RFC 6306
Hierarchical IPv4 Framework
Pages: 65
Experimental
Experimental
Part 1 of 3 – Pages 1 to 18
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) P. Frejborg Request for Comments: 6306 July 2011 Category: Experimental ISSN: 2070-1721 Hierarchical IPv4 FrameworkAbstract
This document describes a framework for how the current IPv4 address space can be divided into two new address categories: a core address space (Area Locators, ALOCs) that is globally unique, and an edge address space (Endpoint Locators, ELOCs) that is regionally unique. In the future, the ELOC space will only be significant in a private network or in a service provider domain. Therefore, a 32x32 bit addressing scheme and a hierarchical routing architecture are achieved. The hierarchical IPv4 framework is backwards compatible with the current IPv4 Internet. This document also discusses a method for decoupling the location and identifier functions -- future applications can make use of the separation. The framework requires extensions to the existing Domain Name System (DNS), the existing IPv4 stack of the endpoints, middleboxes, and routers in the Internet. The framework can be implemented incrementally for endpoints, DNS, middleboxes, and routers. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for examination, experimental implementation, and evaluation. This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. This document is a product of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). The IRTF publishes the results of Internet-related research and development activities. These results might not be suitable for deployment. This RFC represents the individual opinion(s) of one or more members of the Routing Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). Documents approved for publication by the IRSG are not 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/rfc6306.
Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2011 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 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................4 2. Requirements Notation ...........................................7 3. Definitions of Terms ............................................7 4. Hierarchical Addressing .........................................9 5. Intermediate Routing Architecture ..............................11 5.1. Overview ..................................................11 5.2. Life of a hIPv4 Session ...................................15 6. Long-Term Routing Architecture .................................18 6.1. Overview ..................................................19 6.2. Exit, DFZ, and Approach Routing ...........................21 7. Decoupling Location and Identification .........................23 8. ALOC Use Cases .................................................24 9. Mandatory Extensions ...........................................28 9.1. Overview ..................................................28 9.2. DNS Extensions ............................................29 9.3. Extensions to the IPv4 Header .............................30 10. Consequences ..................................................34 10.1. Overlapping Local and Remote ELOC Prefixes/Ports .........34 10.2. Large Encapsulated Packets ...............................35 10.3. Affected Applications ....................................35 10.4. ICMP .....................................................37 10.5. Multicast ................................................37 11. Traffic Engineering Considerations ............................38 11.1. Valiant Load-Balancing ...................................39 12. Mobility Considerations .......................................40 13. Transition Considerations .....................................42 14. Security Considerations .......................................43 15. Conclusions ...................................................45 16. References ....................................................47 16.1. Normative References .....................................47 16.2. Informative References ...................................47 17. Acknowlegments ................................................50 Appendix A. Short Term and Future IPv4 Address Allocation Policy ..51 Appendix B. Multi-Homing becomes Multi-Pathing ....................53 Appendix C. Incentives and Transition Arguments ...................57 Appendix D. Integration with CES Architectures ....................58
1. Introduction
A Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol [LISP] presentation from a breakout session at an expo held in January, 2008, triggered a research study; findings from the study are described in this document. Further studies revealed that the routing community at IETF is concerned about the scalability of the routing and addressing system of the future Internet. The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) held a Routing and Addressing workshop on October 18-19, 2006, in Amsterdam. The outcome from the workshop is documented in [RFC4984]. Also, the IRTF had established a Routing Research Group [RRG] in 2007 and created some design guidelines; see [RFC6227]. The author of this document found the LISP approach very interesting because the IP address space is proposed to be separated into two groups: Routing Locators (RLOCs), which are present in the global routing table of the Internet called the Default-Free Zone (DFZ), and Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs), which are only present in edge networks attached to the Internet. The proposed LISP architecture reduces the routing information in the DFZ, but it also introduces a new mapping system that would require a caching solution at the border routers installed between the edge networks and DFZ. EID prefixes are not needed in the DFZ since a tunneling (overlay) scheme is applied between the border routers. To the author, this seems to be a complex architecture that could be improved by applying lessons learned from similar past architectures -- in the '90s, overlay architectures were common, deployed on top of Frame Relay and ATM technologies. Cache-based routing architectures have also been tried, for example, Ipsilon's IP Switching. These architectures have largely been replaced by MPLS [RFC3031] for several reasons -- one being that overlay and caching solutions have historically suffered from scalability issues. Technology has certainly evolved since the '90s. The scalability issues of overlay and caching solutions may prove to be less relevant for modern hardware and new methods; see [Revisiting_Route_Caching] Nevertheless, the author has some doubt whether overlay and caching will scale well, based upon lessons learned from past overlay and caching architectures. The hierarchical IPv4 framework proposal arose from the question of whether the edge and core IP addressing groupings from LISP could be used without creating an overlay solution by borrowing ideas from MPLS to develop a peer-to-peer architecture. That is, instead of tunneling, why not swap IP addresses (hereafter called locators) on a node in the DFZ? By introducing a shim header to the IPv4 header and Realm Border Router (RBR) functionality on the network, the edge locators are no longer needed in the routing table of DFZ.
