Subject: [mobile-ip] Draft on IPv6 source address selection socket API

From: Samita Chakrabarti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:17:15 -0800 (PST)

We have had discussion about requirement of having a socket-API
on source address selection, in this alias.

A draft has been submitted to address source address selection at
the per-socket (and per apps) basis. Currently it discusses preferences
of source address selection by the application for privacy addresses,
mobileipv6 addresses and Cryptographically generated addresses.
Thus the application can reverse the sense of default source address
selection by using the proposed APIs.

Please provide your comments/feedback on the alias and to the authors.

We have listed some open issues in the draft as well to seek suggestions
from the working group for further enhancement of the draft.

The draft will be available in the draft directory shortly, however, I am
including the text file here.

Thanks,
-Samita

INTERNET-DRAFT                                    Erik Nordmark 
Expires: August, 2003                             Samita Chakrabarti 
                                                  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
					          Julien Laganier
                                                  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
	                                          LIP / ENS-Lyon
						  February, 2003

              IPv6 Socket API for source address selection

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   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 expires August, 2003.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

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Abstract

    The IPv6 default address selection document describes the rules for
    selecting default source address by the system and indicates that
    the applications should be able to reverse the sense of system
    preference of source address selection for that application through
    possible API extensions. However, no such socket APIs exist in the
    basic or advanced IPv6 socket API documents. Hence this document 
    specifies socket level options to prefer a particular source 
    address as per the choice of the applications. It also discusses 
    implications on the name-to-address translation API that performs
    part of the default address selection. The socket APIs described in
    this document will be particularly useful for Mobile IPv6 enabled
    applications and other IPv6 applications which want to choose 
    between temporary and public addresses, CGA (cryptographically 
    generated addresses) and non-CGA addresses etc..

Table of Contents

    1. Introduction ...........................................  3

    2. Example Usage ..........................................  4

    3. Changes to the Socket Interface ........................  5

    4. Changes to the protocol-independent
              nodename  translation ............................ 6

    5. IPv4-Mapped IPv6 Addresses .............................. 7

    6. Security Considerations ................................. 7

    7. Open Issues ............................................. 7

    8. References .............................................. 8
    
    9. Acknowledgements ........................................ 8

   10. Authors' Addresses ...................................... 9

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1.  Introduction

   This document defines socket extensions to support the non-default
   choice of source address by the applications. The IPv6 default
   address selection [1] document has specified the rules for system
   default source address selection for an outbound IPv6 packet.
   Privacy considerations [6] have introduced "public" and "temporary"
   addresses. IPv6 Mobility [3] introduces "home address" and "care-
   of-address" definitions in the mobile systems. Although it is 
   desirable to have default algorithms for the system to choose the
   source address of the outgoing IPv6 packet, an application may want
   to reverse that rule for efficiency and other application specific
   reasons. Currently IPv6 socket API extensions does not provide a
   mechanism to choose a particular source address other than simple
   bind() operation. The bind() operation allows an application to
   specify a particular source address. Thus in order to use bind() 
   the application itself must make sure that the source address is
   appropriate for the destination address (e.g., with respect to the
   interface used to send packets to the destination). The application
   also needs to make sure about the appropriate scope of source address
   with respect to the destination address and so on. The mechanism
   presented in this document allows the application to specify 
   attributes of the source addresses it prefers while still having the
   system do the rest of the default address selection.

   A socket option has been deemed useful for this purpose, as it
   enables an application ability to make a choice of source address at
   per-socket basis as well as it can provide flexibility of enabling
   and disabling choice of source addresses in non-connected sockets.
   The socket option uses a set of flags for source address preferences.
   Since source address selection and destination address ordering need
   to be partially implemented in getaddrinfo() [2] the corresponding
   set of flags are also defined for that routine.

   Thus this document introduces different flags for source address
   selection that can be used by the applications for Mobility [3],
   Privacy Extension [6] and CGA [7] scenarios. In future, more flags
   can be added to designate a choice for a certain type of source
   address as the needs may arise.

   The approach in this document is to allow the application to specify
   preferences on source addresses and not to be able to specify hard
   requirements. Thus for instance an application can specify that it
   prefers temporary addresses but if no temporary addresses are 
   available to the default address selection algorithm, a public
   address would be chosen instead.

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   Furthermore, the approach is to define two flags for each purpose, 
   so that an application can specify either that it prefers 'X' or
   prefers 'not X', or it can choose not to set either of the flags
   relating to 'X' and leave it up to the system default, perhaps while 
   specifing its preferences for some other attribute of the source
   addresses.

