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ICN Traceroute Protocol Specification
draft-irtf-icnrg-icntraceroute-02

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9507.
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Authors Spyridon Mastorakis , Jim Gibson , Ilya Moiseenko , Ralph Droms , David R. Oran
Last updated 2021-10-13 (Latest revision 2021-04-11)
Replaces draft-mastorakis-icnrg-icntraceroute
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draft-irtf-icnrg-icntraceroute-02
ICNRG                                                      S. Mastorakis
Internet-Draft                             University of Nebraska, Omaha
Intended status: Experimental                                  J. Gibson
Expires: 13 October 2021                                   Cisco Systems
                                                            I. Moiseenko
                                                               Apple Inc
                                                                R. Droms
                                                             Google Inc.
                                                                 D. Oran
                                     Network Systems Research and Design
                                                           11 April 2021

                 ICN Traceroute Protocol Specification
                   draft-irtf-icnrg-icntraceroute-02

Abstract

   This document presents the design of an ICN Traceroute protocol.
   This includes the operation of both the client and the forwarder.

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 13 October 2021.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2021 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

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   extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
   as described in Section 4.e of 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Background on IP-Based Traceroute Operation . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Traceroute Functionality Challenges and Opportunities in
           ICN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  ICN Traceroute CCNx Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  ICN Traceroute Request CCNx Packet Format . . . . . . . .   6
     4.2.  Traceroute Reply CCNx Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  ICN Traceroute NDN Packet Format  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.1.  ICN Traceroute Request NDN Packet Format  . . . . . . . .  11
     5.2.  Traceroute Reply NDN Packet Format  . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   6.  Forwarder Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   7.  Protocol Operation For Locally-Scoped Namespaces  . . . . . .  14
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Appendix A.  Traceroute Client Application (Consumer)
           Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18

1.  Introduction

   In TCP/IP, routing and forwarding are based on IP addresses.  To
   ascertain the route to an IP address and to measure the transit
   delays, the traceroute utility is commonly used.  In ICN, routing and
   forwarding are based on name prefixes.  To this end, the problem of
   ascertaining the characteristics (i.e., transit forwarders and
   delays) of at least one of the available routes to a name prefix is a
   fundamendal requirement for instumentation and network management.

   This document describes protocol mechanisms for a traceroute
   equivalent in ICN networks based on CCNx [RFC8569] or NDN [NDNTLV]).
   The document also contains a non-normative appendix section
   suggesting useful properties for an ICN traceroute client application
   that originates traceroute requests and processes traceroute replies.

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 [RFC2119].

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2.  Background on IP-Based Traceroute Operation

   In IP-based networks, traceroute is based on the expiration of the
   Time To Live (TTL) IP header field.  Specifically, a traceroute
   client sends consecutive packets (depending on the implementation and
   the user-specified behavior such packets can be either UDP datagrams,
   ICMP Echo Request or TCP SYN packets) with a TTL value increased by
   1, essentially performing a expanding ring search.  In this way, the
   first IP packet sent will expire at the first router along the path,
   the second IP packet at the second router along the path, etc, until
   the router (or host) with the specified destination IP address is
   reached.  Each router along the path towards the destination,
   responds by sending back an ICMP Time Exceeded packet, unless
   explicitly prevented from doing so by a security policy.

   The IP-based traceroute utility operates on IP addresses, and in
   particular depends on the IP packets having source IP addresses that
   are used as the destination address for replies.  Given that ICN
   forwards based on names rather than destination IP addresses, that
   the names do not refer to unique endpoints (multi-destination), and
   that the packets do not contain source addresses, a substantially
   different approach is needed.

3.  Traceroute Functionality Challenges and Opportunities in ICN

   In the NDN and CCN protocols, the communication paradigm is based
   exclusively on named objects.  An Interest is forwarded across the
   network based on its name.  Eventually, it retrieves a content object
   either from a producer application or some forwarder's Content Store
   (CS).

   An ICN network differs from an IP network in at least 4 important
   ways:

   *  IP identifies interfaces to an IP network with a fixed-length
      address, and delivers IP packets to one or more interfaces.  ICN
      identifies units of data in the network with a variable length
      name consisting of a hierarchical list of components.

   *  An IP-based network depends on the IP packets having source IP
      addresses that are used as the destination address for replies.
      On the other hand, ICN Interests do not have source addresses and
      they are forwarded based on names, which do not refer to a unique
      end-point.  Data packets follow the reverse path of the Interests
      based on hop-by-hop state created during Interest forwarding.