Two architectural options existed regarding how to assemble the packet so that RBR functionality can be applied in the DFZ: the packet was assembled by either an ingress network node (similar to LISP or MPLS) or at the endpoint itself. The major drawback in assembling the packet with a shim header at the endpoint is that the endpoint's stack must be upgraded; however, a significant advantage is that the Path MTU Discovery issue, as discussed in, e.g., LISP, would not exist. In addition, the caching scalability issue is mitigated to the greatest extent possible by pushing caching to the endpoint. This approach also opened up the possibility of extending the current IP address scheme with a new dimension. In an MPLS network, overlapping IP addresses are allowed since the forwarding plane is leveraging label information from the MPLS shim header. By applying RBR functionality, extending the current IPv4 header with a shim header and assembling the new header at endpoints, an IP network can also carry packets with overlapping edge locators, although the core locators must still be globally unique. The location of an endpoint is also no longer described by a single address space; it is described by a combination of an edge locator and a core locator, or a set of core locators. Later on, it was determined that the current 32-bit address scheme can be extended to 64 bits -- 32 bits reserved for globally unique core locators and 32 bits reserved for locally unique edge locators. The new 64-bit addressing scheme is backwards compatible with the currently deployed Internet addressing scheme. By making the architectural decisions described above, the foundation for the hierarchical IPv4 framework was laid out. Note that the hierarchical IPv4 framework is abbreviated as hIPv4, which is close to the abbreviation of Host Identity Protocol (HIP) [RFC4423]. Thus, the reader needs to pay attention to the use of the two abbreviations -- hIPv4 and HIP, which represent two different architectures. Use of the hIPv4 abbreviation has caused much confusion, but it was chosen for two reasons: o Hierarchical - to emphasize that a hierarchical addressing scheme is developed. A formalized hierarchy is achieved in the routing architecture. Some literature describes today's Internet as already using hierarchical addressing. The author believes that this claim is not valid -- today's Internet uses one flat address space.
It is true that we have hierarchical routing in place. A routing
architecture can consist of at least three types of areas: stub
area, backbone area, and autonomous system (AS). The current flat
address space is summarized or aggregated at border routers between
the areas to suppress the size of a routing table. In order to
carry out summaries or aggregates of prefixes, the address space
must be continuous over the areas.
Thus, the author concludes that the current method is best
described as an aggregating addressing scheme since there are
address block dependencies between the areas. Dividing addresses
into edge and core locator spaces (a formalized hierarchy) opens up
a new dimension -- the edge locator space can still be deployed as
an aggregating address scheme on the three types of areas mentioned
earlier. In hIPv4, the core locators are combined with edge
locators, independent from each other -- the two locator space
allocation policies are separated and no dependencies exist between
the two addressing schemes in the long-term architecture.
A new hierarchical addressing scheme is achieved: a two-level
addressing scheme describing how the endpoint is attached to the
local network and also how the endpoint is attached to the
Internet. This change in the addressing scheme will enable a
fourth level, called the Area Locator (ALOC) realm, at the routing
architecture.
o IPv4 - to emphasize that the framework is still based upon the IPv4
addressing scheme, and is only an evolution from the currently
deployed addressing scheme of the Internet.
