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Neighbor Cache Entries on First-Hop Routers: Operational Considerations
draft-ietf-v6ops-nd-cache-init-03

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Author Jen Linkova
Last updated 2020-08-20 (Latest revision 2020-07-13)
Replaces draft-linkova-v6ops-nd-cache-init
Replaced by draft-ietf-6man-grand, RFC 9131
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Jordi Palet Martinez
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2020-07-14
IESG IESG state AD Evaluation::Revised I-D Needed
Consensus boilerplate Yes
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Warren "Ace" Kumari
Send notices to Jordi Palet Martinez <jordi.palet@theipv6company.com>
draft-ietf-v6ops-nd-cache-init-03
v6ops                                                         J. Linkova
Internet-Draft                                                    Google
Intended status: Informational                             July 13, 2020
Expires: January 14, 2021

Neighbor Cache Entries on First-Hop Routers: Operational Considerations
                   draft-ietf-v6ops-nd-cache-init-03

Abstract

   Neighbor Discovery (RFC4861) is used by IPv6 nodes to determine the
   link-layer addresses of neighboring nodes as well as to discover and
   maintain reachability information.  This document discusses how the
   neighbor discovery state machine on a first-hop router is causing
   user-visible connectivity issues when a new (not being seen on the
   network before) IPv6 address is being used.

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 https://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 January 14, 2021.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 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
   (https://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

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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  Proposed Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.1.  Solution Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Solution Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Solutions Considered but Discarded  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.1.  Do Nothing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.2.  Change to the Registration-Based Neighbor Discovery . . .   7
     3.3.  Host Sending NS to the Router Address from Its GUA  . . .   7
     3.4.  Host Sending Router Solicitation from its GUA . . . . . .   8
     3.5.  Routers Populating Their Caches by Gleaning From Neighbor
           Discovery Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     3.6.  Initiating Hosts-to-Routers Communication . . . . . . . .   9
     3.7.  Transit Dataplane Traffic From a New Address Triggering
           Address Resolution  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12

1.  Introduction

   The section 7.2.5 of [RFC4861] states: "When a valid Neighbor
   Advertisement is received (either solicited or unsolicited), the
   Neighbor Cache is searched for the target's entry.  If no entry
   exists, the advertisement SHOULD be silently discarded.  There is no
   need to create an entry if none exists, since the recipient has
   apparently not initiated any communication with the target."

   This approach is perfectly suitable for host-to-host communications,
   which are in most cases bi-directional, and it could be expected that
   if a host A has an ND cache entry for the host B IPv6 address, host B
   also has the corresponding ND entry for the host A address in its
   cache.  However when a host communicates to off-link destinations via
   its first-hop router, that logic does not apply.  The most typical
   scenario when the problem may arise is a host joining the network,
   forming a new address and using that address for accessing the
   Internet:

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   1.  A host joins the network and receives a Router Advertisement (RA)
       packet from the first-hop router (either a periodic unsolicited
       RA or a response to a Router Solicitation sent by the host).  The
       RA contains information the host needs to perform SLAAC and to
       configure its network stack.  As in most cases the RA also
       contains the Source link-layer address of the router, the host
       can populate its Neighbor Cache with the router's link-local and
       link-layer addresses.

   2.  The host starts opening connections to off-link destinations.  A
       very common use case is a mobile device sending probes to detect
       the Internet connectivity and/or the captive portals presence on
       the network.  To speed up that process many implementations use
       Optimistic Duplicate Address Detection [RFC4429] which allows
       them to send probes from their GUA before the DAD process is
       completed.  At that moment the device ND cache contains all
       information required to send those probes (such as the default
       router link-local the link-layer addresses).  The router ND
       cache, however, might contain an entry for the device link-local
       address (if the device has been performing the address resolution
       for the router LLA) but there are no entries for the device GUA.

   3.  Return traffic is received by the first-hop router.  As the
       router does not have any ND cache entry for the host GUA yet, the
       router starts the neighbor discovery process by creating an
       INCOMPLETE cache entry and then sending an NS to the Solicited
       Node Multicast Address.  Most router implementations buffer only
       one data packet while resolving the packet destination address,
       so it would drop all subsequent packets for the host GUA, until
       the address resolution process is completed.

   4.  If the host sends multiple probes in parallel it would consider
       all but one of them failed.  It leads to user-visible delay in
       connecting to the network, especially if the host implements some
       form of backoff mechanism and does not retransmit the probes as
       soon as possible.

   This scenario illustrates the problem happening when the device
   connects to the network for the first time or after a timeout long
   enough for the device address to be removed from the router's
   neighbor cache.  However the same sequence of events happen when the
   host starts using a new GUA previously unseen by the router, such as
   a new privacy address [RFC4941] or if the router's Neighbor Cache has
   been flushed.

