Network Working Group T. Chown
Internet-Draft M. Thompson
Expires: April 18, 2005 A. Ford
University of Southampton, UK
October 18, 2004
Things to think about when Renumbering an IPv6 network
draft-chown-v6ops-renumber-thinkabout-00
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Abstract
This memo presents a summary of scenarios, issues for consideration
and IPv6-specific tools for IPv6 network renumbering, i.e. achieving
the transition from the use of an existing network prefix to a new
prefix in an IPv6 network. Its focus lies not in the procedure for
renumbering, but as a set of "things to think about" when undertaking
such a renumbering exercise. The document is not intended to be
complete at the -00 phase, and will be enhanced as further
operational experience is gathered.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1 Past IPv4 Renumbering studies in the PIER WG . . . . . . . 4
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Renumbering Event Triggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1 Change of uplink prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.1 Migration to new provider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1.2 Dial on Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1.3 Provider migration and upstream renumbering . . . . . 6
3.1.4 IPv6 transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Change of internal topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3 Acquisition or merger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4 Network mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4. Renumbering Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1 Minimal disruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2 Session survivability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2.1 Short-term session survivability . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2.2 Medium-term session survivability . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2.3 Long-term session survivability . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. IPv6 Enablers for Renumbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1 Multi-addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1.1 Border filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1.2 Duration of overlap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.2 Router Advertisement Lifetimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.3 Stateful Configuration with DHCPv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.4 Router Renumbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.5 Prefix Delegation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.6 Anycast addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.7 Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.8 Fixed length subnets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.9 Multi-homing techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.9.1 Relevance of multi-homing to renumbering . . . . . . . 15
5.9.2 Current situation with IPv6 multi-homing . . . . . . . 15
5.10 Unique Local Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.10.1 Private addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.11 Mobile IPv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.11.1 Visited site renumbers when mobile . . . . . . . . . 17
5.11.2 Home site renumbers when mobile . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.11.3 Home site renumbers when disconnected . . . . . . . 18
6. Factors affecting the Renumbering Solution . . . . . . . . . 18
6.1 With or without a flag day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.2 Frequency of renumbering episodes . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.3 Availability of old prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.4 Freshness of service data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.5 DNS and explicitly specified IP addresses . . . . . . . . 20
6.6 Dual-stack network? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.7 Merging networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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6.8 Embedded prefix data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.9 Scalability issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.10 Equipment administrative ownership . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.11 Support for Mobility? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.12 Stateless and Stateful address considerations . . . . . 23
6.13 IPv6 NAT Avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.14 Policy and Configuration adaption . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.14.1 Packet filters, Firewalls and ACLs . . . . . . . . . 25
6.14.2 Monitoring tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7. Application and service-oriented Issues . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.1 Shims and sockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.2 Explicitly named IP addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
7.3 API dilemna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7.4 Server Sockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
8. IETF Call to Arms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
12.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
12.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . 34
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1. Introduction
This memo presents a summary of scenarios, issues for consideration
and IPv6-specific tools for IPv6 network renumbering, i.e. achieving
the transition from the use of an existing network prefix to a new
prefix in an IPv6 network. This document does not relate the
procedures for IPv6 renumbering; for such a procedure the reader is
referred to [1]. The authors plan to use this document, together
with ongoing operational experience, to refine [1] where necessary,
to promote that guide from Informational to BCP.
1.1 Past IPv4 Renumbering studies in the PIER WG
A number of years ago (1996-1997), the Procedures for Internet/
Enterprise Renumbering (PIER) WG spent time considering the issues
for IPv4 renumbering. The WG produced three RFC documents. In
RFC1916 [2], a "call to arms" for input on renumbering techniques was
made. RFC2071 [3] documents why IPv4 renumbering is required.
Interestingly, many, but not all, of the drivers have changed with
respect to IPv6. In RFC2072 [4], a Router Renumbering Guide, some
operational procedures are given, much as they are in Baker [1] for
IPv6.
Reflection on RFC2071 is interesting, witness the quote: "It is also
envisioned that Network Address Translation (NAT) devices will be
developed to assist in the IPv4 to IPv6 transition, or perhaps
supplant the need to renumber the majority of interior networks
altogether, but that is beyond the scope of this document." That
need however is still very strong, particularly given the lack of
Provider Independent (PI) address space in IPv6 (in IPv4, PI address
space exists mainly for historical, pre-CIDR reasons).
RFC2072 is more interesting in the context of this document. Some is
certainly relevant, though much is not, due to the inherent changes
in IPv6. For example, there is no CIDR and address aggregation is
given as mandate. Also, IPv6 subnets are in effect fixed length (/
64), so local administrators do not need to resize subnets to
maximize use of address space as they do in IPv4.
One core message from RFC2072 that holds true today is that of
section 4 where the observation is made that renumbering networks
whilst remaining the same hierarchy of subnets (i.e. the cardinality
of the set of prefixes to renumber remains constant) is the 'easiest'
scenario to renumber; when each "old" prefix can be mapped to a
single "new" prefix.
A distinction of this work is that, where the PIER working group
consider the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing as a renumbering
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scenario, we strictly consider only the renumbering from IPv6
prefixes to other IPv6 prefixes and leave transition to well
documented techniques such as those from the IPv6 Operations (v6ops)
working group.
We will analyse RFC2072 in more detail in updates of this document.
2. Terminology
The following terminology is used in this document (to be expanded in
future revisions):
o Site: A network that is undergoing a renumbering procedure,
ranging from SOHO through to enterprise.
o flag day: A transition that involves a planned service outage.
3. Renumbering Event Triggers
This section details typical actions that result in the need for a
renumbering event, and thus define the scenarios for renumbering.
In many instances, in particular those where no "flag day" is
involved, the process of renumbering will inevitably lead to a
scenario where hosts are multi-addressed or multi-homed as part of
the renumbering procedure. The relationship between renumbering and
multi-homing is discussed later in this document.
In other instances, e.g. a change in the IPv4 address offered by a
provider to a site using 6to4 [9], the change offers no overlap in
external connectivity or addressing, and thus there is no
multi-homing overlap.
Triggers may be provider-initiated or customer-initiated.
Triggers and scenarios for IPv4 renumbering are discussed in RFC2071,
but many of these are no longer relevant, and in IPv6 some new
triggers exist, e.g. those related to network mobility or IPv6
transition tools.
3.1 Change of uplink prefix
One of the most common causes for renumbering will be a change in the
site's upstream provider. As per RFC3177 [10], the typical
allocation for an IPv6 site is a /48 size prefix taken from the
globally aggregated address space of the site's provider. With IPv6,
sites are highly unlikely to be able to obtain provider independent
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(PI) address space, as have in some cases been obtained in the past
with IPv4. Rather, sites use provider assigned (PA) addressing. As
a result, if a site changes provider, it must also change its IPv6 PA
prefix.
3.1.1 Migration to new provider
In the simplest case, the customer is triggering the renumbering by
choosing to change the site's upstream provider to a new ISP and thus
a new PA IPv6 prefix range. This may simply be in the form of
selecting a new commercial provider, although there are several other
possible scenarios, such as changing from a dial-up to a broadband
connection, or moving from a community wireless connection to a fixed
broadband connection.