While performing this research study, the author reviewed a previous
hierarchical addressing and routing architecture that had been
proposed in the past, the Extended Internet Protocol (EIP) [RFC1385].
Should the hIPv4 framework ever be developed from a research study to
a standard RFC, it is recommended that the hierarchical IPv4
framework name be replaced with Extended Internet Protocol, EIP,
since both architectures share similarities, e.g., backwards
compatibility with existing deployed architecture, hierarchical
addressing, etc., and the hIPv4 abbreviation can be mixed up with
HIP.
This document is an individual contribution to the IRTF Routing
Research Group (RRG); discussions between those on the mailing list
of the group have influenced the framework. The views in this
document are considered controversial by the IRTF Routing Research
Group (RRG), but the group reached a consensus that the document
should still be published. Since consensus was not achieved at RGG
regarding which proposal should be preferred -- as stated in
[RFC6115]: "The group explored a number of proposed solutions but did not reach consensus on a single best approach" -- thus, all proposals produced within RRG can be considered controversial.2. Requirements Notation
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].3. Definitions of Terms
This document makes use of the following terms: Regional Internet Registry (RIR): This is an organization overseeing the allocation and registration of Internet number resources within a particular region of the world. Resources include IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) and autonomous system numbers. Locator: A name for a point of attachment within the topology at a given layer. Objects that change their point(s) of attachment will need to change their associated locator(s). Global Locator Block (GLB): An IPv4 address block that is globally unique. Area Locator (ALOC): An IPv4 address (/32) assigned to locate an ALOC realm in the Internet. The ALOC is assigned by an RIR to a service provider. The ALOC is globally unique because it is allocated from the GLB. Endpoint Locator (ELOC): An IPv4 address assigned to locate an endpoint in a local network. The ELOC block is assigned by an RIR to a service provider or to an enterprise. In the intermediate routing architecture, the ELOC block is only unique in a geographical region. The final policy of uniqueness shall be defined by the RIRs. In the long-term routing architecture, the ELOC block is no longer assigned by an RIR; it is only unique in the local ALOC realm.
ALOC realm:
An area in the Internet with at least one attached Realm Border
Router (RBR). Also, an ALOC must be assigned to the ALOC realm.
The Routing Information Base (RIB) of an ALOC realm holds both
local ELOC prefixes and global ALOC prefixes. An ALOC realm
exchanges only ALOC prefixes with other ALOC realms.
Realm Border Router (RBR):
A router or node that is able to identify and process the hIPv4
header. In the intermediate routing architecture, the RBR shall
be able to produce a service, that is, to swap the prefixes in the
IP header and locator header, and then forward the packet
according to the value in the destination address field of the IP
header. In the long-term routing architecture, the RBR is not
required to produce the swap service. Instead, the RBR can make
use of the Forwarding Indicator field in the locator header. Once
the FI-bits are processed, the RBR forwards the packet according
to the value in the destination address of the IP header or
according to the value in the ELOC field of the locator header.
The RBR must have the ALOC assigned as its locator.
Locator Header:
A 4-byte or 12-byte field, inserted between the IP header and
transport protocol header. If an identifier/locator split scheme
is used, the size of the locator header is further expanded.
Identifier:
The name of an object at a given layer. Identifiers have no
topological sensitivity and do not have to change, even if the
object changes its point(s) of attachment within the network
topology.
Identifier/locator split scheme:
Separate identifiers used by applications from locators that are
used for routing. The exchange of identifiers can occur
discreetly between endpoints that have established a session, or
the identifier/locator split can be mapped at a public database.
Session:
An interactive information exchange between endpoints that is
established at a certain time and torn down at a later time.
Provider Independent Address Space (PI addresses/prefixes):
An IPv4 address block that is assigned by a Regional Internet
Registry directly to a user organization.
Provider Aggregatable Address Space (PA addresses/prefixes):
An IPv4 address block assigned by a Regional Internet Registry to
an Internet Service Provider that can be aggregated into a single
route advertisement.
Site mobility:
A site wishing to change its attachment point to the Internet
without changing its IP address block.
