6bed4: Peer-to-Peer IPv6 on Any Internetwork
draft-vanrein-6bed4-01
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 "Expired".
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Rick van Rein | ||
| Last updated | 2014-10-13 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Additional resources | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-vanrein-6bed4-01
Network Working Group R. Van Rein
Internet-Draft OpenFortress B.V.
Intended status: Experimental July 29, 2013
Expires: January 30, 2014
6bed4: Peer-to-Peer IPv6 on Any Internetwork
draft-vanrein-6bed4-01
Abstract
The purpose of 6bed4 is to support IPv6-only applications, even on
IPv4-only networks. A specific area of concern is that of peer-to-
peer protocols such as SIP or document exchange during a chat
session. Such protocols are designed to run in any environment,
which means that they cannot rely on IPv6 for themselves, or for
their peers. The 6bed4 tunnel mechanism ensures that IPv6 can be
assumed on all peers.
The 6bed4 mechanism is meant as a fallback mechanism for IPv6
connectivity on networks that do not support it natively, by running
a tunnel over UDP and IPv4. The IPv4 address is used to support
traceability of the traffic originator, which means that no user
account or other configuration is needed.
The tunnel mechanism encapsulates IPv6 in UDP/IPv4 and builds on
existing IPv6 mechanisms; it employs Stateless Address
Autoconfiguration [RFC4862] to setup an IPv6 address on a 6bed4 Peer,
and Neighbor Discovery [RFC4861] to find the most direct route to a
remote 6bed4 Peer.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 30, 2014.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Wire Format of 6bed4 Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. 6bed4-Prefixed Address Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Invitations for Direct Connections . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. Meaning of EUI-64 flag bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Network Infrastructure and Protocol Overview . . . . . . . . 7
5. NAT and Firewall Traversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Filtering 6bed4 Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7. Routing 6bed4 Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.1. Network Endpoint Routing Options . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. Opportunistic Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.1. Abstract Framework for Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . 16
8.2. Neighbor-based Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8.3. Routing-based Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
8.4. Invitation-based Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
8.5. TCP-based Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
8.6. SCTP-based Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
8.7. SIP-supported Direct Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9. Requirements for 6bed4 Infrastructure Components . . . . . . 19
9.1. Requirements for 6bed4 Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9.2. Requirements for 6bed4 Peers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10. Implementation Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
11. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
12. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
13. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1. Terminology
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
6bed4 Frame: A network frame or packet that consists of an IPv6
frame encapsulated into UDP and then into IPv4.
6bed4 Address: The combination of an IPv4 address and a UDP port
number. This pair of coordinates is used to indicate a UDP/IPv4
endpoint the 6bed4-wrapped traffic. A Source 6bed4 Address is a
6bed4 Address comprising of a source IPv4 address and source UDP
port; a Destination 6bed4 Address is a 6bed4 Address comprising of
a destination IPv4 address and destination UDP port. A 6bed4
Address is called Direct if it represent the coordinates of an
endpoint; a 6bed4 Address is called General if it addresses a
6bed4 server.
6bed4-Prefixed Address: An IPv6 address that begins with the
standard prefix TBD1::/32 that defines it the rest of the address
as holding a General and (usually) a Direct 6bed4 Address.
6bed4 Peer: An endpoint in the 6bed4 communication path. This is
where IPv6 traffic is wrapped into 6bed4 Frames, or taken out of
it. Note that configurations may exist where further
communication over IPv6 takes place, but the peer remains the
endpoint for 6bed4-embedded frames.
6bed4 Infrastrucure: The combination of 6bed4 Peers, 6bed4 Servers
and routing announcements made to the Internet.
/n Prefix: When n is at most 32, we use this notation to refer to an
IPv4 prefix. When n is over 32, we use this notation to refer to
an IPv6 prefix.
/32+n Prefix: This is always an IPv6 prefix, with a length of 32+n
bits, with n at least 0 and at most 32. This notation improves
readability when /32+n prefixes in a 6bed4-Prefixed Address are
compared to /n prefixes in IPv4 addresses.
Native IPv6 Address: An IPv6 address that is not routed over 6bed4,
Teredo [RFC4380] or 6to4 [RFC3056]. In other words, an IPv6
address that matches none of the prefixes TBD1::/32, 2001:0000::/
32, 2002::/16. Synonyms used in this document are Native Address,
or even just "native".
Internal Address: An IPv4 address as specified in [RFC1918] or
[RFC6598], or an IPv6 address specified as Link-Local in
[RFC4291].
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
Public Address: An address as observed by any arbitrary observer on
the Internet, so outside of any layer of Network Address
Translation. Formally, it is defined as any address that is not
an internal address.
UDP/IPv4 Stream: A term that loosely refers to the back-and-forth
exchanges of UDP frames over IPv4 between two specific 6bed4
Addresses. Note that the 6bed4 protocol sends keepalive messages
to keep a started stream open with respect to filtering and
address/port translation.
6bed4 Connection: The exchange of 6bed4 Frames between two 6bed4
endpoints. This is run over an UDP/IPv4 stream. When the
endpoints of that stream are both Direct 6bed4 Addresses, then the
6bed4 connection is also called direct. Otherwise, the 6bed4
connection may be referred to as a general connection to make
explicit that frames travel through at least one 6bed4 server.
Endpoint-Dependent Mapping: Any mapping between 6bed4 Addresses that
is not an endpoint-independent mapping according to [RFC4787]. In
terms of this RFC, for some values of Y2:y2 the value of X1':x1'
differs from X2':x2'.
2. Wire Format of 6bed4 Frames
A 6bed4 Frame is constructed from an IPv6 frame by embedding it into
UDP and IPv4. In that form, it is transmitted over the Internet.
The source IPv4 address and source UDP port together are referred to
as the frame's Source 6bed4 Address; the destination IPv4 address and
destination UDP port together are referred to as the frame's
Destination 6bed4 Address.
The embedded contents of a 6bed4 Frame always represents an IPv6
frame. The source IPv6 address encodes the Source 6bed4 Address, and
the destination IPv6 address encodes the Destination 6bed4 Address.
In fact, there are two variants of each 6bed4 Address depending on
how the destination is reached, namely a Direct 6bed4 Address and a
General 6bed4 Address; both are included in the IPv6 addresses.
Since 6bed4 embedding supports general IPv6 traffic, there is a well-
defined form for carrying around ICMPv6 messages, including Neighbor
Discovery messages. These are actively used to negotiate with 6bed4
Peers. Router Solicitation and Advertisement is used to determine a
public IPv6 address; Neighbor Solicitation and Advertisement is used
to test and confirm if a remote 6bed4 Peer can be reached at the
Direct 6bed4 Address.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
Router Advertisements in 6bed4 Frames always announce /114 prefixes.
