Current Open Questions in Path Aware Networking
draft-irtf-panrg-questions-07
Path Aware Networking RG B. Trammell
Internet-Draft Google Switzerland GmbH
Intended status: Informational August 29, 2020
Expires: March 2, 2021
Current Open Questions in Path Aware Networking
draft-irtf-panrg-questions-07
Abstract
In contrast to the present Internet architecture, a path-aware
internetworking architecture has two important properties: it exposes
the properties of available Internet paths to endpoints, and provides
for endpoints and applications to use these properties to select
paths through the Internet for their traffic. This document poses
questions in path-aware networking open as of 2020, that must be
answered in the design, development, and deployment of path-aware
internetworks. It was originally written to frame discussions in the
Path Aware Networking proposed Research Group (PANRG), and has been
published to snapshot current thinking in this space.
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Internet-Draft PAN questions August 2020
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction to Path-Aware Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. A Vocabulary of Path Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Discovery, Distribution, and Trustworthiness of Path
Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3. Supporting Path Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4. Interfaces for Path Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.5. Implications of Path Awareness for the Data Plane . . . . 6
2.6. What is an Endpoint? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.7. Operating a Path Aware Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.8. Deploying a Path Aware Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction to Path-Aware Networking
In the current Internet architecture, the network layer provides an
unverifiable, best-effort service: an application can assume that a
packet with a given destination address will eventually be forwarded
toward that destination, but little else. A transport layer protocol
such as TCP can provide reliability over this best-effort service,
and a protocol above the network layer such as IPsec AH [RFC4302] or
TLS [RFC8446] can authenticate the remote endpoint. However, little,
if any, explicit information about the path is available, and
assumptions about that path often do not hold, sometimes with serious
impacts on the application, as in the case with BGP hijacking
attacks.
By contrast, in a path-aware internetworking architecture, endpoints
have the ability to select or influence the path through the network
used by any given packet, and the network and transport layers
explicitly expose information about the path or paths available from
one endpoint to another, and vice versa, to those endpoints and the
applications running on them, so that they can make this selection.
Path selection provides transparency and control to applications and
users of the network. Selection may be made at either the
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