2. Example Usages 

   The examples of usages discussed here are limited to applications
   supporting Mobile IPv6, IPv6 Privacy Extensions and Cryptographically
   Generated Addresses. Address selection document [1] recommends that
   home addresses should be preferred over care-of-address when both are
   configured. However, a mobile node may want to prefer care-of-address
   as source address for DNS query in the foreign network as it normally
   means a shorter and local return path compared to the route via the
   mobile node's home-agent when the query contains home-address as 
   source address. Another example is IKE application which requires
   care-of-address as its source address for the initial security 
   association pair with Home Agent [3] while the mobile node boots up
   at the foreign network and wants to do the key exchange before a
   successful  home-registration. Also a Mobile IPv6 aware application 
   may want to toggle between home-address and care-of-address
   depending on its location and state of the application. It
   may also want to open different sockets and use home-address as
   source address for one socket and care-of-address for the others. 

   In a non-mobile environment, similarly an application may prefer to
   use temporary address as source address for certain cases.
   By default, the source address selction rule selects "public"
   address when both are available. For example, an application
   supporting web browser and mail-server may want to use "temporary" 
   address for the former and "public" address for the mail-server as a
   mail-server may require reverse path for DNS records for anti-spam
   rules.

   Similarly, a node  may be configured to use the cryptographically
   genenerated addresses by default, but an application may prefer not
   to use it.  For instance, fping, a debugging tool which tests
   basic reachability of multiple destinations by sending packets in
   parallel, may find that the cost and time incurred in proof-of-
   ownership by CGA verification is not justified.
   On the other hand, when a node is not configured for CGA as default, 
   an application may prefer using CGA by setting the socket option. It 
   may subsequently verify that it is truly bound to a CGA by first 
   calling getsockname() and then recomputing the CGA using the public
   key of the node.

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3.  Changes to the Socket Interface

    IPv6 Basic API [2] defines socket options for IPv6. This document
    adds a new socket option at the IPPROTO_IPV6 level. This socket
    option is called IPV6_SRC_PREFERENCES. It can be used with
    setsockopt() and getsockopt() calls. This socket option takes a
    32bit unsigned integer argument. The argument consists of a number
    of flags which indicate the choice of source address selection.

    The flags defined in this document are:

    IPV6_PREFER_SRC_HOME
    IPV6_PREFER_SRC_COA
    IPV6_PREFER_SRC_TMP
    IPV6_PREFER_SRC_PUBLIC
    IPV6_PREFER_SRC_CGA
    IPV6_PREFER_SRC_NONCGA

    The following example illustrates how it is used:

    uint32_t flags = IPV6_PREFER_SRC_COA;

    if (setsockopt(s, IPPROTO_IPV6, IPV6_SRC_PREFERENCES,
	    (char *) &flags, sizeof (flags)) == -1) {
     	   perror("setsockopt IPV6_SRC_REFERENCES");
    }

    When the IPV6_SRC_PREFERENCES is successfully set with setsockopt(),
    the option value given is used to specify source address for any 
    connection initiation through the socket and all subsequent packets
    sent via that socket. If the option is not set, the system selects
    a default value. Setting conflicting flags at the same time results
    in the error EINVAL.

    It is recommended that the application does a getsockopt() prior
    calling to setsockopt() call so that it can save the existing
    source address preference value, in the cases when the application
    might need to restore the preferences.

    The constants mentioned in this section are defined in 
    <netinet/in.h>.

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4.  Changes to the protocol-independent nodename translation

    Section 8 of Default Address Selction [1] document indicates about
    possible implementation strategy for getaddrinfo() [2]. 
    getaddrinfo() collects available source addresses from the network
    layer and then it sorts the list of source addresses as per source
    address selection rules. Thus if an application sets setsockopt()
    IPV6_SRC_PREFERENCES option to alter the default address selection
    rules , it must make sure that it calls getaddrinfo() with the
    corresponding flags specified in this section. This will ensure
    correct behavior of getaddrinfo() destination address selection
    based on the sorted list of source addresses as per the socket
    source address selection preferences. 

    The following flags are added for the ai_flags in addrinfo data
    structure defined in Basic IPv6 Socket API Extension [2].

     AI_PREFER_SRC_HOME
     AI_PREFER_SRC_COA
     AI_PREFER_SRC_TMP
     AI_PREFER_SRC_PUBLIC
     AI_PREFER_SRC_CGA
     AI_PREFER_SRC_NONCGA

    The above flags are ignored for the AF_INET address family. If a
    returned address is an IPv4 address (either as AF_INET6 when
    AI_V4MAPPED, or as AF_INET) then the source preference flags have
    no effect. 