This leaves 14 bits that can be used locally to distinguish hosts
under the same prefix, possibly managed through static assignment or
DHCPv6. Note that the completion with all zero bits indicates
[RFC4291] the router, or more precisely, the sender of the Router
Advertisement.
3. 6bed4-Prefixed Address Format
A 6bed4 Address is in concept a pair of an IPv4 address and a UDP
port. A representation of this information as drawn below would show
these parts in that order, and each represented in network byte
order. Every 6bed4-Prefixed Address is known to at least contain a
General 6bed4 Address; furthermore, somewhat dependent on a few flags
as explained below, the same address usually also holds a Direct
6bed4 Address.
Conceptual Representation of a 6bed4 Address:
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| IPv4.H | IPv4.h | IPv4.l | IPv4.L | UDP.H | UDP.L |
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
8 8 8 8 8 8
In places where link-scoped addresses [RFC4291] are used, they look
like a standard fe80::/10 prefix followed by zero bit padding and
ending in the six bytes IPv4.H, IPv4.h, IPv4.l, IPv4.L, UDP.H and
UDP.L.
The representation of the General 6bed4 Address is founded on the
knowledge that each 6bed4 Server runs on the standard UDP port TBD2.
This information is not mentioned in the 6bed4-Prefixed Address, but
the IPv4 address is completely shown in the top 64 bits of the
6bed4-Prefixed Address. The resulting sequence is:
o The four bytes IPv4.H, IPv4.h, IPv4.l and IPv4.L.
Assuming it is there, the representation of the Direct 6bed4 Address
is also not entirely straightforward; it goes into the lower half of
the 6bed4-Prefixed Address, but it must respect the two bits that
must be set in the EUI-64 interface identifier (Section 4.2.1 of
[RFC4291]). The bits in those position are placed behind the rest of
the Direct 6bed4 Address. The resulting sequence in the
representation is, in network byte order:
o IPv4.H with the lowest two bits replaced by the EUI-64 required
bits;
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
o The three bytes IPv4.h, IPv4.l and IPv4.L;
o The two bytes UDP.H and UDP.L;
o The overruled 2 bits from IPv4.H.
The last part of the 6bed4-Prefixed Address concerns the 14 bits that
follow after the /114 from the Router Advertisement. This part is
left to the local 6bed4 endpoint to fill. The only thing to be
mindful about is that the continuation with all zero bits is reserved
(Section 2.6.1 of [RFC4291]) for the on-link address of the router
that sent the prefix. This part will be denoted as "lanip" in the
following diagram.
The general format of a 6bed4-Prefixed address that can be embedded
as 6bed4 is as follows:
The IPv6 address for 6bed4:
0 32 64 114
+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| TBD1 | Server IPv4 | Direct 6bed4 Address | lanip|
+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
<--------------------- /114 prefix ---------------------->
The well-known TBD1::/32 prefix is important; it enables software to
recognise this format in IPv6 addresses, and realise that traffic may
be sent to either of the 6bed4 Addresses contained in the IPv6
address.
Note how it takes a /32+32 prefix to describe the route to a
particular 6bed4 Server; however, when the IPv4 address of this
server is contained in a /16 prefix it is possible to publish a /
32+16 prefix, which is rather common. More on global routing follows
in Section 7.
The prefix TBD1::/32 and port TBD1 are only reserved for a period of
ten years, starting at the date of publication of this specification.
Implementations that are aware of time MUST NOT implement 6bed4 after
the final date; an extension of the final date is only possible
through an updating RFC that at least passes through expert review
for both allocated resources. This supports five years for new
applications to roll out IPv6 applications based on 6bed4, and
another five years for the use of 6bed4 to cease to exist and native
IPv6 to replace it. Effectively, 6bed4 supports the assumption of
IPv6 available anywhere, which should help the shift from IPv4 to
IPV6.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
This specification ensures that a 6bed4 Server can always be reached,
and will always receive the frames sent to its /64 prefix. It cannot
place constraints on the routers that act as intermediaries, though.
3.1. Invitations for Direct Connections
One special condition in a 6bed4-Prefixed IPv6 Address can be seen as
an invitation for Direct 6bed4 Connections, namely when the General
and Direct 6bed4 Address are the same. In terms of the address
format, this means that the IPv4 addresses in each are the same, and
that the UDP port in the Direct 6bed4 Address is the 6bed4 standard
port TBD2.
This special format can be exploited to always make Direct 6bed4
Connections to this 6bed4-Prefixed Address; details are given in
Section 8.4.
3.2. Meaning of EUI-64 flag bits
Note that it would be possible to assign meaning to non-zero values
of the two EUI-64 flag bits, but this specification does not detail
how. It could however be useful in an extension to 6bed4; multicast
media streams are more likely with the larger address space of IPv6,
and 6bed4 could facilitate it because it makes IPv6 possible
everywhere and because its peers could attempt to spread the load
through some clever application-layer protocol. The EUI-64 flags
could also be useful to support globally unique EUI-64 identifiers
when the General 6bed4 Address can address hosts locally.
Mindful of the current specification and these possible extensions,
this specification states that the two flag bits SHOULD be set to 0.
The lower half of the IPv6 address MUST NOT be interpreted to contain
a Direct 6bed4 Address if the local/unique flag is set to indicate
uniqueness; in that case, it MAY be interpreted as a modified EUI-64
address and potentially used for local routing if the upper half of
the IPv6 address is in local use. The unicast/multicast flag MUST be
ignored until this specification is refined with details of its
interpretation towards multicast facilities.
4. Network Infrastructure and Protocol Overview
This specification does not refer to parts of the 6bed4
Infrastructure as tunnel clients and tunnel servers, but rather as
6bed4 Peers and 6bed4 Servers. This reflects the intention of making
the endpoints, or peers, use Direct UDP/IPv4 Streams as their
preferred transport for 6bed4 Connections.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
The purpose of a 6bed4 Server is to provide information about the
Public IPv6 Address of a 6bed4 Peer, and to permit fallback to
General 6bed4 Streams as a transport mechanism between 6bed4 Peers
between which Direct UDP/IPv4 Streams are not feasible. Finally, the
6bed4 Server is needed to connect a host that can only do 6bed4 to
one that can only do Native IPv6 Addresses; precautions to avoid that
situation wherever possible follow.
