Network Working Group                                         R. Stewart
Internet-Draft                                                    Huawei
Intended status: Informational                                    P. Lei
Expires: September 30, 2011                          Cisco Systems, Inc.
                                                               M. Tuexen
                                               Muenster Univ. of Applied
                                                                Sciences
                                                          March 29, 2011


                Uses of Stream Reconfiguration for SCTP
               draft-stewart-tsvwg-reconfuse-sctp-00.txt

Abstract

   This document is used to convey different use cases for the Stream
   Reconfiguration draft xxxxxxx.  It does not represent a standard nor
   does it represent real applications that are available for download.
   Instead it illustrates various use cases of the stream
   reconfiguration facilities for SCTP [RFC4960] .  It serves as a
   guideline to application developers to show the stream
   reconfigurations various potentials.

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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   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 30, 2011.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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   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



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   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   3.  Example Applications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.1.  And FTP example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.2.  Combining features to achieve redundancy  . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   6.  IPR Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
     8.1.  Normative references  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
     8.2.  Informational References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9




































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1.  Introduction

   Many times on the tsvwg mailing list some have questioned the valid
   uses of various features in the stream reconfiguration draft.  This
   document attempts to answer those questions by illustrating use cases
   for all of the features currently contained within the draft has it
   went to last call in tsvwg.  Some of the use cases mentioned here
   have been implemented at one time or another by the various co-
   authors of the reconfiguration draft.  Other examples have not been
   built but instead are used to simply illustrate how one would use the
   feature.


2.  Terminology

   List any terminology that we will use in the document.


3.  Example Applications

   In this document we present NNN example applications that illustrate
   the use of stream reconfiguration.  First we will examine a typical
   use by illustrating a mythical file transfer protocol something like
   FTP but modified to fit SCTP.  Next we will go further and examine
   how the stream re-configuation in combination with the SCTP Address
   Reconfiguration [RFC5061] and SCTP Authentication [RFC4895] can be
   combined to provide a redundancy service that allows a "backup"
   application to acquire or move an association from one machine to
   another.

3.1.  And FTP example

   FTP is a long time staple of the internet.  Most every operating
   system today has an ftp client and often times an FTP server that can
   be enabled if desired.  It is an easily understood paradigm.  A user
   logs in to an ftp server via an ftp command.  And then can send
   various commands to change directories, request file transfers, list
   file or even make directories.

   Some users will also find that they have to go into "passive" mode
   since normally when FTP starts a file transfer, it creates a new TCP
   connection between the server and the client for the actual file
   transfer.  The closing of the connection is normally used as the
   signal to the client or server receiving the file that all of the
   data bytes have been transferred.  In the Socket API this is usually
   signified by a zero length read.  In the case of some NAT's and
   firewalls passive mode is required to not be blocked by the
   middlebox.



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   In this example we will illustrate the handy use of SCTP and its
   stream reconfiguration feature to do an equivalent SCTP version of
   FTP.  The user would of course login to the ftp server in the same
   way today that they do with tcp.  Setting up an association via a
   client command.  In the case of the underlying SCTP configuration
   each side would ask for a number of streams equal to one more than
   the number of simultaneous transfers they anticipate supporting.
   Conservative clients and servers would ask for 2.  Stream 0 is
   reserved for the "command" stream and is considered a bi-directional
   stream.  Commands such as 'ls' or 'cd' would be sent via stream 0 and
   the appropriate responses (e.g. the list of files) would be sent back
   to the client over stream 0 in response.

   When the client wishes to transfer a file by the client doing a "get
   foo" command.  The server do the following:

   1> Choose an idle stream, an idle stream is one not being used for
      file transfer at this time and is in the initial state, i.e. the
      next stream sequence number is 0.

   2> On the selected stream the server would send a special message as
      the first message on the stream i.e. stream sequence 0.  This
      message would contain the name of the file, the ownership (user
      name and possibly user id), permissions and any other bookkeeping
      information that is necessary for the transfer.  Setting that
      streams state to non-idle or in the file transfer state.

   3> After sending the first setup message, send each data block to the
      peer from the file in an ordered message on the selected stream to
      the peer requesting the file.

   4> At the completion of the file transfer, reset the stream sequence
      number and place the stream back to the idle state.

   When receiving this first message on the respective stream (N), the
   first message, ssn 0, would:

   A> Key the receiver into placing the incoming stream into "file
      transfer" mode.  The special ssn 0 on a un-assigned stream (i.e
      one not in a file transfer state) into using the first message to
      open the file and set the stream into the "file transfer" state.

   B> All subsequent messages arriving on the stream in this state are
      directly written to the appropriate file descriptor assigned to
      that stream.






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   C> If for some reason the file could not be opened or a write error
      in output of the data occurs, the receiver would request a
      incoming and outgoing stream reset to signal to the peer that an
      error occurred.

   D> In the file transfer state, the stream would continue to receive
      either messages (which would be written out) or a stream reset.
      The stream reset would indicate to the receiver that the stream is
      to be taken out of the file transfer state and the file is to be
      closed.

   E> At that point the stream is set back to the initial state and is
      available for any subsequent transfer.

   When a 'put' is requested by the client, no message need travel over
   the control stream 0.  Instead the client would simply select an idle
   stream and send the same transfer message to the peer as the first
   stream sequence number 0 to the server.  The server would react the
   same way that the client did above and follow similar procedures.

   It is also possible that one of the sides, when going to transfer a
   file, does not have any idle streams.  In such a case the add stream
   capability can be used to add an additional stream resource.  This
   allows a SCTP-FTP server and client to start with a minimal number of
   streams (2 at a minimum) and only expand the number of streams upon
   the demand of the user for parallel transfers.