3.1.2 Dial on Demand
A site may connect intermittently to its upstream provider. In such
cases the prefix allocated by the provider may change with each
connection, as it often does in the case of single IPv4 address
allocations to SOHO customers today. Thus the site may receive a
prefix still in its provider PA range, but the prefix may vary with
each connection, causing a renumbering event.
Dynamically assigned IP addresses are common today with dial-up and
ISDN Internet connections, and to a lesser extent some broadband
products, particularly cable modems. Usually with dynamically
assigned IP addresses on broadband products, the address is only
likely to change when the customer reconnects, which could be very
infrequently.
This case can be mitigated by encouraging ISPs to offer static IPv6
prefixes to customers. Where /48 prefixes are provided, a large ISP
may be forced to require significantly more than the "default" /32
allocation from an RIR to an ISP to be able to service its present
and future customer base. With always-on more common in new
deployments, provider re-allocation should be less common; however
the practice of reallocating IPv4 addresses in SOHO broadband
networks is not uncommon in current broadband ISPs.
3.1.3 Provider migration and upstream renumbering
A site's upstream provider may need to renumber, due for example to a
change in its network topology or the need to migrate to a different
or additional prefix from its Regional Internet Registry (RIR). This
will in turn trigger the renumbering of the end site.
Such renumbering events would be expected to be rare, but it should
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be noted that RIR-assigned IPv6 address space is not owned by an ISP.
3.1.4 IPv6 transition
During transition to IPv6, there are several scenarios where a site
may have to renumber. For example, if the site uses 6to4 for access
and its IPv4 address is dynamically assigned, an IPv6 renumbering
event will be triggered when the site's IPv4 address changes.
Another likely renumbering event would be the change of transition
mechanism, such as from 6to4 to a static IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnel, or from
any one of those mechanisms to a native IPv6 link. When changing
from 6to4 (2002::/16) addresses to native global aggregatable unicast
addresses (under 2001::/16), renumbering would be unavoidable. When
migrating from a tunnelled to a native connection, renumbering may
not be necessary if the same prefix can be routed natively, however
this would be provider-dependent.
In addition, there are likely to be many cases of network renumbering
occurring when the old 6bone prefix (3FFE::/16) is phased out as per
RFC3701 [11], and networks still using it will have to renumber.
Finally, there is at least one transition mechanism, ISATAP [12],
that uses specially crafted host EUI-64 format addresses. Should a
site migrate from ISATAP to use either conventional EUI-64 addressing
(via stateless address autoconfiguration or perhaps DHCPv6), then
renumbering would be required at least in the host part of addresses.
3.2 Change of internal topology
A site may need to renumber all or part of its internal network due
to a change of topology, such as creating more or less specific
subnets, or acquiring a larger IPv6 address allocation. Motivations
for splitting a link into separate subnets may to meet security
demands on a particular link (policy for link-based access control
rules), or for link load management by shuffling popular services to
more appropriate locations in the local topology. Link-merging may
be due to department restructuring within the hosting orgnisation,
for example.
3.3 Acquisition or merger
Two networks may need to merge to one due to the acquisition or
merger of two organisations or companies. Such a reorganisation may
require one or more parts of the new network to renumber to the
primary PA IPv6 prefix.
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3.4 Network mobility
This covers various cases of network mobility, where a static or
nomadic network may obtain different uplink connectivity over time,
and thus be assigned different IPv6 PA prefixes as the topology
changes. One example is the "traditional" NEMO network [13], another
may be a community wireless network where different sets of nodes
gain uplink connectivity - typically to the same provider - at
different times.
4. Renumbering Requirements
In this section we enumerate potential specific goals or requirements
for sites or users undergoing an IPv6 renumber event.
4.1 Minimal disruption
The renumbering event should cause minimal disruption to the routine
operation of the network being renumbered, and the users of that
network.
Disruption is a hard term to quantify in a generic way, but it can be
expressed by factors such as:
o Application sessions being terminated
o Security controls (e.g. ACLs) blocking access to legitimate
resources
o Unreachability of nodes or networks
o Name resolution, directory and configuration services providing
invalid (out-of-date) address data
o Limitation of network management visibility
o ... (more in future revisions)
4.2 Session survivability
The concept of session survivability is catered for by [1] in that
new sessions adopt either old or new prefix based on the state of the
renumbering process. However, other approaches to renumbering
networks may be appropriate in certain deployments, such as where
"flag days" are unavoidable or where two live prefixes are being
"swapped". In these cases, further consideration for existing
sessions (their longevity, frequency, independence across
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interactions, etc.) is required.
Some protocols are specifically geared to aid session survivability,
e.g. the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) [14], and may
prove valuable in mission-critical renumbering scenarios, in
particular the extension that enables the dynamic addition and
removal of IP addresses from an SCTP endpoint association [15].
Sessions may be administratively maintained, such as NFS mounts for
user filestore, or they may be user-driven, e.g. long-running ssh
sessions.
In general, it is important to consider how TCP and the applications
above it handle the connection failures that may result from a change
in address.
There are different classes of session duration, as described in the
following sections.
4.2.1 Short-term session survivability
A typical short-term session would involve a request-response
protocol, such as HTTP, where a new network connection is initiated
per transaction, or at worst for a small transaction set. In such
cases the migration to a new network prefix is transparent: the
client can use the new prefix in new transactions without
consequence. Some applications, however, may be skewed by such a
shift in connection source for the same entity 'user', for example
applications that use recent connection history as a cue to identity
(e.g. POP-before-SMTP as used by many dial-on-demand ISP customers
[32]), or for applications that care about connection statistics (the
same user web-browsing "session" may be split into two where a
renumbering event occurs in-between client transactions).
4.2.2 Medium-term session survivability
A medium-term session is typified by an application or service that
may persist for perhaps a period of a few minutes up to a period of a
day or so. This might involve a TCP-based application that is left
running during a working day, such as an interactive shell (SSH) or a
large file download.
4.2.3 Long-term session survivability
Long term sessions may typically run for several days, if not weeks
or months. These might typically include TCP-based NFS mounts, or
long-running TCP applications. Sessions in this context may also
include those applications that, once started, do not re-resolve
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names and so repeatedly open new connections or send new datagrams to
the same (as bound at time of initialisation) address throughout
their execution lifetime. Even if at API-level applications do
attempt to re-resolve the symbol to which they desire to connect, the
behaviour of the resolvers is unclear as to whether mappings are
refreshed from the naming service, and as such even if the
renumbering site does update it's DNS (or NIS, LDAP database etc.),
the local result may indeed be cached without any indication passed
back up to the application as to how 'old' said binding information
is.
5. IPv6 Enablers for Renumbering
This section documents features of IPv6, or IP-related technologies
not previously (or widely) available for IPv4, that assist in
renumbering.