    If conflicting flags such as AI_PREFER_SRC_HOME and AI_PREFER_SRC_
    COA are set, the getaddrinfo() fails with an error EAI_BADFLAGS[2].

     Some valid sequences of flags would be:

     AI_PREFER_SRC_HOME | AI_PREFER_SRC_PUBLIC
     AI_PREFER_SRC_COA  | AI_PREFER_SRC_PUBLIC
     AI_PREFER_SRC_HOME | AI_PREFER_SRC_CGA
     AI_PREFER_SRC_HOME | AI_PREFER_SRC_NONCGA
     AI_PREFER_SRC_COA  | AI_PREFER_SRC_CGA
     AI_PREFER_SRC_COA  | AI_PREFER_SRC_NONCGA

    All the constants mentioned in this section for ai_flags are defined
    in <netdb.h>.

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5. IPv4-Mapped IPv6 Addresses

   IPv4-Mapped IPv6 addresses are not supported for setting preference
   on home, care-of-address, CGA, non-CGA, public or privacy auto-
   configured addresses as source addresses. Because they are all pure
   IPv6 addresses. 

6. Security Considerations

   This document conforms to the same security implications as specified
   in IPv6 Basic Socket API [2] document. It is also recommended that
   the applications set IPV6_V6ONLY IP level socket option to permit
   the nodes to not process IPv4 packets as IPv4 Mapped addresses.
   Allowing applications to specify a preference for temporary
   addresses provides per-application (and per-socket) ability to use
   the privacy benefits of the temporary addresses.

7. Open Issues

   - Are there more flags we should define at this point in time?
     For instance, PREFER_LARGEST_SCOPE?

   - Is there a need for REQUIRE flags in addition to or instead of the
     PREFER flags? Note that in general it isn't possible to verify 
     that a requirement can be satisfied until sendto() or connect()
     (when the destination address is known) thus this would result
     in late errors being reported to the application.

   - Is there a need for "validation" functions to go with these
     preferences such as functions that check whether an address is
     a temporary address?

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8. References

Normative references:

[1]    Richard Draves, "Default Address Selection for IPv6", 
           draft-ietf-ipv6-default-addr-select-09.txt, August 6, 2002.
  
[2]    R.E. Gilligan, S. Thomson, J. Bound, J. McCann, W. R. Stevens,
           "Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6", 
            draft-ietf-ipngwg-rfc2553bis-10.txt, December, 2002.

Informative references:

[3]    Johnson, D., Perkins, C., Arkko, J., "Mobility Support in IPv6"
           draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-20.txt, January, 2003.

[4]    Deering, S., Hinden, R., "Internet Protocol, Version 6
           (IPv6), Specification", RFC 2460, Dec. 1998.

[5]    Stevens, W. R, Thomas, M., Nordmark, E., Jinmei, T., "Advanced
           Sockets API for IPv6", draft-ietf-ipngwg-rfc2292bis-07.txt  
           April 19, 2002.

[6]    Narten, T. and R. Draves, "Privacy Extensions for Stateless
       Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6", RFC 3041, January 2001.

[7]    Montenegro, G. and C. Castelluccia, "Statistically Unique and
       Cryptographically Verifiable (SUCV) Identifiers and Addresses.", 
       NDSS 2002, February 2002.

[8]    Castelluccia, C. and G. Montenegro, "Securing Group Management
       in IPv6 with  Cryptographically Generated  Addresses",
       draft-irtf-gsec-sgmv6-01 (work in progress), July 2002.

9. Acknowledgements

   The authors like to thank members of mobile-ip and ipv6 working 
   groups for useful discussion on this topic. Richard Draves and
   Dave Thaler suggested that getaddrinfo also needs to be considered
   along with the new socket option. Gabriel Montenegro suggested that
   CGAs may also be considered in this document. Thanks to Alain Durand,
   Renee Danson, Alper Yegin and Francis Dupont for useful discussions.

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10.  Authors' Addresses

    Erik Nordmark
    Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Europe
    180 Avenue de l'Europe
    38334 Saint Ismier, France
    Email: [email-masked]

    Samita Chakrabarti
    Sun Microsystems, Inc. 
    4150 Network Circle 
    Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA
    Email: [email-masked]

    Julien Laganier 
    Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Europe
    180 Avenue de l'Europe
    38334 Saint Ismier, France
    Email: [email-masked]

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