Endpoint mobility:
An endpoint moves relatively rapidly between different networks,
changing its IP layer network attachment point.
Subflow:
A flow of packets operating over an individual path, the flow
forming part of a larger transport protocol connection.
4. Hierarchical Addressing
The current IP addressing (IPv4) and the future addressing (IPv6)
schemes of the Internet are unidimensional by their nature. This
limitation -- the unidimensional addressing scheme -- has created
some roadblocks, for example, breaking end-to-end connectivity due to
NAT, limited deployment of Stream Control Transmission Protocol
(SCTP) [RFC4960], etc., for further growth of the Internet.
If we compare the Internet's current addressing schemes to other
global addressing or location schemes, we notice that the other
schemes use several levels in their structures. For example, the
postal system uses street address, city, and country to locate a
destination. To locate a geographical site, we use longitude and
latitude in the cartography system. The other global network, the
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), has been built upon a
three-level numbering scheme that has enabled a hierarchical
signaling architecture. By expanding the current IPv4 addressing scheme from a single level to a two-level addressing structure, most of the issues discussed in [RFC4984] can be solved. Also, a hierarchical addressing scheme would better describe the Internet we have in place today. Looking back, it seems that the architecture of the Internet changed quite radically from the intended architecture with the introduction of [RFC1918], which divides the hosts into three categories and the address space into two categories: globally unique and private address spaces. This idea allowed for further growth of the Internet and extended the life of the IPv4 address space, and it ended up becoming much more successful than expected. RFC 1918 didn't solve the multi-homing requirements for endpoints providing services for Internet users, that is, multi-homed sites with globally unique IP addresses at endpoints to be accessed from the Internet. Multi-homing has imposed some challenges for the routing architecture that [RRG] is addressing in [RFC6115]. Almost all proposals in the report suggest a core and edge locator separation or elimination to create a scalable routing architecture. The core locator space can be viewed to be similar to the globally unique address space, and the edge locator space similar to the private address space in RFC 1918. RFC 1918 has already demonstrated that Internet scales better with the help of categorized address spaces, that is, globally unique and private address spaces. The RRG proposals suggest that the Internet will be able to scale even further by introducing core and edge locators. Why not then change the addressing scheme (both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing schemes, though this document is only focusing on IPv4) to better reflect the current and forthcoming Internet routing architecture? If we continue to use a flat addressing scheme, and combine it with core (global) and edge (private) locator (address) categories, the routing architecture will have to support additional mechanisms, such as NAT, tunneling, or locator rewriting with the help of an identifier to overcome the mismatch. The result will be that information is lost or hidden for the endpoints. With a two- level addressing scheme, these additional mechanisms can be removed and core/edge locators can be used to create new routing and forwarding directives. A convenient way to understand the two-level addressing scheme of the hIPv4 framework is to compare it to the PSTN numbering scheme (E.164), which uses country codes, national destination codes, and subscriber numbers. The Area Locator (ALOC) prefix in the hIPv4 addressing scheme can be considered similar to the country code in PSTN; i.e., the ALOC prefix locates an area in the Internet called an ALOC realm. The Endpoint Locator (ELOC) prefixes in hIPv4 can be
compared to the subscriber numbers in PSTN -- the ELOC is regionally unique (in the future, locally unique) at the attached ALOC realm. The ELOC can also be attached simultaneously to several ALOC realms. By inserting the ALOC and ELOC elements as a shim header (similar to the MPLS and [RBridge] architectures) between the IPv4 header and the transport protocol header, a hIPv4 header is created. From the network point of view, the hIPv4 header "looks and feels like" an IPv4 header, thus fulfilling some of the goals as outlined in EIP and in the early definition of [Nimrod]. The outcome is that the current forwarding plane does not need to be upgraded, though some minor changes are needed in the control plane (e.g., ICMP extensions).5. Intermediate Routing Architecture
The intermediate routing architecture is backwards compatible with the currently deployed Internet; that is, the forwarding plane remains intact except that the control plane needs to be upgraded to support ICMP extensions. The endpoint's stack needs to be upgraded, and middleboxes need to be upgraded or replaced. In order to speed up the transition phase, middleboxes might be installed in front of endpoints so that their stack upgrade can be postponed; for further details, see Appendix D.5.1. Overview
As mentioned in previous sections, the role of an Area Locator (ALOC) prefix is similar to a country code in PSTN; the ALOC prefix provides a location functionality of an area within an autonomous system (AS), or an area spanning over a group of ASes, in the Internet. An area can have several ALOC prefixes assigned, e.g., for traffic engineering purposes such as load balancing among several ingress/egress points at the area. The ALOC prefix is used for routing and forwarding purposes on the Internet, and so the ALOC prefix must be globally unique and is allocated from an IPv4 address block. This globally unique IPv4 address block is called the Global Locator Block (GLB). When an area within an AS (or a group of ASes) is assigned an ALOC prefix, the area has the potential to become an ALOC realm. In order to establish an ALOC realm, more elements, more than just the ALOC prefix, are needed. One or multiple Realm Border Routers (RBRs) must be attached to the ALOC realm. An RBR element is a node capable of swapping the prefixes of the IP header and the new shim header, called the locator header. The swap service is described in detail in Section 5.2, step 3.