To be reachable to the outside world on a Public IPv6 Address, a
6bed4 Peer sends a Router Solicitation to a 6bed4 Server, and
receives a Router Advertisement with a /114 prefix in response. As
shown in Section 2, the returned prefix includes both the General and
Direct 6bed4 Address for the local endpoint, and leaves some room for
local address assignment. It is then the local 6bed4 Peer's task to
keep open the UDP/IPv4 Stream to the 6bed4 Server, so as to ensure
that the IPv6 address remains constant. If it were to change, then
the server would respond to sent traffic with a new Router
Advertisement, offering a new /114 prefix and retracting the previous
one. This situation is usually avoided by sending regular keepalive
messages.
When initiating a new 6bed4 Connection, in other words when first
contacting a remote 6bed4 Peer, it is also possible to send a Router
Solicitation to the General 6bed4 Address found in the remote 6bed4
Address. This results in an alternate 6bed4-Prefixed Address that
can be setup locally for that contact attempt, avoiding trapezium-
shaped traffic between 6bed4 Peers. This specification ensures that
this mechanism will always work, but a similar responsibility to keep
the link to the remote 6bed4 Server open falls upon the local system.
To further optimise traffic, it is also possible to send a Router
Advertisement to the Direct 6bed4 Address contained in the remote
IPv6 address; this may work and entirely remove the dependency on a
6bed4 Server. It is up to the application which options are tried,
an in which order. Note that it is not generally possible to rely on
certain connectivity between 6bed4 Peers without using at least one
6bed4 Server per 6bed4 Peer as a fallback mechanism to reach it.
Finally, for the most agressive approach towards peer-to-peer
connections, it is even possible to send the Router Solicitation to
the Direct 6bed4 Address of the approached peer. Note that it is
also possible for peers inviting this method to copy their Direct
6bed4 Address in the General 6bed4 Address, and ensure that traffic
always ends up on the 6bed4 endpoint. It should be noted that it is
not generally possible to rely on just trying the Direct 6bed4
Address if certainty of the connection is required; the General 6bed4
Address MUST also be used to achieve this certainty, except when it
is the same as the Direct 6bed4 Address, in which case the Router
Solicitations would be the same.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
At any time before or during communication with a 6bed4 Peer through
a 6bed4 Server, it is possible to try using a Direct UDP/IPv4 Stream
by sending a Neighbor Solicitation from a local Direct 6bed4 Address
to the peer's Direct 6bed4 Address, and observing if it is matched by
a Neighbor Advertisement over the opposite path. Note that "matched"
means that it MUST be certain that the Neighbor Advertisement was not
sent in response to a Neighbor Solicition that went out over another
channel. In Section 8 a few alternatives to this standard method are
presented.
When such direct requests lead to matching direct responses, then it
is safe to assume that a Direct UDP/IPv4 Stream is possible between
the 6bed4 Peers, at least for some time following. This is because
UDP/IPv4 has worked in both directions, and the fact that it
contained ICMPv6 cannot be inferred by the intermediate NAT routers
or firewalls because the UDP format does not tag its contents. To
ensure that this assumption continues to hold, firewalls and NAT
routers MUST NOT give frames from and to the standard 6bed4 port TBD2
any special treatment.
The knowledge that a remote 6bed4 Address can be reached over a
certain UDP/IPv4 Stream MUST NOT be assumed to also apply to
communication with any other IPv6 Address. This is vital, as it
evades the trap of making inductive assumptions about the behaviour
of NAT or firewalls. See Section 5 for details of the deductive
approach of 6bed4 regarding regarding NAT and firewalls.
It is common for IPv6 hosts to have multiple IPv6 addresses, and so
the question which local and remote addresses to use. This has been
answered in [RFC6724]. In relation to 6bed4, native-to-native
traffic MUST precede 6bed4-to-6bed4. In addition, 6bed4-to-6bed4
SHOULD be preferred over either native-to-6bed4 and 6bed4-to-native,
because it is more desirable to use a Direct UDP/IPv4 Stream than a
General UDP/IPv4 Stream through a 6bed4 Router. Every 6bed4 Router
is ultimately a shared resource and thereby a potential bottle neck
for routing efficiency. This choice implies that 6bed4 Routers are
offloaded. Local interface and routing table configurations are
usually the places to configure these rules.
In addition to this optimisation, higher-layer applications MAY also
incorporate knownledge of 6bed4; for instance, a SIP proxy [RFC3261]
could observe a remote peer's 6bed4-Prefixed Address and offer media
exchange over a locally available 6bed4-Prefixed Address instead of a
Native IPv6 Address, once more so as to offload the shared resource
of a 6bed4 Server, and to achieve lower roundtrip delays and jitter.
It could even aim to construct a more optimal 6bed4-Prefixed Address
for the connection using the techniques mentioned above.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
5. NAT and Firewall Traversal
There is a wide variety of NAT router implementations, each with
subtly different characteristics. A similar thing applies to
firewalls. This means that any approach to peering through NAT and
firewalls that is to work everywhere must be founded on deductive
reasoning-from-facts, and not induce information from an incomplete
survey of NAT routers and firewalls. Specifically, STUN [RFC3489]
used to make such inductions which were later relativated
(Section 14.3 [RFC5389]). An IPv6 tunneling mechanism based on this
work [RFC4380] has indeed shown to not work in general [POTAROO].
Nothing in 6bed4 makes assumptions like a behavioural classification
of NAT routers or firewalls. Instead, 6bed4 simply tries if IPv6
traffic between peers is possible by sending a frame directly to a
peer and matching it with a return frame. Since these are carried as
part of a UDP/IPv4 stream with no content tagging, a NAT router
cannot treat this test exchange any differently from "real" data, and
so it is possible to exchange traffic directly for as long as the UDP
/IPv4 stream is considered to be mapped. This may be for a limited
time, but that time can be extended through keepalive messages if so
desired.
Firewalls and NAT routers are assumed to not inspect the contents of
an UDP/IPv4 stream. This is a fair assumption because of the lacking
content tagging in UDP. Network components that alter the contents
of UDP frames have been reported [RFC4380] but are downright broken.
They may need to be replaced before 6bed4 can function; unlike
Teredo, 6bed4 will not reduce the risk of running into what are bugs
by obfuscation of addresses and ports contained in 6bed4 Frames.
This specification assumes that outgoing UDP is supported. This may
not work for every service that states to offer Internet service, but
such statements are false and will lead to more functional problems.