   While in dual-stack networks this problem might be hidden by Happy
   Eyeballs [RFC8305] it manifests quite clearly in IPv6-only
   environments, especially wireless ones, leading to poor user

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   experience and contributing to negative perception of IPv6-only
   solutions as unstable and non-deployable.

   This document discusses operational implications of not proactively
   creating Neighbor Cache entries on first-hop routers and summarizes
   various approaches to mitigate the problem.

1.1.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

1.2.  Terminology

   ND: Neighbor Discovery, [RFC4861].

   SLAAC: IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration, [RFC4862].

   NS: Neighbor Solicitation, [RFC4861].

   NA: Neighbor Advertisement, [RFC4861].

   RS: Router Solicitation, [RFC4861].

   RA: outer Advertisement, [RFC4861].

   SLLA: Source link-layer Address, an option in the ND packets
   containing the link-layer address of the sender of the packet,
   [RFC4861].

   TLLA: Target link-layer Address, an option in the ND packets
   containing the link-layer address of the target, [RFC4861].

   GUA: Global Unicast Address, [RFC4291].

   DAD: Duplicate Address Detection, [RFC4862].

   Optimistic DAD: a modification of DAD, [RFC4429].

   FCFS SAVI: First-Come, First-Served Source Address Validation,
   [RFC6620].

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2.  Proposed Solution

2.1.  Solution Requirements

   It would be highly desirable to improve the Neighbor Discovery
   mechanics so routers have a usable cache entry for a host address by
   the time the first packet for that address is received by the router.
   In particular:

   o  If the router does not have a Neighbor Cache entry for the
      address, a STALE entry needs to be created.

   o  The solution needs to work for Optimistic addresses as well.
      Devices implementing the Optimistic DAD usually attempt to
      minimize the delay in connecting to the network and therefore are
      more likely to be affected by the problem described in this
      document.

   o  In case of duplicate addresses present in the network, the
      proposed solution MUST NOT override the existing entry.

   o  In topologies with multiple first hop routers the cache needs to
      be updated on all of them, as traffic might be asymmetric:
      outgoing flows leaving the network via one router while the return
      traffic enters the segment via another one.

   In addition the solution MUST NOT exacerbate issues described in
   [RFC6583] and MUST be compatible with the recomendations provided in
   [RFC6583].

2.2.  Solution Overview

   The Neighbor Discovery is designed to allow IPv6 nodes to discover
   neighboring nodes reachability and learn IPv6 to link-layer addresses
   mapping.  Therefore ND seems to be the most appropriate tool to
   inform the first-hop routers about addresses the host is going to
   use.

   Section 4.4 of [RFC4861] says:

   "A node sends Neighbor Advertisements in response to Neighbor
   Solicitations and sends unsolicited Neighbor Advertisements in order
   to (unreliably) propagate new information quickly."

   Propagating information about new GUA as quickly as possible is
   exactly what is required to solve the problem outlined in this
   document.  Therefore the host might send an unsolicited NA with the

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   target link-layer address option to advertise its GUA as soon as the
   said address enters Optimistic or Preferred state.

   The proposed solution is discussed in [I-D.ietf-6man-grand].  In
   summary the following changes to [RFC4861] are suggested:

   o  Hosts SHOULD send at least one unsolicited NA packet with the
      Override flag cleared to all-routers multicast address (ff02::2)
      as soon as one of the following events happens:

      *  (if Optimistic DAD is used): a new Optimistic GUA is assigned
         to the host interface.

      *  (if Optimistic DAD is not used): a GUA changes the state from
         tentative to preferred.

   o  Routers SHOULD create a new STALE ND cache entry upon receiving
      unsolicited NAs.

   It should be noted that some routing and switching platforms have
   implemented such behaviour already.  Administrators could enable
   creating neighbor discovery cache entries based on unsolicited NA
   packets sent from the previously unknown neighbors on that interface.

   Network devices implementing FCFS SAVI might drop Neighbor
   Advertisements received through a Validating Port which is in the
   TENTATIVE state (see Section 2.3.2 of[RFC6620]).  Therefore hosts
   using Optimistic DAD might not benefit from the proposed solution if
   FCFS SAVI is implemeneted on the network infrastructure.
   [I-D.ietf-6man-grand] discusses in more details how the proposed
   solution interacts with SAVI.

3.  Solutions Considered but Discarded

   The problem could be addressed from different angles.  Possible
   approaches are:

   o  Just do nothing.

   o  Migrate from the "reactive" Neighbor Discovery ([RFC4861]) to the
      registration-based mechanisms ([RFC8505]).

   o  The router creates new entries in its Neighbor Cache by gleaning
      from Neighbor Discovery DAD messages.

   o  The host initiates bidirectional communication to the router using
      the host GUA.

