Internet Engineering Task Force R. Despres Internet-Draft October 23, 2008 Intended status: Informational Expires: April 26, 2009 IPv6 Rapid Deployment on IPv4 infrastructures (6rd) draft-despres-6rd-02 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on April 26, 2009. Abstract IPv6 rapid deployment (6rd) builds upon mechanisms of 6to4 (RFC3056) to enable a service provider to rapidly deploy IPv6 unicast service to IPv4 sites to which it provides customer premise equipment. Like 6to4, it utilizes stateless IPv6 in IPv4 encapsulation in order to transit IPv4-only network infrastructure. Unlike 6to4, a 6rd service provider uses an IPv6 prefix of its own in place of the fixed 6to4 prefix. A service provider has used this mechanism for its own IPv6 "rapid deployment": five weeks from first exposure to 6rd principles to more than 1,500,000 residential sites being provided quasi-native IPv6, under the only condition that they activate it. Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 1] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Problem statement and purpose of 6rd . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. Remarks on utilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.1. 6rd and ISPs that assign private IPv4 addresses . . . . . 7 4.2. Deployment of native IPv6 after having deployed 6rd . . . 7 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 10 Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 2] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 1. Introduction After having had a succinct presentation of the 6rd idea, a major French Internet service provider (ISP), Free of the Iliad group, did all of the following in an impressively short delay of only five weeks (November 7th to December 11th 2007): 1. obtain its first IPv6 prefix from its regional Internet Registry (RIR); 2. add 6rd support to the software of its Freebox home-gateway (upgrading for this an available 6to4 code); 3. provision PC-compatible platform with a 6to4 gateway software; 4. modify it to support 6rd; 5. test IPv6 operation with several operating systems and applications; 6. finish operational deployment, by means of new downloadable software for Freeboxes; 7. announce IPv6 Internet connectivity, at no extra charge, for all its customers wishing to activate it. More than 1,500,000 residential customers thus became able to use IPv6 if they wished to, with the same look and feel as with a purely native IPv6 solution. The only condition was an activation of IPv6 in their Freeboxes, and of course in their IPv6 capable hosts. This story is reported to illustrate that ISPs that provide customer premise equipment to their customers with routing capability (router CPEs), and that have so far deffered IPv6 deployment can, with the dramatically reduced investment and operational costs that 6rd make possible, decide to wait no longer. To complete the story, Free announced, on March 6th 2008, that provided two of its customer sites had IPv6 activated, its Telesites application (Web sites published on TV) could now be used remotely between them. Also, while IPv6 availability was in december 2007 limited to only one IPv6 link per customer site (/64 site prefixes), it was upgraded to up to 16 IPv6 links per customer site (/60 site prefixes) when, a few months later, Free obtained a /28 prefix from its regional Internet registry. (The /32 obtained initially was the default value an ISP could be assigned without delay). Readers are supposed to be familiar with 6to4 [RFC3056]. Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 3] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 2. Problem statement and purpose of 6rd Having ISPs to rapidly bring IPv6 to customers sites, in addition to IPv4 and without extra charge, is a way to break the existing vicious circle that has delayed IPv6 deployment: ISPs wait for customer demand before deploying IPv6; customers don't demand IPv6 as long as application vendors announce that their products work on existing infrastructures (that are IPv4 with NATs); application vendors focus their investments on NAT traversal compatibility as long as ISPs don't deploy IPv6. But most ISPs are not willing to add IPv6 to their current offer, at no charge, unless incurred investment and operational costs are extremely limited. For this, ISPs that provide router CPEs to their customers have the most favorable conditions: they can upgrade their router CPEs to support IPv6 encapsulation and operate gateways between these infrastructures and the global IPv6 Internet to also do IPv6/v4 encapsulation, so that they can keep the routing plan of their IPv4 infrastructures. Encapsulation a la 6to4 is very close to be sufficient for this: it is simple; it is supported on many platforms including