The only imagined exception to the assumption of functioning UDP is
due to manual override, where an local administrator has opted to
control UDP traffic based on port numbers. In such cases, the
administrator must be contacted to manually install support for
6bed4, precisely as s/he desires it.
Note however, that the inability to recognise UDP traffic in lieu of
content tagging so the firmware in NAT routers and firewalls cannot
make any assumptions on the contents of UDP frames, and so it is not
possible to filter UDP traffic with a general mechanism. As a
result, an entire NAT router or firewall is limited to one default
behaviour for all UDP traffic. Otherwise, UDP as a general protocol
would fail.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
When sending UDP out through a NAT router, it will usually substitute
the source IPv4 address and UDP port with an external IPv4 address
and UDP port. For UDP protocols to behave normally in the presence
of this translation, the same substitutions must applied when future
frames are sent over the same UDP stream, so some mapping between
internal and external IPv4 address and UDP port can safely be
assumed. The NAT router can select values from the source and
destination IPv4 addresses and UDP ports to lookup what mapping to
apply, but as long as all these values match, the same UDP/IPv4
stream is recognised and the same mapping must be applied.
Firewalls have a similar mapping, albeit not for substituting an
address and port, but to recognise if traffic has been sent out over
a UDP/IPv4 stream. Other than this difference, it generally behaves
under the same constraints as a mapping in a NAT router.
To handle all mappings that are possible, 6bed4 makes no assumption
about sharing the same mapping for different UDP/IPv4 Streams; a
Public IPv4 Address and UDP Port may be the same for two remote
peers, or they may differ. As far as 6bed4 concerns, they may be
separately administered mappings. And if they happen to overlap then
it is still safe to treat them separately, as the protocol components
are idempotent.
UDP has no formal end marker for a UDP/IPv4 Stream, so the only thing
that a router can do is guess when a stream has ended. It is assumed
by this specification that a mapping is kept active for a minimum
time, and revived at least when traffic is sent out along the stream,
as that is the only thing on which an implementation can base such
revivals without making UDP insecure. To overcome timeouts on such
mappings, a keepalive mechanism is needed in a number of places, and
the timer triggering that mechanism must be a setting that the end
user can influence. Experiments [RFC4380] have shown that a default
setting of 30 seconds is quite likely to work. To avoid being
presumptious, implementations SHOULD permit user configuration of
this timeout value.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
UDP in general must support bidirectional streams, so when outbound
traffic is passed over an UDP/IPv4 Stream, then reply traffic within
that same same stream must also be accepted. Otherwise, a firewall
or NAT router would break the UDP protocol. Note once more that
there is no tagging of content in UDP, so there can only be one
default policy. There is only one way that a NAT router can redirect
such traffic internally, and that is by applying the mapping for the
UDP/IPv4 stream in reverse. This will send the reply traffic back to
the internal host that initiated the outbound side of the UDP/IPv4
stream, so the damage done to the UDP/IPv4 Stream is unnotice to the
local endpoint (as long as it does not make its endpoint coordinates
explicit to the outside World, of course).
6. Filtering 6bed4 Traffic
Any tunnel should guard against being abused for claims on addresses
"inside" the tunnel based on clients "outside" the tunnel that should
not be able to make such claims. In the case of 6bed4, this means
that the 6bed4 Address from which a 6bed4 Frame arrives must match
with the Sender IPv6 Address.
When a filter rejects a 6bed4 Frame on account of a mismatch between
the Source 6bed4 Address and the suggested IPv6 address, it should
respond with a Router Advertisement that retracts the /114 prefix
used in the IPv6 address, and offer a new /114 prefix that would have
matched to replace it.
Both 6bed4 servers and 6bed4 Peers MUST silently discard any
6bed4-embedded frame that is not an proper IPv6 message; example
conditions to implement that would be:
o the embedded frame length is less than that of an IPv6 header
o the embedded frame does not start with nibble 6
o the embedded frame length differs from the total IPv6 frame length
o there are checksum errors in TCP, ICMPv6 or UDP headers
If the recipient is a 6bed4 Server, then the Source 6bed4 Address of
an acceptable 6bed4 Frame MUST match one of the following:
o the Direct 6bed4 Address embedded in the Source 6bed4 Address;
o the General 6bed4 Address of a 6bed4 Server known to announce
TBD1::/32, but only if the recipient's 6bed4 Address matches the
Destination 6bed4 Address of the 6bed4 Frame.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
Note that 6bed4 Frames may occasionally travel through a router
announced for TBD1::/32 but not when they are sent from a
6bed4-Prefixed Address, in which case it would have been forwarded to
a 6bed4 Address.
If the recipient is a 6bed4 Peer, then the Source 6bed4 Address of an
acceptable 6bed4 Frame MUST match one of the following:
o the Direct 6bed4 Address embedded in the Source IPv6 Address, but
this variation fails if it can be retrieved;
o the General 6bed4 Address embedded in the Source IPv6 Address.
In addition, the Destination 6bed4 Address of an acceptable 6bed4
Frame MUST match the following:
o the Direct 6bed4 Address in the Desintation IPv6 Address, but this
check also succeeds if it can be retrieved.
Finally, the destination IPv6 address SHOULD be assigned by the 6bed4
Server set as the Generic 6bed4 Address as part of the destination
IPv6 address.
In cases where the lower half of the IPv6 address indicates a
globally unique lower half, no Direct 6bed4 Address can be retrieved
from the IPv6 address, and so it is not possible to make the
aforementioned filtering matches. A remote peer could still accept a
6bed4 Frame on account of the General 6bed4 Address in the IPv6
address, but it MUST NOT try to read a Direct 6bed4 Address from the
IPv6 address. In situations like these the 6bed4 Server would follow
other rules because it would be aware of the way to forward (and
receive) 6bed4 Frames from 6bed4 Peers.
A 6bed4 Server MAY apply additional filtering to limit its use to a
particular subset of 6bed4 Peers; for instance, the users of an ISP
or a commercial 6bed4 service. To this end, it would ensure that
6bed4 Frames are passed either from or to a Direct 6bed4 Address that
is accepted. This MUST NOT be done on a 6bed4 Server that announces
routability for the TBD1::/32 prefix.
The only messages exempted from all aforementioned filtering are
Router Solicitation frames targeting a link-local IPv6 address, and
having their IPv6 Hop Limit set to 255. Those messages receive a
Router Advertisement frame in reply, containing the /114 prefix that
matches the 6bed4 Address of the originator of the solicitation.