5.1 Multi-addressing
As per RFC2373 [16], IPv6 hosts may be multi-addressed. This means
that multiple unicast addresses can be assigned and active on the
same interface. These addresses can have different reachabilities
('scopes' such as link-local or global), different statuses including
'preferred' and 'deprecated', and may be ephemeral in nature (such as
care-of addresses when attached to a foreign network [17]. RFC3484
address selection semantics [5] determine which of the "MxN" address
pairs to use for communication in the general case.
During a renumbering episode, the addition of an extra address for an
endpoint does not add significantly to the complexity, and the
(source and destination) address selection mechanisms specified by
RFC3484 hold (but are currently at varying stages of implementation
in operating systems). RFC3484 also specifies policy hooks to allow
administrative override of the default address selection behaviour,
for example to specifically lock-down a source prefix to select for a
set of particular destinations. Where this policy-based address
selection was designed for transition from IPv4 and early IPv6
multi-homing considerations, it is perceived likely to be of benefit
to bespoke renumbering tool development.
Experiments to validate the correctness of common IPv6
implementations with regards RFC3484 and other aspects in the context
of renumbering are on-going and will be reported in future versions
of this memo.
5.1.1 Border filtering
One caveat that arises when assigning multiple globally reachable
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addresses to node interfaces is that of site ingress filtering: not
only is it the norm for sites to filter at their border router
traffic that is not destined to local subnets, but it is also
increasingly common for sites to filter on egress to prevent
administratively local addresses (such as the, now deprecated,
site-local prefix) 'leaking' traffic or for malconfigured hosts (e.g.
visitors with manually configured stacks without Mobile IPv6) from
sourcing traffic that cannot be routed back.
5.1.2 Duration of overlap
A key operational decision when renumbering is enforced due to a
change in connectivity provider is how long to sustain the overlap of
two live prefixes. The trade-off to be made is the cost of
maintaining two contracts with separate providers against the
'smoothness' of the transition to the new prefix as regards local
administration overheads, service migration, etc. Where larger
corporations can likely suffer the increased financial costs, SMEs
and SOHOs might consider as little as one month's overlap too
expensive, and so Baker's State 5 (Stable use of either prefix) [1]
unattainable
In some cases, there may be technical reasons for the overlap to not
be feasible, such as with xDSL provision where the new service is a
drop-in replacement for the old and the two cannot co-exist (for
example, because the provision of the service requires the whole
circuit resource from exchange to customer).
5.2 Router Advertisement Lifetimes
RFC2462 (IPv6 Stateless Autoconfiguration) [6] specifies the
technique for expiring assigned prefixes and then invalidating them,
such that a network has opportunity to gracefully withdraw a prefix
from service whilst not terminally disrupting on-going applications
that use addresses under it. Section 5.5.4 of RFC2462 in particular
details the procedure for deprecation and subsequent invalidation.
By mandating as a node requirement the ability to phase out addresses
assigned to an interface, network renumbering is readily facilitated:
subnet routers update the pre-existing prefix and mark them as
'deprecated' with a scheduled time for expiration and then advertise
(when appropriate) the new prefix that should be chosen for all
outgoing communications.
5.3 Stateful Configuration with DHCPv6
As opposed to stateless autoconfiguration, IPv6 stateful or managed
configuration can be achieved through the deployment of DHCPv6.
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Factors concerning the impact of stateful and stateless configuration
are considered in Section 6.12.
Section 18.1.8 of [18] details how a node should respond to the
receipt of stateful configuration data from a DHCPv6 server where the
lifetime indicated has expired (is zero). Section 19.4.1 details how
clients should respond to being instructed by DHCPv6 servers to
reconfigure (potentially forceful renumbering). Section 22.6 details
how prefix validity time is conveyed (c.f. the equivalent data in
SLAAC's Router Advertisement).
5.4 Router Renumbering
RFC2894 [7] defines a mechanism for renumbering IPv6 routers
throughout a network using a bespoke ICMP message type for
manipulating the set of prefixes deployed throughout subnets.
Through the use of prefix matching and a rudimentary algebra for
bit-wise manipulation of prefix data bound to router interfaces, the
mechanism enables administrators to affect every router within a
scope from a single administration workstation.
The approach utilises multicast communication to the all-routers
address, FF05::2, scoped to the entire 'site' as determined by router
filter policy to distribute configuration updates to all (compliant)
routers. The mechanism also works with more specific addressing
modalities, such as link-local multicast (FF02::2) to reach all
routers on a specific link, or directed unicast to affect a specific
router instance.
Example use cases cited are for deploying global routing prefixes
across a hierarchical network where site-locals already exist
(presumably updated now to Unique Local Addresses), and for
renumbering from an existing prefix to another in a similar manner to
that proposed by Baker (i.e. the deployment of a new prefix
alongside the existing one, which is deprecated and subsequently
expired and removed - using the same mechanism described.
Note that RFC2894 was developed before the shift in recommendation
away from the [TNS]LA address allocations of RFC2373, although the
techniques documented for renumbering the global routing prefix and
subnet ID components in the updated address allocation
recommendations (RFC3513) are not affected by the architectural
change.
As with other prefix assignment techniques, it is the responsibility
of the node to correctly deprecate and then expire the use of a
previously assigned prefix as defined by the IPv6 Neighbour Discovery
protocol, RFC2461 [8], section 4.6.2 describing the Prefix
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Information option in particular.
5.5 Prefix Delegation
Where stateless autoconfiguration enables hosts to request prefixes
from link-attached routers, prefix delegation enables routers to
request a prefix for advertising from superior routers, i.e. routers
closer to the top of the prefix hierarchy - typically topologically
closer, therefore, to the provider. Once the router has been
delegated prefix(es), it can begin advertising it to the connected
subnet (perhaps even multi-link) with indicators for hosts to use
stateful (DHCPv6) or stateless address autoconfiguration as per
RFC2461.
There have been two principal approaches to prefix delegation
proposed: HPD (Hierarchical Prefix Delegation for IPv6), which
proposed the use of bespoke ICMPv6 messages for prefix delegation,
and IPv6 Prefix Options for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol [19],
which defines a DHCPv6 option type. Of the two approaches, the
DHCPv6-based approach has received wide support and is on the
standards track.
5.6 Anycast addressing
Syntactically indistinguishable from unicast addresses, 'anycast'
offers nodes a mean to route traffic toward the topologically nearest
instance of a service (as represented by an IP address), relying on
the routing infrastructure to deliver appropriately. RFC2526 [20]
defines a set of reserved subnet anycast addresses within the highest
128 values of the 64 bit IID space. Of that space, currently only
three are used, of which one is actively used and is for discovery of
Mobile IPv6 Home-Agents. At the current time there are no 'global'
well-known unicast addresses assigned by IANA.
In order to participate using anycast, nodes need to be configured as
routers (to comply with RFC2373 [16]) and exchange routing
information about the reachability of the specific anycast address.
This extra level of administration requirement is negligible in the
context of services as the services themselves would need
configuration anyway.
There have been proposals to define globally well-known anycast
addresses for core services, such as the DNS [21]. Anycast scales
with regard subnet-anycast in the sense that the global routing
prefix used to direct packets to an anycast node within a site is no
different from any other host, and therefore nothing 'special' in the
global routing architecture is required - only locally within the
site does the multi-node nature of anycast need to be considered.