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   *  An IP network supports multi-path, single destination, stateless
      packet forwarding and delivery via unicast, a limited form of
      multi-destination selected delivery with anycast, and group-based
      multi-destination delivery via multicast.  In contrast, ICN
      supports multi-path and multi-destination stateful Interest
      forwarding and multi-destination data delivery to units of named
      data.  This single forwarding semantic subsumes the functions of
      unicast, anycast, and multicast.  As a result, consecutive (or
      retransmitted) ICN Interest messages may be forwarded through an
      ICN network along different paths, and may be forwarded to
      different data sources (e.g., end-node applications, in-network
      storage) holding a copy of the requested unit of data.  The
      ability to discover multiple available (or potentially all) paths
      towards a name prefix is a desirable capability for an ICN
      traceroute protocol, since it can be beneficial for congestion
      control purposes.  Knowing the number of available paths for a
      name can also be useful in cases that Interest forwarding based on
      application semantics/preferences is desirable.

   *  In the case of multiple Interests with the same name arriving at a
      forwarder, a number of Interests may be aggregated in a common
      Pending Interest Table (PIT) entry.  Depending on the lifetime of
      a PIT entry, the round-trip time an Interest-Data exchange might
      significantly vary (e.g., it might be shorter than the full round-
      trip time to reach the original content producer).  To this end,
      the round-trip time experienced by consumers might also vary even
      under constant network load.

   These differences introduce new challenges, new opportunities and new
   requirements in the design of ICN traceroute.  Following this
   communication model, a traceroute client should be able to express
   traceroute requests directed to a name prefix and receive responses.

   Our goals are the following:

   *  Trace one or more paths towards an ICN forwarder (for
      troubleshooting purposes).

   *  Trace one or more paths along which an named data of an
      application can be reached in the sense that Interest packets can
      be forwarded toward it.

   *  Test whether a specific named object is cached in some on-path CS,
      and, if so, trace the path towards it and return the identity of
      the corresponding forwarder.

   *  Perform transit delay network measurements.

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   To this end, a traceroute target name can represent:

   *  An administrative name that has been assigned to a forwarder.
      Assigning a name to a forwarder implies the presence of a
      management application running locally, which handles Operations,
      Administration and Management (OAM) operations.

   *  A name that includes an application's namespace as a prefix.

   *  A named object that might reside in some in-network storage.

   In order to provide stable and reliable diagnostics, it is desirable
   that the packet encoding of a traceroute request enable the
   forwarders to distinguish this request from a normal Interest, while
   also preserving forwarding behavior as similar as possible to that
   for an Interest packet.  In the same way, the encoding of a
   traceroute reply should allow for processing as similar as possible
   to that of a data packet by the forwarders.

   The term "traceroute session" is used for an iterative process during
   which an endpoint client application generates a number of traceroute
   requests to successively traverse more distant hops in the path until
   it receives a final traceroute reply from a forwarder.  It is
   desirable that ICN traceroute be able to discover a number of paths
   towards the expressed prefix within the same session or subsequent
   sessions.  To discover all the hops in a path, we need a mechanism
   (Interest Steering) to steer requests along different paths.  Such a
   capability was initially published in [PATHSTEERING] and has been
   specified for CCNx in [I-D.oran-icnrg-pathsteering].

   It is also important, in the case of traceroute requests for the same
   prefix from different sources, to have a mechanism to avoid
   aggregating those requests in the PIT.  To this end, we need some
   encoding in the traceroute requests to make each request for a common
   prefix unique, and hence avoid PIT aggregation and further enabling
   the exact matching of a response with a particular traceroute packet.

   The packet types and format are presented in Section 4.  The
   procedures, e.g. the procedures for determining and indicating that a
   destination has been reached, are specified in Section 6.

4.  ICN Traceroute CCNx Packet Format

   In this section, we present the CCNx packet format [RFC8609] of ICN
   traceroute, where messages exist within outermost containments
   (packets).  Specifically, we propose two types of traceroute packets,
   a traceroute request and a traceroute reply packet type.

