Network Working Group B. Carpenter Internet-Draft Univ. of Auckland Intended status: Standards Track B. Liu Expires: July 10, 2015 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd January 6, 2015 A Generic Discovery and Negotiation Protocol for Autonomic Networking draft-carpenter-anima-gdn-protocol-01 Abstract This document establishes requirements for a protocol that enables intelligent devices to dynamically discover peer devices, to synchronize state with them, and to negotiate mutual configurations with them. The document then defines a general protocol for discovery, synchronization and negotiation, while the technical objectives for specific scenarios are to be described in separate documents. An Appendix briefly discusses existing protocols as possible alternatives. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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." This Internet-Draft will expire on July 10, 2015. Copyright 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 publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 1] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Requirement Analysis of Discovery, Synchronization and Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1. Requirements for Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2. Requirements for Synchronization and Negotiation Capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.3. Specific Technical Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. GDNP Protocol Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.2. High-Level Design Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.3. GDNP Protocol Basic Properties and Mechanisms . . . . . . 12 3.3.1. Discovery Mechanism and Procedures . . . . . . . . . 12 3.3.2. Certificate-based Security Mechanism . . . . . . . . 14 3.3.3. Negotiation Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.3.4. Synchronization Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.4. GDNP Constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.5. Device Identifier and Certificate Tag . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.6. Session Identifier (Session ID) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.7. GDNP Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.7.1. GDNP Message Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.7.2. Discovery Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.7.3. Response Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.7.4. Request Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.7.5. Negotiation Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.7.6. Negotiation-ending Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.7.7. Confirm-waiting Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.8. GDNP General Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.8.1. Format of GDNP Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.8.2. Divert Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.8.3. Accept Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.8.4. Decline Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.8.5. Waiting Time Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.8.6. Certificate Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 3.8.7. Signature Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 3.8.8. Locator Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.9. Discovery Objective Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.10. Negotiation and Synchronization Objective Options and Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.10.1. Organizing of GDNP Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.10.2. Vendor Specific Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.10.3. Experimental Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 2] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 3.11. Items for Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 7. Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove] . . . . . . . . . . . 36 8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Appendix A. Capability Analysis of Current Protocols . . . . . . 39 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 1. Introduction The success of the Internet has made IP-based networks bigger and more complicated. Large-scale ISP and enterprise networks have become more and more problematic for human based management. Also, operational costs are growing quickly. Consequently, there are increased requirements for autonomic behavior in the networks. General aspects of autonomic networks are discussed in [I-D.irtf-nmrg-autonomic-network-definitions] and [I-D.irtf-nmrg-an-gap-analysis]. In order to fulfil autonomy, devices that embody autonomic service agents need to be able to discover each other, to synchronize state with each other, and to negotiate parameters and resources directly with each other. There is no restriction on the type of parameters and resources concerned, which include very basic information needed for addressing and routing, as well as anything else that might be configured in a conventional network. Following this Introduction, Section 2 describes the requirements for network device discovery, synchronization and negotiation. Negotiation is an iterative process, requiring multiple message exchanges forming a closed loop between the negotiating devices. State synchronization, when needed, can be effected as a special case of negotiation. Section 3.2 describes a behavior model for a protocol intended to support discovery, synchronization and negotiation. The design of Generic Discovery and Negotiation Protocol (GDNP) in Section 3 of this document is mainly based on this behavior model. The relevant capabilities of various existing protocols are reviewed in Appendix A. The proposed discovery mechanism is oriented towards synchronization and negotiation objectives. It is based on a neighbor discovery process, but also supports diversion to off-link peers. Although many negotiations will occur between horizontally distributed peers, many target scenarios are hierarchical networks, which is the predominant structure of current large-scale networks. However, when a device starts up with no pre-configuration, it has no knowledge of Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 3] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 a hierarchical superior. The protocol itself is capable of being used in a small and/or flat network structure such as a small office or home network as well as a professionally managed network. Therefore, the discovery mechanism needs to be able to bootstrap itself without making any prior assumptions about network structure. Because GDNP can be used to perform a decision process among distributed devices or between networks, it adopts a tight certificate-based security mechanism, which needs a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) [RFC5280] system. The PKI may be managed by an operator or be autonomic. It is understood that in realistic deployments, not all devices will support GDNP. Such mixed scenarios are not discussed in this specification. 2. Requirement Analysis of Discovery, Synchronization and Negotiation This section discusses the requirements for discovery, negotiation and synchronization capabilities. 2.1. Requirements for Discovery In an autonomic network we must assume that when a device starts up it has no information about any peer devices. In some cases, when a new user session starts up, the device concerned may again lack information about relevant peer devices. It might be necessary to set up resources on multiple other devices, coordinated and matched to each other so that there is no wasted resource. Security settings might also need updating to allow for the new device or user. Therefore a basic requirement is that there must be a mechanism by which a device can separately discover peer devices for each of the technical objectives that it needs to manage or configure. Some objectives may only be significant on the local link, but others may be significant across the routed network and require off-link operations. Thus, the relevant peer devices might be immediate neighbors on the same layer 2 link or they might be more distant and only accessible via layer 3. The mechanism must therefore support both on-link discovery and off-link discovery of peers that support specific technical objectives. The relevant peer devices may be different for different technical objectives. Therefore discovery needs to be repeated as often as necessary to find peers capable of acting as counterparts for each objective that a discovery initiator needs to handle. In many scenarios, the discovery process may be followed by a synchronization or negotiation process. Therefore, a discovery objective may be Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 4] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 associated with one or more synchronization or negotiation objectives. When a device first starts up, it has no knowledge of the network structure. Therefore the discovery process must be able to support any network scenario, assuming only that the device concerned is bootstrapped from factory condition. In some networks, as mentioned above, there will be some hierarchical structure, at least for certain synchronization or negotiation objectives. A special case of discovery is that each device must be able to discover its hierarchical superior for each such objective that it is capable of handling. This is part of the more general requirement to discover off-link devices. During initialisation, a device must be able to discover the appropriate trust anchor, i.e. the appropriate PKI authority. Logically, this is just a specific case of discovery. However, it might be a special case requiring its own solution. In any case, the trust anchor must be discovered before the security environment is completely established. This question requires further study and is the subject of [I-D.pritikin-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra]. In addition, depending on the type of network involved, discovery of other central functions might be needed, such as the Network Operations Center (NOC) [I-D.eckert-anima-stable-connectivity]. 