Analysis of Stateful 64 Translation
RFC 6889

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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.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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]

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   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