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4.1.  ICN Traceroute Request CCNx Packet Format

   The format of the traceroute request packet is presented below:

    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |               |               |                               |
    |    Version    |   TrRequest   |         PacketLength          |
    |               |               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |               |               |               |               |
    |    HopLimit   |    Reserved   |     Flags     |  HeaderLength |
    |               |               |               |               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    /                                                               /
    /                       PathSteering TLV                        /
    /                                                               /
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |               Traceroute Request Message TLVs                 |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

              Figure 1: Traceroute Request CCNx Packet Format

   The existing packet header fields have similar functionality to the
   header fields of a CCNx Interest packet.  The value of the packet
   type field is TrRequest.  The exact numeric value of this field type
   is to be assigned in the Packet Type IANA Registry for CCNx (see
   section 4.1 of [RFC8609].

   Compared to the typical format of a CCNx packet header [RFC8609],
   there is a new optional fixed header added to the packet header:

   *  A Path Steering hop-by-hop header TLV, which is constructed hop-
      by-hop in the traceroute reply and included in the traceroute
      request to steer consecutive requests expressed by a client
      towards a common or different forwarding paths.  The Pathsteering
      TLV is specified in [I-D.oran-icnrg-pathsteering]

   The message of a traceroute request is presented below:

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    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                               |                               |
    |        MessageType = 1        |          MessageLength        |
    |                               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                          Name TLV                             |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

                Figure 2: Traceroute Request Message Format

   The traceroute request message is of type Interest in order to
   leverage the Interest forwarding behavior provided by the network.
   The Name TLV has the structure described in [RFC8609].  The name
   consists of the target (destination) prefix appended with a nonce
   typed name component as its last component (to avoid Interest
   aggregation and allow exact matching of requests with responses).
   The value of this TLV is a 64-bit nonce.

    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                               |                               |
    |        Name_Nonce_Type        |      Name_Nonce_Length = 8    |
    |                               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |                       Name_Nonce_Value                        |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

                  Figure 3: Name Nonce Typed Component TLV

4.2.  Traceroute Reply CCNx Packet Format

   The format of a traceroute reply packet is presented below:

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    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |               |               |                               |
    |    Version    |    TrReply    |          PacketLength         |
    |               |               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                               |               |               |
    |            Reserved           |     Flags     | HeaderLength  |
    |                               |               |               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                        PathSteering TLV                       |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                 Traceroute Reply Message TLVs                 |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

               Figure 4: Traceroute Reply CCNx Packet Format

   The header of a traceroute reply consists of the header fields of a
   CCNx Content Object and a hop-by-hop path steering TLV.  The value of
   the packet type field is TrReply.  The exact numeric value of this
   field type is to be assigned in the Packet Type IANA Registry for
   CCNx (see section 4.1 of [RFC8609].

   A traceroute reply message is of type Content Object, contains a Name
   TLV (name of the corresponding traceroute request), a PayloadType TLV
   and an ExpiryTime TLV with a value of 0 to indicate that replies must
   not be returned from network caches.

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    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                               |                               |
    |        MessageType = 2        |          MessageLength        |
    |                               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                            Name TLV                           |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                         PayloadType TLV                       |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                         ExpiryTime TLV                        |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

                 Figure 5: Traceroute Reply Message Format

   The PayloadType TLV is presented below.  It is of type
   T_PAYLOADTYPE_DATA, and the data schema consists of 3 TLVs:

   1)  the name of the sender of this reply (with the same structure as
       a CCNx Name TLV),

   2)  the sender's signature of their own name (with the same structure
       as a CCNx ValidationPayload TLV),

   3)  a TLV with return codes to indicate whether the request was
       satisfied due to the existence of a local application, a CS hit
       or a match with a forwarder's name, or the HopLimit value of the
       corresponding request reached 0.

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    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                               |                               |
    |       T_PAYLOADTYPE_DATA      |             Length            |
    |                               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                      Sender's Name TLV                        |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                    Sender's Signature TLV                     |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                       TrReply Code TLV                        |
    |                                                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

                 Figure 6: Traceroute Reply Message Format

   The goal of including the name of the sender in the reply is to
   enable the user to reach this entity directly to ask for further
   management/administrative information using generic Interest-Data
   exchanges or by employing a more comprehensive management tool such
   as CCNInfo [I-D.irtf-icnrg-ccninfo] after a successful verification
   of the sender's name.

   The structure of the TrReply Code TLV is presented below (16-bit
   value).  The assigned values are the following:

   1:  Indicates that the target name matched the administrative name of
       a forwarder (as served by its internal management application).

   2:  Indicates that the target name matched a prefix served by an
       application (other than the internal management application of a
       forwarder).

   3:  Indicates that the target name matched the name of an object in a
       forwarder's CS.

   4:  Indicates that the the Hop limit reached the 0 value.