2.2. Requirements for Synchronization and Negotiation Capability We start by considering routing protocols, the closest approximation to autonomic networking in widespread use. Routing protocols use a largely autonomic model based on distributed devices that communicate iteratively with each other. However, routing is mainly based on one-way information synchronization (in either direction), rather than on bi-directional negotiation. The focus is reachability, so current routing protocols only consider simple link status, i.e., up or down. More information, such as latency, congestion, capacity, and particularly unused capacity, would be helpful to get better path selection and utilization rate. Also, autonomic networks need to be able to manage many more dimensions, such as security settings, power saving, load balancing, etc. A basic requirement for the protocol is therefore the ability to represent, discover, synchronize and negotiate almost any kind of network parameter. Human intervention in complex situations is costly and error-prone. Therefore, synchronization or negotiation of parameters without human intervention is desirable whenever the coordination of multiple devices can improve overall network performance. It follows that a Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 5] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 requirement for the protocol is to be capable of being installed in any device that would otherwise need human intervention. Human intervention in large networks is often replaced by use of a top-down network management system (NMS). It therefore follows that a requirement for the protocol is to be capable of being installed in any device that would otherwise be managed by an NMS, and that it can co-exist with an NMS. Since the goal is to minimize human intervention, it is necessary that the network can in effect "think ahead" before changing its parameters. In other words there must be a possibility of forecasting the effect of a change. Stated differently, the protocol must be capable of supporting a "dry run" of a changed configuration before actually installing the change. Status information and traffic metrics need to be shared between nodes for dynamic adjustment of resources and for monitoring purposes. While this might be achieved by existing protocols when they are available, the new protocol needs to be able to support parameter exchange, including mutual synchronization, even when no negotiation as such is required. Recovery from faults and identification of faulty devices should be as automatic as possible. The protocol needs to be capable of detecting unexpected events such a negotiation counterpart failing, so that all devices concerned can initiate a recovery process. The protocol needs to be able to deal with a wide variety of technical objectives, covering any type of network parameter. Therefore the protocol will need either an explicit information model describing its messages, or at least a flexible and extensible message format. One design consideration is whether to adopt an existing information model or to design a new one. Another consideration is whether to be able to carry some or all of the message formats used by existing configuration protocols. 2.3. Specific Technical Requirements To be a generic platform, the protocol should be IP version independent. In other words, it should be able to run over IPv6 and IPv4. Its messages and general options should be neutral with respect to the IP version. However, some functions, such as multicasting or broadcasting on a link, might need to be IP version dependent. In case of doubt, IPv6 should be preferred. The protocol must be able to access off-link counterparts, i.e., must not be restricted to link-local operation. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 6] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 The negotiation process must be guaranteed to terminate (with success or failure) and if necessary it must contain tie-breaking rules for each technical objective that requires them. Dependencies: In order to decide a configuration on a given device, the device may need information from neighbors. This can be established through the negotiation procedure, or through synchronization if that is sufficient. However, a given item in a neighbor may depend on other information from its own neighbors, which may need another negotiation or synchronization procedure to obtain or decide. Therefore, there are potential dependencies among negotiation or synchronization procedures. Thus, there need to be clear boundaries and convergence mechanisms for these negotiation dependencies. Also some mechanisms are needed to avoid loop dependencies. Policy constraints: There must be provision for general policy intent rules to be applied by all devices in the network (e.g., security rules, prefix length, resource sharing rules). However, policy intent distribution might not use the negotiation protocol itself. Management monitoring, alerts and intervention: Devices should be able to report to a monitoring system. Some events must be able to generate operator alerts and some provision for emergency intervention must be possible (e.g. to freeze synchronization or negotiation in a mis-behaving device). These features may not use the negotiation protocol itself. The protocol needs to be fully secure against forged messages and man-in-the middle attacks, and as secure as reasonably possible against denial of service attacks. It needs to be capable of encryption in order to resist unwanted monitoring, although this capability may not be required in all deployments. 3. GDNP Protocol Overview 3.1. Terminology The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119] when they appear in ALL CAPS. When these words are not in ALL CAPS (such as "should" or "Should"), they have their usual English meanings, and are not to be interpreted as [RFC2119] key words. The following terms are used throughout this document: Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 7] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 o Discovery: a process by which a device discovers peer devices according to a specific discovery objective. The discovery results may be different according to the different discovery objectives. The discovered peer devices may later be used as negotiation counterparts or as sources of synchronization data. o Negotiation: a process by which two (or more) devices interact iteratively to agree on parameter settings that best satisfy the objectives of one or more devices. o State Synchronization: a process by which two (or more) devices interact to agree on the current state of parameter values stored in each device. This is a special case of negotiation in which information is exchanged but the devices do not request their peers to change parameter settings. All other definitions apply to both negotiation and synchronization. o Discovery Objective: a specific network functionality, network element role or type of autonomic service agent (TBD) which the discovery initiator intends to discover. One device may support multiple discovery objectives. A discovery objective may be in one-to-one correspondence with a synchronization objective or a negotiation objective, or it may correspond to a certain group of such objectives. o Discovery Initiator: a device that spontaneously starts discovery by sending a discovery message referring to a specific discovery objective. o Discovery Responder: a peer device which responds to the discovery objective initiated by the discovery initiator. o Synchronization Objective: specific technical content, which needs to be synchronized among a number of devices. It is naturally based on a specific service or function or action. It could be a logical, numeric, or string value or a more complex data structure. o Synchronization Initiator: a device that spontaneously starts synchronization by sending a request message referring to a specific synchronization objective. o Synchronization Responder: a peer device which responds with the value of a synchronization objective. o Negotiation Objective: specific technical content, which needs to be decided in coordination with another network device. It is naturally based on a specific service or function or action. It Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 8] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 could be a logical, numeric, or string value or a more complex data structure. o Negotiation Initiator: a device that spontaneously starts negotiation by sending a request message referring to a specific negotiation objective. o Negotiation Counterpart: a peer device with which the Negotiation Initiator negotiates a specific negotiation objective. o Device Identifier: a public key, which identifies the device in GDNP messages. It is assumed that its associated private key is maintained in the device only. o Device Certificate: A certificate for a single device, also the identifier of the device, further described in Section 3.5. o Device Certificate Tag: a tag, which is bound to the device identifier. It is used to present a Device Certificate in short form. 3.2. High-Level Design Choices This section describes a behavior model and some considerations for designing a generic discovery, synchronization and negotiation protocol, which can act as a platform for different technical objectives. NOTE: This protocol is described here in a stand-alone fashion as a proof of concept. An elementary version has been prototyped by Huawei and the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. However, this is not yet a definitive proposal for IETF adoption. In particular, adaptation and extension of one of the protocols discussed in Appendix A might be an option. Also, the security model outlined below would in practice be part of a general security mechanism in an autonomic control plane [I-D.behringer-anima-autonomic-control-plane]. This whole specification is subject to change as a result. o A generic platform The protocol is designed as a generic platform, which is independent from the synchronization or negotiation contents. It takes care of the general intercommunication between counterparts. The technical contents will vary according to the various synchronization or negotiation objectives and the different pairs of counterparts. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 9] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 o Security infrastructure and trust relationship Because this negotiation protocol may directly cause changes to device configurations and bring significant impacts to a running network, this protocol is based on a restrictive security infrastructure, allowing it to be trusted and monitored so that every device in this negotiation system behaves well and remains well protected. On the other hand, a limited negotiation model might be deployed based on a limited trust relationship. For example, between two administrative domains, devices might also exchange limited information and negotiate some particular configurations based on a limited conventional or contractual trust relationship. o Discovery, synchronization and negotiation designed together The discovery method and the synchronization and negotiation methods are designed in the same way and can be combined when this is useful. These processes can also be performed independently when appropriate. o A uniform pattern for technical contents The synchronization and negotiation contents are defined according to a uniform pattern. They could be carried either in TLV (Type, Length and Value) format or in payloads described by a flexible language. The initial protocol design uses the TLV approach. The format is extensible for unknown future requirements. o A conservative model for synchronization Synchronization across a number of nodes is not a new problem and the Trickle model that is already known to be effective and efficient is adopted. o A simple initiator/responder model for negotiation Multi-party negotiations are too complicated to be modeled and there might be too many dependencies among the parties to converge efficiently. A simple initiator/responder model is more feasible and can complete multiple-party negotiations by indirect steps. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 10] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 o Organizing of synchronization or negotiation content Naturally, the technical content will be organized according to the relevant function or service. The content from different functions or services is kept independent from each other. They are not combined into a single option or single session because these contents may be negotiated or synchronized with different counterparts or may be different in response time. o Self aware network device Every network device will be pre-loaded with various functions and be aware of its own capabilities, typically decided by the hardware, firmware or pre-installed software. Its exact role may depend on the surrounding network behaviors, which may include forwarding behaviors, aggregation properties, topology location, bandwidth, tunnel or translation properties, etc. The surrounding topology will depend on the network planning. Following an initial discovery phase, the device properties and those of its neighbors are the foundation of the synchronization or negotiation behavior of a specific device. A device has no pre-configuration for the particular network in which it is installed. o Requests and responses in negotiation procedures The initiator can negotiate with its relevant negotiation counterpart devices, which may be different according to the specific negotiation objective. It can request relevant information from the negotiation counterpart so that it can decide its local configuration to give the most coordinated performance. It can request the negotiation counterpart to make a matching configuration in order to set up a successful communication with it. It can request certain simulation or forecast results by sending some dry run conditions. Beyond the traditional yes/no answer, the responder can reply with a suggested alternative if its answer is 'no'. This would start a bi-directional negotiation ending in a compromise between the two devices. o Convergence of negotiation procedures To enable convergence, when a responder makes a suggestion of a changed condition in a negative reply, it should be as close as possible to the original request or previous suggestion. The Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 11] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 suggested value of the third or later negotiation steps should be chosen between the suggested values from the last two negotiation steps. In any case there must be a mechanism to guarantee convergence (or failure) in a small number of steps, such as a timeout or maximum number of iterations. * End of negotiation A limited number of rounds, for example three, or a timeout, is needed on each device for each negotiation objective. It may be an implementation choice, a pre-configurable parameter, or a network-wide policy intent. These choices might vary between different types of autonomic service agent. Therefore, the definition of each negotiation objective MUST clearly specify this, so that the negotiation can always be terminated properly. * Failed negotiation There must be a well-defined procedure for concluding that a negotiation cannot succeed, and if so deciding what happens next (deadlock resolution, tie-breaking, or revert to best- effort service). Again, this MUST be specified for individual negotiation objectives, as an implementation choice, a pre- configurable parameter, or a network-wide policy intent. 3.3. GDNP Protocol Basic Properties and Mechanisms 3.3.1. Discovery Mechanism and Procedures o Separated discovery and negotiation mechanisms Although discovery and negotiation or synchronization are defined together in the GDNP, they are separated mechanisms. The discovery process could run independently from the negotiation or synchronization process. Upon receiving a discovery (Section 3.7.2) or request (Section 3.7.4) message, the recipient device should return a message in which it either indicates itself as a discovery responder or diverts the initiator towards another more suitable device. The discovery objective could be network functionalities, role- based network elements or service agents (TBD). The discovery results could be utilized by the negotiation protocol to decide which device the initiator will negotiate with. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 12] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 o Discovery Procedures Discovery starts as on-link operation. The Divert option can tell the discovery initiator to contact an off-link discovery objective device. Every DISCOVERY message is sent by a discovery initiator to the ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR multicast address (Section 3.4). Every network device that supports the GDNP always listens to a well-known transport port to capture the discovery messages. If the neighbor device supports the requested discovery objective, it MAY respond with a Response message (Section 3.7.3) with locator option(s). Otherwise, if the neigbor device has cached information about a device that supports the requested discovery objective (usually because it discovered the same objective before), it SHOULD respond with a Response message with a Divert option pointing to the appropriate Discovery Responder. After a GDNP device successfully discovers a Discovery Responder supporting a specific objective, it MUST cache this information. This cache record MAY be used for future negotiation or synchronization, and SHOULD be passed on when appropriate as a Divert option to another Discovery Initiator. A GDNP device with multiple link-layer interfaces (typically a router) MUST support discovery on all interfaces. If it receives a DISCOVERY message on a given interface for a specific objective that it does not support and for which it has not previously discovered a Discovery Responder, it MUST relay the query by re-issuing the same DISCOVERY message on its other interfaces. Togther with the caching mechanism, this should be sufficient to support most network bootstrapping scenarios. o A complete discovery process will start with multicast on the local link; a neighbor might divert it to an off-link destination, which could be a default higher-level gateway in a hierarchical network. Then discovery would continue with a unicast to that gateway; if that gateway is still not the right counterpart, it should divert to another device, which is in principle closer to the right counterpart. Finally the right counterpart responds to start the negotiation or synchronization process. o Rapid Mode (Discovery/Negotiation binding) A Discovery message MAY include one or more Negotiation Objective option(s). This allows a rapid mode of negotiation Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 13] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 described in Section 3.3.3. A similar mechanism is defined for synchronization. 3.3.2. Certificate-based Security Mechanism A certificate-based security mechanism provides security properties for GDNP: o the identity of a GDNP message sender can be verified by a recipient. o the integrity of a GDNP message can be checked by the recipient of the message. o anti-replay protection can be assured by the GDNP message recipient. The authority of the GDNP message sender depends on a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system with a Certification Authority (CA), which should normally be run by the network operator. In the case of a network with no operator, such as a small office or home network, the PKI itself needs to be established by an autonomic process, which is out of scope for this specification. A Request message MUST carry a Certificate option, defined in Section 3.8.6. The first Negotiation Message, responding to a Request message, SHOULD also carry a Certificate option. Using these messages, recipients build their certificate stores, indexed by the Device Certificate Tags included in every GDNP message. This process is described in more detail below. Every message MUST carry a signature option (Section 3.8.7). For now, the authors do not think packet size is a problem. In this GDNP specification, there SHOULD NOT be multiple certificates in a single message. The current most used public keys are 1024/2048 bits; some may reach 4096. With overhead included, a single certificate is less than 500 bytes. Messages are expected to be far shorter than the normal packet MTU within a modern network. 3.3.2.1. Support for algorithm agility Hash functions are used to provide message integrity checks. In order to provide a means of addressing problems that may emerge in the future with existing hash algorithms, as recommended in [RFC4270], a mechanism for negotiating the use of more secure hashes in the future is provided. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 14] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 In addition to hash algorithm agility, a mechanism for signature algorithm agility is also provided. The support for algorithm agility in this document is mainly a unilateral notification mechanism from sender to recipient. If the recipient does not support the algorithm used by the sender, it cannot authenticate the message. Senders in a single administrative domain are not required to upgrade to a new algorithm simultaneously. So far, the algorithm agility is supported by one-way notification, rather than negotiation mode. As defined in Section 3.8.7, the sender notifies the recipient what hash/signature algorithms it uses. If the responder doesn't know a new algorithm used by the sender, the negotiation request would fail. In order to establish a negotiation session, the sender MAY fall back to an older, less preferred algorithm. Certificates and network policy intent SHOULD limit the choice of algorithms. 3.3.2.2. Message validation on reception When receiving a GDNP message, a recipient MUST discard the GDNP message if the Signature option is absent, or the Certificate option is in a Request Message. For the Request message and the Response message with a Certification Option, the recipient MUST first check the authority of this sender following the rules defined in [RFC5280]. After successful authority validation, an implementation MUST add the sender's certification into the local trust certificate record indexed by the associated Device Certificate Tag (Section 3.5). The recipient MUST now authenticate the sender by verifying the Signature and checking a timestamp, as specified in Section 3.3.2.3. The order of two procedures is left as an implementation decision. It is RECOMMENDED to check timestamp first, because signature verification is much more computationally expensive. The signature field verification MUST show that the signature has been calculated as specified in Section 3.8.7. The public key used for signature validation is obtained from the certificate either carried by the message or found from a local trust certificate record by searching the message-carried Device Certificate Tag. Only the messages that get through both the signature verifications and timestamp check are accepted and continue to be handled for their contained GDNP options. Messages that do not pass the above tests MUST be discarded as insecure messages. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 15] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 3.3.2.3. TimeStamp checking Recipients SHOULD be configured with an allowed timestamp Delta value, a "fuzz factor" for comparisons, and an allowed clock drift parameter. The recommended default value for the allowed Delta is 300 seconds (5 minutes); for fuzz factor 1 second; and for clock drift, 0.01 second. The timestamp is defined in the Signature Option, Section 3.8.7. To facilitate timestamp checking, each recipient SHOULD store the following information for each sender: o The receive time of the last received and accepted GDNP message. This is called RDlast. o The time stamp in the last received and accepted GDNP message. This is called TSlast. An accepted GDNP message is any successfully verified (for both timestamp check and signature verification) GDNP message from the given peer. It initiates the update of the above variables. Recipients MUST then check the Timestamp field as follows: o When a message is received from a new peer (i.e., one that is not stored in the cache), the received timestamp, TSnew, is checked, and the message is accepted if the timestamp is recent enough to the reception time of the packet, RDnew: -Delta < (RDnew - TSnew) < +Delta The RDnew and TSnew values SHOULD be stored in the cache as RDlast and TSlast. o When a message is received from a known peer (i.e., one that already has an entry in the cache), the timestamp is checked against the previously received GDNP message: TSnew + fuzz > TSlast + (RDnew - RDlast) x (1 - drift) - fuzz If this inequality does not hold, the recipient SHOULD silently discard the message. If, on the other hand, the inequality holds, the recipient SHOULD process the message. Moreover, if the above inequality holds and TSnew > TSlast, the recipient SHOULD update RDlast and TSlast. Otherwise, the recipient MUST NOT update RDlast or TSlast. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 16] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 An implementation MAY use some mechanism such as a timestamp cache to strengthen resistance to replay attacks. When there is a very large number of nodes on the same link, or when a cache filling attack is in progress, it is possible that the cache holding the most recent timestamp per sender will become full. In this case, the node MUST remove some entries from the cache or refuse some new requested entries. The specific policy as to which entries are preferred over others is left as an implementation decision. 3.3.3. Negotiation Procedures A negotiation initiator sends a negotiation request to counterpart devices, which may be different according to different negotiation objectives. It may request relevant information from the negotiation counterpart so that it can decide its local configuration to give the most coordinated performance. This would be sufficient in a case where the required function is limited to state synchronization. It may additionally request the negotiation counterpart to make a matching configuration in order to set up a successful communication with it. It may request a certain simulation or forecast result by sending some dry run conditions. The details, including the distinction between dry run and an actual configuration change, will be defined separately for each type of negotiation objective. If the counterpart can immediately apply the requested configuration, it will give an immediate positive (accept) answer. This will end the negotiation phase immediately. Otherwise, it will negotiate. It will reply with a proposed alternative configuration that it can apply (typically, a configuration that uses fewer resources than requested by the negotiation initiator). This will start a bi- directional negotiation to reach a compromise between the two network devices. The negotiation procedure is ended when one of the negotiation peers sends a Negotiation Ending message, which contains an accept or decline option and does not need a response from the negotiation peer. A negotiation procedure concerns one objective and one counterpart. Both the initiator and the counterpart may take part in simultaneous negotiations with various other devices, or in simultaneous negotiations about different objectives. Thus, GDNP is expected to be used in a multi-threaded mode. Certain negotiation objectives may have restrictions on multi-threading, for example to avoid over- allocating resources. Rapid Mode (Discovery/Negotiation linkage) Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 17] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 A Discovery message MAY include one or more Negotiation Objective option(s). In this case the Discovery message also acts as a Request message to indicate to the Discovery Responder that it could directly reply to the Discovery Initiator with a Negotiation message for rapid processing, if the discovery objective could act as the corresponding negotiation counterpart. However, the indication is only advisory not prescriptive. This rapid mode could reduce the interactions between nodes so that a higher efficiency could be achieved. This rapid negotiation function SHOULD be configured off by default and MAY be configured on or off by policy intent. 3.3.4. Synchronization Procedure A synchronization initiator sends a synchronization request to counterpart devices, which may be different according to different synchronization objectives. The counterpart responds with a Response message containing the current value(s) of the requested synchronization objective. No further messages are needed, but otherwise the procedure operates as a subset of the negotiation procedure. If no Response message is received, the synchronization request MAY be repeated after a suitable timeout. A synchronization responder MAY send an unsolicited Response message containing a synchronization objective, if and only if the specification of this objective permits it. This MAY be sent as a multicast message to the ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR multicast address (Section 3.4). In this case the Trickle algorithm [RFC6206] MUST be used to avoid excessive multicast traffic. The parameters Imin, Imax and k of the Trickle algorithm will be specified as part of the specification of the synchronization objective concerned. Rapid Mode (Discovery/Synchronization linkage) A Discovery message MAY include one or more Synchronization Objective option(s). In this case the Discovery message also acts as a Request message to indicate to the Discovery Responder that it could directly reply to the Discovery Initiator with a Response message with synchronization data for rapid processing, if the discovery target supports the corresponding synchronization objective. However, the indication is only advisory not prescriptive. This rapid mode could reduce the interactions between nodes so that a higher efficiency could be achieved. This rapid synchronization function SHOULD be configured off by default and MAY be configured on or off by policy intent. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 18] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 3.4. GDNP Constants o ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR (TBD1) A link-local scope multicast address used by a GDNP-enabled device to discover GDNP-enabled neighbor (i.e., on-link) devices . All devices that support GDNP are members of this multicast group. * IPv6 multicast address: TBD1 * IPv4 multicast address: TBD2 o GDNP Listen Port (TBD3) A UDP port that every GDNP-enabled network device always listens to. 3.5. Device Identifier and Certificate Tag A GDNP-enabled Device MUST generate a stable public/private key pair before it participates in GDNP. There MUST NOT be any way of accessing the private key via the network or an operator interface. The device then uses the public key as its identifier, which is cryptographic in nature. It is a GDNP unique identifier for a GDNP participant. It then gets a certificate for this public key, signed by a Certificate Authority that is trusted by other network devices. The Certificate Authority SHOULD be managed within the local administrative domain, to avoid needing to trust a third party. The signed certificate would be used for authentication of the message sender. In a managed network, this certification process could be performed at a central location before the device is physically installed at its intended location. In an unmanaged network, this process must be autonomic, including the bootstrap phase. A 128-bit Device Certifcate Tag, which is generated by taking a cryptographic hash over the device certificate, is a short presentation for GDNP messages. It is the index key to find the device certificate in a recipient's local trusted certificate record. The tag value is formed by taking a SHA-1 hash algorithm [RFC3174] over the corresponding device certificate and taking the leftmost 128 bits of the hash result. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 19] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 3.6. Session Identifier (Session ID) A 24-bit opaque value used to distinguish multiple sessions between the same two devices. A new Session ID MUST be generated for every new Discovery or Request message, and for every unsolicited Response message. All follow-up messages in the same discovery, synchronization or negotiation procedure, which is initiated by the request message, MUST carry the same Session ID. The Session ID SHOULD have a very low collision rate locally. It is RECOMMENDED to be generated by a pseudo-random algorithm using a seed which is unlikely to be used by any other device in the same network [RFC4086]. 3.7. GDNP Messages This document defines the following GDNP message format and types. Message types not listed here are reserved for future use. The numeric encoding for each message type is shown in parentheses. 3.7.1. GDNP Message Format All GDNP messages share an identical fixed format header and a variable format area for options. Every Message carries the Device Certificate Tag of its sender and a Session ID. Options are presented serially in the options field, with no padding between the options. Options are byte-aligned. The following diagram illustrates the format of GDNP messages: 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | MESSAGE_TYPE | Session ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | Device Certificate Tag | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Options (variable length) | . . +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ MESSAGE_TYPE: Identifies the GDNP message type. 8-bit. Session ID: Identifies this negotiation session, as defined in Section 3.6. 24-bit. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 20] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 Device Certificate Tag: Represents the Device Certificate, which identifies the negotiation devices, as defined in Section 3.5. The Device Certificate Tag is 128 bit, also defined in Section 3.5. It is used as index key to find the device certificate. Options: GDNP Options carried in this message. Options are defined starting at Section 3.8. 3.7.2. Discovery Message DISCOVERY (MESSAGE_TYPE = 1): A discovery initiator sends a DISCOVERY message to initiate a discovery process. The discovery initiator sends the DISCOVERY messages to the link- local ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR multicast address for discovery, and stores the discovery results (including responding discovery objectives and corresponding unicast addresses or FQDNs). A DISCOVERY message MUST include a discovery objective option (Section 3.9). A DISCOVERY message MAY include one or more negotiation objective option(s) (Section 3.10) to indicate to the discovery objective that it could directly return to the discovery initiatior with a Negotiation message for rapid processing, if the discovery objective could act as the corresponding negotiation counterpart, and similarly for synchronization. 3.7.3. Response Message RESPONSE (MESSAGE_TYPE = 2): A node which receives a DISCOVERY message sends a Response message to respond to a discovery. It MUST contain the same Session ID as the DISCOVERY message. It MAY include a copy of the discovery objective from the DISCOVERY message. If the responding node supports the discovery objective of the discovery, it MUST include at least one kind of locator option (Section 3.8.8) to indicate its own location. A combination of multiple kinds of locator options (e.g. IP address option + FQDN option) is also valid. If the responding node itself does not support the discovery objective, but it knows the locator of the discovery objective, then Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 21] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 it SHOULD respond to the discovery message with a divert option (Section 3.8.2) embedding a locator option or a combination of multiple kinds of locator options which indicate the locator(s) of the discovery objective. A node which receives a synchronization request sends a Response message with the synchronization data. A node MAY send an unsolicited Response Message with synchronization data and this MAY be sent to the link-local ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR multicast address. If the response contains synchronization data, this will be in the form of a GDNP Option for the specific synchronization objective. 3.7.4. Request Message REQUEST (MESSAGE_TYPE = 3): A negotiation or synchronization requesting node sends the REQUEST message to the unicast address (directly stored or resolved from the FQDN) of the negotiation or synchronization counterpart (selected from the discovery results). A request message MUST include the relevant objective option, with the requested value in the case of negotiation. 3.7.5. Negotiation Message NEGOTIATION (MESSAGE_TYPE = 4): A negotiation counterpart sends a NEGOTIATION message in response to a REQUEST message, a NEGOTIATION message, or a DISCOVERY message in Rapid Mode. A negotiation process MAY include multiple steps. 3.7.6. Negotiation-ending Message NEGOTIATION-ENDING (MESSAGE_TYPE = 5): A negotiation counterpart sends an NEGOTIATION-ENDING message to close the negotiation. It MUST contain one, but only one of accept/ decline option, defined in Section 3.8.3 and Section 3.8.4. It could be sent either by the requesting node or the responding node. 3.7.7. Confirm-waiting Message CONFIRM-WAITING (MESSAGE_TYPE = 6): A responding node sends a CONFIRM-WAITING message to indicate the requesting node to wait for a further negotiation response. It might Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 22] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 be that the local process needs more time or that the negotiation depends on another triggered negotiation. This message MUST NOT include any other options than the Waiting Time Option (Section 3.8.5). 3.8. GDNP General Options This section defines the GDNP general option for the negotiation and synchronization protocol signalling. Option types 10~63 are reserved for GDNP general options defined in the future. 3.8.1. Format of GDNP Options 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | option-code | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | option-data | | (option-len octets) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: An unsigned integer identifying the specific option type carried in this option. Option-len: An unsigned integer giving the length of the option-data field in this option in octets. Option-data: The data for the option; the format of this data depends on the definition of the option. GDNP options are scoped by using encapsulation. If an option contains other options, the outer Option-len includes the total size of the encapsulated options, and the latter apply only to the outer option. 3.8.2. Divert Option The divert option is used to redirect a GDNP request to another node, which may be more appropriate for the intended negotiation or synchronization. It may redirect to an entity that is known as a specific negotiation or synchronization counterpart (on-link or off- link) or a default gateway. The divert option MUST only be encapsulated in Response messages. If found elsewhere, it SHOULD be silently ignored. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 23] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_DIVERT | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Locator Option(s) of Diversion Device(s) | . . +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_DIVERT (1). Option-len: The total length of diverted destination sub-option(s) in octets. Locator Option(s) of Diversion Device(s): Embedded Locator Option(s) (Section 3.8.8) that point to diverted destination device(s). 3.8.3. Accept Option The accept option is used to indicate to the negotiation counterpart that the proposed negotiation content is accepted. The accept option MUST only be encapsulated in Negotiation-ending messages. If found elsewhere, it SHOULD be silently ignored. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_ACCEPT | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_ACCEPT (2) Option-len: 0 3.8.4. Decline Option The decline option is used to indicate to the negotiation counterpart the proposed negotiation content is declined and end the negotiation process. The decline option MUST only be encapsulated in Negotiation-ending messages. If found elsewhere, it SHOULD be silently ignored. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 24] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_DECLINE | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_DECLINE (3) Option-len: 0 Notes: there are scenarios where a negotiation counterpart wants to decline the proposed negotiation content and continue the negotiation process. For these scenarios, the negotiation counterpart SHOULD use a Response message, with either an objective option that contains at least one data field with all bits set to 1 to indicate a meaningless initial value, or a specific objective option that provides further conditions for convergence. 3.8.5. Waiting Time Option The waiting time option is used to indicate that the negotiation counterpart needs to wait for a further negotiation response, since the processing might need more time than usual or it might depend on another triggered negotiation. The waiting time option MUST only be encapsulated in Confirm-waiting messages. If found elsewhere, it SHOULD be silently ignored. The counterpart SHOULD send a Response message or another Confirm- waiting message before the current waiting time expires. If not, the initiator SHOULD abandon or restart the negotiation procedure, to avoid an indefinite wait. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_WAITING | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Time | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_WAITING (4) Option-len: 4, in octets Time: Time in milliseconds Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 25] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 3.8.6. Certificate Option The Certificate option carries the certificate of the sender. The format of the Certificate option is as follows: 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION Certificate | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | . Certificate (variable length) . . . | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_CERT_PARAMETER (5) Option-len: Length of certificate in octets Public key: A variable-length field containing a certificate 3.8.7. Signature Option The Signature option allows public key-based signatures to be attached to a GDNP message. The Signature option is REQUIRED in every GDNP message and could be any place within the GDNP message. It protects the entire GDNP header and options. A TimeStamp has been integrated in the Signature Option for anti-replay protection. The format of the Signature option is described as follows: 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_SIGNATURE | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | HA-id | SA-id | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Timestamp (64-bit) | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | . Signature (variable length) . . . | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_SIGNATURE (6) Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 26] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 Option-len: 12 + Length of Signature field in octets. HA-id: Hash Algorithm id. The hash algorithm is used for computing the signature result. This design is adopted in order to provide hash algorithm agility. The value is from the Hash Algorithm for GDNP registry in IANA. The initial value assigned for SHA-1 is 0x0001. SA-id: Signature Algorithm id. The signature algorithm is used for computing the signature result. This design is adopted in order to provide signature algorithm agility. The value is from the Signature Algorithm for GDNP registry in IANA. The initial value assigned for RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 is 0x0001. Timestamp: The current time of day (NTP-format timestamp [RFC5905] in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), a 64-bit unsigned fixed-point number, in seconds relative to 0h on 1 January 1900.). It can reduce the danger of replay attacks. Signature: A variable-length field containing a digital signature. The signature value is computed with the hash algorithm and the signature algorithm, as described in HA-id and SA-id. The signature constructed by using the sender's private key protects the following sequence of octets: 1. The GDNP message header. 2. All GDNP options including the Signature option (fill the signature field with zeroes). The signature field MUST be padded, with all 0, to the next 16 bit boundary if its size is not an even multiple of 8 bits. The padding length depends on the signature algorithm, which is indicated in the SA-id field. 3.8.8. Locator Options These locator options are used to present a device's or interface's reachability information. They are Locator IPv4 Address Option, Locator IPv6 Address Option and Locator FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) Option. 3.8.8.1. Locator IPv4 address option Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 27] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_LOCATOR_IPV4ADDR | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | IPv4-Address | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_LOCATOR_IPV4ADDR (7) Option-len: 4, in octets IPv4-Address: The IPv4 address locator of the device/interface 3.8.8.2. Locator IPv6 address option 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_LOCATOR_IPV6ADDR | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | IPv6-Address | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_LOCATOR_IPV6ADDR (8) Option-len: 16, in octets IPv6-Address: The IPv6 address locator of the device/interface Note: A link-local IPv6 address MUST NOT be used when this option is used within the Divert option. 3.8.8.3. Locator FQDN option 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_FQDN | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Fully Qualified Domain Name | | (variable length) | . . +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 28] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 Option-code: OPTION_FQDN (9) Option-len: Length of Fully Qualified Domain Name in octets Domain-Name: The Fully Qualified Domain Name of the entity 3.9. Discovery Objective Option The discovery objective option is to express the discovery objectives that the initiating node wants to discover and to confirm them in a Response message. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_DISOBJ | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Expression of Discovery Objectives (TBD) | . . +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_DISOBJ (TBD) Option-len: The total length in octets Expression of Discovery Objectives (TBD): This field is to express the discovery objectives that the initiating node wants to discover. It might be network functionality, role-based network element or service agent. 3.10. Negotiation and Synchronization Objective Options and Considerations Negotiation and Synchronization Objective Options MUST be assigned an option type greater than 64 in the GDNP option table. The Negotiation Objective Options contain negotiation objectives, which are various according to different functions/services. They MUST be carried by Discovery, Request or Negotiation Messages only. For most scenarios, there SHOULD be initial values in the negotiation requests. Consequently, the Negotiation Objective options SHOULD always be completely presented in a Request message,or in a Discovery message in rapid mode. If there is no initial value, the bits in the value field SHOULD all be set to 1 to indicate a meaningless value, unless this is inappropriate for the specific negotiation objective. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 29] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 Synchronization Objective Options are similar, but MUST be carried by Discovery, Request or Response messages only. They include value fields only in Response messages. 3.10.1. Organizing of GDNP Options Naturally, a negotiation objective, which is based on a specific service or function or action, SHOULD be organized as a single GDNP option. It is NOT RECOMMENDED to organize multiple negotiation objectives into a single option. A negotiation objective may have multiple parameters. Parameters can be categorized into two class: the obligatory ones presented as fixed fields; and the optional ones presented in TLV sub-options. It is NOT RECOMMENDED to split parameters in a single objective into multiple options, unless they have different response periods. An exception scenario may also be described by split objectives. 3.10.2. Vendor Specific Options Option codes 128~159 have been reserved for vendor specific options. Multiple option codes have been assigned because a single vendor might use multiple options simultaneously. These vendor specific options are highly likely to have different meanings when used by different vendors. Therefore, they SHOULD NOT be used without an explicit human decision and SHOULD NOT be used in unmanaged networks such as home networks. There is one general requirement that applies to all vendor specific options. They MUST start with a field that uniquely identifies the enterprise that defines the option, in the form of a registered 32 bit Private Enterprise Number (PEN) [I-D.liang-iana-pen]. There is no default value for this field. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | OPTION_vendor | option-len | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Private Enterprise Number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Option Contents | . (variable length) . +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Option-code: OPTION_vendor (128~159) Option-len: Length of PEN plus option contents in octets Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 30] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 3.10.3. Experimental Options Option code 176~191 have been reserved for experimental options. Multiple option codes have been assigned because a single experiment may use multiple options simultaneously. These experimental options are highly likely to have different meanings when used for different experiments. Therefore, they SHOULD NOT be used without an explicit human decision and SHOULD NOT be used in unmanaged networks such as home networks. These option codes are also RECOMMENDED for use in documentation examples. 3.11. Items for Future Work There are various design questions that are worthy of more work in the near future, as listed below: o UDP vs TCP: For now, this specification has chosen UDP as message transport mechanism. However, this is not closed yet. UDP is good for short conversations, fitting the discovery and divert scenarios well. However, it may have issues with large packets. TCP is good for stable and long sessions, with a little bit of time consumption during the session establishment stage. If messages exceed a reasonable MTU, a TCP mode may be necessary. o Message encryption: should GDNP messages be (optionally) encrypted as well as signed, to protect against internal eavesdropping or monitoring within the network? o DTLS or TLS vs built-in security mechanism. For now, this specification has chosen a PKI based built-in security mechanism based on asymmetric cryptography. However, (D)TLS might be chosen as security solution to avoid duplication of effort. It also allows essentially similar security for short messages over UDP and longer ones over TCP. The implementation trade-offs are different. The current approach requires expensive asymmetric cryptographic calculations for every message. (D)TLS has startup overheads but cheaper crypto per message. o Should discuss lifetime of discovery cache, and what to do when discovery fails (timeout and repeat?). o Timeout for lost Negotiation Ending and other messages to be added. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 31] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 o We mention convergence mechanisms and say "Also some mechanisms are needed to avoid loop dependencies." These issues need more work. o For replay protection, GDNP currently requires every participant to have an NTP-synchronized clock. Is this OK for low-end devices, and how does it work during device bootstrapping? We could take the Timestamp out of signature option, to become an independent and OPTIONAL (or RECOMMENDED) option. o Would use of MDNS have any impact on the Locator FQDN option? o Need to add a section describing the minimum requirements for the specification of an individual discovery, synchronization or negotiation objective. Maybe a formal information model is needed. o Is it reasonable to consider that a Discovery Objective is really just a set of specific Negotiation and/or Synchronization Objectives? In other words, if a GDNP node supports Negotiation and/or Synchronization Objectives A, B and C, then its corresponding Discovery Objective is a shorthand for "A+B+C". o Would a DISCOVERY(ANY) mechanism be useful during bootstrapping, i.e. used by all GDNP-capable routers to find all their neighbours that support any GDNP discovery objective?. o Would it be reasonable to allow an unsolicited Response message with Discovery Objective content, to speed up discovery during bootstrapping? o Is there a risk that the relaying of discovery messages (Section 3.3.1) will lead to loops or multicast storms? At least we should consider throttling discovery relays to a maximum rate. Or is there a better method for zeroconf discovery with no predefined hierarchy? o Should we consider a distributed or centralised DNS-like approach to discovery (after the initial discovery needed for bootstrapping)? o Need to discuss automatic recovery mechanism as required by Section 2.2 and management monitoring, alerts and intervention in general. o The Decline Option (Section 3.8.4) includes a note that a counterpart could use a Response message to indicate "Decline but Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 32] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 try again". That seems strange - why not use a Negotiation message for this case? o The Signature Option (Section 3.8.7) states that this option could be any place in a message. Wouldn't it be better to specify a position (such as the end)? That would be much simpler to implement. o DoS Attack Protection needs work. o Use case and protocol walkthrough. A description of how a node starts up, performs discovery, and conducts negotiation and synchronisation for a sample use case would help readers to understand the applicability of this specification. Maybe it should be an artificial use case or maybe a simple real one. However, the authors have not yet decided whether to have a separate document or have it in this document. o We currently assume that there is only one counterpart for each discovery action. If this is false or one negotiation request receives multiple different responses, how does the initiator choose between them? Could it split them into multiple follow-up negotiations? o Alternatives to TLV format. It may be useful to provide a generic method of carrying negotiation objectives in a high-level format such as YANG or XML schema. It may also be useful to provide a generic method of carrying existing configuration information such as DHCP(v6) or IPv6 RA messages. These features could be provided by encapsulating such messages in their own TLVs, but large messages would definitely need a TCP mode instead of UDP. 4. Security Considerations It is obvious that a successful attack on negotiation-enabled nodes would be extremely harmful, as such nodes might end up with a completely undesirable configuration that would also adversely affect their peers. GDNP nodes and messages therefore require full protection. - Authentication A cryptographically authenticated identity for each device is needed in an autonomic network. It is not safe to assume that a large network is physically secured against interference or that all personnel are trustworthy. Each autonomic device should be capable of proving its identity and authenticating its messages. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 33] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 GDNP proposes a certificate-based security mechanism to provide authentication and data integrity protection. The timestamp mechanism provides an anti-replay function. Since GDNP is intended to be deployed in a single administrative domain operating its own trust anchor and CA, there is no need for a trusted public third party. - Privacy Generally speaking, no personal information is expected to be involved in the negotiation protocol, so there should be no direct impact on personal privacy. Nevertheless, traffic flow paths, VPNs, etc. may be negotiated, which could be of interest for traffic analysis. Also, carriers generally want to conceal details of their network topology and traffic density from outsiders. Therefore, since insider attacks cannot be prevented in a large carrier network, the security mechanism for the negotiation protocol needs to provide message confidentiality. - DoS Attack Protection TBD. 5. IANA Considerations Section 3.4 defines the following multicast addresses, which have been assigned by IANA for use by GDNP: ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR multicast address (IPv6): (TBD1) ALL_GDNP_NEIGHBOR multicast address (IPv4): (TBD2) Section 3.4 defines the following UDP port, which has been assigned by IANA for use by GDNP: GDNP Listen Port: (TBD3) This document defined a new General Discovery and Negotiation Protocol. The IANA is requested to create a new GDNP registry. The IANA is also requested to add two new registry tables to the newly- created GDNP registry. The two tables are the GDNP Messages table and GDNP Options table. Initial values for these registries are given below. Future assignments are to be made through Standards Action or Specification Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 34] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 Required [RFC5226]. Assignments for each registry consist of a type code value, a name and a document where the usage is defined. GDNP Messages table. The values in this table are 16-bit unsigned integers. The following initial values are assigned in Section 3.7 in this document: Type | Name | RFCs ---------+-----------------------------+------------ 0 |Reserved | this document 1 |Discovery | this document 2 |Response | this document 3 |Request Message | this document 4 |Negotiation Message | this document 5 |Negotiation-end Message | this document 6 |Confirm-waiting Message | this document GDNP Options table. The values in this table are 16-bit unsigned integers. The following initial values are assigned in Section 3.8 and Section 3.10 in this document: Type | Name | RFCs ---------+-----------------------------+------------ 0 |Reserved | this document 1 |Divert Option | this document 2 |Accept Option | this document 3 |Decline Option | this document 4 |Waiting Time Option | this document 5 |Certificate Option | this document 6 |Signature Option | this document 7 |Device IPv4 Address Option | this document 8 |Device IPv6 Address Option | this document 9 |Device FQDN Option | this document 10~63 |Reserved for future GDNP | this document |General Options | 128~159 |Vendor Specific Options | this document 176~191 |Experimental Options | this document The IANA is also requested to create two new registry tables in the GDNP Parameters registry. The two tables are the Hash Algorithm for GDNP table and the Signature Algorithm for GDNP table. Initial values for these registries are given below. Future assignments are to be made through Standards Action or Specification Required [RFC5226]. Assignments for each registry consist of a name, a value and a document where the algorithm is defined. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 35] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 Hash Algorithm for GDNP. The values in this table are 16-bit unsigned integers. The following initial values are assigned for Hash Algorithm for GDNP in this document: Name | Value | RFCs ---------------------+-----------+------------ Reserved | 0x0000 | this document SHA-1 | 0x0001 | this document SHA-256 | 0x0002 | this document Signature Algorithm for GDNP. The values in this table are 16-bit unsigned integers. The following initial values are assigned for Signature Algorithm for GDNP in this document: Name | Value | RFCs ---------------------+-----------+------------ Reserved | 0x0000 | this document RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 | 0x0001 | this document 6. Acknowledgements A major contribution to the original version of this document was made by Sheng Jiang. Valuable comments were received from Zhenbin Li, Dimitri Papadimitriou, Michael Richardson, Rene Struik, Dacheng Zhang, and other participants in the NMRG research group and the ANIMA working group. This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool [RFC2629]. 7. Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove] draft-carpenter-anima-discovery-negotiation-protocol-01, restructured the logical flow of the document, updated to describe synchronization completely, add unsolicited responses, numerous corrections and clarifications, expanded future work list, 2015-01-06. draft-carpenter-anima-discovery-negotiation-protocol-00, combination of draft-jiang-config-negotiation-ps-03 and draft-jiang-config- negotiation-protocol-02, 2014-10-08. 8. References Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 36] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 8.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC3174] Eastlake, D. and P. Jones, "US Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA1)", RFC 3174, September 2001. [RFC4086] Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, "Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086, June 2005. [RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008. [RFC6206] Levis, P., Clausen, T., Hui, J., Gnawali, O., and J. Ko, "The Trickle Algorithm", RFC 6206, March 2011. 