Specifically note that even a commercially exploited 6bed4 Server
MUST welcome Router Solicitation from unaffiliated peers that intend
to avoid trapezium-shaped routing.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
7. Routing 6bed4 Traffic
In backbone networks, IPv6 connectivity providers exchange routes
through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). There is no standard for
prefix lengths supported, and principally everyone makes their own
filtering rules. In practice [ref] however, a /48 is a mostly
supported length, unlike anything that is longer. The small
percentage that does not support the /48 is usually capable of
routing through a covering /32 IPv6 prefix. The best approach to
global routeability appears to be the combination of a /32+16 with a
covering /32+0 prefix.
One MUST own the IPv4 range over which routing is announced, so the
announcement of a /32+16 is only possible for a 6bed4 Address that
falls in a /16 prefix that is owned by the anonymous system that runs
the 6bed4 server. An exception is made for the /32+0 prefix, which
serves as a fallback routing facility. This fallback range can be
used as anycast, so this MAY be announced by any party implementing a
6bed4 server. What this means is that control over return traffic is
only possible through announcement of the /32+16, with a minute
portion of the Internet still routing it through the /32
announcement.
Note that routing practice [ref] indicates that there is no global
routing use in announcing prefixes longer than /32+16 if a /16 prefix
is not held around the 6bed4 server; such longer prefixes usually do
not make it to the backbone. Also note that there is no use in
announcing shorter prefixes than /32+16 if a shorter prefix than a /
16 is available around the 6bed4 server address. This is because
only a sinlge IPv4 address is addressed, and because the /32+16
prefix is the most likely to make it to the backbone.
Anyone announcing a /32+16 MAY also announce the /32+0; anyone
announcing the /32+0 MUST respond to all non-local 6bed4 traffic
(targeted at 6bed4 server addresses outside locally administered IPv4
ranges) by relaying the traffic to the General 6bed4 Address embedded
in the top half of the IPv6 destination address and the sending
server's address as the source address [TODO:why_accept?]. This
relaying is done inside a 6bed4 Frame over UDP, with the default
6bed4 port as both the source and destination port.
Announced /32+16 prefixes SHOULD be retracted during downtime of the
6bed4 service; announced /32 prefixes MUST be retracted during
downtime of the 6bed4 service. It is advised to relay routing
messages that establish these routes through the 6bed4 service, to
the effect that service downtime implies route announcement
retraction. This would not normally interfere with intentions to
setup redundant 6bed4 service.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
7.1. Network Endpoint Routing Options
Note that the availability of /32+0 announcements as an anycasted
service makes it possible for any node with a single IPv4 address and
access to the 6bed4 port to offer 6bed4 service. The quality level
of this service is lower due to the dependency on the anycast range
for more than just fallback routing. Having said that, it does
enable a model where an endpoint can run a 6bed4 service to cover a
local network. In this case it is possible to use the local
numbering scheme, as long as the respective bit in the EUI-64 address
is zero. This specifically implies that Stateless Address
Autoconfiguration cannot be used to assign a 6bed4 Address on such a
LAN, but DHCPv6 or manual schemes, or local-bit-flipping
autoconfiguration could all work.
8. Opportunistic Peering
An explicit design goal of 6bed4 is to exploit Direct UDP/IPv4
Streams between 6bed4 Peers. This is achieved by simply trying an
exchange over UDP/IPv4 and relying on the uninterpreted transport of
UDP payloads to infer that the entire UDP/IPv4 stream must be
possible if a single exchange works bidirectionally.
It is vitally important that UDP/IPv4 Streams follow the same path in
both directions. This is because it is only safe to assume that
outgoing traffic in a UDP/IPv4 Stream keeps NAT router and firewalls
open for return traffic. Specifically, these network components need
to see the same UDP ports and IPv4 addresses for the traffic in both
directions, albeit with their source and destination roles exchanged.
To ensure this, a 6bed4 Peer that receives direct traffic from a
remote peer that it would address through a 6bed4 server MUST start
one of the following methods to setup direct peering. In such cases,
it may not give up before it has tried the Neighbor Discovery method,
which is the only obliged method.
The one thing left to specify is how peering is initiated. This is
done by one of the following methods to setup direct peering, applied
opportunistically. This can basically be done at any time deemed
fitting, but it is suggested to employ some form of rate limiting for
opportunistic peering attempts. A few useful places to do this would
be to send a Router Advertisement to a direct 6bed4 Address before
sending it to its general 6bed4 Address; or to send Neighbor
Discovery sometime during the normal exchange; or to do it during the
setup of a TCP/IPv6 stream.
The following subsections introduce a general framework for setting
up direct peering. It continues with a few concrete examples, some
of which must be implemented with 6bed4. There are certainly
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
opportunities for other specific implementations of the general
opportunistic mechanism.
8.1. Abstract Framework for Direct Peering
The abstract framework for direct peering setup assumes that 6bed4
Frames may be lost, a common assumption when routing frames over the
Internet. This assumption allows the 6bed4 Peer to simply try
sending a frame directly, without having to maintain resending
queues. Usually, lost frames will be resent by higher protocol
layers, at which time they would be sent through the 6bed4 Server.
Alternatively, extra frames can be generated in the 6bed4 Peer.
Another aspect of the abstract framework is that it must be possible
to relate an incoming direct reply to an outgoing direct request, and
only a direct outgoing request. This can be established with a nonce
if a frame is generated for the purposes of 6bed4 Peer detection; or
if a higher protocol layer generates the message, then the time
between the first send and a later re-send is the window during which
the direct response is considered a reliable sign of bidirectional
traffic.
8.2. Neighbor-based Direct Peering
One mechanism that MUST be implemented in all 6bed4 Peers is that of
peering setup through Neighbor Discovery. This involves a Neighbor
Solictation generated by the 6bed4 Peer over a Direct UDP/IPv4
Stream, and receiving a reply in the form of a Neighbor
Advertisement. In short, this is standaard reachability detection
for IPv6. The usual ICMPv6 requirement of a Hop Limit equal to 255
applies here, and is not invalidated by the underlying UDP/IPv4
transport.
In order to ensure that a response matches a request sent directly,
as well as to thwart attemts to overtake traffic, a nonce following
[RFC6496] MUST be sent as part of the Neighbor Solicitation. A 6bed4
Peer MUST respond to Neighbor Solicitation with Hop Limit 255 and its
own address information as destination with a Neighbor Advertisement
with Hop Limit 255, and it MUST include the nonce it found in the
Neighbor Solicitation, if any.