PC compatible appliances; open-source portable code is available; its stateless nature ensures good scalability. There is however a limitation of 6to4 that prevents ISPs to use it to offer full IPv6 unicast connectivity to their customers. While an ISP that deploys 6to4 can guarantee that IPv6 packets outgoing from its customer sites will reach the IPv6 Internet, and also guarantee that packets coming from other 6to4 sites will reach its customer sites, it cannot guarantee that packets from native IPv6 sites will reach them. A packet coming from a native IPv6 address needs to traverse, somewhere on its way, a 6to4 relay router do the required IPv6/IPv4 encapsuation. The problem is that there is no guarantee to have a route toward such a relay from everywhere, nor is there a guarantee that all such relays do forward packets toward the complete IPv4 Internet. An ISP, if it operates one or several 6to4 relay routers and opens IPv6 routes toward them on the IPv6 Internet for the 6to4 prefix 2002::/16, may receive in these relays packets destined to an unknown number of other 6to4 ISPs. If it doesn't forward them, it creates a black hole in which packets may be systematically lost, breaking some of the IPv6 connectivity. If it does forward them, it can no longer dimension its 6to4 relay routers in proportion to the traffic of its own customers. Quality of service, at least for customers of other 6to4 ISPs, will then hardly be guaranteed. Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 4] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 The purpose of 6rd is to slightly modify 6to4 so that: 1. Packets that, coming from the global Internet, enter 6rd gateways of an ISP are only packets destined to customer sites of this ISP. 2. All IPv6 packets destined to 6rd customer sites of an ISP, and coming from anywhere else on the IPv6 Internet, traverse a 6rd gateway of this ISP. 3. Specification The principle of 6rd is that, to build on 6to4 and suppress its limitation, it is sufficient that: 1. 6to4 functions are modified to replace the standard prefix 2002::/16 by an IPv6 prefix that belongs to the ISP assigned address space, and to replace the 6to4 anycast address by another anycast address chosen by the ISP. 2. The ISP operates one or several 6rd gateways (upgraded 6to4 routers) at its border between its IPv4 infrastructure and the IPv6 Internet. 3. CPE routers are IPv6 on their customer-site side and support 6rd (upgraded 6to4 function). Figure 1 shows how the IPv6 prefix of a customer site is derived from its IPv4 address. +---------------//-------.------------------------------+ | 6rd-relays IPv6 prefix | IPv4 address | | of the ISP | of the customer site | +---------------//-------'------------------------------+ <-- less or equal to 32 -><------------ 32 -------------> <-------------------------- less or equal to 64 -------> FORMAT OF THE IPV6 PREFIX ASSIGNED TO A 6RD CUSTOMER SITE Figure 1 Figure 2 shows which nodes have to be upgraded from 6to4 to 6rd, and which addresses or prefixes have to be routed to them. Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 5] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 IPv4 AND IPv6 customer site | | 6rd CPEs 6rd relays | (modified 6to4) (modified 6to4) | | | | | __________________________ | | | | | | | | | ISP IPV4 INFRASTRUCTURE | V GLOBAL V V | | ___ IPV6 ___ | | | | INTERNET | | | | .-----------------|--| |--- |--| |--|-. / | |___| | |___| | \ / | | \ / IPv4 | IPv6 Prefix | O anycast address => | <= of 6rd relays | ___ | / \ of 6rd relays | of the ISP | | | | / \ | ___ |--| |--|-' \ | | | | |___| | '-----------------|--| |--- | | | |___| | IPv4 addresses | | <= of customer sites | |__________________________| ISP ARCHITECTURE TO DEPLOY IPV6 WITH 6RD Figure 2 Like with 6to4, IPv6 communication between customer sites is direct across the ISP IPv4 infrastructure. It doesn't need to go through 6rd relays. The IPv4 anycast address of 6rd relays may be chosen independently by each ISP. The only constraint is that routes toward the ISP that are advertised must not include this address. For example, Free took a 192.88.99.k address, routed with the same /24 prefix as 6to4 but with k different from 1 to avoid confusion with the 6to4 address of [RFC3068]. Another possibility is to use the anycast address of 6to4 and to add, in relays, a test on the IPv6 prefix of the ISP side address. If it is 2002::/16, the packet is 6to4, not 6rd. Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 6] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 4. Remarks on utilization 4.1. 