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    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

    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                               |                               |
    |       TrReply_Code_Type       |    TrReply_Code_Length = 2    |
    |                               |                               |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
    |                                                               |
    |                     TrReply_Code_Value                        |
    +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

                         Figure 7: TrReply Code TLV

5.  ICN Traceroute NDN Packet Format

   In this section, we present the ICN traceroute Request and Reply
   Format according to the NDN packet specification [NDNTLV].

5.1.  ICN Traceroute Request NDN Packet Format

   A traceroute request is encoded as an NDN Interest packet.  Its
   format is the following:

           TracerouteRequest ::= INTEREST-TYPE TLV-LENGTH
                 Name
                 MustBeFresh
                 Nonce
                 HopLimit
                 Parameters?

               Figure 8: Traceroute Request NDN Packet Format

   The name of a request consists of the target name, a nonce value (it
   can be the value of the Nonce field) and the suffix "traceroute" to
   denote that this Interest is a traceroute request.

   The "Parameters" field of the Request contains the following
   PathSteering TLV:

           PathSteering TLV ::= PATHSTEERING-TLV-TYPE TLV-LENGTH BYTE{8}

                         Figure 9: PathSteering TLV

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   Since the NDN packet format does not provide a mechanism to prevent
   the network from caching specific data packets, we instead use the
   MustBeFresh selector for requests (in combination with a Freshness
   Period TLV of value 0 for replies) to avoid fetching cached
   traceroute replies with a freshness period that has expired
   [REALTIME].

5.2.  Traceroute Reply NDN Packet Format

   A traceroute reply is encoded as an NDN Data packet.  Its format is
   the following:

           TracerouteReply ::= DATA-TLV TLV-LENGTH
                           PathSteering TLV
                           Name
                           MetaInfo
                           Content
                           Signature

               Figure 10: Traceroute Reply NDN Packet Format

   Compared to the format of a regular NDN Data packet, a traceroute
   reply contains a PathSteering TLV field, which is not included in the
   security envelope, since it might be modified in a hop-by-hop fashion
   by the forwarders along the reverse path.

   The name of a traceroute reply is the name of the corresponding
   traceroute request, while the format of the MetaInfo field is the
   following:

         MetaInfo ::= META-INFO-TYPE TLV-LENGTH
                  ContentType
                  FreshnessPeriod

                          Figure 11: MetaInfo TLV

   The value of the ContentType TLV is 0.  The same applies to the value
   of the FreshnessPeriod TLV, so that the replies are treated as stale
   data as soon as they are received by a forwarder.

   The content of a traceroute reply consists of the following 2 TLVs:
   Sender's name (an NDN Name TLV) and Traceroute Reply Code.  There is
   no need to have a separate TLV for the sender's signature in the
   content of the reply, since every NDN data packet carries the
   signature of the data producer.

   The Traceroute Reply Code TLV format is the following (with the
   values specified in Section 4.2):

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           TrReplyCode ::= TRREPLYCODE-TLV-TYPE TLV-LENGTH BYTE{2}

                    Figure 12: Traceroute Reply Code TLV

6.  Forwarder Operation

   When a forwarder receives a traceroute request, the hop limit value
   is checked and decremented and the target name (i.e, the name of the
   traceroute request without the last nonce name component and the
   suffix "traceroute" in the case of a request with the NDN packet
   format) is extracted.

   If the HopLimit has not expired (its value is greater than 0), the
   forwarder will forward the request upstream based on CS lookup, PIT
   creation, LPM lookup and the path steering value, if present.  If no
   valid next-hop is found, an InterestReturn indicating "No Route" in
   the case of CCNx or a network NACK in the case of NDN is sent
   downstream.

   If the HopLimit value is equal to zero, the forwarder generates a
   traceroute reply.  This reply includes the forwarder's administrative
   name and signature, and a PathSteering TLV.  This TLV initially has a
   null value since the traceroute reply originator does not forward the
   request and, thus, does not make a path choice.  The reply will also
   include the corresponding TrReply Code TLV.

   A traceroute reply will be the final reply of a traceroute session if
   any of the following conditions are met:

   *  If a forwarder has been given one or more administrative names,
      the target name matches one of them.

   *  The target name exactly matches the name of a content-object
      residing in the forwarder's CS (unless the traceroute client
      application has chosen not to receive replies due to CS hits as
      specified in Appendix A).

