative References

   [DSR]      Lamparter, D. and A. Smirnov, "Destination/Source
              Routing", Internet Draft draft-ietf-rtgwg-dst-src-routing-
              06, May 2018.

   [RFC6126]  Chroboczek, J., "The Babel Routing Protocol
              (Experimental)", RFC 6126, February 2011.

   [SS-ROUTING]
              Boutier, M. and J. Chroboczek, "Source-Specific Routing",
              August 2014.

              In Proc.  IFIP Networking 2015.  A slightly earlier
              version is available online from http://arxiv.org/
              pdf/1403.0445.

Authors' Addresses

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   Matthieu Boutier
   IRIF, University of Paris-Diderot
   Case 7014
   75205 Paris Cedex 13
   France

   Email: boutier@irif.fr

   Juliusz Chroboczek
   IRIF, University of Paris-Diderot
   Case 7014
   75205 Paris Cedex 13
   France

   Email: jch@irif.fr

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