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   o  Making the probing logic on hosts more robust.

   o  Increasing the buffer size on routers.

   o  Transit dataplane traffic from an unknown address (an address w/o
      the corresponding neighbor cache entry) triggers an address
      resolution process on the router.

   It should be noted that some of those options are already implemented
   by some vendors.  The following sections discuss those approaches and
   the reasons they were discarded.

3.1.  Do Nothing

   One of the possible approaches might be to declare that everything is
   working as intended and let the upper-layer protocols to deal with
   packet loss.  The obvious drawbacks include:

   o  Unhappy users.

   o  Many support tickets.

   o  More resistance to deploy IPv6 and IPv6-Only networks.

3.2.  Change to the Registration-Based Neighbor Discovery

   The most radical approach would be to move away from the reactive ND
   as defined in [RFC4861] and expand the registration-based ND
   ([RFC6775], [RFC8505]) used in Low-Power Wireless Personal Area
   Networks (6LoWPANs) to the rest of IPv6 deployments.  This option
   requires some investigation and discussions and seems to be an
   overkill for the problem described in this document.

3.3.  Host Sending NS to the Router Address from Its GUA

   The host could force creating a STALE entry for its GUA in the router
   ND cache by sending the following Neighbor Solicitation message:

   o  The NS source address is the host GUA.

   o  The destination address is the default router IPv6 address.

   o  The Source Link-Layer Address option contains the host link-layer
      address.

   o  The target address is the host default router address (the default
      router address the host received in the RA).

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   The main disadvantages of this approach are:

   o  Would not work for Optimistic addresses as section 2.2 of
      [RFC4429] explicitly prohibits sending Neighbor Solicitations from
      an Optimistic Address.

   o  If first-hop redundancy is deployed in the network, the NS would
      reach the active router only, so all backup routers (or all active
      routers ex. one) would not get their neighbor cache updated.

   o  Some wireless devices are known to alter ND packets and perform
      various non-obvious forms of ND proxy actions.  In some cases
      unsolicited NAs might not even reach the routers.

3.4.  Host Sending Router Solicitation from its GUA

   The host could send a router solicitation message to 'all routers'
   multicast address, using its GUA as a source.  If the host link-layer
   address is included in the Source Link-Layer Address option, the
   router would create a STALE entry for the host GUA as per the section
   6.2.6 of [RFC4861].  However this approach can not be used if the GUA
   is in optimistic state: the section 2.2 of [RFC4429] explicitly
   prohibits using an Optimistic Address as the source address of a
   Router Solicitation with a SLLAO as it might disrupt the rightful
   owner of the address in the case of a collision.  So for the
   optimistic addresses the host can send an RS without SLLAO included.
   In that case the router may respond with either a multicast or a
   unicast RA (only the latter would create a cache entry).

   This approach has the following drawbacks:

   o  If the address is in the Optimistic state the RS can not contain
      SLLAO.  As a result the router would only create a cache entry if
      the solicited RAs is sent as as a unicast.  Routers sending
      solicited RAs as multicast would not create a new cache entry as
      they do not need to send a unicast packet back to the host.

   o  There might be a random delay between receiving an RS and sending
      a unicast RA back (and creating a cache entry) which might
      undermine the idea of creating the cache entry proactively.

   o  Some wireless devices are known to fiddle with ND packets and
      perform various non-obvious forms of ND proxy actions.  In some
      cases the RS might not even reach the routers.

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3.5.  Routers Populating Their Caches by Gleaning From Neighbor
      Discovery Packets

   Routers may be able to learn about new addresses by gleaning from the
   DAD Neighbor Solicitation messages.  The router could listen to all
   solicited node multicast address groups and upon receiving a Neighbor
   Solicitation from the unspecified address search its Neighbor Cache
   for the solicitation's Target Address.  If no entry exists the router
   may create an entry, set its reachability state to 'INCOMPLETE' and
   start the address resolution for that entry.

   The same solution was proposed in
   [I-D.halpern-6man-nd-pre-resolve-addr].  Some routing vendors support
   such optimization already.  However this approach has a number of
   drawbacks and therefore should not be used as the only solution:

   o  Routers need to receive all multicast Neighbor Discovery packets
      which might negatively impact the routers CPU.

   o  If the router starts the address resolution as soon as it receives
      the DAD Neighbor Solicitation the host might be still performing
      DAD and the target address might be tentative.  In that case the
      host SHOULD silently ignore the received Neighbor Solicitation
      from the router as per the Section 5.4.3 of [RFC4862].  As a
      result the router might not be able to complete the address
      resolution before the return traffic arrives.

3.6.  Initiating Hosts-to-Routers Communication

   The host may force the router to start address resolution by sending
   a data packet such as ping or traceroute to its default router link-
   local address, using the GUA as a source address.  As the RTT to the
   default router is lower than RTT to any off-link destinations it's
   quite likely that the router would start the neighbor discovery
   process for the host GUA before the first packet of the returning
   traffic arrives.