   This example illustrates the use of two basic reconfiguration
   utilities.  The add-stream and the stream-reset for SSN.  The next
   example will illustrate some various uses of the multiple stream
   reset and the TSN/SSN reset capabilities.

3.2.  Combining features to achieve redundancy

   Consider the following picture:


       +--------+                  +---------+
       | Host-A |                  | Host-A~ |
       +---+----+                  +----+----+
           | IP-A                       | IP-B
           |                            |
           +-------------+--------------+
                         |
                         | IP-Z
                  +------+----+
                  | Host-Peer |
                  +-----------+



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   Host-A and Host-Peer have an SCTP association between them.  The
   association is between IP-A:NNNN and IP-Z:MMMMM.  Now often times in
   such a situation it is desired to have Host-A~ backup Host-A in case
   of a fault in either the hardware or software of Host-A.  A variety
   of methods have been used to do this in the past.  One common method
   is that Host-A~ watches Host-A in some fashion via either specialized
   hardware of some sort of pinging mechanism.  If Host-A~ sees that
   Host-A is down, it assumes the network identity of host A by adopting
   IP-A on its interface and sending a promiscuous ARP so that packets
   destined to IP-A end up at the backup (i.e.  Host-A~).

   Now one problem with this is any TCP connection or SCTP association
   between Host-A and Host-Peer will need to be torn down and re-
   established.  This, in some protocols, may have un-desireable side-
   effects (e.g.  BGP).  Some implementations have attempted to
   compensate for this by having additional connectivity between Host-A
   and Host-A~ and keeping track of sequence numbers at the transport
   layer as well as keeping track of application state (between the
   primary and backup application).  Much of the transport state is
   stable but large parts of it also are transient.  In SCTP's case TSN
   and Stream Sequence numbers may be changing quite rapidly and this
   takes away additional resources by generating additional traffic
   between Host-A and Host-A~.  Add to this that the promiscuous ARP and
   assuming the network identity of the peer is in itself somewhat
   kludgy at best.

   Now consider a possible different scenario which can be used if we
   apply SCTP's address reconfiguration, SCTP Authentication and the
   Stream reconfiguration mechanisms.  If the two servers (Host-A and
   Host-A~) will do the following every time they acquire a peer:

   1) After association setup send the random keys (for AUTH), Vtags,
      Sequence numbers, stream sequence numbers and various SCTP PCB
      information to Host-A~.

   2) The application can use an inter-SCTP association between IP-A and
      IP-B to send this information.  This association can further be
      used to send any application state updates that are needed and
      both servers should be using the same port number NNNN.

   3) If the application ever uses the stream reconfiguration mechanism,
      an updated stream reconfiguration sequence number must be sent to
      the backup peer over this association.  But note these changes are
      hopefully far less frequent then changes to TSN or SSN's within
      the association to the Host-Peer.






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   4) The backup peer Host-A~ may wish to increase the SCTP heartbeat
      rate to a faster value so that normal SCTP mechanisms (although at
      a faster rate) can be used to detect peer association failure
      faster than normally would be detected (by Host-Peer).

   After this setup, if Host-A fails, Host-A~ would do the following:

   A) Immediately upon detecting host failure of Host-A, send an Address
      Reconfiguration [RFC5061] with the appropriate authentication
      [RFC4895] to Host-Peer.  In this reconfiguration, Add IP-B first,
      followed by Delete IP-A.  These two actions should be bundled in
      one reconfiguration message but the Add parameter must be first
      (otherwise the peer would reject the request).

   B) After the address reconfiguration successfully completes send a
      stream reconfiguration resetting the TSN and all SSN's.  This is
      done with the TSN/SSN reconfiguration request.

   C) After completion the application should be able to continue to
      talk to Host-Peer over the same association.  Asking for any
      reconfiguration (if needed) that the application would like with
      its peer (e.g. a BGP restart).

   An alternative to this strategy would be to use just SSN resets but
   this would place additional burden upon the synchronization between
   Host-A and Host-A~ in that the TSN sequence would need to be kept in
   sync in addition to the stream reconfiguration sequence space.

   This mechanism could then be used to provide a "friendly" takeover
   for redundancy purposes of a peer association with no down time.
   Other scenarios are also possible, for example an application may
   want to use similar mechanisms to hand off part of its load from one
   server to another while both are active i.e. not in a failure case.

   More Examples to come


4.  Security Considerations

   TBD


5.  IANA Considerations

   TBD






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6.  IPR Considerations

   An IPR disclosure will be forthcoming.


7.  Acknowledgements


8.  References

8.1.  Normative references

   [RFC4895]  Tuexen, M., Stewart, R., Lei, P., and E. Rescorla,
              "Authenticated Chunks for the Stream Control Transmission
              Protocol (SCTP)", RFC 4895, August 2007.

   [RFC4960]  Stewart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol",
              RFC 4960, September 2007.

   [RFC5061]  Stewart, R., Xie, Q., Tuexen, M., Maruyama, S., and M.
              Kozuka, "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
              Dynamic Address Reconfiguration", RFC 5061,
              September 2007.

8.2.  Informational References

   [RFC2960]  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.


Authors' Addresses

   Randall R. Stewart
   Huawei
   Chapin, SC  29036
   USA

   Email: randall@lakerest.net











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   Peter Lei
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   8735 West Higgins Road
   Suite 300
   Chicago, IL  60631
   USA

   Phone:
   Email: peterlei@cisco.com


   Michael Tuexen
   Muenster University of Applied Sciences
   Stegerwaldstr. 39
   48565 Steinfurt
   Germany

   Email: tuexen@fh-muenster.de

































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