RADIUS EXTensions Working Group Sanal Kumar Kariyezhath INTERNET-DRAFT Aravind Prasad Sridharan Intended Status: Standards Track Chandra Mohan Expires: February 5, 2016 DELL August 4, 2015 RADIUS Message Bundling draft-aravind-radext-message-bundling-00 Abstract This draft proposes a mechanism to bundle multiple RADIUS requests in a single RADIUS Message which could assist in improving the overall performance and scalability. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and 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/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html Copyright and License Notice Copyright (c) 2015 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 Aravind, et al. Expires February 5, 2016 [Page 1] INTERNET DRAFT RADIUS Message Bundling August 4, 2015 publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 Implementation Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1 Introduction Currently, RADIUS Messages that are exchanged between the Network Access Server/Authenticator and RADIUS Server (Authentication Server) allows only one RADIUS request per message. When there are a large number of RADIUS requests to be sent from the Authenticator, then it can affect its performance as separate RADIUS message needs to be sent for each request. Typically implementation specific reliability mechanism is required to ensure message delivery for each RADIUS message. This may be costlier with respect to performance if multiple RADIUS requests need to be sent at the same time. Scalability is also affected by the performance bottlenecks of current RADIUS limitation. The above mentioned problem is very significant in the deployment scenarios of 802.1x supplicants where thousands of supplicants need to be authenticated at the same time. This can happen in the events such as NAS restart or the port flaps to which the supplicants are connected. 1.1 Terminology The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this Aravind, et al. Expires February 5, 2016 [Page 2] INTERNET DRAFT RADIUS Message Bundling August 4, 2015 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 2 Solution In the single RADIUS Message, accommodate multiple RADIUS requests instead of just one request. Each request would contain its own set of Code, Packet Identifier, Length, Authenticator and Attribute Value Pairs fields. No new message types or TLVs are introduced and hence server can support this proposal with minimal changes. According to RFC 2865 [RFC2865] that details the RADIUS protocol, the maximum message size is 4096 bytes. Hence, we can piggyback the requests up to this maximum length. One bundling mechanism could be that we can have a timeout T in milli-seconds to pack multiple requests and send out the RADIUS message. Trigger for sending the RADIUS message can be either the maximum message length or timeout T. RADIUS Message +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----+ | Request-1 | Request-2 | Request-3 | ... | +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----+ Contents of each Request in RADIUS Message +------+-----------+--------+---------------+------+ | Code | Packet ID | Length | Authenticator | AVPs | +------+-----------+--------+---------------+------+ All the existing RADIUS Codes, Attributes and Specifications can be used without any modifications. 3 Implementation Considerations This bundling mechanism is applicable to the RADIUS Messages sent to and from the RADIUS Server. The current RADIUS Server implementations expect only a single request in a RADIUS message. Hence, before using this mechanism, the implementation on the other side MUST be upgraded to support this bundling mechanism. Hence, the Client/Network Access Server MUST use this mechanism only after upgrading the RADIUS Server implementation and vice versa from the RADIUS Server to the Client/Network Access Server. Aravind, et al. Expires February 5, 2016 [Page 3] INTERNET DRAFT RADIUS Message Bundling August 4, 2015 4 Security Considerations This document does not introduce any new security concerns or any other specifications referenced in this document. 5 IANA Considerations No IANA actions required. 6 References 6.1 Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2865] Rigney, C., Willens, S., Rubens, A., and W. Simpson, "Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)", RFC 2865, June 2000. [RFC3575] Aboba, B., "IANA Considerations for RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service)", RFC 3575, July 2003. [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, May 2008. [RFC6158] DeKok, A. and G. Weber, "RADIUS Design Guidelines", BCP 158, RFC 6158, March 2011. [RFC6929] DeKok, A. and A. Lior, "Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Protocol Extensions", RFC 6929, April 2013. 6.2 Informative References [RFC6613] DeKok, A., "RADIUS over TCP", May 2012. [RFC2868] Zorn, G., Leifer, D., Rubens A., Shriver, J., Holdrege, M., Goyret, I, "RADIUS Attributes for Tunnel Protocol Support", June 2000 [RFC6929] DeKok, A. and Lior , A., "Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service RADIUS) Protocol Extensions", April 2013. Aravind, et al. Expires February 5, 2016 [Page 4] INTERNET DRAFT RADIUS Message Bundling August 4, 2015 [RFC5080] Nelson, D. and DeKok. A., "Common Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Implementation Issues and Suggested Fixes" [RFC2867] Zorn, G., Aboba, B. and Mitton, D., "RADIUS Accounting Modifications for Tunnel Protocol Support", June 2000. [RFC5997] DeKok. A., "Use of Status-Server Packets in the Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Protocol", August 2010. Authors' Addresses Sanal Kumar Kariyezhath DELL Olympia Technology Park Guindy, Chennai 600032 India Phone: +91 4058643 Email: Sanal_Kumar_Sivarama@dell.com Aravind Prasad Sridharan DELL Olympia Technology Park Guindy, Chennai 600032 India Phone: +91 9884612715 Email: aravind_sridharan@dell.com Chandra Mohan DELL Olympia Technology Park Guindy, Chennai 600032 India Phone: +91 9894517847 Email: chandru.dav@gmail.com Aravind, et al. Expires February 5, 2016 [Page 5]