8.2. Informative References [I-D.behringer-anima-autonomic-control-plane] Behringer, M., Bjarnason, S., BL, B., and T. Eckert, "An Autonomic Control Plane", draft-behringer-anima-autonomic- control-plane-00 (work in progress), October 2014. [I-D.chaparadza-intarea-igcp] Behringer, M., Chaparadza, R., Petre, R., Li, X., and H. Mahkonen, "IP based Generic Control Protocol (IGCP)", draft-chaparadza-intarea-igcp-00 (work in progress), July 2011. [I-D.eckert-anima-stable-connectivity] Eckert, T. and M. Behringer, "Autonomic Network Stable Connectivity", draft-eckert-anima-stable-connectivity-00 (work in progress), October 2014. [I-D.ietf-dnssd-requirements] Lynn, K., Cheshire, S., Blanchet, M., and D. Migault, "Requirements for Scalable DNS-SD/mDNS Extensions", draft- ietf-dnssd-requirements-04 (work in progress), October 2014. [I-D.ietf-homenet-hncp] Stenberg, M. and S. Barth, "Home Networking Control Protocol", draft-ietf-homenet-hncp-02 (work in progress), October 2014. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 37] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 [I-D.ietf-netconf-restconf] Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., and K. Watsen, "RESTCONF Protocol", draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-03 (work in progress), October 2014. [I-D.irtf-nmrg-an-gap-analysis] Jiang, S., Carpenter, B., and M. Behringer, "Gap Analysis for Autonomic Networking", draft-irtf-nmrg-an-gap- analysis-03 (work in progress), December 2014. [I-D.irtf-nmrg-autonomic-network-definitions] Behringer, M., Pritikin, M., Bjarnason, S., Clemm, A., Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and L. Ciavaglia, "Autonomic Networking - Definitions and Design Goals", draft-irtf- nmrg-autonomic-network-definitions-05 (work in progress), December 2014. [I-D.liang-iana-pen] Liang, P., Melnikov, A., and D. Conrad, "Private Enterprise Number (PEN) practices and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registration considerations", draft-liang-iana-pen-04 (work in progress), July 2014. [I-D.pritikin-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra] Pritikin, M., Behringer, M., and S. Bjarnason, "Bootstrapping Key Infrastructures", draft-pritikin-anima- bootstrapping-keyinfra-00 (work in progress), November 2014. [RFC2205] Braden, B., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, S., and S. Jamin, "Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) -- Version 1 Functional Specification", RFC 2205, September 1997. [RFC2608] Guttman, E., Perkins, C., Veizades, J., and M. Day, "Service Location Protocol, Version 2", RFC 2608, June 1999. [RFC2629] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629, June 1999. [RFC2865] Rigney, C., Willens, S., Rubens, A., and W. Simpson, "Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)", RFC 2865, June 2000. [RFC3209] Awduche, D., Berger, L., Gan, D., Li, T., Srinivasan, V., and G. Swallow, "RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP Tunnels", RFC 3209, December 2001. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 38] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 [RFC3315] Droms, R., Bound, J., Volz, B., Lemon, T., Perkins, C., and M. Carney, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6)", RFC 3315, July 2003. [RFC3416] Presuhn, R., "Version 2 of the Protocol Operations for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)", STD 62, RFC 3416, December 2002. [RFC4270] Hoffman, P. and B. Schneier, "Attacks on Cryptographic Hashes in Internet Protocols", RFC 4270, November 2005. [RFC4861] Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman, "Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861, September 2007. [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, May 2008. [RFC5905] Mills, D., Martin, J., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch, "Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms Specification", RFC 5905, June 2010. [RFC5971] Schulzrinne, H. and R. Hancock, "GIST: General Internet Signalling Transport", RFC 5971, October 2010. [RFC6241] Enns, R., Bjorklund, M., Schoenwaelder, J., and A. Bierman, "Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC 6241, June 2011. [RFC6733] Fajardo, V., Arkko, J., Loughney, J., and G. Zorn, "Diameter Base Protocol", RFC 6733, October 2012. [RFC6762] Cheshire, S. and M. Krochmal, "Multicast DNS", RFC 6762, February 2013. [RFC6763] Cheshire, S. and M. Krochmal, "DNS-Based Service Discovery", RFC 6763, February 2013. [RFC6887] Wing, D., Cheshire, S., Boucadair, M., Penno, R., and P. Selkirk, "Port Control Protocol (PCP)", RFC 6887, April 2013. Appendix A. Capability Analysis of Current Protocols This section discusses various existing protocols with properties related to the above negotiation and synchronisation requirements. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 39] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 The purpose is to evaluate whether any existing protocol, or a simple combination of existing protocols, can meet those requirements. Numerous protocols include some form of discovery, but these all appear to be very specific in their applicability. Service Location Protocol (SLP) [RFC2608] provides service discovery for managed networks, but requires configuration of its own servers. DNS-SD [RFC6763] combined with mDNS [RFC6762] provides service discovery for small networks with a single link layer. [I-D.ietf-dnssd-requirements] aims to extend this to larger autonomous networks. However, both SLP and DNS-SD appear to target primarily application layer services, not the layer 2 and 3 objectives relevant to basic network configuration. Routing protocols are mainly one-way information announcements. The receiver makes independent decisions based on the received information and there is no direct feedback information to the announcing peer. This remains true even though the protocol is used in both directions between peer routers; there is state synchronization, but no negotiation, and each peer runs its route calculations independently. Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) [RFC3416] uses a command/ response model not well suited for peer negotiation. Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) [RFC6241] uses an RPC model that does allow positive or negative responses from the target system, but this is still not adequate for negotiation. There are various existing protocols that have elementary negotiation abilities, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) [RFC3315], Neighbor Discovery (ND) [RFC4861], Port Control Protocol (PCP) [RFC6887], Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) [RFC2865], Diameter [RFC6733], etc. Most of them are configuration or management protocols. However, they either provide only a simple request/response model in a master/slave context or very limited negotiation abilities. There are also signalling protocols with an element of negotiation. For example Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) [RFC2205] was designed for negotiating quality of service parameters along the path of a unicast or multicast flow. RSVP is a very specialised protocol aimed at end-to-end flows. However, it has some flexibility, having been extended for MPLS label distribution [RFC3209]. A more generic design is General Internet Signalling Transport (GIST) [RFC5971], but it is complex, tries to solve many problems, and is also aimed at per-flow signalling across many hops rather than at device-to-device signalling. However, we cannot completely exclude extended RSVP or Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 40] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 GIST as a synchronization and negotiation protocol. They do not appear to be directly useable for peer discovery. We now consider two protocols that are works in progress at the time of this writing. Firstly, RESTCONF [I-D.ietf-netconf-restconf] is a protocol intended to convey NETCONF information expressed in the YANG language via HTTP, including the ability to transit HTML intermediaries. While this is a powerful approach in the context of centralised configuration of a complex network, it is not well adapted to efficient interactive negotiation between peer devices, especially simple ones that are unlikely to include YANG processing already. Secondly, we consider HomeNet Control Protocol (HNCP) [I-D.ietf-homenet-hncp]. This is defined as "a minimalist state synchronization protocol for Homenet routers." NOTE: HNCP is under revision at the time of this writing, so the following comments will soon be out of date. Specific features are: o Every participating node has a unique node identifier. o "HNCP is designed to operate between directly connected neighbors on a shared link using link-local IPv6 addresses." o Currency of state is maintained by spontaneous link-local multicast messages. o HNCP discovers and tracks link-local neighbours. o HNCP messages are encoded as a sequence of TLV objects, sent over UDP. o Authentication depends on a signature TLV (assuming public keys are associated with node identifiers). o The functionality covered initially includes: site border discovery, prefix assignment, DNS namespace discovery, and routing protocol selection. Clearly HNCP does not completely meet the needs of a general negotiation protocol, especially due to its limitation to link-local messages and its strict dependency on IPv6, but at the minimum it is a very interesting test case for this style of interaction between devices without needing a central authority. Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 41] Internet-Draft GDN Protocol January 2015 A proposal has been made for an IP based Generic Control Protocol (IGCP) [I-D.chaparadza-intarea-igcp]. This is aimed at information exchange and negotiation but not directly at peer discovery. However, it has many points in common with the present work. None of the above solutions appears to completely meet the needs of discovery, state synchronization and negotiation in the general case. Neither is there an obvious combination of protocols that does so. Therefore, this document proposes the design of a protocol that does meet those needs. However, this proposal needs to be confronted with alternatives such as extension and adaptation of GIST or HNCP, or combination with IGCP. Authors' Addresses Brian Carpenter Department of Computer Science University of Auckland PB 92019 Auckland 1142 New Zealand Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com Bing Liu Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd Q14, Huawei Campus No.156 Beiqing Road Hai-Dian District, Beijing 100095 P.R. China Email: leo.liubing@huawei.com Carpenter & Liu Expires July 10, 2015 [Page 42]