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However, for global well-known anycast addresses to be defined,
host-specific routes will need to be advertised and distributed
throughout the entire Internet. As acknowledged by section 2.6 of
[22], this presents a severe scaling limit and it is expected that
support for global anycast sets may be unavailable or very
restricted.
5.7 Multicast
IPv6 supports an enriched model of multicast compared to IPv4 in that
there are well-defined scopes for multicast communication that are
readily expressed in the protocol's addressing architecture.
Multicast features much more prominently in the core specification,
for example it is the enabling technology for the Neighbour Discovery
protocol (a much more efficient approach to layer 2 address discovery
than compared to ARP with IPv4).
Where multicast is used to discover the availability of core services
(e.g. all DHCPv6 servers in a site will join FF02::1:3), the effect
of renumbering the unicast address of those services will mean that
the services are still readily discoverable without resorting to a
(bespoke or otherwise) service location protocol to continue to
function - particularly if ULAs are not deployed locally as per
Section 5.10.
5.8 Fixed length subnets
The IAB/IESG recommendations for IPv6 address allocations [10]
details some of the motivations behind the change in the addressing
architecture of IPv6 since its inception, and asserts the current
state of a 64-bit 'network' part (the prefix) and a 64-bit 'host'
part (the interface identifier). Fixing the lower 64 bits to be
exclusive of routing topology significantly reduces the
administrative load associated with renumbering and re-subnetting as
experienced with IPv4 networks previously, for example, to get better
address utilisation efficiency as networks evolve and provider
address allocations changed.
The recommendations also discuss what length of network prefix should
be allocated to sites, typically provisioning for 16-bits of subnet
space in which sites can build their topology. Having such a large
address space for sites to divide up at their discretion alleviates
many of the drivers for renumbering discussed during the PIER working
group's lifetime [3].
5.9 Multi-homing techniques
A multi-homed site is a site which has multiple upstream providers.
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A site may be multi-homed for various reasons, however the most
common are to provide redundancy in case of failure, to increase
bandwidth, and to provide more varied, optimal routes for certain
destinations.
In renumbering, multi-homing will either be a temporary state, during
the transition, or be a permanent feature of the network
configuration, which may be being altered during the renumbering.
5.9.1 Relevance of multi-homing to renumbering
As discussed in section 2, and in particular section 2.5, of [1],
during the renumbering procedure there will be a period where both
the old and the new prefixes are stable and valid for the network.
During such a period, the network will therefore be multi-homed, and
as such many of the issues relating to multi-homing in IPv6 are also
relevant, albeit in a small capacity, to the renumbering procedure.
A stable multi-homed situation must therefore be a requirement for
renumbering without a 'flag day'.
In such a situation, however, the multi-homed state will not be
permanent, and will only exist for the duration for which it is
required, i.e. for the period during the renumbering procedure when
both prefixes should be valid.
Renumbering can also occur, however, in a network that is already
multi-homed, for example with redundant links to multiple providers.
Such a site may wish to renumber for any of the situations given in
the earlier section, as well as renumbering because of changes in the
number of upstream providers. Until the best practice for such a
situation is defined, however, its effect on renumbering is not a
focus of this document.
5.9.2 Current situation with IPv6 multi-homing
Unlike IPv4 multi-homing, where PI address space is relatively easy
to obtain and thus a site can broadcast its own routing information,
most IPv6 addresses will be PA addresses and thus the site will have
no control over routing information. Multi-homing in IPv6 therefore
does not necessarily exist in the same way as in IPv4 and the <http:/
/www.ietf.org/html.charters/multi6-charter.html> working group exists
to try to find a solution. Current solutions [23] examine the
potential for using identifiers within IP to identify a host, as
opposed to an IP address, so that connections can continue unhindered
across renumbering events. Such solutions are, however, very much in
their infancy and as yet do not provide a stable solution to this
problem.
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5.10 Unique Local Addressing
Section 5 of [24] suggests that the use of Local IPv6 addresses in a
site results in making communication using these addresses
independent of renumbering a site's provider based global addresses.
It also points out that a renumbering episode is not triggered when
merging multiple sites that have deployed centrally assigned unique
local addresses[25] because the FC00::/8 ULA prefix assures global
uniqueness.
When merging two sites that have both deployed FD00::/8 locally
assigned ULA prefixes, the chance of collision is inherently small
given the pseudo-random global-ID determination algorithm of [24].
Consideration of possible collisions may be prudent however unlikely
the occurrence may be.
With reference to section 2 of [1], the adoption of ULA to assist in
network renumbering can be considered a 'seasoning' of Baker's
renumbering procedure: where interaction between local nodes and
their services cannot suffer the inherent issues observed when
migrating to a new aggregatable global unicast prefix, the use of
FC00::/7 unique local addresses may offer an appropriately stable and
reliable solution. The use of ULAs in single-site networks (e.g.
SOHO) appears straightforward and of immediate benefit with regards
renumbering episodes triggered by uplink connectivity changes. How
their use scales to multi-site (e.g. Enterprise or use in ISP or
transit networks) is not so evident.
The use of ULAs may not necessarily be accompanied by PA addresses.
If addresses under a PA global routing prefix are not used, some form
of IPv6 NAT or application layer gateway deployment will be required
for ULA-only nodes internal to the network to communicate with
external nodes that are not part of the same ULA topology, that is
destination nodes that are not part of the same administrative domain
from which the ULA allocation of the local node is made, nor part of
a predetermined routing agreement between two organisations utilising
different ULAs for nodes within their own sites. ULAs are not
intended to be routed globally.
If addresses under a global routing prefix are also deployed, then
nodes will need to cater for being multi-addressed, e.g. follow the
principles laid out in RFC3484 [5]. The administrator should ideally
be able to set local policy such that nodes use ULAs for intranet
communications and global addresses for extranet communications. The
use of ULAs internally would in principle mitigate against global
address renumbering of nodes.
ULAs appear to lend themselves particularly well for long-lived
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sessions (from the categorisation Section 4.2.3) whose nature is
intra-site, for example local filestore mounts over TCP-mounted NFS:
With clients using ULA source addresses to mount filestore using the
ULA of an NFS server, both client and server can have their global
routing prefix renumbered without consequence to ongoing local
connections.
5.10.1 Private addressing
Whilst not a recommended standards-compliant deployment, sites may
choose to deploy - or 'keep' deployed in the case of renumbered
prefixes - otherwise-valid global routing prefixes that they have not
been allocated by the registries. Providing that these addresses are
never routed off-site, such behaviour does not impinge on other sites
at all except that site that is later allocated the prefix (or
sub-prefix therefrom) being mis-used. This is somewhat akin to
site-local addressing and suffers the very same issues that have
resulted in that particular architecture of addresses being
officially deprecated from use.