   *  The target name matches (in a Longest Prefix Match manner) a FIB
      entry with an outgoing face referring to a local application.

   The TrReply Code TLV value of the reply is set to indicate the
   specific condition that was met.  If none of those conditions was
   met, the TrReply Code is set to 4 to indicate that the hop limit
   value reached 0.

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   A received traceroute reply will be matched to an existing PIT entry
   as usual.  On the reverse path, the path steering TLV of a reply will
   be updated by each forwarder to encode its choice of next-hop(s).
   When included in subsequent requests, this path steering TLV allows
   the forwarders to steer the requests along the same path.

7.  Protocol Operation For Locally-Scoped Namespaces

   In this section, we elaborate on 2 alternative design approaches in
   cases that the traceroute target prefix corresponds to a locally-
   scoped namespace not directly routable from the client's local
   network.

   The first approach leverages the NDN Link Object [SNAMP].
   Specifically, the traceroute client attaches to the expressed request
   a LINK Object that contains a number of routable name prefixes, based
   on which the request can be forwarded across the Internet until it
   reaches a network region, where the request name itself is routable.
   A LINK Object is created and signed by a data producer allowed to
   publish data under a locally-scoped namespace.  The way that a client
   retrieves a LINK Object depends on various network design factors and
   is out of the scope of the current draft.

   Based on the current deployment of the LINK Object by the NDN team, a
   forwarder at the border of the region, where an Interest name becomes
   routable has to remove the LINK Object from the incoming Interests.
   The Interest state maintained along the entire forwarding path is
   based on the Interest name regardless of whether it was forwarded
   based on this name or a prefix in the LINK Object.

   The second approach is based on prepending a routable prefix to the
   locally-scoped name.  The resulting prefix will be the name of the
   traceroute requests expressed by the client.  In this way, a request
   will be forwarded based on the routable part of its name.  When it
   reaches the network region where the original locally-scoped name is
   routable, the border forwarder rewrites the request name and deletes
   its routable part.  There are two conditions for a forwarder to
   perform this rewriting operation on a request:

   1)  the routable part of the request name matches a routable name of
       the network region adjacent to the forwarder (assuming that a
       forwarder is aware of those names), and

   2)  the remaining part of the request name is routable across the
       network region of this forwarder.

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   The state maintained along the path, where the locally-scoped name is
   not routable, is based on the routable prefix along with the locally-
   scoped prefix, while within the network region that the locally-
   scoped prefix is routable is based only on it.  To ensure that the
   generated replies will reach the client, the border forwarder has
   also to rewrite the name of a reply and prepend the routable prefix
   of the corresponding request.

8.  Security Considerations

   A reflection attack could occur in the case of a traceroute reply
   with the CCNx packet format if a compromised forwarder includes in
   the reply the name of a victim forwarder.  This could redirect the
   future administrative traffic towards the victim.  To foil such
   reflection attacks, the forwarder that generates a traceroute reply
   MUST sign the name included in the payload.  In this way, the client
   is able to verify that the included name is legitimate and refers to
   the forwarder that generated the reply.  Alternatively, the forwarder
   could include in the reply payload their routable prefix(es) encoded
   as a signed NDN Link Object [SNAMP].

   This approach does not protect against on-path attacks, where a
   compromised forwarder that receives a traceroute reply replaces the
   forwarder's name and the signature in the message with its own name
   and signature to make the client believe that the reply was generated
   by the compromised forwarder.  To foil such attack scenarios, a
   forwarder can sign the reply message itself.  In such cases, the
   forwarder does not have to sign its own name in reply message, since
   the message signature protects the message as a whole and will be
   invalidated in the case of an on-path attack.

   Signing each traceroute reply message can be expensive and can
   potentially lead to computation attacks against forwarders.  To
   mitigate such attack scenarios, the processing of traceroute requests
   and the generation of the replies SHOULD be handled by a separate
   management application running locally on each forwarder.  Serving
   traceroute replies therefore is thereby separated from load on the
   forwarder itself.  The approaches used by ICN applications to manage
   load may also apply to the forwarder's management application.

   Interest flooding attack amplification is possible in the case of the
   second approach to deal with locally-scoped namespaces described in
   Section 7.  A border forwarder will have to maintain extra state to
   prepend the correct routable prefix to the name of an outgoing reply,
   since the forwarder might be attached to multiple network regions
   (reachable under different prefixes) or a network region attached to
   this forwarder might be reachable under multiple routable prefixes.