A 6bed4 Peer wanting to initiate a Direct 6bed4 Connection may use
this mechanism at any time; it is safe because it does not interfere
with the actual data stream between the peers. These internally
generated Neighbor Discovery messages SHOULD NOT be sent to the 6bed4
Server. Only when a direct Neighbor Solicitation results in a
Neighbor Advertisement with the same nonce may the originator of the
exchange conclude that a Direct 6bed4 Connection can be used. The
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
remote peer MUST NOT draw that conclusion, as it cannot be sure if
the direct Neighbor Advertisement arrived. Also in the interest of
security, it should initiate its own exchange.
8.3. Routing-based Direct Peering
Another mechanism that SHOULD be implemented in 6bed4 Peers, and that
MUST be implemented in 6bed4 Servers, is responding to Router
Discovery messages with the Hop Limit set to 255. The response
should be composed of the /64 prefix that applies to the 6bed4 server
in use, and the lower half should be composed from the 6bed4 Address
over which the request was received. If a nonce is included, it MUST
be handled as for Neighbor Discovery. A 6bed4 Peer MUST include a
nonce if it sends out a Router Discovery message.
8.4. Invitation-based Direct Peering
The simplest possible form of opportunistic direct routing is when
the 6bed4-Prefixed address of a remote peer has the same values set
as its General and Direct 6bed4 Address. This means that the
opportunistic route can be tried immediately, as the 6bed4 Router
function requires accessibility over the standard UDP port TBD2 that
is apparently also in use for Direct 6bed4 Connections.
Note that it is usually necessary to obtain a 6bed4-Prefixed Address
to use for communication with such a party, so if no local IPv6
address with the same /64 as the remote peer's IPv6 address exists,
then one should be requested from the remote peer through Router
Solicitation. This will inform the local peer how its public address
looks to the inviting peer.
8.5. TCP-based Direct Peering
This mechanism MAY be incorporated into 6bed4 implementations that
run TCP over 6bed4. It piggy-backs on the SYN and ACK flags
exchanged while setting up a TCP connection to a remote 6bed4 Peer,
and introduces peering opportunistically and, quite possibly, without
any explicit messaging for setting it up.
TCP-based peering is based on the SYN flag sent initially by a new
TCP connection being setup, and the ACK flag sent to acknowledge it.
Furthermore, it assumes that the TCP stack wil resend a failed first
SYN attempt.
The first SYN sent to a remote 6bed4 Peer would be sent to the Direct
6bed4 Address of the remote peer; if it reports back with the ACK
flag set, then a direct connection was clearly possible. If this
response does not arrive before the TCP-stack re-sends the SYN fame,
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
then this and further attempts are sent to the General 6bed4 Address,
until further inspiration triggers another attempt at direct peering.
The endpoint information in TCP as well as window offsets are used to
recognise the SYN attempt, and later pairing the ACK to it. This
means that the conditions are available for certainty that a direct
attempt is paired with a direct response.
Note that this mechanism works in both directions; as the passive
side responds to a SYN with ACK, it usually sends its own SYN flag in
hope of an ACK back from the active side. This second exchange can
follow the same rules to detect bidirectional connectivity from the
other side. Sending that first ACK along with the second SYN also
means that a first attempt is made through direct peering.
This facility is useful for servers that have configured their NAT
and Firewalls to open a UDP port, so any direct contact attempts are
certain to succeed. This can be used to construct a fixed 6bed4
Address, which would be suitable for publication in DNS. Although
the Invitations of Section 8.4 are a special form of this approach,
the TCP-based approach covers many more situations.
8.6. SCTP-based Direct Peering
The Opportunistic Peering method for SCTP [RFC4960] is a variation on
the method for TCP. Note that SCTP does not have the usual
acceptance problems when used between 6bed4 Peers, since 6bed4
traffic is largely unfiltered and tunnels through the NAT routers
that currently tend to block this protocol.
SCTP follows an association initiation protocol with four frames
instead of the three of TCP. The last two may carry data chunks, but
this would be stored in a separate chunk, permitting the network
layer some freedom to manipulate the frames if desired.
The advantage of four messages over three is that the first chunk
(INIT) can be sent first to the Direct 6bed4 Address, then to the
General 6bed4 Address of the remote peer, which can then assume that
outgoing UDP traffic has opened a hole in NAT and Firewalls. This
means that the chances of entry for a reply message are optimal.
Therefore, the opportunistic method for SCTP relies on the remaining
three chunks of association initiation.
The INIT-ACK chunk counts as an opportunistic attempt from the remote
to the local peer when it arrives over the Direct UDP/IPv4 Stream;
the COOKIE chunk sent over the Direct UDP/IPv4 stream signals
acceptance to the remote peer and is at the same time an
opportunistic attempt from the local peer to the remote; the COOKIE
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
ECHO chunk sent over the Direct UDP/IPv4 Stream signals acceptance to
the local peer.
In short, new SCTP associations can send the first attempt of each of
the chunks for association initiation to the Direct 6bed4 Address of
a peer. With the exception of INIT, the arrival of a chunk over the
General UDP/IPv4 Stream indicates that the SCTP association must
continue through the 6bed4 Server.
8.7. SIP-supported Direct Peering
Another example of opportunistic peering that can be advantageous for
a specific application is SIP [RFC3261]. A SIP exchange consists of
a request and one or more responses. The application software is
well aware of the distinction between those, and can prove useful to
facilitate 6bed4 peering if it integrates with the network layers.
SIP messages, when sent over UDP, are prone to resends if a response
is not received for some time. As a result, it is possible to first
attempt sending to the remote peer's Direct 6bed4 Address, and send
later retries to the General 6bed4 Address. As with TCP, it is
possible to treat as proof of direct peering any incoming direct
responses between the intial request and its re-sends through the
General 6bed4 Address.
The link between a SIP request and its response is easily made with
the identifying parts of the message; these are embedded in text and
would thus rely on application integration with 6bed4. The parts are
contained in the Call-ID: header, From: tag and optional To: tag. In
addition, the top Via: header contains a branch parameter that
identifies the exchange. All this is the knowledge domain of the
application, and could take too much from the 6bed4 tunneling code,
so instead of support such protocols directly it is a sign that an
extended API between the 6bed4 stack and the application can be
advantageous.
9. Requirements for 6bed4 Infrastructure Components
This section describes minimum requirements for 6bed4 Servers and
6bed4 Peers.