5.11 Mobile IPv6
Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) [17] specifies routing support to permit an IPv6
host to continue using its "permanent" home address as it moves
around the Internet. Mobile IPv6 supports transparency above the IP
layer, including maintenance of active TCP connections and UDP port
bindings. There are a number of issues to take into account when
renumbering episodes occur where Mobile IPv6 is deployed:
5.11.1 Visited site renumbers when mobile
When a node is mobile and attached to a foreign network it, like any
other node on the link, is subject to prefix renumbering at that
site. Detecting a new prefix through the receipt of router
advertisements, the mobile node can then re-bind with its home agent
informing it of its care-of address - just as if it had detached from
the foreign network and migrated elsewhere. Where the node receives
forewarning of the renumbering episode, the Mobility specification
suggests that the node explicitly solicits an update of the prefix
information on its home network
5.11.2 Home site renumbers when mobile
When mobile, a host can still be contacted at its original (home)
address. Should the home network renumber whilst the node is away
but active (i.e. having bound to the home agent and registered a
live care-of address), then it can be informed of the new global
routing prefix used at the home site through the Mobile Prefix
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Solicitation and Mobile Prefix Advertisement ICMPv6 messages
(sections 6.7 and 6.8 of RFC3775 respectively).
5.11.3 Home site renumbers when disconnected
Finally, if a mobile node is detached (i.e. no binding with the home
agent exists with the node present on a foreign network) and the home
network renumbers, the recommended procedure - documented as an
appendix to the mobility specification and therefore not necessarily
proven - is to fall back to alternative methods of 'rediscovering'
its home network, using the DNS to find the new global routing prefix
for the home network and therefore the Home Agent's subnet anycast
address, 'guessing' at what the node's new home address would be on
the basis of a 64 bit prefix and 64 bit interface identifier, and
then attempting to perform registration to bind its new location.
6. Factors affecting the Renumbering Solution
There are many aspects of the renumbering procedure that may benefit
from the development of bespoke renumbering tools (scripts, etc.),
likely to result from the study of the experimental scenarios
associated with this work. This section investigates the various
factors that should be considered for developing such tools.
6.1 With or without a flag day
A network may be renumbered with or without a flag day. In the
context of this document we are focusing on without a flag day,
although many of the issues will still apply when renumbering is
effected with a flag day.
Despite the similarities, because there is an outage of services when
renumbering with a flag day, it is not necessary to ensure continuity
of network connections, and almost all reconfiguration can be done
during the outage, thus greatly simplifying the task of renumbering.
6.2 Frequency of renumbering episodes
The many different renumbering scenarios, discussed in Section 3, can
have vastly different frequencies of renumbering events. In the case
of a provider offering only dynamically assigned IP addresses, it
could be very frequent, for example as frequent as 'per-connection'
for dial-on-demand services, or weekly for some broadband services.
Such renumbering events usually only occur when a customer reconnects
to such services or are explicitly cited in a subscription agreement
and as such are often pre-determined.
The renumbering of a site due to upstream renumbering is relevant to
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all connections from a small dial-up link to a large enterprise. It
is of particular interest since the end user has no control over the
timing or frequency of the renumbering events. It is expected,
however, that such events are likely to be very infrequent.
The other irregular renumbering events are those that occur due to
end user migrating, either to a new provider, or to a new address
allocation of their choosing. The timing of such an event is
therefore often within the control of the end user (within reason),
and are also likely to be one-off events, or at the very least,
highly infrequent.
6.3 Availability of old prefix
The length of time for which the old prefix remains available has
impacts on how long can be allowed for the renumbering procedure, and
the maximum time for which existing sessions could continue. If end
users have control over the renumbering procedure (such as when
changing provider), then they can continue providing the old prefix
for as long as required, within reason (such as cost aspects). This
heavily mitigates the issues of session survivability, and relaxes
the speed at which hosts must be reconfigured.
If the end users do not have such control, such as when the upstream
provider forces the renumbering, the availability of the old prefix
is determined entirely by the upstream provider's willingness to
continue providing it, which is likely to be based on the
technicalities of their own renumbering situation. The end user
should therefore not rely on retaining the old prefix for a
relatively long period of time. In addition, many situations, such
as dial-on-demand with dynamic IP addresses, and nomadic networks,
will lose their old prefix quickly, if not almost instantaneously.
It would be possible to continue using the old prefix internally,
even when the external connectivity for that prefix is no longer
active, for example to keep access to core services such as DNS
servers while the transition is taking place. This should, however,
be considered bad practice in case of route leaking and application
confusion, and should only be used as a last resort to ensure
internal continuity of service, if the availability of the old prefix
is too short to allow a full transition to take place.
6.4 Freshness of service data
One of the largest issues when renumbering a network will be the
effect on applications that are already running. In particular,
applications that periodically contact a particular host may do an
initial hostname lookup, and cache the result for use throughout the
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lifetime of the program. In such a situation, there is no way for
the application to find out that the host in question has been
renumbered, and it should stop using its already cached address. It
is therefore recommended that applications should regularly request
hostname lookups for the desired hosts, leaving the caching to the
resolver. It is then up to the resolver to ensure that resource
record TTLs are observed, and its cached response is updated as
necessary.
Despite this, there is still a serious issue in that there is no
method of caching resolvers knowing when a renumbering event is going
to take place. If a typical RR's TTL is one day, then that should be
reduced not less than a day before the renumbering event, so that
resolvers will more frequently check for changed records. This will
work successfully for a pre-planned renumbering event, but problems
of stale, cached records will exist if the renumbering event is
unplanned (e.g. by receiving a new router advertisement from
upstream).
There are also cases where the use of a resolver is not practical,
such as with packet filter rules. If a packet filter has been
configured with explicit hostnames, these are translated to IP
addresses for fast packet matching. Such a packet filter is likely
to need to be reloaded for the DNS changes to be recognised.
A similar problem exists when a nameserver is renumbered. If the
operating system's resolver has cached the nameserver address, it
will at some point find it unavailable. To mitigate this problem, it
is suggested that at least one off-site nameserver is included in the
configuration. In addition, well-known anycast addresses (see
Section 5.6) could be used, so that the client's DNS configuration
does not need to be changed at all during the renumbering event.
6.5 DNS and explicitly specified IP addresses
The basic process of renumbering, involving the introduction of a new
prefix and the deprecation and eventual removal of the old prefix,
could be hypothetically handled by a special tool, with no manual
intervention. Such a tool would have to become significantly more
complex in order to handle all the cases where IP addresses are
explicitly specified (a comprehensive list is given in Section
Section 7.2). Other particularly notable cases that could be changed
with a tool, were it to be developed, include DNS zone files and
DHCPv6 configuration.
6.6 Dual-stack network?
There are several issues to consider when renumbering a dual-stacked
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network. In the simplest case, the IPv4 addresses will be remaining
the same while the IPv6 addresses are renumbered. This could, for
example, be due to an upstream renumbering, a change of IPv6
transition method (such as a tunnel), or a topology change. In such
a case, the IPv4 connectivity remains unchanged, and as such can be
used as a fallback during the renumbering to assist with session
continuity, DNS services, etc.
