Network Working Group                                       James Uttaro
Internet Draft                                                      AT&T
Updates: 5575                                          Clarence Filsfils
Intended Status: Proposed Standard                     Pradosh Mohapatra
Expiration Date: September 2012                              David Smith
                                                                   Cisco
                                                           March 4, 2012


        Revised Validation Procedure for BGP Flow Specifications
                   draft-djsmith-bgp-flowspec-oid-00


Abstract

   This document describes a modification to the validation procedure
   defined in RFC 5575 for the dissemination of BGP flow specifications.
   RFC 5575 requires that the originator of the flow specification
   matches the originator of the best-match unicast route for the
   destination prefix embedded in the flow specification. This allows
   only BGP speakers within the data forwarding path (such as autonomous
   system border routers) to originate BGP flow specifications.  Though
   it is possible to disseminate such flow specifications directly from
   border routers, it may be operationally cumbersome in an autonomous
   system with a large number of border routers having complex BGP
   policies. The modification proposed herein enables flow
   specifications to be originated from a centralized BGP route
   controller.


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
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   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
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Internet Draft   Revised Flowspec Validation Procedure        March 2012


   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 1, 2012.

Copyright Notice

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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   described in the Simplified BSD License.



Table of Contents

    1          Specification of Requirements  ......................   3
    2          Motivation  .........................................   3
    3          Introduction  .......................................   5
    4          Revised Validation Procedure  .......................   6
    5          Security Considerations  ............................   6
    6          IANA Considerations  ................................   6
    7          Normative References  ...............................   6
    8          Informational References  ...........................   6
    9          Acknowledgements  ...................................   7
   10          Authors' Addresses  .................................   7

















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Internet Draft   Revised Flowspec Validation Procedure        March 2012


1. Specification of Requirements

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].


2. Motivation

   Step (a) of the validation procedure in [RFC5575], section 6 is
   defined with the underlying assumption that the flow specification
   NLRI traverses the same path, in the inter-domain and intra-domain
   route distribution graph, as that of the longest-match unicast route
   for the destination prefix embedded in the flow specification.

   In the case of inter-domain traffic filtering, for example, the flow
   specification originator at the egress border routers of ASN1 (RTR-D
   and RTR-E in figure 1) matches the EBGP neighbor that advertised the
   longest match destination prefix (RTR-F and RTR-G respectively).
   Similarly, at the ingress border routers of ASN1 (RTR-A and RTR-B in
   figure 1), the flow specification originator matches the egress IBGP
   border routers that had advertised the unicast route for the best-
   match destination prefix (RTR-D and RTR-E respectively). This is true
   even when ingress border routers select paths from different egress
   border routers as best path based upon IGP distance (as an example,
   RTR-A chooses RTR-D's path as best; RTR-B chooses RTR-E as the best
   path).
























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Internet Draft   Revised Flowspec Validation Procedure        March 2012


                        / - - - - - - - - - - - - -  -
                        |           ASN1              |
                          +-------+        +-------+
                        | |       |        |       |  |
                          | RTR-A |        | RTR-B |
                        | |       |        |       |  |
                          +-------+        +-------+
                        |       \           /         |
                           IBGP  \         / IBGP
                        |         \       /           |
                                  +-------+
                        |         |       |           |
                                  | RTR-C |
                        |         |  RC   |           |
                                  +-------+
                        |           /   \             |
                                   /     \
                        |   IBGP  /       \ IBGP      |
                          +-------+        +-------+
                        | | RTR-D |        | RTR-E |  |
                          |       |        |       |
                        | |       |        |       |  |
                          +-------+        +-------+
                        |     |                 |     |
                         - - -|- - - - - - - - -|- - -/
                              | EBGP       EBGP |
                         - - -|- - - - - - - - -|- - -/
                        |     |                 |     |
                          +-------+        +-------+
                        | |       |        |       |  |
                          | RTR-F |        | RTR-G |
                        | |       |        |       |  |
                          +-------+        +-------+
                        |           ASN2              |
                        / - - - - - - - - - - - - -  -

                                  Figure 1

   It is highly desirable that each ASN is able to protect itself
   independently from network security attacks using the BGP flow
   specification NLRI for intra-domain purposes only. Network operators
   often deploy a dedicated Security Operations Center (SOC) within
   their ASN to monitor and detect such security attacks. To mitigate
   attacks in a scalable intra-domain manner, operators require the
   ability to originate intra-domain flow specification NLRIs from a
   central BGP route controller (or router reflector per [RFC4456]) that
   is not within the data forwarding plane.  In this way, operators can
   direct border routers within their ASN with specific attack