9.1. Requirements for 6bed4 Servers
A 6bed4 Server MUST respond to well-formed Router Solicitations from
any 6bed4 Peer, including non-local and non-member requests, by
advertising the /114 prefix that starts with the well-known prefix
TBD1::/32, followed by its own 6bed4 Address in the position of the
General 6bed4 Address, and the requesting 6bed4 Address as the Direct
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
6bed4 Address. The 6bed4 Server MUST know its own 6bed4 Address as a
combination of a configured public IPv4 address and the UDP port TBD2
and it MUST be reachable for anyone at the resulting 6bed4 Address.
A 6bed4 Server MUST filter incoming 6bed4 Frames as specified in
Section 6. When a 6bed4 Frame is rejected on account of its Source
6bed4 Address, then the same Router Advertisement MUST be sent in
response, with the extension that the falsely assumed /114 prefix
from the source IPv6 address is also retracted.
When responding to Neighbor Solicitation or Router Solicitation, a
6bed4 Server MUST copy any nonce and timing information from the
request into the response.
A 6bed4 Server MAY publish prefixes of its IPv6 address with lengths
between /32+0 and /32+32 through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
with at least the 6bed4 Address that it assigns in Router
Advertisements as the General 6bed4 Address, and MAY be published in
BGP with a larger prefix. The 6bed4 Server MUST receive all native
IPv6 traffic sent to this published prefix.
A 6bed4 Server SHOULD forward IPv6 frames sent to 6bed4-Prefixed
Addresses after embedding them in a 6bed4 Frame; the Destination
6bed4 Address is the Direct 6bed4 Address if the General 6bed4
Address matches the server's 6bed4 Address, or otherwise the
Destination 6bed4 Address is the General 6bed4 Address.
A 6bed4 Server SHOULD forward 6bed4 Frames destined for IPv6
Addresses that do not fall under the TBD1::/32 prefix. This is done
by unpacking the 6bed4 Frames, or in other words, by removing the UDP
and IPv4 headers.
A 6bed4 Server SHOULD forward 6bed4 Frames destined for a
6bed4-Prefixed Address to the next hop 6bed4 Address. If the
destination IPv6 Address holds the 6bed4 Server's address as the
General 6bed4 Address, then the next hop is the Direct 6bed4 Address
found in the destination IPv6 address. Otherwise, the next hop is
the General 6bed4 Address found in the destination IPv6 address.
The "SHOULD" conformance level in the last three paragraphs is a
conscious limitation of the service, in support for commercial 6bed4
offerings. However, if the 6bed4 Server announces router prefixes of
at least 32 bits valued TBD1, then any IPv6 Frames whois source or
destination IPv6 Address matches one such prefix MUST be forwarded as
described by the last three paragraphs.
9.2. Requirements for 6bed4 Peers
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
A 6bed4 Peer SHOULD respond to well-formed Router Solicitations from
any 6bed4 Peer, and to invalid incoming 6bed4 Frames from any source
with a Router Advertisement, by advertising the /114 prefix that
starts with the well-known prefix TBD1::/32, followed by its own
6bed4 Address in the position of the General 6bed4 Address, and the
requesting 6bed4 Address as the Direct 6bed4 Address. The 6bed4 Peer
may obtain its own 6bed4 Address from the Destination 6bed4 Address
of the incoming 6bed4 Frame.
A 6bed4 Peer MUST filter incoming 6bed4 Frames as specified in
Section 6. When a 6bed4 Frame is rejected on account of its Source
6bed4 Address, then the same Router Advertisement MUST be sent in
response, with the extension that the falsely assumed /114 prefix
from the source IPv6 address is also retracted.
When setting up a 6bed4 Connection to a remote 6bed4 Address, a 6bed4
Peer SHOULD prefer any address for the local side of the 6bed4
Connection that starts with the same /64 prefix as the remote 6bed4
Peer's. If no such address is available locally, it is RECOMMENDED
to acquire one by sending a Router Solicitation to the remote peer's
General and/or Direct 6bed4 Address.
A 6bed4 Peer MUST respond to received Neighbor Solicitation messages
with Neighbor Discovery messages, to implement Opportunistic Peering
as specified in Section 8.1. It MAY also implement other mechanisms
for Opportunistic Peering.
When communicating over a 6bed4 Connection, it is RECOMMENDED that a
6bed4 Peer attempts to setup a Direct 6bed4 Connection according to
the Optimistic Peering procedures described in Section 8.1.
When receiving 6bed4 Frames over a Direct 6bed4 Connection when not
being setup to perform direct 6bed4 Peering to the Source 6bed4
Address, a 6bed4 Peer MUST work towards Optimistic Peering, and
Neighbor Solicitation MUST be one of the opportunistic mechanisms
tried before considering failure. If attempts towards Optimistic
Peering are already in motion for the same remote 6bed4 Peer, then
its result may be awaited first.
A 6bed4 Peer SHOULD send a nonce and timing information [RFC6496] in
any sent Neighbor Solicitation and Router Solicitation.
When responding to Neighbor Solicitation or Router Solicitation, a
6bed4 Peer MUST copy any nonce and timing information from the
request into the response.
A 6bed4 Peer SHOULD send keepalive frames to keep the UDP/IPv4 Stream
open for active 6bed4 Connections. A keepalive frames MAY be a valid
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
IPv6 frame, or it may be an empty message embedded in UDP and IPv4 as
would have been done for an IPv6 frame. It MAY be sent with an IPv4
Time To Live that is so low that the keepalive frame just makes it to
the public Internet, after having crossed local NAT routers and
firewalls. The timing interval of a keepalive frame SHOULD be a user
setting, and it MAY by default be set to a safe low value of 30
seconds.
Finally, a 6bed4 Peer SHOULD deliver any 6bed4 Frames by unwrapping
it (meaning, removing the IPv4 and UDP headers) and locally process
the contained IPv6 frame, and it should accept local IPv6 frames
originating at one of its local 6bed4-Prefixed Addresses, and wrap it
into UDP and IPv4 to send to the destination, either to the Direct or
General 6bed4 Address contained in the IPv6 destinationsaddres.
10. Implementation Concerns
One potential implementation of a 6bed4 tunnel interface would
exploit the Neighbor Cache in an IPv6 host to facilitate storage and
timing of the various neighboring relationships. Indeed, the
timeouts of such relations are generally shorter than NAT mapping
timeouts. It should however be noted that not all Neighbor Caches
are designed for large-scale operation, and that an active host could
choke on that. Furthermore, there is no keepalive mechanism built
into such neighbor caches, which means that one or more peering
relations could loose their address when no traffic is exchanged for
some time.