The other case is when the IPv4 network is being renumbered along
with the IPv6 network. Again this could be due to an upstream
change, a network reconfiguration, or because the two are
inter-linked - such as with the 6to4 transition mechanism. In this
case, it is unlikely that the existence of IPv4 on the network can be
used for any advantage, and instead many of the same issues are
likely to be found when renumbering the IPv4 network as for the IPv6
network, except for the fact that more of the renumbering must be
manually configured, for example by reconfiguring the stateful IPv4
DHCP configuration, or even manually configuring IPv4 addresses.
6.7 Merging networks
Renumbering of all or part of a network due to merging two or more
smaller networks has many of the concerns already discussed, but it
may not affect the whole network. For example, multiple disparate
networks may be merged together as one entirely new subnet, and thus
all hosts must be renumbered; but it is also possible that one of the
networks in the merger retains its prefix, and the other network(s)
merge with it.
When the networks merge, the router advertises itself, and the new
prefix if appropriate, to the new hosts, and Duplicate Address
Detection (DAD, see Section 5.4 of [6]) must be applied by the new
hosts to ensure they are not taking addresses already assigned to the
existing hosts. Things become a little more complicated, however, in
the case of link-local addresses. Hosts are unlikely to re-run the
DAD algorithm on their link-local addresses after a network merge, so
there is the possibility of an address conflict. However, as is
noted in RFC2462, DAD is not completely reliable, and as such it
cannot be assumed that initially after a network merge all link-local
addresses will be unique.
6.8 Embedded prefix data
IPv6 global routing prefixes can also appear 'embedded' in other
addressing within a site, and consideration needs to be given to how
those nodes that use - particularly serve - those addresses
transition to the new prefix being deployed.
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One such example are those addresses as per RFC3306 [26], which
specifies how unicast prefixes can be embedded into multicast
addresses for the purposes of enabling network operators to identify
their multicast addresses without the need for an inter-domain
allocation protocol. By way of example, a site renumbering away from
prefix "2001:db8:beef::/48" might have globally-scoped multicast
addresses in use under the prefix "ff3e:30:2001:db8:beef::/96". How
those multicast sources re-source their group addresses requires
consideration.
6.9 Scalability issues
During the renumbering transition, there will be a time when two
prefixes are valid for use. At this point, there will be a
considerable amount of configuration that will have to be
(temporarily) duplicated. In particular, routing entries on the
hosts will be doubled, and there will, for a short period, be two
forward records for every hostname. Security is another key
scalability issue. All access control lists, packet filters, etc,
will need to be updated to cope with the multiple addresses that each
host will have. This could have a noticeable impact on packet filter
performance, especially if it lead to, for example, the doubling of
several hundred firewall rules.
The scalability issues created by the increase in configuration to
cope with the temporary existence of multiple addresses per host adds
a complexity in management, but how much so is up to the end-users
themselves. A user may choose to do direct transitions of some
services (such as web servers) from one IP address to another,
without going through a stage where the service is available on
either address. While that is not strictly providing a fully
seamless transition, it could significantly reduce the management
complexity, without a significant impact on service, especially if
the DNS updates are rapid.
It should also be noted that during a renumbering event, since the
DNS resource record TTLs are significantly shorter, the primary DNS
servers for the domains will receive significantly more queries, as
resolvers do not cache the responses for so long, and regularly check
back with the master.
6.10 Equipment administrative ownership
The question of who owns and administers (also, who is authorised to
administer) the site's access router is an issue in some renumbering
situations. In the enterprise scenarios, the liaison between the end
users and remote admins is likely to be relatively easy; this is less
likely to be the case for a SOHO scenario. This is not likely to be
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a major issue, however, since SOHO renumbering is likely to only be
required if the remote admins deem it necessary, or if the end user
is sufficiently technically competent and decides to renumber their
own network.
6.11 Support for Mobility?
Renumbering a network which has mobile IPv6 active is a potentially
complex issue to think about. In particular, can changed router
advertisements correctly reach the mobile nodes, and can they be
correctly renumbered, like a node on the local network? In addition,
an even more complex issue is what happens when the home agent
renumbers? Is it possible for the mobile nodes to be informed and
correctly renumber and continue, or will the link be irretrievably
broken?
6.12 Stateless and Stateful address considerations
Most IPv6 networks are likely to be configured using StateLess
Address AutoConfiguration [6], and in order to work through the
multi-staged process as documented by Baker [1], the new prefix is
introduced via router advertisements, and then the old prefix is
deprecated, and finally removed.
Initially the router advertisements will contain only the prefix of
the old network, then for a time they will contain both the old and
the new, but with a shorter lifetime on the old prefix to indicate
that it is deprecated. Finally the router advertisements will
contain only the new prefix.
Some IPv6 networks will be configured, at least in part, by Stateful
Address AutoConfiguration, using DHCPv6 [18]. Here, clients will
query the DHCPv6 server and be assigned IPv6 addresses with a given
lifetime.
The key difference between SLAAC and SAAC, at least from the
renumbering point-of-view, is that SLAAC is both a 'push' and 'pull'
protocol (the server can broadcast router advertisements, and the
clients can request them), where as DHCPv6 is only a 'pull' protocol
(the server only responds when it is queried by the client). This
makes renumbering more complex under a DHCPv6 system, since it should
be planned in advance, as the lifetimes of the DHCPv6 address
assignments must be reduced before the event, so that the clients can
respond in a timely manner and acquire addresses from the new prefix.
Sometimes, DHCPv6 will be used alongside SLAAC. SLAAC will provide
the address assignment, and DHCPv6 will provide additional host
configuration options, such as DNS servers. If any of the DHCPv6
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options are directly related to the IPv6 addresses being renumbered,
then the configuration must be changed at the appropriate time during
the renumbering event, even though it itself does not handle the
address assignments. Clients of the configuration protocol should
poll the service to obtain potentially updated ancillary data, such
as suggested by [27].
Where DHCPv6 has been employed, careful consideration about the
configuration of the service is required such that administrators can
be confident that clients will re-contact the service to refresh
their configuration data. As alluded to in sections 22.4 and 22.5 of
[18], the configurable timers that offer servers the ability to
control when clients recontacts the server about its configuration
can be set such that clients rarely (if ever!) connect to validate
their configuration set.
6.13 IPv6 NAT Avoidance
RFC2072 stated: "Network address translation (NAT) is a valuable
technique for renumbering, or even for avoiding the need to renumber
significant parts of an enterprise." That is, by 'hiding' the subnet
topology and making independent of any connectivity provider the
addressing model used within a site, NATs enable renumbering of
entire networks because the only device that is renumbered when
global addressing changes is the outside edge of the NAT devices.
However, NAT is strongly discouraged in IPv6, not least because they
obscure identity - the basis for permission, authorisation,
verification and validation - and thus should not be considered as
being available as a solution. A significant reason to deploy IPv6
is to simplify network and application operation by NAT removal, for
example to provide true end-to-end connectivity, to make simple the
gateway between site and Internet, to encourage 'considered' policy
as regards secure access rather than the weak and dangerous defense
of hiding behind a NAT. A more detailed discussion of the
motivations for 'protecting' the network architecture from NATs can
be found in [28].