Today's routers do not support this RBR functionality. Therefore, the new functionality will most likely be developed on an external device attached to a router belonging to the ALOC realm. The external RBR might be a server with two interfaces attached to a router, the first interface configured with the prefix of the ALOC and the second with any IPv4 prefix. The RBRs do not make use of dynamic routing protocols, so neither a Forwarding Information Base (FIB) nor a cache is needed -- the RBR performs a service, swapping headers. The swap service is applied on a per-packet basis, and the information needed to carry out the swap is included in the locator header of the hIPv4 packet. Thus, a standalone device with sufficient computing and I/O resources to handle the incoming traffic can take the role as an RBR. Later on, the RBR functionality might be integrated into the forwarding plane of a router. It is expected that one RBR will not be able to handle all the incoming traffic designated for an ALOC realm and that having a single RBR would also create a potential single point of failure in the network. Therefore, several RBRs might be installed in the ALOC realm and the RBRs shall use the ALOC prefix as their locator, and the routers announce the ALOC prefix as an anycast locator within the local ALOC realm. The ALOC prefix is advertised throughout the DFZ by BGP mechanisms. The placement of the RBRs in the network will influence the ingress traffic to the ALOC realm. Since the forwarding paradigm of multicast packets is quite different from forwarding unicast packets, the multicast functionality will have an impact on the RBR. Because the multicast RBR (mRBR) functionality is not available on today's routers, an external device is needed -- later on the functionality might be integrated into the routers. The mRBR shall take the role of an anycast Rendezvous Point with the Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) [RFC3618] and Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) [RFC4601] capabilities, but to swap headers neither a FIB nor a cache is required. As with the RBR, the multicast hIPv4 packets are carrying all needed information in their headers in order to apply the swap service; for details, see Section 10.5. The ALOC realm is not yet fully constructed. We can now locate the ALOC realm on the Internet, but to locate the endpoints attached to the ALOC realm, a new element is needed: the Endpoint Locator (ELOC). As mentioned in the previous section, the ELOC prefixes can be considered similar to the subscriber numbers in PSTN. The ELOC is not a new element but a redefinition of the current IPv4 address configured at an endpoint. The term redefinition is applied because when the hIPv4 framework is fully implemented, the global uniqueness of the IPv4 addresses is no longer valid. A more regional address
allocation policy of IPv4 addresses can be deployed, as discussed in Appendix A. The ELOC prefix will only be used for routing and forwarding purposes inside the local and remote ALOC realms, and it is not used in the intermediate ALOC realms. When an initiator is establishing a session to a responder residing outside the local ALOC realm, the value in the destination address field of the IP header of an outgoing packet is no longer the remote destination address (ELOC prefix); instead, the remote ALOC prefix is installed in the destination address field of the IP header. Because the value in the destination address field of the IP header is carrying an ALOC prefix, the intermediate ALOC realms do not need to install the ELOC prefixes of other ALOC realms in their routing tables. It is sufficient for the intermediate ALOC realms to carry only the ALOC prefixes. The outcome is that the routing tables at each ALOC realm will be reduced when the hIPV4 framework is fully implemented. The ALOC prefixes are still globally unique and must be installed in the DFZ. Thus, the service provider cannot control the growth of the ALOC prefixes, but she/he can control the amount of local ELOC prefixes in her/his local ALOC realm. When the hIPv4 packet arrives at the remote ALOC realm, it is forwarded to the nearest RBR, since the value in the destination address field of the