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   We also note that traceroute requests have the same privacy
   characteristics as regular Interests.

9.  References

9.1.  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,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8569]  Mosko, M., Solis, I., and C. Wood, "Content-Centric
              Networking (CCNx) Semantics", RFC 8569,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8569, July 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8569>.

   [RFC8609]  Mosko, M., Solis, I., and C. Wood, "Content-Centric
              Networking (CCNx) Messages in TLV Format", RFC 8609,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8609, July 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8609>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.irtf-icnrg-ccninfo]
              Asaeda, H., Ooka, A., and X. Shao, "CCNinfo: Discovering
              Content and Network Information in Content-Centric
              Networks", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-irtf-
              icnrg-ccninfo-05, 21 September 2020,
              <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-icnrg-ccninfo-05>.

   [I-D.oran-icnrg-pathsteering]
              Moiseenko, I. and D. Oran, "Path Steering in CCNx and
              NDN", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-oran-icnrg-
              pathsteering-01, 23 April 2020,
              <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-oran-icnrg-
              pathsteering-01>.

   [NDNTLV]   "NDN Packet Format Specification.", 2016,
              <http://named-data.net/doc/ndn-tlv/>.

   [PATHSTEERING]
              Moiseenko, I. and D. Oran, "Path switching in content
              centric and named data networks", in Proceedings of the
              4th ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking,
              2017.

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   [REALTIME] Mastorakis, S., Gusev, P., Afanasyev, A., and L. Zhang,
              "Real-Time Data Retrieval in Named Data Networking", in
              Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Conference on
              Hot Topics in Information-Centric Networking, 2017.

   [SNAMP]    Afanasyev, A. and , "SNAMP: Secure namespace mapping to
              scale NDN forwarding", IEEE Conference on Computer
              Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), 2015.

Appendix A.  Traceroute Client Application (Consumer) Operation

   This section is an informative appendix regarding the proposed
   traceroute client operation.

   The client application is responsible for generating traceroute
   requests for prefixes provided by users.

   The overall process can be iterative: the first traceroute request of
   each session will have a HopLimit of value 1 to reach the first hop
   forwarder, the second of value 2 to reach the second hop forwarder
   and so on and so forth.

   When generating a series of requests for a specific name, the first
   one will typically not include a PathSteering TLV, since no TLV value
   is known.  After a traceroute reply containing a PathSteering TLV is
   received, each subsequent request might include the received path
   steering value in the PathSteering header TLV to drive the requests
   towards a common path as part of checking the network performance.
   To discover more paths, a client can omit the PathSteering TLV in
   future requests.  Moreover, for each new traceroute request, the
   client has to generate a new nonce and record the time that the
   request was expressed.  It will also set the lifetime of a request,
   which will have semantics similar to the lifetime of an Interest.

   Moreover, the client application might not wish to receive replies
   due to CS hits.  In CCNx, a mechanism to achieve that would be to use
   a Content Object Hash Restriction TLV with a value of 0 in the
   payload of a traceroute request message.  In NDN, the exclude filter
   selector can be used.

   When it receives a traceroute reply, the client would typically match
   the reply to a sent request and compute the round-trip time of the
   request.  It should parse the PathSteering value and decode the
   reply's payload to parse the sender's name and signature.  The client
   should verify that both the received message and the forwarder's name
   have been signed by the key of the forwarder, whose name is included
   in the payload of the reply (by fetching this forwarder's public key
   and verifying the contained signature).  In the case that the client

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   receives an TrReply Code TLV with a valid value, it can stop sending
   requests with increasing HopLimit values and potentially start a new
   traceroute session.

   In the case that a traceroute reply is not received for a request
   within a certain time interval (lifetime of the request), the client
   should time-out and send a new request with a new nonce value up to a
   maximum number of requests to be sent specified by the user.

Authors' Addresses

   Spyridon Mastorakis
   University of Nebraska, Omaha
   Omaha, NE
   United States of America

   Email: smastorakis@unomaha.edu

   Jim Gibson
   Cisco Systems
   Cambridge, MA
   United States of America

   Email: gibson@cisco.com

   Ilya Moiseenko
   Apple Inc
   Cupertino, CA
   United States of America

   Email: iliamo@mailbox.org

   Ralph Droms
   Google Inc.
   Cambridge, MA
   United States of America

   Email: rdroms.ietf@gmail.com

   Dave Oran
   Network Systems Research and Design
   Cambridge, MA
   United States of America

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   Email: daveoran@orandom.net

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