6.14 Policy and Configuration adaption
Section 3.1 of Baker [1] is aptly titled "Find all the places", and
serves as a gentle reminder to application developers that embedding
addresses is bad at best. Where common UNIX tools such as "grep"
allow administrators to crawl the file systems of servers for places
where address information is hard-coded, the proliferation of
technologies such as NetInfo and other directory- or hive-based
configuration schemes makes the job of finding all the places that
addresses are hard-coded intractable.
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Beyond the call to arms for application and services developers made
by Baker, and specific to the challenges of renumbering, the
following security and policy-related services that initial research
has flagged as particularly troublesome:
6.14.1 Packet filters, Firewalls and ACLs
Throughout the transition from the old address set to the new, all
packet filters and firewalls will need to adapt to map policy to both
sets of addresses - perhaps even selectively as the old addresses
become deprecated. Whilst technologies such as Router Renumbering
and Neighbour Discovery automate to a large extent the transition of
router and node configurations, and dynamic DNS update for the
re-mapping of resource records to reflect the new addresses [29], no
such mechanism exists at present for mechanising the adaption of
security policy.
Particularly troublesome policies to administer include egress
filtering, where packet filters discard outbound packets that have
source addresses that should not exist within the site, and filtering
inbound site-local addresses in cases where two organisations are
renumbering as a step toward merging their networks together
(although the use of site-local addressing is now deprecated).
Where renumbering is due to a 'clean break' from previous
connectivity provider, another consideration is for the ingress
filtering performed by the provider. For instance, the new provider
may refuse to receive into their routing topology those packets whose
source address is under the old prefix, and likewise for the old
provider and new prefix. Whilst it is not the business of the IETF
to mandate business practice, it is likely that the provision of
out-of-allocation prefix routing as part of a multi-homing service
contract would be a chargeable service and not one that an enterprise
trying to make a clean break away would likely be willing to pay just
for the duration of transition to their new prefix.
Beyond the immediate up-stream provider, there are other policy-based
considerations to take into account when renumbering. Some
rudimentary authenticated access mechanisms rely on access queries
coming from a particular IP network, for example, and so those
application service providers will need to update their access
control lists. Likewise all the internal applications (possibly
meant for 'internal' eyes only) will have to have their access
controls updated to reflect the change. The use of symbolic access
controls (i.e. DNS domain names) rather than embedded addresses may
serve to mitigate much of the distributed administrative load here,
especially during the mid-renumbering states where both sets of
addresses are still live and valid.
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6.14.2 Monitoring tools
Network monitoring and supervisory utilities such as RMON probes,
etc., are often deployed to monitor network status based on IP
traffic. During a renumbering episode, the addresses for which the
probes should monitoring and the addresses of logging services to
which the probes report (e.g. in the case of remote SNMP logging)
need to be tracked.
"Helpdesk ops" service liveness monitoring software also poses a
particular problem where liveness is determined, for example, by a
null transaction (e.g. for POP3 mail server, authenticating and
performing a NOOP) made against a named service instance, if the name
is by IP then two instances of the liveness test will be required:
one on the old address to cater for those remote parties that are not
yet aware of the new address, and one test against the new.
7. Application and service-oriented Issues
In this section we highlight issues and common approaches to software
development that 'disrupt' protocol layering to the extent that
applications become aware of renumbering episodes, even if
catastrophic and without knowing how to recover without failing.
NOTE: This section, like section 6 before it, will evolve as
experience grows researching the various renumbering strategies in
controlled experiments - particularly in light of Section 8.
7.1 Shims and sockets
As discussed in Section 6.14, Baker's draft calls for application
developers to consider the effects of renumbering whilst applications
are 'live', particularly as regards caching the results of symbol
resolution. Where applications maintain open connections to services
over a sustained period of time (as opposed to the ephemeral nature
of protocol interactions such as with HTTP), any change in either
end's addressing may intrude on the application's execution -
particularly if the change is abrupt or the session longer than the
expiry and withdrawal time of the old addresses.
Various options may be available to minimise the risk of application
disruption in this instance. A HIP-like 'shim' [30], as is being
developed as a candidate solution to the general multi-homing
problem, removes the tight coupling between a connection and a
service's topological location: as the renumbering event takes place,
the locator is updated to reflect the new address topology and the
application blissfully unaware - a form of layer 3.5 mobility.
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Alternatively, should the old address space be available such that a
single (or subnet of) Mobile IPv6 Home Agents be deployed in the
routing path of the to-be-otherwise-interrupted connection, then the
endpoint being renumbered could utilise layer 3 mobility once the old
prefix removed from its link, i.e. register with the Home Agent in
the old prefix topology - presumably in the provider's network,
formerly upstream from the site - and rely on Mobile IPv6 route
optimisation to make good the additional overhead imposed by the
reverse tunneling to the new prefix.
Applications that employ SCTP as opposed TCP or UDP for communication
avoid all of the issues highlighted in this sub-section due to the
provision of dynamic endpoint reconfiguration in the protocol (see
Section 4.2).
7.2 Explicitly named IP addresses
There are many places in the network where IP addresses are embedded
as opposed to symbolic names, and finding them all to be updated
during a renumbering episode is not a trivial task. This section
details an evolving list of such places as surveyed as common.
Addresses may be hard-coded in software configuration files or
services, in software source-code itself (which is particularly
cumbersome if no source is available, e.g. a bespoke utility built
to order), in firmware (for example, an access-controlling hardware
dongle), or even in hardware, e.g. fixed by DIP switches.
A non-exhaustive list of instances of such addresses includes:
o Provider based prefix(es)
o Names resolved to IP addresses in firewall at startup time
o IP addresses in remote firewalls allowing access to remote
services
o IP-based authentication in remote systems allowing access to
online bibliographic resources
o IP address of both tunnel end points for IPv6 in IPv4 tunnel
o Hard-coded IP subnet configuration information
o IP addresses for static route targets
o Blocked SMTP server IP list (spam sources)
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o Web .htaccess and remote access controls
o Apache .Listen. directive on given IP address
o Configured multicast rendezvous point
o TCP wrapper files
o Samba configuration files
o DNS resolv.conf on Unix
o Any network traffic monitoring tool
o NIS/ypbind via the hosts file
o Some interface configurations
o Unix portmap security masks
o NIS security masks
o PIM-SM Rendezvous Point address
Some hard-coded IP address information will be held in remote
locations, e.g. remote firewalls, DNS glue, etc. adding to the
complexity of the search for all instances of the old prefix. Should
symbols be used rather than addresses, administrative ownership of
DNS - with due consideration for the TTL of resource records - and
other naming services ease this particularly problematic issue of
data ownership and validity.
7.3 API dilemna
In light of Section 6.4, there is an open question as to whether we
need an extension to the sockets API that would allow applications
resolving addresses to be able to determine the freshness of the
resolved data. A straw poll of networking applications demonstrated
that common programming practise is to 'resolve once, bind many'
during the lifetime of an application, caching the initial lookup
result and assuming that it is still valid throughout. Whilst this
is a perfectly valid approach for short-lived applications, where the
chance of renumbering - site or the single node - increases with
regards the longevity of the application, the likelihood of the
resolved data being intrusively inaccurate also increases.