IP header is the remote ALOC prefix. When the RBR has swapped the hIPv4 header, the value in the destination address field of the IP header is the remote ELOC; thus, the hIPv4 packet will be forwarded to the final destination at the remote ALOC realm. An endpoint using an ELOC prefix can be attached simultaneously to two different ALOC realms without the requirement to deploy a classical multi-homing solution; for details, see Section 12 and Appendix B. Understanding that the addressing structure is no longer unidimensional and that a second level of hierarchy has been added, it is important to solve the problems of locating the remote ELOC (endpoint) and remote ALOC realm on the Internet, as well as determining where to assemble the header of the hIPv4 packet. The hierarchical IPv4 framework relies upon the Domain Name System needs to support a new record type so that the ALOC information can be distributed to the endpoints. To construct the header of the hIPv4 packet, either the endpoint or an intermediate node (e.g., a proxy) should be used. A proxy solution is likely to prove suboptimal due to a complication induced by the proxy's need to listen to DNS messages, and a cache solution has scalability issues.
A better solution is to extend the current IPv4 stack at the endpoints so that the ALOC and ELOC elements are incorporated at the endpoint's stack; however, backwards compatibility must be preserved. Most applications will not be aware of the extensions while other IP- aware applications, such as Mobile IP, SIP, IPsec AH and so on (see Section 10.3) will suffer and cannot be used outside their ALOC realm when the hIPv4 framework is fully implemented, unless they are upgraded. The reason is that the IP-aware applications depend upon the underlying network addressing structure, e.g., to identify an endpoint. Note that the applications used inside the local ALOC realm (e.g., enterprise's private network) do not need to be upgraded -- neither in the intermediate nor in the long-term routing architecture. The classical IPv4 framework is preserved in that only IP-aware applications used between ALOC realms need to be upgraded to support the hIPv4 header. Figure 1 shows a conceptual overview of the intermediate routing architecture. When this architecture is in place, the ELOC space is no longer globally unique. Instead, a regional allocation policy can be implemented. For further details, see Appendix A. The transition from the current routing architecture to the intermediate routing architecture is discussed in Appendix D.
Legend: *attachment point in the ALOC realm UER=Unique ELOC region EP=Endpoint |-------------------------------------------------------------| | UER1 | | UER2 | |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Enterprise1 | ISP1 | ISP | ISP2 | Enterprise2 | | ALOC Realm | ALOC Realm | Tier1 | ALOC Realm | ALOC Realm | | | | | | | | *EP | *RBR | | *RBR | *EP | | ELOC1 | ALOC1 | | ALOC2 | ELOC4 | | | | | | | | | *EP | | *EP | | | | ELOC2 | | ELOC3 | | | | | | | | |-------------|xxxxxxxxxxxxxx DFZ xxxxxxxxxxxxxx| ------------| | RIB | RIB | RIB | RIB | RIB | | | | | | | | ALOC1 | ALOC1 | ALOC1 | ALOC2 | ALOC2 | | ELOC1 | ALOC2 | ALOC2 | ALOC1 | ELOC4 | | | ELOC2 | | ELOC3 | | | | ELOC1 | | ELOC4 | | | | | | | | |-------------------------------------------------------------| Figure 1: Intermediate routing architecture of hIPv45.2. Life of a hIPv4 Session
This section provides an example of a hIPv4 session between two hIPv4 endpoints: an initiator and a responder residing in different ALOC realms. When the hIPv4 stack is assembling the packet for transport, the hIPv4 stack shall decide if a classical IPv4 or a hIPv4 header is used based on the ALOC information received by a DNS reply. If the initiator's local ALOC prefix equals the responder's ALOC prefix, there is no need to use the hIPv4 header for routing purposes, because both the initiator and responder reside in the local ALOC realm. The packet is routed according to the prefixes in the IP header since the packet will not exit the local ALOC realm. When the local ALOC prefix does not match the remote ALOC prefix, a hIPv4 header must be assembled because the packet needs to be routed to a remote ALOC realm.