   The downside of this approach includes:

   o  Data packets to the router LLA could be blocked by security policy
      or control plane protection mechanism.

   o  Additional overhead for routers control plane (in addition to
      processing ND packets, the data packet needs to be processed as
      well).

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   o  Unless the data packet is sent to 'all routers' ff02::2 multicast
      address, if the network provides a first-hop redundancy then only
      the active router would create a new cache entry.

3.7.  Transit Dataplane Traffic From a New Address Triggering Address
      Resolution

   When a router receives a transit packet it might check the presence
   of the neighbor cache entry for the packet source address and if the
   entry does not exist start address resolution process.  This approach
   does ensure that a Neighbor Cache entry is proactively created every
   time a new, previously unseen GUA is used for sending offlink
   traffic.  However this approach has a number of limitations, in
   particular:

   o  If traffic flows are asymmetrical the return traffic might not
      transit the same router as the original traffic which triggered
      the address resolution.  So the neighbor cache entry is created on
      the "wrong" router, not the one which actually needs the neighbor
      cache entry for the host address.

   o  The functionality needs to be limited to explicitly configured
      networks/interfaces, as the router needs to distinguish between
      onlink addresses (ones the router needs to have Neighbor Cache
      entries for) and the rest of the address space.

   o  Implementing such functionality is much more complicated than all
      other solutions as it would involve complex data-control planes
      interaction.

4.  IANA Considerations

   This memo asks the IANA for no new parameters.

5.  Security Considerations

   This memo documents the operational issue and does not introduce any
   new security considerations.  Security considerations of the proposed
   solution are discussed in the corresponding section of
   [I-D.ietf-6man-grand].

6.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to the following people (in alphabetical order) for their
   review and feedback: Mikael Abrahamsson, Lorenzo Colitti, Owen
   DeLong, Igor Gashinsky, Fernando Gont, Tatuya Jinmei, Erik Kline,
   Warren Kumari, Jordi Palet Martinez, Michael Richardson, Dave Thaler,
   Pascal Thubert, Loganaden Velvindron, Eric Vyncke.

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7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-6man-grand]
              Linkova, J., "Gratuitous Neighbor Discovery: Creating
              Neighbor Cache Entries on First-Hop Routers", draft-ietf-
              6man-grand-00 (work in progress), March 2020.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC4291]  Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
              Architecture", RFC 4291, DOI 10.17487/RFC4291, February
              2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4291>.

   [RFC4429]  Moore, N., "Optimistic Duplicate Address Detection (DAD)
              for IPv6", RFC 4429, DOI 10.17487/RFC4429, April 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4429>.

   [RFC4861]  Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman,
              "Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4861, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4861>.

   [RFC4862]  Thomson, S., Narten, T., and T. Jinmei, "IPv6 Stateless
              Address Autoconfiguration", RFC 4862,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4862, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4862>.

   [RFC6583]  Gashinsky, I., Jaeggli, J., and W. Kumari, "Operational
              Neighbor Discovery Problems", RFC 6583,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6583, March 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6583>.

   [RFC6620]  Nordmark, E., Bagnulo, M., and E. Levy-Abegnoli, "FCFS
              SAVI: First-Come, First-Served Source Address Validation
              Improvement for Locally Assigned IPv6 Addresses",
              RFC 6620, DOI 10.17487/RFC6620, May 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6620>.

   [RFC6775]  Shelby, Z., Ed., Chakrabarti, S., Nordmark, E., and C.
              Bormann, "Neighbor Discovery Optimization for IPv6 over
              Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs)",
              RFC 6775, DOI 10.17487/RFC6775, November 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6775>.

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   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8305]  Schinazi, D. and T. Pauly, "Happy Eyeballs Version 2:
              Better Connectivity Using Concurrency", RFC 8305,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8305, December 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8305>.

   [RFC8505]  Thubert, P., Ed., Nordmark, E., Chakrabarti, S., and C.
              Perkins, "Registration Extensions for IPv6 over Low-Power
              Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN) Neighbor
              Discovery", RFC 8505, DOI 10.17487/RFC8505, November 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8505>.

7.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.halpern-6man-nd-pre-resolve-addr]
              Chen, I. and J. Halpern, "Triggering ND Address Resolution
              on Receiving DAD-NS", draft-halpern-6man-nd-pre-resolve-
              addr-00 (work in progress), January 2014.

   [RFC4941]  Narten, T., Draves, R., and S. Krishnan, "Privacy
              Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in
              IPv6", RFC 4941, DOI 10.17487/RFC4941, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4941>.

Author's Address

   Jen Linkova
   Google
   1 Darling Island Rd
   Pyrmont, NSW  2009
   AU

   Email: furry@google.com

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