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7.4 Server Sockets
Certain services create a server socket instance on which they intend
to receive client connections throughout their execution lifetime,
never re-binding that socket unless explicitly shut-down and
restarted. An example would be a webserver, which may in fact bind
to multiple different IP addresses to serve content for different
domains where the particular business case is for customers to be
allocated their 'own' IP address (e.g. for reverse DNS to reflect
their branded domain name). Address space usage inefficiencies
aside, the class of service that creates a server socket that
persists on the initially-bound address is problematic during
renumbering.
A typical work-around would be to schedule a restart of all such
services having first identified whether they can operate on both
address prefixes (to satisfy the middle states of Baker [1]), or at
least to schedule their migration to the new address configuration in
light of the DNS name bindings (considering caches and TTL), and the
nature of existing clients that may still be bound to the old service
(consider graceful migration).
8. IETF Call to Arms
In the above considerations, a number of actions would be most
helpful in advancing the understanding of the practical implications
and robustness of IPv6 renumbering. These include:
o Survey of the pervasiveness of address literals and steps to avoid
their use
o Validation of address selection at source and destination during
various stages of Baker's renumbering procedure
o Validation of RA lifetime expiry and confirmation of prefix
removal and effects on existing sessions
o Better understanding of the commonalities and differences between
renumbering and multi-homing
o ... (to be expanded in future revisions)
Effort is on-going researching the issues discussed and validating
and extending [1] and associated activities and the results of that
work will be reflected in revisions to this memo as well as fedback
to the appropriate draft authors.
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9. IANA Considerations
This document makes no request of IANA.
10. Security Considerations
The security considerations as outlined in [1] still hold, with the
following supporting comments... (tbd)
11. Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the many helpful discussions and
suggestions of their colleagues from the 6NET consortium,
particularly Fred Baker, Graca Carvalho, Ralph Droms, Eliot Lear,
Christian Schild, Andre Stolzé, Tina Strauf, Bernard Tuy,
Gunter Van de Velde, and Stig Venaas.
12. References
12.1 Normative References
[1] Baker, F., Lear, E. and R. Droms, "Procedures for Renumbering an
IPv6 Network without a Flag Day",
draft-ietf-v6ops-renumbering-procedure-01 (work in progress),
July 2004.
[2] Berkowitz, H., Ferguson, P., Leland, W. and P. Nesser,
"Enterprise Renumbering: Experience and Information
Solicitation", RFC 1916, February 1996.
[3] Ferguson, P. and H. Berkowitz, "Network Renumbering Overview:
Why would I want it and what is it anyway?", RFC 2071, January
1997.
[4] Berkowitz, H., "Router Renumbering Guide", RFC 2072, January
1997.
[5] Draves, R., "Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol
version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 3484, February 2003.
[6] Thomson, S. and T. Narten, "IPv6 Stateless Address
Autoconfiguration", RFC 2462, December 1998.
[7] Crawford, M., "Router Renumbering for IPv6", RFC 2894, August
2000.
[8] Narten, T., Nordmark, E. and W. Simpson, "Neighbor Discovery for
IP Version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 2461, December 1998.
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12.2 Informative References
[9] Carpenter, B. and K. Moore, "Connection of IPv6 Domains via
IPv4 Clouds", RFC 3056, February 2001.
[10] IAB and IESG, "IAB/IESG Recommendations on IPv6 Address
Allocations to Sites", RFC 3177, September 2001.
[11] Fink, R. and R. Hinden, "6bone (IPv6 Testing Address
Allocation) Phaseout", RFC 3701, March 2004.
[12] Templin, F., Gleeson, T., Talwar, M. and D. Thaler, "Intra-Site
Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP)",
draft-ietf-ngtrans-isatap-22 (work in progress), May 2004.
[13] Ernst, T. and H. Lach, "Network Mobility Support Terminology",
draft-ietf-nemo-terminology-01 (work in progress), February
2004.
[14] Stewart, R., Xie, Q., Morneault, K., Sharp, C., Schwarzbauer,
H., Taylor, T., Rytina, I., Kalla, M., Zhang, L. and V. Paxson,
"Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 2960, October 2000.
[15] Stewart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
Dynamic Address Reconfiguration",
draft-ietf-tsvwg-addip-sctp-09 (work in progress), June 2004.
[16] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture", RFC 2373, July 1998.
[17] Johnson, D., Perkins, C. and J. Arkko, "Mobility Support in
IPv6", RFC 3775, June 2004.
[18] Droms, R., Bound, J., Volz, B., Lemon, T., Perkins, C. and M.
Carney, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6
(DHCPv6)", RFC 3315, July 2003.
[19] Troan, O. and R. Droms, "IPv6 Prefix Options for Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP) version 6", RFC 3633, December
2003.
[20] Johnson, D. and S. Deering, "Reserved IPv6 Subnet Anycast
Addresses", RFC 2526, March 1999.
[21] Jeong, J., "IPv6 Host Configuration of DNS Server Information
Approaches", draft-ietf-dnsop-ipv6-dns-configuration-04 (work
in progress), September 2004.
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[22] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
Addressing Architecture", RFC 3513, April 2003.
[23] "Architectural Approaches to Multi-Homing for IPv6",
draft-ietf-multi6-architecture-00 (work in progress), July
2004.
[24] Hinden, R. and B. Haberman, "Unique Local IPv6 Unicast
Addresses", draft-ietf-ipv6-unique-local-addr-06 (work in
progress), September 2004.
[25] Hinden, R. and B. Haberman, "Centrally Assigned Unique Local
IPv6 Unicast Addresses", draft-ietf-ipv6-ula-central-00 (work
in progress), June 2004.
[26] Haberman, B. and D. Thaler, "Unicast-Prefix-based IPv6
Multicast Addresses", RFC 3306, August 2002.
[27] Venaas, S. and T. Chown, "Lifetime Option for DHCPv6",
draft-ietf-dhc-lifetime-02 (work in progress), September 2004.
[28] Velde, G., "IPv6 Network Architecture Protection",
draft-vandevelde-v6ops-nap-00 (work in progress), October 2004.
[29] Vixie, P., Thomson, S., Rekhter, Y. and J. Bound, "Dynamic
Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS UPDATE)", RFC 2136,
April 1997.
[30] Moskowitz, R., "Host Identity Protocol Architecture",
draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-06 (work in progress), June 2004.
[31] Chown, T., "IPv6 Campus Transition Scenario Description and
Analysis", draft-chown-v6ops-campus-transition-00 (work in
progress), July 2004.
URIs
[32] <http://popbsmtp.sourceforge.net/>
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Authors' Addresses
Tim J. Chown
University of Southampton, UK
Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
UK
Phone: +44 23 8059 5415
Fax: +44 23 8059 2865
EMail: tjc@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Mark K. Thompson
University of Southampton, UK
EMail: mkt@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Alan J. Ford
University of Southampton, UK
EMail: af@ecs.soton.ac.uk
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