For ISPs that do not provide 6bed4, there is no problem to reach out
to more distant 6bed4 service providers. It is even thinkable that
such a service would be offered on a commercial basis, and that
traffic through the service would only be passed through when it
either passes to or from a customer's registered address (range).
Such a service provider obviously should not announce that it can
route the TBD1::/32 prefix.
Although this specification speaks only of UDP as a transport for
6bed4, it is possible to add TCP as a fallback protocol if the code
of the 6bed4 Peer and 6bed4 Server agree to that. Although SCTP
would be more suitable, it is not likely to find a situation where
that is present and UDP is not. What is common is that UDP is banned
while TCP is not. Such cases could benefit from a fallback to TCP.
The format of the messages exchanged would be precisely the same,
except that the transmission happens to be ordered and guaranteed.
As one more option to cator to failed Internet installations, one
could even consider supporting TCP over port 80 or 443 instead of the
standard port. In all cases, the 6bed4 Server should now be aware of
all connected 6bed4 Peers, and choose to contact them over TCP
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
instead of UDP, as would normally be the case. This can be remedied
in various ways, with differentiation through the 6bed4 Address of
the server being the easiest.
Another option based on protocol extensions to which 6bed4 Server and
6bed4 Peer could agree, is to apply encryption to the information
exchanged. Such facilities are not part of this specification.
A few situations call for coordination between 6bed4 Infrastructure
components. This will take place under the domain name 6bed4.net for
as long as the TBD1::/32 prefix and the TBD2 port are allocated for
6bed4. The precise methods are not detailed here because it does not
concern the core communication protocols of the 6bed4 tunneling
mechanism. One thing coordinated under 6bed4.net is an service where
Autonomous Systems who announce TBD1::/32 routing must register all
IPv4 addresses of 6bed4 Servers that could pass on 6bed4 traffic to a
machine with a longer prefix that did not make it through to all
parts of the Internet.
11. IANA Considerations
This specification reserves a 32-bit address prefix in the IPv6
address space for a period of ten years, starting from the date of
publication of this specification.
This specification also reserves Port TBD2 from the pool of UDP ports
and from the pool of TCP ports for a period of ten years, starting
from the date of publication of this specification.
The prefix is TBD1::/32 and will be exclusively used for 6bed4
addresses. The port TBD2 will be the port on which 6bed4 Servers
provide their services.
12. Security Considerations
Tunneling mechanisms must always be on their guard for wrapped
packets containing false origins [RFC6169]. To shield against this,
6bed4 ensures that the source IPv4 address and UDP port of the
together match either the Direct or General 6bed4 Address contained
in the source IPv6 address.
Note that this facility works best when address filtering [BCP38] is
applied. In lieu of authentication facilities for frame source, the
best that the 6bed4 tunnel can do is to avoid worsening the problems
of incomplete address filtering.
One exception arises with the possibility that a target
6bed4-Prefixed Address publishes a /32+16 prefix which is not seen
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 23]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
everywhere on the Internet; or that such a prefix is not actually
published at all. In such situations, a 6bed4 Frame may be routed to
a TBD1::/32 route, which passes it on to the General 6bed4 Address
contained in the IPv6 destination address. The list of routers that
can pass on such traffic will generally be limited, and will be
maintained externally to this specification, but documented on
6bed4.net. Routes announced to larger IP space than owned by the
publishing Anonymous System MUST be registered on 6bed4.net so as to
distinguish them from abuse. The domain will publish processible
information that helps 6bed4 Servers to recognise this distinction
too.
It is important to realise that 6bed4 bypasses NAT and Firewalls.
This is a feature inasfar as it enables peer-to-peer connectivity,
but it also implies a responsibility to not lightly attach services
to a 6bed4-Prefixed Address. There is no protection, other than what
is being added. Specifically noteworthy is that the operator of the
6bed4 Server cannot implement filtering on behalf of their customers;
the ability to use Direct 6bed4 Connections would bypass this, and
since this could happen at any time such filtering could not even be
realiably made connection-aware.
13. Normative References
[RFC1918] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, R., Karrenberg, D., Groot, G., and
E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", BCP
5, RFC 1918, February 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels ", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3056] Carpenter, B. and K. Moore, "Connection of IPv6 Domains
via IPv4 Clouds", RFC 3056, February 2001.
[RFC3261] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
June 2002.
[RFC3489] Rosenberg, J., Weinberger, J., Huitema, C., and R. Mahy,
"STUN - Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
Through Network Address Translators (NATs)", RFC 3489,
March 2003.
[RFC4787] Audet, F. and C. Jennings, "Network Address Translation
(NAT) Behavioral Requirements for Unicast UDP", BCP 127,
RFC 4787, January 2007.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 24]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
[RFC4861] Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman,
"Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861,
September 2007.
[RFC4291] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture", RFC 4291, February 2006.
[RFC4380] Huitema, C., "Teredo: Tunneling IPv6 over UDP through
Network Address Translations (NATs)", RFC 4380, February
2006.
[RFC4862] Thomson, S., Narten, T., and T. Jinmei, "IPv6 Stateless
Address Autoconfiguration", RFC 4862, September 2007.
[RFC4960] Stewart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC
4960, September 2007.
[RFC5389] Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing,
"Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389,
October 2008.
[RFC6169] Krishnan, S., Thaler, D., and J. Hoagland, "Security
Concerns with IP Tunneling", RFC 6169, April 2011.
[RFC6496] Krishnan, S., Laganier, J., Bonola, M., and A. Garcia-
Martinez, "Secure Proxy ND Support for SEcure Neighbor
Discovery (SEND)", RFC 6496, February 2012.
[RFC6598] Weil, J., Kuarsingh, V., Donley, C., Liljenstolpe, C., and
M. Azinger, "IANA-Reserved IPv4 Prefix for Shared Address
Space", BCP 153, RFC 6598, April 2012.
[RFC6724] Thaler, D., Draves, R., Matsumoto, A., and T. Chown,
"Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol Version 6
(IPv6)", RFC 6724, September 2012.
[BCP38] Ferguson, P. and D. Senie, "Network Ingress Filtering:
Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source
Address Spoofing", BCP 38, RFC 2827, May 2000.
[POTAROO] Huston, G., "Testing Teredo", April 2011,
<http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2011-04/teredo.html>.
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 25]
Internet-Draft 6bed4 July 2013
Author's Address
Rick van Rein
OpenFortress B.V.
Haarlebrink 5
Enschede, Overijssel 7544 WP
The Netherlands
Email: rick@openfortress.nl
Van Rein Expires January 30, 2014 [Page 26]