A session between two endpoints inside an ALOC realm might use the locator header -- not for routing purposes, but to make use of Valiant Load-Balancing [VLB] for multipath-enabled transport protocols (see Section 11.1) or to make use of an identifier/locator split scheme (see Section 7). When making use of VLB, the initiator adds the locator header to the packet and by setting the VLB-bits to 01 or 11, indicating to the responder and intermediate routers that VLB is requested for the subflow. Because this is an intra-ALOC realm session, there is no need to add ALOC and ELOC fields to the locator header, and thus the size of the locator header will be 4 bytes. If an identifier/locator split scheme is applied for the session (intra-ALOC or inter-ALOC), the initiator must set the I-bit to 1 and make use of the Locator Header Length field. Identifier/locator split scheme information is inserted into the locator header after the Locator Header Length field. How a hIPv4 session is established follows: 1. The initiator queries the DNS server. The hIPv4 stack notices that the local and remote ALOCs do not match and therefore must use the hIPv4 header for the session. The hIPv4 stack of the initiator must assemble the packet by the following method: a. Set the local IP address from the API in the source address field of the IP header. b. Set the remote IP address from the API in the ELOC field of the locator header. c. Set the local ALOC prefix in the ALOC field of the locator header. d. Set the remote ALOC prefix in the destination address field of the IP header. e. Set the transport protocol value in the protocol field of the locator header and set the hIPv4 protocol value in the protocol field of the IP header. f. Set the desired parameters in the A-, I-, S-, VLB-, and L- fields of the locator header. g. Set the FI-bits of the locator header to 00.
h. Calculate IP, locator, and transport protocol header checksums.
The transport protocol header calculation does not include the
locator header fields. When completed, the packet is
transmitted.
2. The hIPv4 packet is routed throughout the Internet based on the
value in the destination address field of the IP header.
3. The hIPv4 packet will reach the closest RBR of the remote ALOC
realm. When the RBR notices that the value in the destination
address of the IP header matches the local ALOC prefix, the RBR
must:
a. Verify that the received packet uses the hIPv4 protocol value
in the protocol field of the IP header.
b. Verify IP, locator, and transport protocol header checksums.
The transport protocol header verification does not include the
locator header fields.
c. Replace the source address in the IP header with the ALOC
prefix of the locator header.
d. Replace the destination address in the IP header with the ELOC
prefix of the locator header.
e. Replace the ALOC prefix in the locator header with the
destination address of the IP header.
f. Replace the ELOC prefix in the locator header with the source
address of the IP header.
g. Set the S-field to 1.
h. Decrease the Time to Live (TTL) value by one.
i. Calculate IP, locator, and transport protocol header checksums.
The transport header calculation does not include the locator
header fields.
j. Forward the packet according to the value in the destination
address field of the IP header.
4. The swapped hIPv4 packet is now routed inside the remote ALOC
realm based on the new value in the destination address field of
the IP header to the final destination.
5. The responder receives the hIPv4 packet.
a. The hIPv4 stack must verify that the received packet uses the
hIPv4 protocol value in the protocol field of the IP header.
b. Verify IP, locator, and transport protocol header checksums.
The transport protocol header verification does not include the
locator header fields.
6. The hIPv4 stack of the responder must present the following to the
extended IPv4 socket API:
a. The source address of the IP header as the remote ALOC prefix.
b. The destination address of the IP header as the local IP
address.
c. Verify that the received ALOC prefix of the locator header
equals the local ALOC prefix.
d. The ELOC prefix of the locator header as the remote IP address.
The responder's application will respond to the initiator and the
returning packet will take almost the same steps, which are steps 1
to 6, as when the initiator started the session. In step 1, the
responder does not need to do a DNS lookup since all information is
provided by the packet.
(page 18 continued on part 2)