Analysis of Stateful 64 Translation
RFC 6889
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Penno
Request for Comments: 6889 Cisco Systems, Inc.
Category: Informational T. Saxena
ISSN: 2070-1721 Cisco Systems
M. Boucadair
France Telecom
S. Sivakumar
Cisco Systems
April 2013
Analysis of Stateful 64 Translation
Abstract
Due to specific problems, Network Address Translation - Protocol
Translation (NAT-PT) was deprecated by the IETF as a mechanism to
perform IPv6-IPv4 translation. Since then, new efforts have been
undertaken within IETF to standardize alternative mechanisms to
perform IPv6-IPv4 translation. This document analyzes to what extent
the new stateful translation mechanisms avoid the problems that
caused the IETF to deprecate NAT-PT.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6889.
Penno, et al. Informational [Page 1]
RFC 6889 Analysis of 64 Translation April 2013
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Analysis of 64 Translation against Concerns of RFC 4966 . . . 4
2.1. Problems Impossible to Solve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Problems That Can Be Solved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. Problems Solved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1. Introduction
1.1. Definition
This document uses stateful 64 (or 64 for short) to refer to the
mechanisms defined in the following documents:
o IP/ICMP Translation Algorithm [RFC6145]
o Stateful NAT64: Network Address and Protocol Translation from IPv6
Clients to IPv4 Servers [RFC6146]
o DNS64: DNS Extensions for Network Address Translation from IPv6
Clients to IPv4 Servers [RFC6147]
Penno, et al. Informational [Page 2]
RFC 6889 Analysis of 64 Translation April 2013
o IPv6 Addressing of IPv4/IPv6 Translators [RFC6052]
o Framework for IPv4/IPv6 Translation [RFC6144]
1.2. Context
Stateful 64 is widely seen as a major interconnection technique
designed to enable communications between IPv6-only and IPv4-only
networks. One of the building blocks of the stateful 64 is
decoupling the DNS functionality from the protocol translation
itself.
This approach is pragmatic in the sense that there is no dependency
on DNS implementation for the successful NAT handling. As long as
there is a function (e.g., DNS64 [RFC6147] or other means) that can
construct an IPv6-embedded IPv4 address with a pre-configured IPv6
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