6rd and ISPs that assign private IPv4 addresses If an ISP has assigned addresses of an IPv4 private space RFC 1918 to some customer sites (and operates IPv4 NATs in its infrastructure), it can also use 6rd to bring IPv6 to these sites. IPv4 packets that contain IPv6 packets don't go to NATs: they go directly to 6rd relays because of their destination being the 6rd relay anycast address. 4.2. Deployment of native IPv6 after having deployed 6rd If an ISP has taken its only assigned IPv6 prefix as its 6rd relay prefix, it can still add native IPv6 routing to its infrastructure without conflict with 6rd addresses. For this, it is sufficient that all native IPv6 prefixes have 1110 as the 4 bits next to the IPv6 6rd relay prefix. The reason is that: o IPv4 addresses that are included in 6rd IPv6 addresses are, like in 6to4, only unicast addresses. o 1110 (i.e. 240.0.0.0/4) is, in IPv4, the prefix of multicast addresses [IPv4 addresses]. Once native IPv6 has thus been brought to all its customer sites, the ISP can abandon all its support of 6rd. After that, no restriction holds any longer on native IPv6 prefixes that may be assigned. 5. Security Considerations Security considerations for 6to4 are documented in [RFC3964]. With the restriction imposed by 6rd that relays of an ISP deal only with traffic that belongs to that ISP, checks that have to be done become the following: o CPE PACKETS TOWARD THE INTERNET: The IPv6 source must be, and the IPv6 destination must no be, a 6rd address of the site. o RELAY PACKETS TOWARD THE INTERNET: The IPv6 source must be a 6rd address that matches the IPv4 source. The IPv6 destination must not start with the ISP 6rd prefix. o CPE PACKETS FROM THE INTERNET: If the IPv4 source is the 6rd- relays anycast address of the local ISP, the IPv6 source must not Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 7] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 be a 6rd address of this ISP. Otherwise, the IPv6 source must be the 6rd address that matches the IPv4 source. o RELAY PACKETS FROM THE INTERNET: The IPv6 source must not be a 6rd address of the ISP. The IPv4 destination must not be multicast, i.e. must not star with 224/3. (Notes: The fact that the IPv6 destination starts with the IPv6 prefix of the ISP 6rd relays is ensured by the routing configuration, but may be double-checked. If the IPv4 address extracted from the IPv6 destination doesn't belong to the ISP, the destination CPE should detect that the IPv6 destination contains neither its ISP 6rd prefix, if it has one, nor the 6to4 prefix, and should discard the packet.) These precautions being taken, it remains that, where IPv4 address spoofing is possible (IPv4 sites placing unauthorized source addresses in some packets they send), IPv6 address spoofing is also possible. Higher layers are then left, like with IPv4, with the responsibility to limit consequences. 6. IANA Considerations 6rd can be deployed by ISPs without needing any new assignment by IANA. 7. Acknowledgements The author warmly acknowledges the major contribution of Rani Assaf to 6rd's proven credibility. He readily appreciated 6rd's potential, and made the daring decision to rapidly implement it and deploy it on Free's operational network. Mark Townsley, Brian Carpenter and Patrick Grossetete have to be thanked for their encouragements and suggestions as to how to proceed in IETF. Acknowledgments are also due to some IPv6 old timers, in particular Laurent Toutain, Francis Dupont and Alain Durand, who, when the author came as a late novice on IPV6, taught him a few subtleties of the subject. Without them, designing 6rd would probably not have been possible. 8. References Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 8] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 8.1. Normative References [RFC3056] Carpenter, B. and K. Moore, "Connection of IPv6 Domains via IPv4 Clouds", RFC 3056, February 2001. [RFC4291] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture", RFC 4291, February 2006. 8.2. Informative References [IPv4 addresses] Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, "Internet Protocol v4 Address Space - http://www.iana.org/assignments/ ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xhtml", February 2008. [RFC1918] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, R., Karrenberg, D., Groot, G., and E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, February 1996. [RFC3068] Huitema, C., "An Anycast Prefix for 6to4 Relay Routers", RFC 3068, June 2001. [RFC3964] Savola, P. and C. Patel, "Security Considerations for 6to4", RFC 3964, December 2004. Author's Address Remi Despres 3 rue du President Wilson Levallois, France Phone: +33 6 72 74 94 88 Email: remi.despres@free.fr Despres Expires April 26, 2009 [Page 9] Internet-Draft 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment October 2008 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. 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