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Internet Draft   Revised Flowspec Validation Procedure        March 2012


   mitigation actions (drop the traffic, forward to a clean-pipe center,
   etc.).  To originate a flow specification NLRI, a central BGP route
   controller (or route reflector) must set itself as the originator in
   the flowspec NLRI. This is necessary given the route controller is
   originating the flow specification not reflecting it, and to avoid
   the complexity of having to determine the egress border router whose
   path was chosen as the best in each of the ingress border routers. It
   thus becomes necessary to relax step (a) of the validation procedure
   for IBGP learned flow specification NLRIs.


3. Introduction

   RFC 5575 defined a new BGP capability that can be used to distribute
   traffic flow specifications amongst BGP speakers in support of
   traffic filtering. The primary intention of RFC 5575 is to enable
   downstream autonomous systems to signal traffic filtering policies to
   upstream autonomous systems. In this way, traffic is filtered closer
   to the source and the upstream autonomous system(s) avoid carrying
   the traffic to the downstream autonomous system only to be discarded.
   RFC 5575 also enables more granular traffic filtering based upon
   upper layer protocol information (e.g., protocol port numbers) as
   opposed to coarse IP destination prefix-based filtering.  Flow
   specification NLRIs received from a BGP peer are subject to validity
   checks before being considered feasible and subsequently installed
   within the respective Adj-RIB-In.  The validation procedure defined
   within RFC 5575 requires that the originator of the flow
   specification NLRI matches the originator of the best-match unicast
   route for the destination prefix embedded in the flow specification.
   This allows only BGP speakers [RFC4271] within the data forwarding
   path (such as autonomous system border routers) to originate BGP flow
   specification NLRIs. Though it is possible to disseminate such flow
   specification NLRIs directly from border routers, it may be
   operationally cumbersome in an autonomous system with a large number
   of border routers having complex BGP policies.  This document
   describes a modification to the RFC 5575 validation procedure
   allowing flow specification NLRIs to be originated from a centralized
   BGP route controller within the local autonomous system that is
   neither in the data forwarding path nor serving as a BGP route
   reflector [RFC4456]. While the proposed modification cannot be used
   for inter-domain coordination of traffic filtering, it greatly
   simplifies distribution of intra-domain traffic filtering policies in
   an autonomous system with a large number of border routers having
   complex BGP policies. The proposed modification allows flow
   specifications to be distributed in a standard manner throughout an
   autonomous system.





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Internet Draft   Revised Flowspec Validation Procedure        March 2012


4. Revised Validation Procedure

   Step (a) of the validation procedure specified in [RFC5575], section
   6 is OPTIONAL for IBGP learned flow specification NLRIs. This
   OPTIONAL behavior MAY be configurable on BGP speakers, however, step
   (a) of the validation procedure SHOULD be disabled by default for
   IBGP learned flow specification NRLIs.


5. Security Considerations

   No new security issues are introduced by relaxing the validation
   procedure for iBGP learned flow specifications. iBGP peers are
   implicitly trusted, hence, no new security risks are introduced.
   Conversely, the validation procedure remains enforced for eBGP peers,
   hence, no new security risks.


6. IANA Considerations

   This document has no actions for IANA.


7. Normative References

   [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
   Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC4456] Bates, T., Chen, E., and Chandra, R., "BGP Route
   Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP (IBGP)", RFC
   4456, April 2006.

   [RFC5575] Marques, P., Sheth, N., Raszuk, R., Greene, B., Mauch, J.,
   and McPherson, D., "Dissemination of Flow Specification Rules", RFC
   5575, August 2009.


8. Informational References

   [RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
   Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.










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Internet Draft   Revised Flowspec Validation Procedure        March 2012


9. Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Han Nguyen for his direction on this
   work as well as Shyam Sethuram and Waqas Alam for their review
   comments.


10. Authors' Addresses


      James Uttaro
      AT&T
      200 S. Laurel Avenue
      Middletown, NJ  07748
      USA

      Email: ju1738@att.com



      Clarence Filsfils
      Cisco
      Brussels  1000
      BE

      Email: cf@cisco.com



      Pradosh Mohapatra
      Cisco
      170 W. Tasman Drive
      San Jose, CA  95134
      USA

      Email: pmohapat@cisco.com



      David J. Smith
      Cisco
      111 Wood Avenue South
      Iselin, NJ  08830
      USA

      E-mail: djsmith@cisco.com





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